Thanksgiving to Whom?

All Saints Church, River Ridge, La. 11 17 08

Dear Friends in Christ,

A common phenomenon among most peoples in the world and their religious traditions is a harvest festival. Among the Israelites, two big harvest festivals were appointed, namely Shavuot (Pentecost) and Sukkoth (Festival of Booths). These commemorated the first harvest in the late spring and the great fall harvest. Although these appear to have begun as agricultural festivals, they soon took on theological meaning in the Torah. Pentecost commemorated the giving of the Law at Mt. Sinai (interestingly for Christians it is the giving of the Holy Spirit). Sukkoth commemorated the wanderings in the wilderness and the provision of manna by God. Jews and Christians have been nervous about having feast days solely associated with agriculture because of their pagan associations. It is not the earth or the grain goddesses to whom we pray, but God who created and sustains the world.

Hence, Christians (like their Jewish forbearers) do not have explicitly agricultural festivals on our calendars, yet in most Christian cultures civil authorities appoint one, such as Harvest Home in England. In the United States, our government has established Thanksgiving on the fourth Thursday of November. It has its antecedent in the Plymouth colony and similar commemorations in Virginia and elsewhere. Again, in spite of food and produce brought to church, it is not a feast of thanksgiving to the gods of produce, but to the Creator, who provides and sustains us.

The bookend to Thanksgiving is a commemoration in the spring of the year called the Rogation Days (Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday before Ascension Day), in which prayers are said and processions conducted to bless the fields, that there may be a fruitful harvest. Today, Rogation Sunday is often observed as a kind of liturgical Earth Day, where we pray for all involved in agriculture, environment and industry, that we may sustainably be stewards of God gifts.

In the coming week, as we commemorate Thanksgiving, let us give thanks for family and friends that have gathered and for all God has given to us in Creation and God’s continuous care for all that God has made. May we also give thanks for the redemptive acts of God in Christ and throughout our lives.

Fidelio and Apocalyptic

All Saints Church, River Ridge, La. 11 10 08

Dear Friends in Christ,

The other day, I was listening to the radio and they happened to play one of my favorite pieces of music (from my favorite opera), and I was totally overcome by its power and beauty. The piece is the Prisoners’ Chorus, “O welche Lust” (Oh, what joy), from Act I of Beethoven’s Fidelio. It is a powerful piece where a large group of political prisoners are briefly released from the dungeon to experience a beautiful day in a beautiful garden, before going back down into the dungeon. The burst of joy is palpable because of the glimpse of freedom and of fresh air. Freedom is seen as coming from God. It is the hope that is whispered in the ear in the darkness of the dungeon. For Beethoven, the opera and these prisoners were a kind of paradigm for all unjustly imprisoned. The stirring music and beautiful singing reinforces its power. In the Christian tradition, art, music, beauty connect in an interesting way with Christian apocalyptic – a theme in this part of the church year.

Having grown up in a practical Modernist mindset, many of us see art or music or beauty as peripheral aspects of our lives. They are viewed as a kind of luxury and impractical. In schools (including at St. Martin’s) these are referred to as “enrichment” subjects. Yet, as N.T. Wright, the Anglican theologian and current Bishop of Durham notes, beauty as expressed in art or music is a way of experiencing aspects of the in-breaking of the Kingdom (or Reign) of God. Apocalyptic visions of God, of the new heaven and earth, of the peaceable kingdom, all contain visions of incredible and unspeakable beauty. When the artist or musician or architect or gardener creates a piece or place of beauty it is not merely “nice,” it has a kind of spiritual power to move us and transform us. This power which beauty can exert over us is because it taps into something very deep in our souls. Our souls yearn for the in-breaking of the kingdom. It is not coincidental that our ancestors built great churches of incredible beauty and artistry, and produced amazing pieces of music. It not that they had more money than we have, probably much less, it is rather that they saw art as a way of expressing their spiritual values, and this was worth considerable sacrifice.

The genius in Beethoven’s Prisoners’ Chorus is the contrast which the prisoners experience in the bright and fresh daylight from their confinement in the dark and dank dungeon. This leads them to this burst of joy. It is my prayer that when we experience beauty in art, music, nature, architecture, or (perhaps) in church – that we experience in it a brief glimpse of the unspeakable beauty of that coming Kingdom. It is a Kingdom which the biblical writers can only describe with the most exuberant and lavish imagery. We pray for this Kingdom each time we say the Lord’s Prayer, “thy Kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.”

Apocalypticism

All Saints Church, River Ridge, La. 11 03 08
Dear Friends in Christ,

In the 1830s, there emerged a new and highly influential teaching about our Lord’s Second Coming. It was promulgated by an Anglo-Irish ex-Anglican clergyman named J.N. Darby. He preached for several decades in Ireland, Britain and America. His peculiar doctrine was the “rapture.” This teaching was based on the Epistle for the coming Sunday, 1 Thessalonians 4:13-18, which describes the coming of our Lord and uses the phrase, “meet the Lord in the air.” This text was interpreted by Darby to mean that at our Lord’s coming, believers would be snatched out of their current lives and whisked away to heaven, while the earth descends into chaos, violence and destruction. Various “rapture” schemas are presented by countless groups from the Millenarian movements of the 19th century, to the Jehovah’s Witnesses, Adventists groups, American revivalists and fundamentalists, and various Pentecostal groups. All stem from this innovative eschatology of J.N. Darby. In recent years the most prominent examples of this teaching are the “Left Behind” series, Hal Lindsey’s “The Late Great Planet Earth,” and John Hagee. This view has become so dominant that persons who have no connection with these traditions picture the Coming of our Lord in this way.

Among the innovations in this teaching were that there is a complete discontinuity between the world in which we live (which God created and into which our Lord came in his incarnation), and the world to come. This teaching claims that this world is bound for destruction and our aim is to escape it and await rescue (by the rapture) from it. Traditional Christianity would view this as a kind of latter-day Gnosticism, an anti-creation and anti-incarnation teaching.

The troubling thing about this teaching (besides being wrong) is that it encourages a kind of escapism from this world. This view discourages people from bettering human structures and engaging in building a world on kingdom principles – in anticipation of the breaking in of Christ’s kingdom. Rather, this eschatological perspective expects conditions in the world and society to worsen and welcomes evidence to prove this view. War in the Middle East is particularly welcomed as further evidence that Christ is near. Among some who hold this view, active social engagement for the betterment of the world and even peace movements are considered counter to God’s will.

Anglicanism and other forms of catholic Christianity have always fostered social engagement and promoted of social reform and social welfare as part of the Christian mandate to “make disciples of all nations” (Matt 28:19). Not only individuals are to be brought into relationship to Christ, but “nations” including social structures are to be brought into line with kingdom principles.

As we engage these apocalyptic texts in the coming weeks, let us see how they engage us in our world.