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Anna and I are at our first official appointment with the Vanderbilt nurse-midwives this morning.

We’re in the midst of a book study at St. Joseph’s on the book Free of Charge by Miroslav Volf.  I was reading the third chapter today, in preparation for Sunday, when I came across these comments:

If we take a closer look at our giving, we’ll probably be surprised at how many of our gifts are given… to ourselves.  We need friends in high places, so we find a way to invite them for dinner or do them a favor.  We want a car repaired speedily, so we bring a bottle of scotch to our local mechanic.  We hope to quiet the legitimate ire of our spouse after we’ve committed a small transgression, so we bring flowers or jewelry.  Such gifts are investments, and like all investments, we expect them to deliver returns–the bigger, the better. (p. 90)

This comment reminded me of this bit of the Gospel reading from a few weeks ago:

[Jesus] said also to the one who had invited him, “When you give a luncheon or a dinner, do not invite your friends or your brothers or your relatives or rich neighbors, in case they may invite you in return, and you would be repaid.  But when you give a banquet, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, and the blind.  And you will be blessed, because they cannot repay you, for you will be repaid at the resurrection of the righteous” (Luke 14:12-14)

The following are links to some interesting things I’ve come across on the web recently:

• Tiny Solar Cells fix themselves (BBC)
• The Bed Bugs are coming, the bed bugs are coming (BBC)
• Prison Without Walls (The Atlantic)
• Peter Berger talks about Mark Noll’s The Civil War as a Theological Crisis and the current conflict over sexuality in the American church (American Interest)
• Another from Berger: American National Interest and the Stoning of Women.  If the US leaves Afghanistan without securing the rights of women, the world will learn (or relearn) this lesson: The United States must never be trusted. (American Interest)
• The Japanese may be preparing to rely on robots instead of foreign workers (American Interest)

As an ordained person who has to interact with people who have a multiplicity of perspectives, I try to stay out of politics.  I don’t endorse candidates, I’m registered as an unaffiliated voter, I don’t talk about campaigns from the pulpit.  If people want to know what I think on a particular issue they are welcome to ask me and I’ll tell them, but I make sure they know it’s my opinion and my reasons for thinking a certain way.  If it’s a moral issue that the Church has a traditional position on, I’ll share that.  But that’s the extent of it.

This position has made me grateful for the option of registering as an independent or unaffiliated voter.  And yet, articles like this one from the Tennessean (Associated Press) bring to mind a political science essay I read several years ago.  First the Associated Press piece:

A Republican civil war is raging, with righter-than-thou conservatives dominating ever more primaries in a fight for the party’s soul. And the Democrats hope to benefit.

The latest examples of conservative insurgents’ clout came Tuesday at opposite ends of the country. In Florida, political newcomer Rick Scott beat longtime congressman and state Attorney General Bill McCollum for the GOP gubernatorial nomination. And in Alaska, tea party activists and Sarah Palin pushed Sen. Lisa Murkowski to the brink of defeat, depending on absentee ballot counts in her race against outsider Joe Miller.

The GOP is likely to survive its bitter intraparty battles in such states as Alaska and Utah, even if voters oust veteran senators in both. But tea party-backed candidates might be a godsend to desperate Democrats elsewhere — in Nevada, Florida and perhaps Kentucky, where the Democrats portray GOP nominees as too extreme for their states. {Read it all}

Whether one is talking about Democrats or Republicans, there is a tendency for candidates to play to their party’s base during a primary, throwing red meat to partisans who are revealed to be more extreme when taken in the context of the broader public, while they then run toward the middle in the general election.  All of this leads to broken promises, frustrated party members and an even more frustrated public as realistic legislation is either never proposed or gets torpedoed by ideology.

The political science piece I was thinking about–I’m sorry I can’t recall the source at the moment–suggested that the reason for this disparity between primaries and general elections stems from the very system I appreciate.  As more and more states allow unaffiliated or independent voter registrations, it has sapped both political parties of moderates.  No longer to people in the middle have to choose whether they are “more Democrat” or “more Republican.”  Instead, they can simply remain unaffiliated and still take part in elections.  This means that the only motivated participants in party politics are, well, partisans… that is, they are the more extreme members of the electorate and the policies they support reflect this, whether they are conservative or liberal.  And the preferences of the people on these extremes then set the agenda for both parties, leaving a vast swath of the American people unrepresented…perhaps by our own unwitting choice.

When I was in college, I once stumbled into a lecture by an art historian talking about Byzantine art. In a side note he commented that people in the West were sometimes snobbish toward Eastern Orthodox Iconography, seeing it as backward and child-like. He observed that this was a misunderstanding of the history of Icons, and the result of a number of assumptions carried over from western art which saw the revival of realism in the renaissance as superior in skill to what came before.  It would be a mistake, he argued, to see Icons as primitive because they were less realistic, or to believe that they were not realistic because the artists lacked the ability to portray their subjects realistically.  Instead, he pointed out, Icons grew out of the more realistic tradition of Greco-Roman funeral portraiture and that, at least in the East, the artists were capable of presenting a subject in a more realistic manner and simply chose not to.

He went on with his lecture, but his comments stuck with me and inspired me to do quite a bit of reading about Icons, their idioms and symbolism.

Fast forward to this summer. Anna had already been in California visiting her family for a week or so, and I was preparing to join her for our vacation. “So what do you want to do when you get here?”, the question came.  In thinking about it, there wasn’t much beyond going to the beach that crossed my mind. But then I was reading a random article online and saw a reference to funerary portraits, with the image associated with the article being listed as taken from a display at the Getty in Los Angeles.  Immediately the remarks of that historian crossed my mind and my interest was piqued. I did some research and found that the Getty Villa in Malibu California is devoted to ancient Greek, Etruscan and Roman artifacts, and that they had a whole collection of funerary portraits. Specifically, they had several examples of mummy portraits from Roman Egypt on display.

When I learned this, I knew I had to take the opportunity to see this exhibit, since these mummy portraits are an artistic ancestor of Christian Icons.

When most of us think of mummies, we tend to think of Ancient Egypt, but the practice of mummification continued through the first centuries A.D. and was widespread in Roman Egypt.  Funeral portraits emerged, which, while realistic in some ways, were also often painted from set patterns, making them easier to produce in higher quantities. For some reason, however, the practice of painting funerary portraits seems to have died out in Roman Egypt by the middle of the third century A.D., which coincides with the rise of Christianity. Once Christianity became the dominant faith tradition, the old art of panel painting continued on in Coptic (Egyptian) and other forms of Iconography, but with some distinctive changes.

Just as the old funeral portrait artists have standardized some characterizations, to which they would add an individual’s distinctive features, there was a degree of standardization that arose in Christian iconography.  Certain saints would be depicted in particular ways, certain poses became standard.  As one author notes:

The Oldest Extant Pantocrator Icon

“The Eastern Church tradition places words and images on an equal footing. The great theologian St. John of Damascus (c. 675–749) points out that ‘just as words encourage hearing, so do images stimulate the eyes’. He regards words written in books as verbal icons. The text or speech expresses a mental picture. This fundamental equivalence between words and images, between theology and iconography leads implicitly to the forms being standardized.”(The Mystical Language of Icons)

In addition to standardization for the purpose of conveying specific doctrines, there was also a shift in style. Realism became less emphasized as things became someone disproportionate. Eyes became larger, noses and fingers longer in part to communicate the idea that the figures being presented no longer exist as we do.

In paradise their senses will be heightened. Feet are depicted so as not to really touch the ground, but give the slight feeling of hovering, and eyes do not look where one would expect. For example, in many icons of Mary with the infant Jesus, Mary looks not at the Christ Child, but directly at the viewer, locking eyes and drawing us in. Likewise the Baby Jesus is not looking at Mary, but over her head or shoulder, drawing the observer’s attention upward to God.

I find all of this very interesting, and one of the things I appreciate about iconography is how conducive it is to “reading,” to considering consistent themes and ways of presenting them.

Yet even as I reflect on the ways that Christian theology influenced culture and changed it, I find myself wondering even more: how have my beliefs changed me. How is the Gospel altering the way I look at the world. That’s a healthy question for all of us to consider.

Perhaps considering how the Christian faith has impacted culture might inspire us to consider how it ought to impact our lives.

More images from the Getty:

Jesus Christ Extreme Humility

When I was in seminary at Sewanee I would ride down the mountain to Winchester and on the way back I would look at the top of the plateau as it surrounded the valley.  Just off to the right, on the very edge of the plateau, there was this big white building.  It looked like a giant had perched a white block on the bluff.  For a while I would wonder to myself as I was driving just what this building could be, and that would be the end of it.  Eventually though, I asked someone about the strange building, which I knew must be quite large to be so noticeable from the valley below and so far away.

It turns out the building was the Templeton Library.  As I understand it, at that point there were no books in the library and only a portion of it was occupied, as the foundation that owned it rented a few rooms to people.  It had been built by a man some of you might be familiar with, Sir John Templeton, the well known investment banker and philanthropist.  Turns out he was born in Winchester Tennessee, and after he achieved his success on Wall Street and became a citizen of the UK, he still had a fondness for the area, so he built his library on the mountain near Sewanee with the understanding that upon his death (he died in 2008), his collection of books relating to science and theology would be transported there.  It’s an interesting story.  But that’s not the point.

The point is the irony.

I finally made my way to the Templeton Library one day, and discovered out in front of it, a larger than life-size statue of John Templeton.  Templeton was an author as well as an investor and philanthropist, and in his hand–the statue’s hand–and down to his side, are a collection of his books, one of which bears the title “The Humble Approach.”

I don’t know whether Sir John appreciated the irony or if it was the idea of the artist, but the irony of a large statue of someone holding their book with a title like that surely couldn’t be lost on anyone.

And yet, even though we might find the juxtaposition of the statue and the book title to be ironic it brings to mind a struggle we all deal with, the struggle to be honest with ourselves; to actually be humble as opposed to desiring humility for others and recognition for ourselves.

In many ways our society makes it very difficult to be humble… it’s antithetical to so many values our culture espouses.  Humility isn’t a hallmark of reality television shows, and even for those who avoided the negative effects of self-esteem misapplied and run amok in schools, we’re taught in our college applications, job hunting etc… to “sell ourselves” and present our best face to the world… the problem being that sometimes that face is unrecognizable.

All of this goes hand-in-hand with a problem observed by psychologists from Cornell University in the late 90′s.  They published their findings in a paper entitled: “Unskilled and Unaware of It: How Difficulties in Recognizing One’s Own Incompetence Lead to Inflated Self-Assessments” and just as the title suggests, they found that there was an inverse correlation between a person’s competence and their confidence.  In other words, a person who is incompetent at a particular task is much more likely to positively evaluate their own performance than a person who actually is competent.

We’re touching on something innate to human nature here–let’s call it pride–and just say that there are many illustrations to choose from.  The result of all of this is a lack of truthfulness, either intentional or unintentional, that prevents us from seeing the reality of who we are and who God is.

And truthfulness is what humility is really all about.  The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church says, among other things regarding humility, that it is about: “neither exaggerating nor denigrating the truth of what one is.”  Thomas Aquinas defined it  “as the virtue which restrains the appetite from pursuing great things beyond right reason.  It is the virtue which is the moderation of ambition–not its contradiction, but its moderation.  It is based on, though it is not identical with, a just appreciation of one’s own defects.” (p 148-149, A Brief History of Western Philosophy).

In our Gospel lesson Jesus is ministering in a world that is in some respects similar to our own, but also very different.  It is similar in the sense that people are concerned with themselves–that’s a universal–but the way they exercised that concern was somewhat different.  For one thing, whatever we may think of our society, it isn’t as socially stratified as the Greco-Roman world.  In that world who one ate with and where one sat at the table were much more important concerns than they are in all but a few social groupings in our time.  In this ancient Mediterranean culture social standing was supremely important.  Receiving an invitation to dine with someone was an opportunity to establish or reinforce one’s social status and people would often vie for the positions closest to the host in order to raise their standing or at least maintain it.

Every time Jesus was invited to dine with someone, this sort of exchange was going on below the surface; this would’ve especially been the case when Jesus entered the homes of respected leaders, such as in today’s selection from Luke, where we find him in the home of a leader among the Pharisees.  Jesus, as was often the case, seems to have been invited out of a mixture of interest and concern.  Folks were watching him, waiting to see what he would do.  Here was someone who didn’t fit into their neat categories or seem to care very much about their social conventions.  This was a sabbath meal, and just as he had earlier healed the woman in the synagogue, Jesus, on his way to this Pharisee’s home for a sabbath meal, chooses to heal a man.

Jesus continues to challenge the assumptions of those around him, highlighting hypocrisy, subverting injustice and above all proclaiming the good news of salvation and the Kingdom of God.

Jesus watches the people showing up for the meal at the leaders house, watches as they choose their places to sit.  One can imagine the looks that were exchanged as friends and acquaintances worked their way in and started to sort themselves out according to their perceived social status.  When he sees them taking places of honor, Jesus tells them a parable about a wedding feast, a sure sign that he’s teaching about the Kingdom of God, and that his listeners–and us–are intended to draw a conclusion about the new order that God is putting in place.

In this new order, those who exalt themselves–the ones who choose the places of honor at feasts–will find themselves humbled, while those who do not presume, will find themselves exalted.  Jesus uses the people’s own fear of disgrace to show them what they need to know.  He’s not telling them that they aren’t important, instead, he’s showing them that their concern with social standing will not serve them in the Kingdom of God.  If they exalt themselves, if they focus on status, they will find themselves humbled, because in this kingdom, everyone is called to serve.

In a teaching that echoes the call for the first to be servant of all, Jesus tells the folks at the meal: “when you give a banquet, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, and the blind. And you will be blessed, because they cannot repay you, for you will be repaid at the resurrection of the righteous.”

The humility we seek isn’t one of self denigration, but the simple recognition that we are sinners in need of forgiveness, that we are called to repentance and at the same time that we are a people of God’s own redeeming, made in the image of God, icons of the Father restored by the Son and empowered by the Holy Spirit to live in in new ways, in the Kingdom of God here and now.  Humility is recognizing that no one is worth less than one thing: the very life of the Son of God.  Nor is anyone worth more.  This is another way of saying that we are equal in the eyes of God.  We can call no one worthless, we can set ourselves above no one.  At the same time, it is a false humility, and a harmful denigration for us to believe that we are ourselves somehow not as valuable as another.  The truthful humility we are called to as Christians will allow neither falsehood.  We are all called to be citizens of the Kingdom.

I can think of no better reminder of our need for humility and our status as new creations of the merciful God than the words of the Prayer of Humble Access:

We do not presume to come to this thy Table, O merciful Lord, trusting in our own righteousness, but in thy manifold and great mercies. We are not worthy so much as to gather up the crumbs under thy Table. But thou art the same Lord whose property is always to have mercy. Grant us therefore, gracious Lord, so to eat the flesh of thy dear Son Jesus Christ, and to drink his blood, that we may evermore dwell in him, and he in us. Amen. (Traditional language-absent a phrase-Rite I, 1979 BCP)

We do not presume to come to this your table, merciful Lord, trusting in our own righteousness, but in your manifold and great mercies. We are not worthy so much as to gather up the crumbs under your table. But you are the same Lord whose nature is always to have mercy. Grant us therefore, gracious Lord,so to eat the flesh of your dear Son Jesus Christ and to drink his blood, that our sinful bodies may be made clean by his body and our souls washed through his most precious blood, and that we may evermore dwell in him, and he in us. Amen. (Contemporary, Common Worship of the C of E)

China’s youth once trundled across the countryside spreading communism. Now, they’re spreading God’s word.

[ Read it all, via NPR.]

Last year I was invited by another priest in the Diocese of Tennessee to give a series of reflections on “changing Christianity” during their parish retreat.  I enjoyed it a lot.  Part of what I spoke about was the changing demographics of Christianity around the world.  Technically speaking it has been incorrect to talk of Christianity as a “western” faith for quite a while, but we are finally beginning to catch onto what that means.

Not the first: Cross & Lotus from the ancient Church of the East in China

One big barometer of change are the increasing numbers of Christians in China, now thought to outnumber the official membership of the communist party.  When I was doing the research for my presentation, I found estimates claiming that, should current trends continue, there will be approximately 175,095,000 Christians in China by 2025 and that they will make up around 12% of the population, making China the country with the third largest population of Christians in the world, behind the US and Brazil (because of the sheer size of China, the same number is obviously a much smaller percentage of the population).  Some analysts predict that China will have the worlds largest population of Christians by 2050.

The question is, what will an economically powerful China with a large Christian minority look like?  What will be the ramifications for Christianity itself?  To put things in perspective, most historians I’ve read place the percentage of Christians in the Roman Empire at the time of legalization under Constantine, to have been between 10-15%.  We know the major influence Roman culture had on the development of Christianity… what will the Chinese influence be?

There are obviously many positives (from my perspective) in this news, but there is also the troubling matter of nationalism wrapped in theological garb which seems to be hinted at in at least some of the comments in the interview.  Is it any worse than “God bless America?”  I don’t know, but given the propensity of Christians to claim chosen status for their nations at various points in history (Rome, the Byzantines, English, Germans, Russians to name a few–all have claimed divine sanction for their policies and wars) it is something we need to be aware of.

So, what do you think, what might be some of the contributions of a surging Chinese Christianity?

Anna and I saved an old hymn board from the trash heap a while ago and I took some time to clean it up.  After some thinking about different ways of using it (is there a way to fit cork board on it, maybe we could use it to leave notes, lists etc…) I came up with the idea of finding some magnetic stainless steel (some of it’s not magnetic you know) and cutting it into strips the same size as the original letters and numbers that would’ve slid into the slots.  [Credit where credit is due: I *did* get the idea for a stainless steel magnetic board from a project Anna did with the youth at Trinity Winchester several years ago].

After hanging and leveling the board (which I did with one of these things), finding the right gauge of metal, getting some upright metal snips (like these, only with the red handle) that were sharp enough to cut it while being angled enough to keep the metal from cutting me, I measured out the sizes we’d need and went to work.   A little over an hour including regular talk and water breaks, and viola, we had a great place for the magnetic poetry that had been displaced by our new non-magnetic stainless-steel fridge when we moved into the house.

I’ve also found it’s a good way to get over writer’s block and it adds some fun to the office/library.  Take a closer look:

To add to the effect, here’s one of the songs I listened to as I worked.  David Olney’s Jerusalem Tomorrow.

an instrument for making an annoying racket that instills a thankfulness in Jody that he is not a soccer fan, and only watched a little of the USA-Ghana game.  While still sad the USA didn’t win, he is not sad that he will not be hearing the vuvuzelas buzzing again any time soon.

Lord God Almighty, in whose Name the founders of this country won liberty for themselves and for us, and lit the torch of freedom for nations then unborn: Grant that we and all the people of this land may have grace to maintain our liberties in righteousness and peace; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever.  Amen. (Collect for Independence Day, The Book of Common Prayer p. 242)

The Flag of the United States

We are fast approaching another birthday.  Not my birthday or your birthday (though perhaps yours is close as well), but the birthday of the United States, the anniversary of the adoption of Declaration of Independence, appropriately called Independence Day.  This Fourth of July will mark the two hundred and thirty fourth year since the declaration was adopted by the Continental Congress.  Two hundred and thirty four years is a respectable amount of time.  It may only be a drop in the bucket in terms of length of existence compared to some nations, but it’s definitely a good amount of time for a people to live under a democratic form of government.  Our cultural roots in North America may not extend so far into history as some other nations, for instance, in Europe, but our stability as a republic is unmatched.  Not only that, but we have many accomplishments and freedoms to celebrate.  The honoring of individual liberty is part of the DNA of the United States, and through its influence, this trait has been shared with or expanded in many other nations.

In recent years some Christians in attempting to shine a light on some of the unhelpful ways the Church has accommodated itself to the culture, have pointed out an unhealthy link between certain patterns of thought masquerading as Christianity, which serve to prop up negative versions of nationalism or to blur the distinction between the Kingdom of God and the United States of America.  In an attempt to combat this “Constantinian” turn, these folks have called attention to the ways in which Americans, like the English, Germans, Russians, Holy Romans and Byzantines (pick a country) before us–and contemporary with us–have sometimes justified wrongful national ambitions and actions in religiously steeped language.  Since all of these have been culturally Christian nations, that language has often taken the guise of Christian speech.  This is a helpful critique, and one that we should always be mindful of–all nations (indeed, all human institutions and every one of us individually) have a drive to self-justify.  And yet we should not let a drive to prevent the baptism of national vices stop us from appreciating the fruits of a hard won and costlily preserved Godly liberty.  And I would argue that one of the positive things we Americans have inherited and expanded from our English forebears is a conviction that freedom is a gift of God, and that freedom rightly exercised is a virtue both private and civil.

The line that all Christians must walk is the one that recognizes our status as resident aliens, citizens of another country first and foremost.  The Lordship and claims of Christ subvert and overcome all earthly claims and yet, I would argue they are not necessarily opposed to all earthly claims, helping us to prioritize and–at our best–become loyal citizens, patriots and ardent critics of our nation.  This is the line that Christians have had to walk since Constantine made the faith a licit or legal religion–I might repurpose the term and call this the “Constantinian line” that Christians have to walk.  You see, it’s rather easy to determine one’s relationship to a state that is hostile to your beliefs, and the New Testament is clear: be good citizens and follow the law unless it conflicts with your faith, then be willing to die for Jesus.  It’s a much more difficult situation to define one’s relationship to a state that doesn’t persecute, but even protects you and your right to worship.  This is the tension that our Christian forebears had to deal with, as they went from a position of being persecuted, and therefore withdrawing from public life, to one of being a legal–even an official–religion and then called upon to take up roles in civil affairs that they had never participated in before.

The way that Christian communities have chosen to walk this Constantinian line is one that has helped define them throughout history.  There have always been more sectarian groups that looked with greater or lesser degrees of skepticism on the claims of the state; the Anabaptist tradition is one example (think of the Amish or Mennonites), as are some forms of revivalism and holiness traditions.  Anyone who has seen the old movie “Sergeant York” will have seen an example of a revivalism committed to Christian non-violence come up against the claims of the state (and, we can tell from the title, how things played out).  Movements, like individuals, have changed their stances over time–the Assemblies of God, for example, were officially pacifistic until the 1960′s.  Our own tradition, as Anglicans, has been less skeptical of the authority of the state, and, sometimes to our detriment, more willing to work with the nation (England, and later the United States among others).  On the positive side though, our refusal to absent ourselves from public life has meant that we have attempted to fulfill a calling to act as a conscience to the nation, calling it back to its own best principals, celebrating triumphs and mourning failures.

It is this role as public conscience that I would argue we as a body of Christians are called to exercise, and in large measure this is most helpfully and fruitfully realized when we as individual Christians take up our roles in civic life as Christians, guided by the moral compass of our faith and calling our leaders–and ourselves–to account to the “better angels of our nature.”  This is where the true heart of Christian patriotism resides, not in justification of every act of the state, but in the love of neighbor that extends out to the love of home and nation.

The great philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre once compared being called to sacrifice for the modern bureaucratic state as something akin to being asked to die for the phone company (Ethics and Politics: Selected Essays Vol. 2, p 163).  If that were all our nation consisted of, he would be right.  But as any veteran will tell you, no soldier fights for a bureaucracy–at least not for very long–instead, people sacrifice for their neighbors, their loved ones, the people right next to them, the fellow members of their units, and those virtues of their homelands that they believe make life worth living, and which they believe are worth dieing for.  The heart of Christian patriotism is the love of neighbor, “Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends (John 15:3).”  The best way to honor these sacrifices, I believe, is to honor the virtues that have made this country worth sacrificing for.  Senator Carl Schurz said the following in 1872:

The Senator from Wisconsin cannot frighten me by exclaiming, “My country, right or wrong.” In one sense I say so too. My country; and my country is the great American Republic. My country, right or wrong; if right, to be kept right; and if wrong, to be set right.

These words echo very well the call of the Collect for Independence Day, which asks that we be granted the grace to “maintain our liberties in righteousness and peace.”  On this two hundred and thirty fourth birth day of our nation, let us give thanks to Almighty God for the many gifts and blessings he has bestowed upon our homeland, lets take this day and celebrate, enjoying the freedoms that have been won and held at so dear a cost.  And let us also, as faithful followers of Christ, exercise our calling to be in the world, not to retreat, and to work to make certain that this great and virtuous nation has not yet seen its greatest or most virtuous day, and that it remains one nation, under God, indivisible with liberty and justice for all.