Mar 13 | “So what?”: Lenten Journal #7

My eyelashes flutter, and I cry, “My hero!” It should actually be a little disturbing that I should find such a great source of advice in William Temple, because it suggests that we have a long way to go before we actually start taking a wise man’s advice. I suppose there’s comfort in knowing that Nature sometimes provides us with geniuses who lay the groundwork for something that has a chance to blossom later. Science celebrates its early bloomers – let us do the same.

I find so much in Temple’s thought that would help the world today. Particularly illuminating is his focus on co-operation rather than competition as key to “social fellowship” as a normative part of our natural communal state as humans. I have been involved in a few projects  that have had me think about bullying in school, and how many people sanctimoniously (finally) say that bullying has no place in schools and must be eradicated. But there is so much of a focus on bullying in schools that rarely does anyone confront the issue of bullying in business, and in fact society’s encouragement and glorification of this attitude through a focus on competition, both in schools and in business. Temple would have recognized this tendency, I’m sure. Recognizing this and naming a healthier and more Christlike alternative was one of his steps toward incarnational theology, a theology which is crucial to my own life as a Christian.

Other marks of this lifestyle were freedom and choice. I am a liminal person in many aspects of my life, and one place where I definitely straddle a chasm is between Pelagianism and Augustianism. Fundamentally flawed but precious (and redeemable) because of it is how I would describe the human experience. What matters is that we have the freedom to remain both…and the freedom to decide to go beyond simply redeemable.

It is also important that my decision to be a Christian is not clouded by fear that I am going to hell if I do not live as a Christian. This is not good news! The world is sick of that message, and rightly so. A god that rules by fear is a tyrant not worthy of worship. Temple would probably agree when I said that I should have the freedom to worship God without fear – and more than that. I do have the freedom to know and worship God in thanks for the amazing gifts God has bestowed upon the whole creation (and not just on me). Obligation would be linked to service as well. We are trained as children toward one specific obligation among many: If someone today asked a group of adults, “What do we say?” I’d be willing to guarantee most would say, as if by rote, “Thank you.” Therefore we thank God for what s/he has done, and we live out our lives in service to others.

To me, this is intimately linked through incarnational theology. It is not enough for me to see everyone as fellow humans who deserve love as much as I do. Certainly people are those things, but it doesn’t inspire me – it’s not good enough to just recognize we’re all members of the same species. I need to recognize that holiness rests on all of creation, good and bad, like the rain falls on the good and bad alike. It’s a Matthew 25 kind of spirituality, and it’s very incarnational indeed.

If we should remember, then we also have to worship, and once again I come to find myself at the stone marked ‘anamnesis.’ It is not enough to put Jesus’s words on a powerpoint projector and go through why each one was important while everyone puts on their best thoughtful expression. I must walk the way Jesus walked. We move toward the altar, and back out into the world, then back toward the altar again. We go forward to receive bread, and then walk out into the world with bread and light within us. For Anglicans, a priest carries not only her own bread with her, but bread enough for all that are hungry, and for those who wish to step forward, the water of new life that will never run dry.

This is what I want to do with my life.

I return to the question I asked myself in my first journal entry: “Have you been changed by love?”

Yes.

And now, every prof at VST’s favourite question follows: “So what?”

So I walk forward, receive, and walk out. I pray for a day when I might receive a gift too wonderful for me: the gift to carry the bread out with me to help God feed all who are hungry.

-Clarity