Luminous Darkness

The subject of miracles has come up a few times in the past week, and it got me thinking about it. First off, I spent Friday and Saturday attending a series of lectures by Marcus Borg, a well-known scholar of the Historical Jesus and a proponent of what he terms ‘liberal progressive’ Christianity. The lectures were very interesting, and I agreed with a lot of what he had to say.

For example, he laid out a few ways that the free gift of God’s grace towards humanity has often been overshadowed in the history of the Church by fear of heresy or conflict. In any study of the early church, it quickly becomes apparent that the standard of salvation was to believe what was pronounced as ‘orthodox’. These propositions tended to be put forth by people who often had just as much political power as ecclesiastical.* During the Reformation, Martin Luther railed against the late medieval version of this behavior and reminded us of that gift of free grace. Unfortunately, within a short period of time, the ongoing conflict between the Roman Catholic Church and various Protestant groups led to Luther’s original idea being corrupted so that it was the belief in the theological concept of free grace (as opposed to works) that made one saved, not actually the grace itself. This is a subtle but important difference in how we as human beings approach God. Free grace means that there is no ‘if…’ statement, but that, first and foremost, God loves us just as we are. I can very much agree with Borg’s point here.

However, when it came to miracles, he described how, in most modern biblical scholarship, such episodes in the Bible are generally regarded to be factually untrue, and in fact are unhelpful to modern Christian faith since they ask people to believe in “the factuality of the spectacular.” He says that this is something that no modern Church, grounded in the scientific age, should expect people to believe. In this he includes such things as the virgin birth, Jesus walking on the water, and Jesus curing a man blind from birth (although curiously he does say that he thinks Jesus could have healed a man who became ‘blind’ for other reasons than simply not having the correct ocular equipment — no real explanation of the distinction though).

The next sign was a post made by my friend Fr. Nick Knisely, regarding a new book in the UK that does very much the same thing, speaking specifically about the ‘nature miracles’ such as Jesus turning water into wine or calming the storm at sea and also the creation story in Genesis.** He also links to an article by Ruth Glendhill in The Times about a teaching document put forth by the Roman Catholic bishops of Great Britain a few years ago that makes very much the same point.

This led me to recall a sermon I preached last year where I discussed miracles. In it, I said the following:

… as some of the most far-reaching branches of science, especially theoretical physics and cosmology, are teaching us, what we can see or experience in our three-dimensional universe is not necessarily what is true. To us, the miracles in the gospels seem, well, miraculous. But to God, miracles are not miraculous. They are normal. God subsists in such a way that the divine nature is not bound by the constraints of our human existence … The reality of God is not above our reality or beyond our reality in any kind of spatial or dimensional terms that we can express. The reality of God is, by definition, completely and profoundly different than our reality. We have to readjust our perspective of the universe in light of the radical change worked by God in the Incarnation …

What I find interesting is that Fr. Nick makes a similar and related point in the comments responding to some questions about his post:

As a scientist (and more so as a physicist) I’ve never had any problems believing in the miracles described in the Bible. Quantum Physics (or at least the classical understanding of it) would say that such things are explicitly allowed to occur - they are just highly unlikely. If the Lord of all Creation is walking around, then selecting out a specific outcome of an observation of reality (even if VERY unlikely) is then pretty much even more allowable.

Speaking more as a believer - and one who’s spirituality leans towards the mystic end of the spectrum - I’ve always understood this as something that can only be viewed through eyes of faith. The same eyes that let us see more deeply into the truth of reality than would the eyes of a skeptic.

It’s really a modernist behavior though to insist though that something did or did not happen specifically.

I feel that this expresses the point I was trying to make in another way (and from a perspective of someone with rather more formal scientific training than I possess).

To conclude, the part of Borg’s lectures that troubled me the most was his fairly clear statement that he cannot accept the traditional understanding of the doctrine of the Incarnation. He believes that Jesus was a ‘Jewish mystic’ and that God did not send him to Earth for any specific purpose but that, after the crucifixion, God said ‘Yes!’ to Jesus and his life and teachings in a special and ‘decisive’ way through the resurrection, and that is how we end up with our Christ-centered Way to God. As should be clear by the excerpt from my sermon, the Incarnation is very important to me, and while I can go some of the way with Borg regarding Jesus’ human characteristics, I must fit that in with the definition of Chalcedon where Christ is divine as well.

While I would agree with Borg that “God never wants anyone to be crucified,” I do not think that precludes the idea that God might have made the Word flesh in the incarnation in order to begin the rebuilding of creation. We humans had managed to screw it up already fairly well, and we just went one step further in crucifying Jesus. However, as always, God is able to take what we screw up and do more good with it than we can possibly ask or imagine. Even, perhaps, with a miracle.

* I should make it clear here that by this statement, I am not saying I do not believe that good, true statements about the nature of God and Jesus Christ did not come out of these deliberations and councils, but perhaps rather that the Holy Spirit worked in spite of them instead of through them at certain points.

** The Genesis story is, of course, a myth. ‘Myth’ is a term that I have come to appreciate more and more over recent years. It is NOT, as much of the modern world believes, the same as fiction. Rather it speaks to a much greater and deeper truth about humanity. In words attributed to the 4th century Roman philosopher Sallustius: “a myth is a story about the way things never were but always are.”

After having been told off this morning at church for not ‘friending’ someone as quickly as apparently I should have on Facebook, I was reminded of a discussion at the World Council of Churches General Assembly that I attended last year in Brazil.*

A group of us was talking about the role of technology in the future of the church, especially with regards to ‘young people’ who, in the terms of the World Council, was anyone under the age of 35. The conversation turned to the question of sacraments, and whether or not they would be valid if performed over the internet.

Now, the knee-jerk reaction of many would be to say, no, of course not, and in same cases I think I would agree. One definition of a sacrament would describe how it needs to have both words and a physical act together in order to be properly celebrated. One can see this is the combination of liturgical words and actions present in baptism and the Eucharist. In baptism, the words “I baptize you in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit” are said while water is poured over the candidate’s head. In the Eucharist, the words of Jesus at the last supper are repeated while bread and wine are held up in a reflection of that event, and these elements are then shared with the congregation.

One could see some inherent difficulties in sharing these kinds of activities electronically, although perhaps we should not preclude the idea of some future technology that would allow in the sharing of ‘virtual’ elements. Personally, I think that part of the gospel message to our modern world needs to be that we should be more grounded in the real, physical world and not loose ourselves inside our technology (which real, physical sacraments might help with), but I also would certainly never want to discount what God might do through what we have created.

On the other hand, a sacrament such as reconciliation (or confession of you prefer) does not necessarily have a physical act associated with it. In some traditions it might entail a laying on of hands, but not always. Similarly, although prayers for the sick might involve anointing with oil, they needn’t necessarily. There are numerous websites where you can ask for prayers for yourself or another, or ask to be forgiven for your sins. Some will even allow you to chat in real time with another person, perhaps a ‘confessor’ or a ‘prayer partner’. Are these valid only as potentially helpful spiritual encounters or are they sacramental acts? I think that the boundary is much more gray here. In one sense, the physical act of being with another person is an important part of our relationships with other human beings and collectively in our relationship with God. But in another sense, some would certainly believe in the transformative and healing power of prayer that may or may not be occurring in the same physical space as those being prayed for.

What is clear to me above all else is that these and future technologies will continue to impact the Church in real and meaningful ways, and we should embrace them rather than running away to hide because we don’t understand them or we don’t like the implications of what they might mean. This is not to say that there is not a place for a theological understanding of what role technology should have in society, but that any such understanding needs to be grounded in a reality that is fully experienced and explored.

*For anyone who does not know, Facebook is an website where you can network with your friends, and by extension their friends, to build online communities. The key is that you have to ask permission to be added as a ‘friend’ to somebody’s list, and so you send them a ‘friend request’. If they approve you, you are then permitted to look at their profile, or whatever portion of it they choose to show you, so that you can get to know them better and discover connections with others in similar communities.

I have been in Miami, Florida this week with my job, conducting a planning study for a school here. Tonight, I attended a Requiem Mass for the Feast of All Souls’ at St. Thomas Episcopal Parish in Coral Gables, a neighborhood in Miami. It was a particularly interesting service, not because the music, Fauré’s Requiem, was splendidly sung (it was), or because the liturgy was beautifully Anglo-Catholic (it was), but because the congregation consisted of ten people. In his sermon, the rector mentioned that people had been asking him why they do this service every year (I got the impression that tonight’s attendance is not unusual), and his answer was refreshing and hopeful. He said:

This church tonight is not empty. It is packed; there is not an empty seat. Tonight’s service is about worship, and we are joined here in our worship by that great cloud of witnesses who have gone ahead of us into the Kingdom of God. This church tonight is packed — standing room only.*

I think that he is absolutely right, and certainly I experienced plenty of empty churches during the time that I was in England. In fact, I remember several occasions during Evensong at my college in Cambridge where I was the only member of the congregation! (I do have to say that it did rather feel like I had my own private chapel and chapel choir singing Evensong just for me, which was kind of nice.)

I learned a very important lesson during those services which is that the worship of God goes on everywhere and at all times. Whenever we worship, even if it is reading the daily office alone in the privacy of our own room, we are partaking of, and joining in with, the worship of the saints that goes on without end in heaven. In the words of one of the hymns that we sang this evening:

They stand, those halls of Zion,
Conjubilant with song,
And bright with many an angel
And all the martyr throng.
And they who, with their Leader,
Have conquered in the fight,
Forever and forever
Are clad in robes of white.**

The church is indeed never empty. Even when it looks full with those whom we can see, it is packed even more fully with our fellow brothers and sisters in Christ who worship at the foot of the throne of God and of the Lamb.

* My apologies to Father Tobin for paraphrasing his excellent sermon.

** From ‘Jerusalem the Golden’. I have taken the liberty of using the original translation by J.M. Neale, rather than the one in the Episcopal Hymnal 1982, mostly because I really like the word conjubilant.

I’ve read several things by Richard Dawkins, the well-known British atheist scientist, and had heard about his new book, The God Delusion last week on The Colbert Report. I’ve never been particularly impressed by his arguments, but hadn’t been able to fully articulate why until I saw this article in the Church Times (pointed out by the daily episcopalian). The author, Giles Fraser, notes that

The root of the problem is that too many modern atheists adopt a position that is a photographic negative of a sort of Christianity believed only by the most conservative. God is X, says the modern atheist, giving a short definition that allegedly captures what all believers believe. This means that the God they reject doesn’t look anything like the God that most of us meet in our prayers.

This encapsulates pretty closely the way that I feel about Dawkins and his compatriots. There are any number of my atheist friends over the years with whom I have discussed my Christian faith at great length and in significant intellectual depth. I have never seen this kind of real understanding of the issues from Dawkins.

This is the Sunday when nobody ever wants to preach – the curate always gets that job assigned by the vicar – because talking about the trinity is not easy. Or rather, it is very easy to talk about the trinity, but much more difficult to do so whilst not straying outside the boundaries of orthodoxy, especially when speaking to congregations that tend to be less educated theologically than they once were. I freely admit that I took a bit of an easy way out in this sermon, letting the archbishop of Canterbury speak about the trinity for me with one of my images, but his language is very interesting since it comes from a lecture he gave on Christian belief and practice to a group of Muslims at the Islamic University in Islamabad, Pakistan. The full lecture can be read via the Anglican Communion News Service.

My sermon can be read here: Trinity Sunday 2006.

Here are a few sermons that I have given recently. The first was for the candidates who were confirmed at Grey College this term. I was honoured to be in charge of organising their confirmation classes over the last year, and was pleased to be able to speak to them at their first Eucharist in College. The second sermon was for the Eve of the Feast of the Visitation of the Blessed Virgin Mary, and although perhaps more theological in scope, was also something that I enjoyed writing and delivering, especially since it was at St. Mary’s College.

• Confirmation 2006
• Visitation of the BVM 2006

Today’s sermon is a study of the profoundly important difference between the Word of God, incarnate to us in Jesus Christ, and the words of Holy Scripture, inspired by God, but written in the Bible by human beings. Read it here: Fourth Sunday before Lent 2006.

Holocaust Memorial Day was celebrated last Friday, 27 January, and I preached my sermon about it this weekend. Please feel free to read it and comment: Candlemas 2006.

I seem to be doing a lot of preaching this term (for three weeks in a row!), and the first of these sermons took place at Grey College this morning. The Eucharist was particularly related to Tom Willmore, professor of pure mathematics at Durham, who died last year, and in whose memory a photographic exhibition is currently going on in the college. His photographic work is profound, and I was able to draw on it for this sermon, the text of which may be found in the ‘Sermons’ link on the right, or also by clicking here: III Epiphany 2006.

I have now preached a few times in the last year, and thought it might be good to have those sermons up on the blog, but since they are rather too long for individual posts, I have created a new page that you can find here, or on the right side of the page under the ‘About’ category. Please feel free to read and comment.