I received my first book of Quaker faith and practice in 1975, when Ottawa Friends Meeting accepted me as a new member. Canadian Friends of that era had adopted London Yearly Meeting's Christian Faith and Practice for that purpose, alongside their own loose leaf supplement entitled Organization and Procedure.
British Friends, in the renamed Britain Yearly Meeting, published a new faith and practice book in 1995, now entitled Quaker Faith and Practice.
The word "Christian" was not exactly being deprecated—the full title of the book is Quaker Faith and Practice: The book of Christian discipline of the Yearly Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers) in Britain. It may be tempting to interpret the title change in terms of the post-Christian trends among some British Quakers, but that's not what interests me today.
I suppose that in either case, Christian or Quaker, the prevailing assumption was that these books are for internal use among Friends. This is who we are, more or less. But what I like about the title Christian Faith and Practice is another interpretation entirely, one I have no permission or evidence to propose: this way of faith and life is not just for us; it's recommended for all Christians.
This way of thinking rubs against the ecumenical/interfaith spirit of our times. It paradoxically conflicts with both the modesty and diffidence of contemporary Quakers on the one hand, and our sectarian exceptionalism on the other. But it makes sense to me to interpret these books as our contribution to an ecumenical conversation: this is how we are trying to live with Jesus at the center of our communities; how about you? Can we learn from each other? Are we ready (with kindness) to point to each other's strong places, and each other's defects, blind spots, and worldly accommodations? Ideally, we Quakers are not forming yet another community of self-contained "enthusiasts" (in Ronald Knox's sense) but are eager participants and ecumenical allies in turning the world upside down in the Lamb's war against all forms of oppression.
I don't know how George Fox and his companions would feel about my interpretation of the true audiences of our "faith and practice," but one of his late interpreters, Lewis Benson, once told me, "I don't have an ecumenical bone in my body." He firmly believed that Fox didn't intend to organize a new sect, but to revive or reconstitute the entire Church. However, as Knox points out, the reality is that most reform movements, inside and outside the established confessions, have similar ambitions, so it's up to us to keep the lines of conversation open with all of them rather than tending to our own exclusive conceits.
The work of our late Friend Eden Grace at the World Council of Churches is a wonderful example of these kinds of conversations. Given the range of concerns among Friends worldwide at this grave moment in human history (speaking of ecological as well as political and economic challenges), there probably won't be many of us who will be called to make ecumenical conversation a priority. But if you are one who happens to understand "Christian Faith and Practice" as a contribution to a potentially unlimited audience, I hope these words are encouraging.
Kristin Du Mez comments on Keri Ladner's newly published book American Dominion, and provides us an excerpt. (Also see link to today's live episode of The Convocation Unscripted.)
"...When I heard that song, I said, 'Man, it's just what my soul needed.'" Eric Bibb remembering Lightnin' Hopkins performing "Needed Time" in the film Sounder. (Here's Lightnin' Hopkins' version.)
Part one (last week's post) was my April sermon as guest speaker for Spokane Friends Meeting. In May, again hosted by Spokane Friends, I continued the theme of grace on Pentecost Sunday. Here's that sermon.
Among the questions we looked at last time was how, historically, the church has handled the extravagance of God’s grace, trying to figure out how to communicate this wonderful gift of God’s unmerited favor and blessing to a needy or skeptical audience, and maybe how to manage and filter it so that we might remain dependent on a hierarchy.
Today, I’d like to try to look at it from God’s point of view, if I dared. What I mean is, history tells us that we’ve had a hard time believing all that goodness is really ours. After all, my understanding of history as a political scientist is that it’s mainly a constant tug of war between the idealists and the cynics, and even I, idealist that I am, too often find myself looking at the scene around me and becoming a bit cynical. What does God have to do to reach us and open us up to that grace that represents God’s powerful love for all that God has created?
Fermilab's Don Lincoln on cosmic background microwave radiation. Screenshot from source.
Sabine Hossenfelder on uses of CMBR data for testing the Standard Model of cosmology. Source.
When I came up with the subtitle to today’s message, “windows of grace,” I really had in mind an illustration from astronomy. Maybe you’ve all heard about the phenomenon known as cosmic microwave background radiation. It’s a form of radiation that pervades the whole universe. It even has a temperature…about two or three degrees above absolute zero. If you look at an old-fashioned analog television attached to an old-fashioned antenna, pre-cable and pre-Internet, and tuned it to an empty channel, you’d see and hear what we used to call “snow.” That static was mostly interference from nearby electromagnetic pollution, static from motors, even electrical noise from beyond our planet. but if we could filter out all interference, some tiny percentage of that snow would still be there, that cosmic microwave background. And it is a remnant, an all-pervasive souvenir from the moment our universe was created, 13.8 billion years ago.
I interpret that moment as God populating the universe with God’s beloved Creation. It grew and spread all that time to the present day, when we appeared among God’s beloved creatures, including each one of us sitting here today. Even as parts of that grand opening solidified into stars and planets and carbon and creatures, God’s burst of extravagant love continues to pervade every little corner of creation, whether we choose to receive and enjoy that universal godly energy, what I call grace, or not. We humans have our little conceits—our rules, tribes, borders, uniforms, hierarchies, conventions, prejudices—but grace is gloriously indifferent to all those filters. What matters in the universal ecology of grace is whether we choose to receive it and pass it on.
I don’t know whether that residual universal presence of cosmic microwaves, originating with the very first moment of Creation, are literally an echo of God or just some kind of side-effect. I can play with that image of the analog television set as a window of grace, but it’s really just a tiny bit of evidence. God has had far more effective ways to open grace up to us, and open us up to grace, and today’s holiday of Pentecost is one of my favorite examples.
Most of you have probably heard this Pentecost story many times, often captioned as the “birth of the church.” According to Luke in the book of Acts, at the time of the Jewish Pentecost, that is, the close of the season of Passover, lots of pilgrims of all sorts of backgrounds and languages were crowded into Jerusalem. From the place where the disciples of Jesus were meeting, marked with tongues of fire, these visitors heard the Good News being preached. Each member of the audience heard it in their own language. As Luke takes up the account…
Acts 2:12-18. Amazed and perplexed, they asked one another, “What does this mean?” Some, however, made fun of them and said, “They have had too much wine.”
Then Peter stood up with the Eleven, raised his voice and addressed the crowd: “Fellow Jews and all of you who live in Jerusalem, let me explain this to you; listen carefully to what I say. These people are not drunk, as you suppose. It’s only nine in the morning!
No, this is what was spoken by the prophet Joel:
‘In the last days, God says,
I will pour out my Spirit on all people.
Your sons and daughters will prophesy,
your young men will see visions,
your old men will dream dreams.
Even on my servants, both men and women,
I will pour out my Spirit in those days,
and they will prophesy.’”
The good news of God’s love cannot be blocked by ethnic or linguistic boundaries; God made a direct way to experience God’s power and to invite this audience into community with the followers of Jesus so that they could learn to live with this power. And hundreds were added to the community and inaugurated a movement that we participate in to this very day.
As the movement spread and organized itself, with the help of that new convert Paul, they continued to experience this power, but they wondered whether raw grace was sufficient to maintain an orderly community. Even Gentiles, with no history of participation in God’s people, whose men weren’t circumcised, were being touched by the Holy Spirit and experiencing this grace. The apostles gathered for a meeting for business, and James was the clerk. As Luke continues the narrative,
Acts 15:12-20. The whole assembly became silent as they listened to Barnabas and Paul telling about the signs and wonders God had done among the Gentiles through them. When they finished, James spoke up. “Brothers,” he said, “listen to me. Simon has described to us how God first intervened to choose a people for his name from the Gentiles. The words of the prophets are in agreement with this, as it is written:
“‘After this I will return
and rebuild David’s fallen tent.
Its ruins I will rebuild,
and I will restore it,
that the rest of [humanity] may seek the Lord,
even all the Gentiles who bear my name,
says the Lord, who does these things’—
things known from long ago.’
“It is my judgment, therefore, that we should not make it difficult for the Gentiles who are turning to God. Instead we should write to them, telling them to abstain from food polluted by idols, from sexual immorality, from the meat of strangled animals and from blood.”
And, apparently, those at the meeting for business all said “approved,” and the resulting minute was sent out.
I interpret this episode as affirmation that grace was sufficient, that a structure of rules from the original community need not be imposed on top of the work of grace. It’s hard enough for us hard-headed human beings to believe that grace is really true and available directly; let’s not get in grace’s way.
When James was summing up the sense of the meeting, he referred to a prophecy from the prophet Amos, which I’ll repeat in a modern English translation from the Septuagint, the version of the Hebrew Bible that those Greek speakers would have been familiar with:
Amos 9:11-12 [context]. In that day I will raise up the tabernacle of David that is fallen, and will rebuild the ruins of it, and will set up the parts thereof that have been broken down, and will build it up as in the ancient days: that the remnant of men, and all the Gentiles upon whom my name is called, may earnestly seek me, says the Lord who does all these things.
Maybe you remember the context here: Amos has been reading the riot act to the people of Israel, particularly to the Northern Kingdom, accusing them of the same crimes of idolatry and oppression that he has seen in the surrounding Gentile nations, and saying that God demands the same purity and the same ethical standards of all of them, Israelites and Gentiles alike. He warns Israel that the woes that will fall on those Gentiles will also fall on them. You can’t mock God.
But, according to Amos, this is not God’s final word. When the Day of the Lord comes, using a phrase that would become an important phrase for George Fox and the early Quakers, God will restore the tabernacle of David for the sake of the remnant of both Israelites and Gentiles who earnestly seek God. There will be a shrine of hope, a window of grace, even after all the mischief we humans get up to in defiance of God’s demands for purity and justice.
Doesn’t this sound like a cycle we’ve been through before? Over this past couple of years as I’ve had these chances to speak with you, we’ve revisited the story of Noah and the flood, and God’s rainbow command for us to live bountifully; we’ve considered Moses and Pharaoh and Exodus, and God making a way for the oppressed, to the point where Moses says “Wouldn’t it be great if all God’s people were prophets?” We’ve considered Ezekiel’s litany, “Then they shall know that I am the LORD.” Over and over, we as individuals or whole nations enter seasons where it seems like we either forget the presence of grace for ourselves, or withhold the message from others. It’s important to say that God’s grace doesn’t come and go in cycles. It’s our capacity to receive it and pass it on that seems so variable.
The cycle didn’t end with the Bible, of course. Aside from all the other waves of war and peace, the church has had its own struggles keeping its channels of grace clear. And in one of those eras when doctrines and territory and tradecraft seemed more important than the purity and directness of grace, George Fox and Friends, among other reform movements, rose up to take our turn at restoring that simplicity and transparency.
Here’s a final story for this morning. In the Eastern Orthodox Church, icons are considered windows of grace, or windows into grace. But even here, we humans can get a little crosswise with God’s ways.
The great icon writer, Andrei Rublyov, created an icon back in the early 1400’s, popularly called The Trinity, also known as The Hospitality of Abraham. For over three centuries, this icon was part of the iconostasis, or screen separating the main hall of the church from the area around the altar, at the Trinity Cathedral in Sergiev Posad, not far from Moscow.
This icon was deeply respected because it was closely associated with Andrei Rublyov himself, and because of its location at this important center of Orthodoxy, but for most of the years at the cathedral it was nearly covered with a metal mask that showed only the faces of the Holy Three, and it was not associated with any miracles. Traditionally, all consecrated icons are equal, in that all serve as windows of grace, but in Soviet times Rublyov’s Trinity gradually became regarded as a high point in Russian art and became enmeshed in what we sometimes call civil religion.
The icon's fragile condition required constant monitoring and ideal conditions of air purity and humidity, and because of this it has been kept in a special chamber at the Tretyakov Museum in Moscow for most of the last hundred years, and Judy and I have visited it on many occasions. Occasionally it has been allowed to make guest appearances, but only over the strong protests of conservators. So about two weeks ago Vladimir Putin ordered that the icon be returned to the Orthodox Church. After a time of display at the Cathedral of Christ the Savior in Moscow, it will be re-installed at Sergiev Posad.
According to much of the commentary I’ve read about this decision, this is not an assertion of grace, but of power, particularly in the context of the war in Ukraine. Every indication is that Vladimir Putin wants to go down in history as the gatherer and restorer of the Russian World in Capital Letters, and he has appropriated this symbol of faith on behalf of his campaign, even as Orthodox believers are bombing and shooting at other Orthodox believers. There is no theological support for moving this icon to its earlier home, because a consecrated copy of the icon is already at Sergiev Posad, and a consecrated copy is supposed to be equal in value to the original. Wherever the icon is located, its own message cannot be changed by a politician’s will: it is a window into the life of the Holy Three, the Creator, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, and so are all those other windows God has provided us to see and receive grace.
By telling this rather sour story of an attempt to control a channel of grace, I’m not encouraging us to feel totally superior to Putin and the Kremlin. Here in the USA, Christian nationalism is yet another way some of us apparently would like to obscure the universal reach of God’s grace. How shall we respond?
Although I’m a bit cynical about moving icons about in a display of power, I’m not the least cynical about icons themselves. There’s a miniature of the Trinity icon right here behind me as I speak to you, and here’s a very simple icon that I brought back from the Soviet Union in 1975. Jesus looks straight at us, holding open the Gospel to his words, “I give you a new commandment, to love one another.”
When we understand that God’s grace is for each of us, then each of us can become transparent windows of grace, icons on legs, challenging every every idolatry, injustice, prejudice, conceit that holds us and our beloved neighbors in bondage. Let’s make our church, our community, a laboratory and incubator and beacon of grace.
As I re-read that last paragraph from the sermon, I want to remind all of us that we're not all equally ready to be "icons on legs" all of the time. As I said in part one, sometimes we need to take turns holding each other in grace. And that's not even taking into account that the "on legs" metaphor obscures the reality that not all of us have the use of both legs. In any case, the most constant evidence I have for the very existence of grace is not static on a television, nor a compelling image on wood, but the love and care of my global church family.
@elenakrumgolde There are news that the unique house-museum of Pelageya (Polina) Rayko is under water now because Kahovka Dam was destroyed. This war is killing not only people and animals, but also unique art. Polina Rayko (1928 - 2004) was Ukrainian naïve painter who started painting her property at the age of 69. Her home is a national cultural monument of Ukraine. 💔 Поліна Андріївна Райко (1928 - 2004) — українська художниця-самоучка в жанрі наївного мистецтва. Не маючи художньої освіти, у 69-річному віці почала малювати. Образна система мисткині поєднувала християнську, радянську та язичницьку символіки. Розписала власний будинок, літню кухню, хвіртки, паркани і гаражні ворота, використовуючи найпростіші та найдешевші фарби — емаль ПФ, де відтворила власну біографію, свою родину, домашніх тварин, картини природи. На фарби і пензлі витрачала майже всю мізерну пенсію. Будинок Поліни Райко охороняється Законом України «Про охорону культурної спадщини». Цінність її творчості підтверджена багатьма як українськими, так і іноземними експертами. Творчість народної художниці ставлять в один ряд з мистецтвом Марії Примаченко та Катерини Білокур. #folkdesign#folkart#artbrut#naiveart#stopwar#oleshki#ukraine🇺🇦#kahovkadam#kakhovka#kahovka#stopwar♬ You Are Holy - Josué Novais Piano Worship
Thanks to the destruction of the Kakhovka dam in Ukraine, the extraordinary house-museum of Polina Rayko is underwater. I found out about this possible loss of an artistic treasure from a Tiktok video by Elena Krumgolde. A Guardian news article gives additional details.
Here is the first post in Beth Felker Jones's new series on "Reframing Paul on Sexual Ethics." (And she's just posted part two.)
Why are we here at Meeting? I’ve found myself wondering. And if it seems so important that we’re here, why are there so few of us? Even more I’ve been wondering that too. Are we special? What do others know that lead them to make other choices on Sunday mornings? What are we missing that those others get? Or what are they missing?
There are many positive things to be gained from an exploration of Celtic spirituality. However, as a PhD student researching theology and race, I have some observations and questions about the whiteness of Celtic spirituality to wrestle with if it is going to form a part of my faith journey.
The late Tina Turner and her post-Ike performance of "A Fool in Love."
What follows is a sermon I presented at Spokane Friends Meeting via Zoom on April 23 during our month in London. I dedicated it to Eden Grace, who had just received very difficult news from her medical team. Remission of her cancer was no longer a realistic possibility. By the time I gave part two of this sermon at Spokane Friends on May 28, Eden was no longer with us. At least not in the ordinary sense.
Good morning! Grace and peace to you from God, our gracious loving Creator and the Lord Jesus Christ. Let me start out with these two Bible passages out of the dozens I could have chosen:
Ephesians 2:8. For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God….
2 Peter 1:2-4. Grace and peace be yours in abundance through the knowledge of God and of Jesus our Lord. His divine power has given us everything we need for a godly life through our knowledge of him who called us by his own glory and goodness. Through these he has given us his very great and precious promises, so that through them you may participate in the divine nature, having escaped the corruption in the world caused by evil desires.
In two weeks, here in London, Charles the Third will be crowned king of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. If the model of the two previous coronations will be followed, at some point during the ceremony, Charles will be anointed with holy oil, while the choir sings, “Anoint and cheer our soiled face / with the abundance of thy grace.” In fact, God’s grace will be invoked several times during the coronation. What is this grace that they’re singing and talking about, that is apparently essential to sealing the deal for Charles to be the king?
When I was in seminary, I had Tom Mullen as my preaching professor. I have lots of Tom Mullen stories, and maybe some of you do, too. He was an excellent speaker himself, so of course we students were all eager to do well in his course, and at the same time knew we had a hard act to follow.
I think HE thought he was making it easier when he told us, “There is really only one truly Christian sermon theme, and that is ‘grace’—but that gives you enough material for a lifetime of messages.” I suppose I should have been comforted by the idea that I really don’t have to search for new topics every time I speak, but there really is a problem: thinking about “grace” is a little like looking directly at the sun. It seems much safer to skirt around the issue than to dare to look directly at God’s unconditional love poured out on us.
When I was a pastor at Reedwood Friends Church in Portland, I don’t think I gave a single sermon that was focused completely on grace. Well, maybe one—and that was a children’s message. Sometimes, when I gave children’s messages, I used my friends Garfield and Lamb Chop and Dima the Bear. You all know Garfield, right? How many of you remember Shari Lewis’s puppet Lamb Chop? Usually, when I speak to you from our home in Portland, you see Lamb Chop peeking out from the bookshelves on my left.
Dima the banker, Lamb Chop, Garfield.
In my storytelling world, Garfield and Lamb Chop are friends, and they were the main cast members of the stories I used to tell our kids at bedtime when they were young. Later I used some of these same stories for the kids at Reedwood. One of the stories, for example, was a fable to explain the Trinity. But the one I’m recalling today involved the lasagna restaurant that Garfield and Lamb Chop opened in Kokomo, Indiana.
They needed a bank loan to finance this project. Their friend Dima the banker gave them the money they needed. Dima explained to them that if they couldn’t make their loan payment on the day it was due, they had a 30-day period of grace, during which they could sell enough lasagna to make the payment. During those thirty days, they could focus their energy on making lasagna, not the debt. Dima was a good banker and a good friend, but he wasn’t God. God has no time limit on grace.
Tom Mullen’s students weren’t the first to be dazzled by the theme of grace. Theologians of higher rank than Dima and Lamb Chop have been trying to filter it into manageable size for millennia. I thought I knew what the word meant: God’s unmerited loving power and care, that enables us to be in relationship with God and to act in the world on the basis of that power and that relationship. It is ours for the asking; there’s nothing we have to do to earn or deserve it. It’s so overwhelming, so total, that of course we humans had to figure out how to manage such generosity intellectually.
Some early theologians thought that, though grace was supposedly universal, we humans are so rotten to the core that God has to select a fixed number on whom to bestow mercy, and then they would continue to need grace to maintain the relationship. Others, particularly in the Eastern church, protested that grace was unconditional, and we human beings, all of us, are always at liberty to choose to receive it. Eastern Orthodox Christians have their own ways of interpreting the word, and often it involves the idea that grace is the primordial, uncreated energies of God. When we receive grace, we are potentially participating as much in God’s own nature as it is possible for a creature of God to do.
Listen again to Second Peter:
His divine power has given us everything we need for a godly life through our knowledge of him who called us by his own glory and goodness. Through these he has given us his very great and precious promises, so that through them you may participate in the divine nature….
No wonder we need strong sunglasses to even think about what God offers us in grace.
Now, church as human institution, church as power structure, might not want us ordinary people to have direct access to these promises without some kind of supervision. Now I don’t mean to make out that the church necessarily had bad motives. Somehow these incredible promises had to be conveyed to people who were not yet aware of them, and so, those who had the gift of conveying them, were also given the responsibility to communicate what God was promising. We can see in Acts and the New Testament epistles how this was going on. Paul starts out most of his New Testament letters with the words “grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.”
(Parenthetically, I could comment that “God our creator” or “God our parent” instead of "Father" would work just as well for me. This is an important point, which we could talk about another time. I don't want to go there now, but I also didn't want just to blow right past it.)
And, along with that gracious introduction, most of Paul’s letters then end up greeting the various people he knows in those places he’s writing to; these are the men and women who are actually proclaiming and showing grace in their house churches and communities.
The vocabulary of grace got more elaborate as time went on, and as the church’s intellectuals grappled with such questions as “are we sinners capable of receiving grace unless God intervenes somehow to open us up to it; and, if such intervention is necessary, does it happen to everyone or just some of us? And does it depend on us or does it depend on God’s choice?” Along with that set of questions comes the politically weighty question of “who decides?” Who operates the gates of the church, signaling to us which of us are acceptable and which aren’t?
And then there is the equally political question of how grace, once it's satisfactorily defined, is conveyed from God to God’s creatures. Once again, in simplifying these questions, I have no desire to mock the church in its humanness. Communication is always a challenge, and choosing the most effective words and symbols for the early church was often done with care and beauty, drawing on the resources of the Jewish communities that gave birth to Christianity. Passover, for example, helped shape the sacrament of communion, both being intended to convey God’s promises to God’s people. Only later was communion defined as one of a limited number of sacraments that were codified as the way grace is communicated to the people. Sacraments were supposedly the way that our souls and our affections are drawn into cooperation with God. And far be it from us Quakers to look condescendingly on the outward sacraments if we have not ourselves found an equally effective way to be reminded of our need for grace and our standing invitation to open ourselves up to it.
Some theologians came to see the Bible as another vehicle of grace, but, then, can we church leaders risk letting ordinary people read the Bible for themselves, or is this channel of grace reserved for the leadership? For centuries, giving the wrong answer to this question could get you burned at the stake.
Where politics and conflict came in, of course, was not in the good motivation of developing vocabularies and symbols to communicate grace. Thank God our ancestral mentors in faith cared enough to do that. But with the passing of generations, that motivation may have been overshadowed by the tradecraft of sacraments, which after all require licensing—that is, who is authorized to perform them and get compensated for their performance. And there has to be quality control—how do we know when the ceremonies are being correctly performed in all the various settings where churches arise? If grace is promised, how do we know that the promise is effectively kept? The history of Western Christianity is a nearly unbroken series of arguments about these sorts of complications.
Then along came Quakers, who claimed to cherish the Scriptures equally with their contemporaries, but who didn’t seem to require the traditional channels for conveying the grace promised in those Scriptures. As William Penn explained in his defense of Quakers against what he called the “perversions” charged against them:
Of water baptism and the supper
Perversion 14: The Quakers deny the two great sacraments or ordinances of the Gospel, Baptism and the Supper.
Principle: Whatever is truly a Gospel ordinance, they desire to own and practice. But they observe no such language in the Scriptures as in the reflection. They do confess the practice of John’s baptism and the Supper is to be found there; but practice only is no institution, nor a sufficient reason for continuation. ... [T]hey were then proper, they believe, when the mysteries lay yet couched in figures and shadows. But it is their belief that no figures or signs are perpetual or of institution under the Gospel administration, when Christ, Who is the Substance of them, is come.
When it comes to theology, we Quakers have another peculiarity. Historically, we haven't spent much time on trying to understand or describe the mysteries of faith, preferring to describe the functional outcomes of faith. To put it another way, metaphysics isn't one of our strengths as a people. So, for example, here's William Penn again, from the same tract I just quoted from, treating the subject of the Trinity:
Of the Holy Three, or Scripture Trinity
Perversion 9: The Quakers deny the Trinity.
Principle: Nothing less. They believe in the holy three, or Trinity of Father, Word, and Spirit, according to Scripture. And that these things are truly and properly one; of one nature as well as will. But they are tender of quitting Scripture terms and phrases for schoolmen’s, such as distinct and separate Persons or substances are, from whence people are apt to entertain gross ideas and notions of the Father, Son and Holy Ghost. And they judge that a curious inquiry into those high and divine revelations, or into speculative subjects, though never so great truths in themselves, tends little to godliness and less to peace, which should be the chief aim of true Christians. Therefore, they cannot gratify that curiosity in themselves or others. Speculative truths are, in their judgment, to be sparingly and tenderly declared, and never to be made the measure and condition of Christian communion. [Penn went on to write...] Men are too apt to let their heads outrun their hearts, and their notions exceed their obedience, and their passions support their conceits, instead of a daily cross, a constant watch, and a holy practice.
So, not surprisingly, we Friends have not prioritized describing exactly how grace is conveyed from God to us, and in what order, and under what conditions, but we love to see it in operation as people grow closer to God and to each other, and our lives reflect what we're learning daily about living with God at the center.
However! (There always has to be a however!) ... If other Christians say that grace is conveyed through Word (with a capital W) and Sacrament, and we say, those are well and good but not necessary, because those are all types and shadows and we have the substance, Christ, we better mind our manners. Those "types and shadows," so-called, have visibly been effective for many generations of dear people who were never abandoned by God, even if church authorities became over-controlling or, on the other hand, began phoning it in because it all became so routine. AND, also, do we in fact have the substance we claim to have? Do we functionally know what it is to live with Jesus himself at the head of our meetings, and our yearly meetings, or are we too just as vulnerable as everyone else to falling in love with our own clichés and conceits?
The good news for this morning, and for all mornings, is that God's promises are true and unconditional, and we can claim and reclaim them at every moment. Every time I visit you, I get glimpses of that functional grace that even peering at each other through Zoom can't dim. As you ask for prayer, and pray for each other, I see grace in operation. I see grace in the fascinating material you put in your newsletters. I love how grace is reflected in the music that you choose for worship, because I know that making those choices is a talent I wish I had, but don't.
But maybe there's someone here this morning, or online, who's not feeling much grace at the moment. It happens. It's happened to me. I just have two points in conclusion: first, God is pouring it out on us now and always, whether or not we're in a place to be as aware as we'd like. And, second, sometimes we do need a channel for that grace to touch us. That's where the community comes in. Today I may feel lost and without a sense of grace, but you as a body are remembering God's promises on my behalf. Tomorrow, I might be far more ready to receive this reassurance, and carry it on your behalf. Together, step by step, sometimes in fits and starts, God's grace is helping us, just as Peter's letter promised, grow into the Divine nature.
So, when companies began to demand that workers return to the pre-pandemic status quo, the question, ‘how much work is enough?’ prompted another: ‘enough for what?’ To earn a living? To meet our employers’ productivity expectations? To support our pursuit of happiness, or perhaps to retire? The answers vary, depending on who asks and who responds.
Brad Vaughn proposes three different paradigms that respectively "represent how most people understand their local church (and the church more generally)." The third closely matches how I understand Quakers.
Restoring my perspective in complicated times: reading about the mysterious cosmic threads that are intriguing scientists.
Helicopter pilot Prince Harry's "hover monkeys" and "head squirrels" ... and what they suggested to Nancy Thomas about the dangers of aging.
It's been about two years since we lost the great James Harman, "a full service blues man since 1962." Here is Nathan James with an affectionate tribute video:
The problem with building your peacemaking on what you're against and not what you're for is that you're always prepared for a fight and always looking for an enemy.
But that's the thing. Neither response is truly peacemaking.
— Osheta Moore, Dear White Peacemakers: Dismantling Racism with Grit and Grace.
Osheta Moore has written not only an important book, but what some may consider an impossible book. In Dear White Peacemakers, Osheta calls us to fight racism while remaining true to the peacemaking ethic set forth by Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount. This is a smart and compelling work, and Osheta’s voice is both honest and hopeful. I benefited greatly from Dear White Peacemakers.
— Brian Zahnd, author of A Farewell to Mars: An Evangelical Pastor's Journey Toward the Biblical Gospel of Peace.
I've rarely seen the words "anti-racism" and "peacemaking" in the same sentence, so when I heard about Osheta Moore's book during a visit to North Seattle Friends Church last month, I had to read it for myself. The book has been out for nearly two years, so you may well have seen it long before I did. However, just in case you haven't, here are some of my thoughts.
Moore's book reminded me of R.W. Tucker's logic in his essay "Revolutionary Faithfulness": In contrast to secular results-oriented pacifists, he says, ...
A Christian, as Friends have understood the word, is someone who elects now to live as though the world were Christian. He [sic] will remain a committed person though the heavens fall, because his inward condition demands it of him. He ardently hopes to end war—a political change—but he would continue a pacifist though certain his efforts would never bear any fruit at all.
Similarly, Moore's vision of anti-racist work, from her Anabaptist perspective, is embodied in a vision of all of us as the Beloved of God. In other words, she "elects to live" under the assumption that the Gospel of Grace is trustworthy and true for everyone. Her book is drenched in grace, and she addresses her imperfect readers as "Beloved." With endearing vulnerability, she reveals her own failures as well.
Tucker's essay doesn't shy away from addressing sentimentalized and class-bound versions of pacifism. Likewise, the "grit" of Moore's subtitle indicates that the grace she constantly holds up doesn't come cheap.
I'm interested in dismantling white supremacy in order to build up something better for you and for me. I'm interested in the peacemaking North Star of the Beloved Community. This is our third way of anti-racism—not the cheap grace of the racial reconciliation movement and not the callous grit of anti-racism work apart from Jesus, but the Beloved Community that holds us accountable to be in right relatedness to each other and create an environment where we can all thrive.
White peacemakers engaged in anti-racist work—that is, those who accept Moore's gracious and gritty guidance—will learn not to indulge in the kind of self-flagellating shame that can actually become gratifying, nor will we get off the hook by appropriating Black culture instead of absorbing and appreciating it—and appreciating its capacity for joy as well as grief.
But grief is there. "To be Black in America is to be constantly grieving," Moore writes. The shattering instances of recent American history—Mother Emanuel AME Church, Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor, George Floyd, just to jog (often too episodic) memories—are part of a dense pattern of daily reality.
What you're seeing in this moment, White Peacemaker, is not just a great racial reckoning, it is an invitation to grieve. To listen to our collective bodies, to hold, see, and share in grief. To mourn with us, as we mourn.
We're not just invited to "understand," we're invited into a definite discipline: to squelch defensiveness and minimization; to say "I'm sorry" and "I'm listening."
As peacemakers, we're tasked with identifying with our Prince of Peace who overcame our bloodthirsty enemy by shedding his own blood—selflessness and love flows from the cross and lays out our chosen path, humility. "I'm sorry" tames the anger. "I'm sorry" respects the pain. "I'm sorry" positions you as a friend and not adversary.
"I'm listening" because we're called to be reconcilers. Like Jesus reconciled us to the Father—it's a painful process. A denying process. A humiliating process. But a kingdom process, nonetheless. "I'm listening" says, "Yes, I have an opinion, and yes, I have strong feelings, and yes, this makes me feel more than a little helpless, but I'm going to press into this specific pain and listen."
I'm mostly quoting passages that feature Moore in teaching mode. But some of the most powerful pages are her own stories, her own experiences, her encounters with the all-too-familiar shock of racism near and far. Maybe most instructive of all are her stories of both insensitivity and generosity among those who want to be (and, thanks to grace, usually are) her allies. It was wonderful and so bittersweet to encounter the late Rachel Held Evans once again in these pages.
Among the most valuable chapters in this book are Moore's thoughts on reconciliation and forgiveness (in private and in public) and the important distinction between them.
While forgiveness is vital to a life lived in love, we must also love ourselves enough not to subject ourselves to ongoing retraumatization. Jesus' way of love opens the door to reconciliation, but it's not a guarantee. People are also free to continue in their sin, and it isn't healthy for us to join ourselves to them while they are in that state.
Moore's book is 335 pages of diagnosis and healing, both compassionate and blunt, delivered with humor, passion, anger, zero manipulation, and much hope. Believe me, there's a lot I've left out. If you haven't read it yet, see for yourself.
A long but fascinating and sobering essay by Rebekah Mui on "complementarian sexual 'asymmetry'," via Kristin Du Mez. (I couldn't help thinking of Sarah Ruden's Paul Among the People.)
I spend most Saturday evenings holed up in a guest room in Ramallah, decompressing from the week. (On the next day I'm able to worship with Ramallah Friends before heading back to Hebron.) Last Saturday, I finally watched the documentary film about Fred Rogers, Won't You Be My Neighbor?
Earlier that evening I watched a YouTube video of Brennan Manning preaching on his favorite theme, God's love for each of us as we are, not as we should be. One of Manning's lines has taken on a life of its own in my head. God loves you so much that God would rather die than be without you. So many of us either think this is wildly improbable or haven't even had a chance to take it in. Maybe that explains a lot of the bondages that abound in our world.
I heard Manning speak at George Fox University a couple of times. He had a rare ability to combine intellectual and emotional content to form a powerful appeal to take God's love utterly seriously. In the service of this appeal he spoke with such urgency that his style sometimes verged on confrontational.
Both Manning and Rogers were evangelists for God's unconditional love, but Fred Rogers shaped his message to fit his special audience and his channel of connection with it -- daily visits with children, whose growth, anxieties, feelings, and capacities provided the specific themes for his programs. Manning, on the other hand, mostly addressed adults, including (I'm sure) many who had never absorbed the reality of unconditional love that was the heartbeat of the Rogers neighborhood. Manning's urgency was fueled in part by the institutional church's failure to prioritize the message of God's "relentless tenderness."
I have no idea how much each knew about the other, but I think Rogers and Manning had a wonderful partnership.
When I signed up to spend three months in Hebron as a human rights observer, my number one hope and priority was to learn more about praying without ceasing. Along with countless other believers, I've been fascinated by this instruction ever since I first heard about it. I love these lines from Thomas Kelly's A Testament of Devotion:
There is a way of ordering our mental life on more than one level at once. On one level we may be thinking, discussing, seeing, calculating, meeting all the demands of external affairs. But deep within, behind the scenes, at a profounder level, we may also be in prayer and adoration, song and worship and a gentle receptiveness to divine breathings.
At times I've experienced this way of ordering my mental life, but sometimes it's hard to meet even some of the demands of external affairs, at the ordinary walking-and-chewing-gum-at-the-same-time level, never mind staying inwardly attentive.
The following is observation, not advice. The all-pervading context of occupation, and its inevitable consequences -- tension, stress, clashes, hidden and open violence -- has given me a new prayer word: WHY? On some days, my most constant form of prayer consists of keeping my eyes open and praying that question.
The shopkeepers in the Old City's souq had a deal for us: free kittens! We looked into the cardboard box next to one of the shops we pass several times a day, and, sure enough, two tiny kittens lay curled up against each other.
Of course it wasn't as simple as that. They were young -- too young, we thought, to be without a mother. Each was just the size of my hand. They had been found near the Ibrahimi mosque, no parent anywhere in sight, so one of the shopkeepers had brought them with him to his work.
The first time we saw the kitties, we were on our way somewhere, so we didn't make any promises. But the second time we passed by, the shopkeepers said to us, "We're going to be closing soon. We don't know what to do with these kittens." We agreed to take them.
Both kittens were shivering and lethargic. We said to ourselves, "Maybe we're just providing a hospice, but even so, we could make their last hours more comfortable."
We got the kittens into the Christian Peacemaker Teams office, and began assessing the situation. Some of us held the little ones, while others searched online for advice. Both kittens were still shivering, so our first task was to warm them up gently, lightly swaddling them and letting our body heat do the job. We improvised a bed from the box that they came in, and found a small electric heater to put near them. For several reasons they couldn't stay in the main room or office, so I offered my bedroom as their temporary home, with the thought that eventually (we hoped) they could live in the patio/garden just outside our door. But first things first -- would they even survive the night? We were especially concerned for the black and white kitten, who was smaller, scrawnier, and lethargic. Not having any suitable food, we mixed up a concoction of milk, egg yolks, and salad oil. The bigger kitten lapped from a dish, the smaller licked the stuff from a fingertip. And now we think we might have a line on some goats' milk.
FB Messenger screenshot
It's now the evening of their second day in our place. Both kitties are still with us. For the first 36 hours, the black and white kitten stayed within a very short distance of its bed, while the larger one began gaining weight right away, and was soon roaming my bedroom. It also seemed to assume a sort of mentorship for its younger partner, grooming its unkempt hair (it worked! -- soon they were both busy grooming) and poking it as if to say, "You gotta make an effort!" This morning, I heard the smaller cat's voice for the first time, and sometime this afternoon I saw a sight that made me so happy -- it started a wrestling match with its sibling!! This evening both kitties succeeded in clawing their way up one of my legs and up to my shoulders.
On the kitties' first evening with us, someone suggested not naming them until we were reasonably sure they had a chance. I have hopes that we're soon going to be giving them names.
Internet Monk: Evolving Faith ... and evolving conservatives.
It turns out that Quakers are a mainline church! (Check this review of The Twenty-something Soul for other startling observations.)
