Alleluia of Advent 1 superimposed on a black Christ in gloryIt seems there are times God would like something to drown out our pieties.
Take away from me the noise of your songs; I will not listen to the melody of your harps. But let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an everflowing stream. (Amos 5:23-24)
When the exterior and interior are aligned, when our walk matches out talk, when our yearning for God corresponds with letting God’s love and justice flow through us, unimpeded, then our hymns become acceptable. Otherwise, we sing them for ourselves, not God.
Do I live up to this? Are you kidding? I’m a bumbling, neurotic schlump who knows better than he does, desires better than he achieves, and is nobody’s idea of a role model. To the extent that I can be a channel of God’s love and justice, God be praised. That being said, I am in no position to cast stones or wag my finger. (Doesn’t stop me; I know.)
But you, beloved, must remember the predictions of the apostles of our Lord Jesus Christ; for they said to you, ‘In the last time there will be scoffers, indulging their own ungodly lusts.’ It is these worldly people, devoid of the Spirit, who are causing divisions. But you, beloved, build yourselves up on your most holy faith; pray in the Holy Spirit; keep yourselves in the love of God; look forward to the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ that leads to eternal life. (Jude 17-21)
[If you have been following the readings for the Daily Office you know I skipped right over Jude’s version of Sodom and Gomorrah yesterday. It is the only reference in the Bible that does NOT treat the sin of Sodom as inhospitality but I didn’t feel like going into an entire discourse on that theme and the role of Jude in the development of theological symbology.]
The world has never had a shortage of scoffers, nor of those indulging in ungodly lusts. Few of us, if we are honest, will slip through that double net. Nor has there ever been a shortage of those who cause divisions.
Hello! Anglicans of the world, anybody paying attention?
We get in trouble when we start that finger-pointing business, deciding just WHO is causing the divisions. Those other chaps, always, of course, never us.
Now it’s no secret where I come down and I must point out (oops, pointing again) that I have not excommunicated my sisters and brothers in Nigeria, Kenya, and Uganda, though their ecclesiastical officials have excommunicated me. Not that it makes much practical difference; I had not planned a visit through central Africa anytime soon. It seems to have made them feel better, though. Safer from cooties and all that.
What to do when divisions are rampant?
Build yourselves up on your most holy faith;
pray in the Holy Spirit;
keep yourselves in the love of God;
look forward to the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ.
Oh. I rather wanted to go on a glorious campaign to improve the Church and here am being told to build myself up (not others), to pray in the Holy Spirit (and not to or at others), to keep myself in the love of God (instead of sorting out who else is or is not in the love of God), and to look forward to Christ’s mercy. Not nearly so exalted (or self-aggrandizing). Damn.
Caesar gets the coin stamped with his image. God gets me, stamped with God’s image. And, in Christ, I get all things. Maybe God has it worked out better than I could do.
Turn again to your rest, O my soul;
for the Lord has treated you well. (Psalm 116:6)
--the BB
5 comments:
When the exterior and interior are aligned, when our walk matches our talk, when our yearning for God corresponds with letting God’s love and justice flow through us, unimpeded, then our hymns become acceptable. Otherwise, we sing them for ourselves, not God.
If this is the standard, then none of us could ever measure up--and the great ones would be the first to say so. And yet those of us who have known God are impelled to worship.
You're saying that only the hymns of the perfect are acceptable. None of us ever can be. And yet we are loved, now. We are redeemed, now. And that's what our worship is responding to.
If you're really doing it right, every act--every breath--is worship. None of us are there, but we can work toward it.
We have to praise, as we are, because we cannot praise, as we will never be.
I suspect by now you know I don't believe we earn our way into God's favor and I do believe it is there a priori and always. What I am trying to express is that until we allow that transforming grace to work its way into us and out through us our songs are mostly offered to ourselves. In other words, without that opening to God and others what we are doing is more reassuring ourselves than praising God. Now the reality is that we never offer perfect praise and we're never wholly open but I don't think I am out of line with the message of Amos. It takes more than words. That's his point, and mine.
And though we all enjoy God's acceptance always, we do not fully enjoy the fruits of it without opening up to it. Divine grace and human effort must not be oppose; we are co-agents of creation and redemption through God's incomprehensible condescension. And of course I'm semi-Pelagian: I'm an Anglican, for heaven's sake.
Thanks for the heresy review; I had to look up Pelagianism. (Luckily, my Oxford Dictionary o' Everything was under my bed.) I'm all about co-creation, too.
I think I hear you better now. I did wonder if I was misreading you. I read that passage as, "actions trump words; show me justice." It isn't very far from that to, "I don't want your blathering, if you don't mean it," and I see now what you're saying. I believe the "walk the talk" reading; I just know that I can't drive myself to perfection, and live. [I spent way too long beating myself up; I don't want the voice of God to do it for me.]
I didn't know what openness to God was, until I was blown open. I know that will happen to me again, and again, and again, at deeper levels until I truly do "get it." I know I don't really walk my talk now. Openness is a process; a progression within the relationship of God and us. If I could do it instantly, I would, but if I did, I'd be a bodhisattva now. We do need to be open; to be in relationship with God is to be opening. It takes love and work and time.
All of this, I know, is outside of Amos' point, and yours. I think I'm just not responding well to the immediacy of the command here. "Show me justice," I can shout "Amen." "I don't want you if you don't," (my paraphrase of Amos) goes too far for me.
I could be over-personalizing a lot, and I probably am.
Amos was speaking to a society where there were lots of nouveau riche types getting wealthy on the backs of the poor. Sound familiar? Amos came along and said you can't indulge yourselves thoughtlessly, exploit the poor, and play church and think it's OK with the God of heaven.
You did not grow up in the American suburbia of the 50s and 60s as I did, where life was good for the middle class, church had more than a passing resemblance to a social club (which does not mean people didn't believe) and everybody more or less went to church to get their lifestyle blessed. Harsh? Yes, but not untrue. The only sins people were scandalized by involved sex, violent crime, and being disreputable (poor? uncouth?). Individual righteousness or the lack thereof might cause some gossipy prayers (and prayer requests always came with too much information) but social evils were not anywhere near the radar screen. It was a world of complacency, conformity, sterility. Against that, my generation rebelled. I graduated in 1968, the summer students rioted in France, the Vietnam War was in full swing. We'd just lost Martin and Bobby. My parents were horrified by love-ins, assuming everybody was doing a dozen different drugs and a dozen different people. Maybe at some sites but the one on the Claremeont Colleges campuses was the sort of thing you could bring children to, a mass church picnic without church, lots of colorful silliness, and a desire to pursue peace and loosen up.
I love the classic prophets. I do not think they were ungrounded in grace but they were clear on what the divine Lover yearns for passionately and they weren't afraid to name it.
It's all process. Love accepts us as we are, without conditions, yet also wants us to be all we might by grace become. The Holy Spirit is thus a disturber as well as a comforter, a troubler and a wooer, nudging and luring us into a future we cannot yet conceive.
The old tension of comforting the afflicted and afflicting the comfortable. Amos afflicted the comfortable. If you have had more than enough affliction in your life, his message might not be what you need right now. Which is fine. Get what you need; God will provide it. Different parts of the traditions speak to us at different times.
[I put all this in comments rather than offline because I think the issues have general application and make for wonderful dialogue.]
Hugs!
Hugs back, and I'm going to think about this for awhile.
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