Showing posts with label Temples of God. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Temples of God. Show all posts

21 May 2018

Pentecost: A Tale of Two Kingdoms (Reprise)

 One of the problems I see most often with regard to our Christianity is its domestication, a kind of blunting of its prophetic and counter cultural character. It is one thing to be comfortable with our faith, to live it gently in every part of our lives and to be a source of quiet challenge and consolation because we have been wholly changed by it. It is entirely another to add it to our lives and identities as a merely superficial "spiritual component" which we refuse to allow not only to shake the very foundations of all we know but also to transform us in all we are and do. 

Even more problematical --- and I admit to being sensitive to this because I am a hermit called both morally and canonically to "stricter separation from the world" --- is a kind of self-centered spirituality which focuses on our own supposed holiness or perfection but calls for turning away from a world which undoubtedly needs and yearns for the love only God's powerful Spirit makes possible in us. Clearly today's Festal readings celebrate something very different than the sort of bland, powerless, pastorally ineffective, merely nominal Christianity we may embrace --- or the self-centered spirituality we sometimes espouse in the name of "contemplation" and  "contemptus mundi". Listen again to the shaking experience of the powerful Spirit that birthed the Church which Luke recounts in Acts: 

[[When the day of Pentecost came, they were all together in one place. Suddenly a sound like the blowing of a violent wind came from heaven and filled the whole house where they were sitting. They saw what seemed to be tongues of fire that separated and came to rest on each of them. All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues as the Spirit enabled them.]]

Roaring sounds filling the whole space, tongues of fire coming to rest above each person, a power of language which commun-icates (creates) incredible unity and destroys division --- this is a picture of a new and incredible creation, a new and awesome world in which the structures of power are turned on their heads and those who were outsiders --- the sick and poor, the outcast and sinners, those with no status and only the stamp of shame marking their lives --- are kissed with divinity and revealed to be God's very own Temples. The imagery of this reading is profound. For instance, in the world of this time coins were stamped with Caesar's picture and above his head was the image of a tongue of fire. Fire was a symbol of life and potency; it was linked to the heavens (stars, comets, etc). The tongue of fire was a way of indicating the Emperor's divinity.  Similarly, the capacity for speech, the fact that one has been given or has a voice, is a sign of power, standing, and authority.

And so Luke says of us. The Spirit of the Father and Son has come upon us. Tongues of Fire mark us as do tongues potentially capable of speaking a word of ultimate comfort to anyone anywhere. We have been made a Royal People, Temples of the Holy Spirit and called to live and act with a new authority, an authority and status which is greater than any Caesar. As I have noted before, this is not mere poetry, though it is certainly wonderfully poetic. On this Feast we open ourselves to the Spirit who transforms us quite literally into images of God, literal Temples of God's prophetic presence in our world, literal exemplars of a consoling love-doing-justice and a fiery, earth-shaking holiness which both transcends and undercuts every authority and status in our world that pretends to divinity or ultimacy. We ARE the Body of Christ, expressions of the one in whom godless death has been destroyed, expressions of the One in whom one day all sin and death will be replaced by eternal life. In Christ we are embodiments and mediators of the Word which destroys divisions and summons creation to reconciliation and unity; in us the Spirit of God loves our world into wholeness.

You can see that there is something really dangerous about today's Feast. What we celebrate is dangerous to a Caesar oppressing most of the known world with his taxation and arbitrary exercise of power depending on keeping subjects powerless and without choice or voice; it is dangerous if you are called to live out this gift of God's own Spirit as a prophetic presence in the very same world which kills prophets and executed God's Anointed One as a shameful criminal --- a traitor or seditionist and blasphemer. Witnesses to the risen Christ and the Kingdom of God are liable, of course, to  martyrdom of all sorts. That is the very nature of the word, "martyr", and it is what yesterday's gospel lection referred to when it promised Peter that in his maturity he would be led where he did not really desire to go. But it is also dangerous to those who prefer a more domesticated and timid "Christianity", one that does not upset the status quo or demand the overthrow of all of one's vision, values, and the redefinition of one's entire purpose in life; it is dangerous if you care too much about what people think of you or you desire a faith which is consoling but undemanding --- a faith centered on what Bonhoeffer called "cheap grace". At least it is dangerous when one opens oneself, even slightly, to the Spirit celebrated in this Feast.

A few years ago my pastor (John Kasper, OSFS)  quoted from Annie Dillard's book, Teaching a Stone to Talk. It may have been for Pentecost, but I can't remember that now. Here, though, is the passage from which he quoted, [[Why do people in church seem like cheerful, brainless tourists on a packaged tour of the Absolute? … Does anyone have the foggiest idea what sort of power we blithely invoke? Or, as I suspect, does no one believe a word of it? The churches are children playing on the floor with their chemistry sets, mixing up a batch of TNT to kill a Sunday morning. It is madness to wear ladies’ straw hats and velvet hats to church; we should all be wearing crash helmets. Ushers should issue life preservers and signal flares; they should lash us to our pews. For the sleeping god may wake someday and take offense, or the waking god may draw us to where we can never return.]] Clearly both Fr John and Ms Dillard understood how truly dangerous the Spirit of Pentecost is.

We live in a world where two Kingdoms vie against each other. One is marked by oppression, a lack of freedom --- except for the privileged few who hold positions of wealth and influence, though these folks may not know authentic freedom at all --- and is marred by the dominion of sin and death. It is a world where the poor, ill, aged, and otherwise powerless are essentially voiceless. In this world Caesars of all sorts have been sovereign or pretended to sovereignty. The other Kingdom, the Kingdom which signals the eventual and inevitable end of the first one is the Kingdom of God. It has come among us first in God's quiet self-emptying and in the smallness of an infant, the generosity, compassion, and ultimately, the weakness, suffering and sinful death of a Jewish man in a Roman world. Today it comes to us as a powerful wind which shakes and disorients even as it grounds and reorients us in the love of God. Today it comes to us as the power of love that does justice and sets all things to right.

While the battle between these two Kingdoms occurs all around us in the way we live and proclaim the Gospel with our lives, the way, that is, we worship God, raise our children, teach our students, treat our parishioners, clients, and patients, vote our consciences, contribute to our society's needs, and generally minister to our world, it is our hearts which are ground zero in this "tale of two Kingdoms." It is not easy to admit that insofar as we are truly human we have been kissed by a Divinity which invites us to a divine/human union that completes us, makes us whole, and results in a fruitfulness we associate with all similar "marriages". It is not easy to give our hearts so completely or embrace a dignity which is entirely the gift of another. Far easier to keep our hearts divided and ambiguous. But today's Feast calls us to truly open ourselves to this union, to accept that our lives are marked and transformed by tongues of fire and the shaking, stormy Spirit of prophets. After all, this is Pentecost and through us God truly will renew the face of the earth.

28 October 2008

Called to be a Living Temple of God

There is an online conversation about the new Cathedral of Christ the Light in Oakland, and it falls about the way one might expect: Traditionalists hate it, call it Protestant, non-Catholic, castigate it for lacking Catholic symbolism, gothic sensibilities, altar rails, bell towers, etc ad infinitum et ad nauseam. This morning one person (in a more generous comment) called it "nice but plain" and it got me to thinking about what is actually missing from this Cathedral in the pictures these folks are looking at (because almost none of them have actually SEEN the new Cathedral first hand). With the help of today's readings I got a good kick in the pants (it's a jeans and work tunic kind of day!!) re what is the crucial element that Cathedral itself calls for and needs so clearly.

It was an obvious answer. What is missing is the ASSEMBLY, the coming together of the "called ones" who will make up the living stones of the living Temple. Because when the assembly is present, the Cathedral pulses with a life which is palpable; it is what it is meant to be at these times. Now don't get me wrong. The Cathedral is beautiful in any case. Its symbolism is rich and clear and more traditional or truly Catholic one could not get. It is alive with light and living water (the image of the Christ of majesty is created second by second by the light that enters the cathedral through minute holes, and the baptismal font has the water contantly moving), and of course, there is also the reserved Eucharist. But this cathedral is not a museum; it is a worship space, and despite its inherent beauty and symbolism, it is built so that it is really only complete and completely alive when it is filled with worshipping Christians. The Cathedral of Christ the Light is wonderful, but it, in its own way, steps back and serves the more important reality: the Temple of living stones which are Christ "brought to full stature" as Paul's letter to the Ephesians puts the matter.

For some time the term "vocation" was something the church, at least in practice, associated solely with religious and clergy. We all remember this and may see signs of it today. In fact, bits of this way of thinking and viewing things may still reside in our own hearts and prevent us from taking our lives as seriously as God does (and as he desires we do as well!). To "have a vocation" meant to be called to religious or priestly life. Nothing else was honored with the term "vocation" --- not marriage, not single life. Vocations were understood as wonderful things, to be highly esteemed, but only a relative few were thus called by God. The result was inevitable: those NOT called to religious life or priesthood came to see their own lives as less important or significant in God's eyes. They were taught that religious life is a "higher vocation" (a misunderstanding of the idea of relative "states of perfection") and naturally, they heard in their heart of hearts that their own vocation (if they could even apply that word effectively!) was "lower" or second class.

Today's readings cut the heart out of such a practice and undergird the changes that were achieved at Vatican II in this regard. Each of us is called by NAME to be --- that is, simply to be is a response to a call of God --- and more, each of us is called to be part of the very inner life of God --- called to take a place within his very life even as we allow him to reside more and more fully within us and fill our own lives with being and light. It does not matter whether we are religious, hermits, priests, or laity; each of us is called to be this living temple of God and living stones in the larger Temple which is the People of God. Awareness of this tremendous dignity and challenge is at the root of all truly prayerful and faithful living. It leaves no room for thinking of oneself or one's vocation as second class --- nor for thinking that one's vocation is "higher" than another's.

As the first reading from Ephesians affirms: "You are no longer strangers or sojourners, but you are fellow citizens with the holy ones and members of the household of God. . .[through Christ you are being built into a structure which] is held together and grows into a Temple sacred in the Lord; in Him you are also being built together into a dwelling place of God in the Spirit."

Imagine being a temple of the Spirit! The place where the Holy Spirit dwells in our world! Imagine really being people of prayer, not because we undertake an activity called prayer once or even several times a day, but because the Word speaks and the Spirit breathes in us in a way which MAKES us God's own prayers --- for remember, prayer is not what we do, but what God does in us. If it sounds astounding, it should, and yet, it is our everyday vocation, our call to be genuinely human, to be a dialogue between this world and God --- for that is what authentic humanity really is. Religious or eremitical life, priesthood or laity, marriage, single life, or consecrated virginity are all simply paths to this universal vocation. All of this is what Paul is referring to when he speaks of us as living stones or temples of the Holy Spirit. So imagine saying this living stone, this temple of the Holy Spirit is a first class stone, and this one is second class! Doesn't really work, does it?

The new Cathedral of Christ the Light, like any cathedral is the diocesan mother church, the seat of the Bishop. But to be complete, to be perfected in its structure and purpose it must be filled with praying people, people who are and are becoming PRAYER -- living stones in a living Temple with Christ as the capstone. If this new cathedral's symbolism of mediating the light and reality of the risen Christ between heaven and earth is to really be SYMBOLIC (which is to be more than a sign, afterall!) it must be filled with people who have themselves become dialogues between this world and God and who come together to celebrate the fact and, especially, the God who makes it continually possible. So, if the Cathedral of Christ the Light is "nice but plain" without its assembly of living stones, then that is as it should be. For, beautiful as the new cathedral is, it is a vehicle for something even more awesome --- the vocation of Christians, both individually and corporately, to realize their call to be the dwelling place of God and to be taken up into his own life at the same time, the vocation to be living stones in a Temple which will outlast (and outclass!) ANY Cathedral.