Combination Lunch at Kreuz Market in Lockhart, Texas
Life, the Universe, and Everything:
A Recovering Liberal and the Deconstructed ChurchAn Adult Sunday School Lesson delivered at St. Michael's Episcopal Church on
The Feast of the Transfiguration, August 6, 2000 A.D.
Hello. My name is Michael, and I am a liberal.
It is a great honor and privilege for me to be here with you at St. Michael's and All Angels this morning, a church named for one of my two patron saints. And it is also no small surprise.
Greetings, in the Name of God the Father and of our Lord, Jesus Christ.
A couple of months ago when Shelly called me (based on a recommendation from Carol) to give this Sunday School presentation, she told me the topic was up to me, but that she needed a title that day to put in the printed schedule. Now, Carole and I used to serve on the Diocese of Dallas' Church and the Environment Committee, so perhaps that was the appropriate subject. But that committee is now defunct. I used to also work closely with Laura from St. Michael's on Church Renewal projects, so perhaps that should be the subject. I've also worked with St. Michael's Whitey on American Anglican Council projects, and perhaps that should be the area for discussion. However, I currently serve with St. Michael's own Fred (and Timothy and Fr. Don) on the Diocese's Evangelism Department, and maybe that would be the most timely topic.
I couldn't decide, but Shelly NEEDED a title for her deadline. I waited for the inspiration. It came in the form of British author Douglas Adam's title for the third volume in his The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy trilogy, to which I added a qualifying subtitle. It provides adequate "cover" for all my topic ideas. Here goes.
"Life, the Universe, and Everything: A Recovering Liberal and the Deconstructed Church."
By the way, The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy (sort of a cosmological Michelin Guide) is described by Mr. Adams as a black book with large friendly letters on the cover that read, "Don't Panic".
A RECOVERING LIBERAL
I describe myself as a recovering liberal (as opposed to a neo-conservative) because whenever an issue arises that has liberal-conservative positions, I immediately want to jump toward the liberal position. It is a bit like a recovering alcoholic who always wants a drink, or an ex-smoker who still craves a Marlboro.
In the 1960s (as a teenager) I walked in a civil rights protest. In the 1970s, (while attending Art School in San Francisco), I walked in the great Anti-war Moratorium March. In the 1980s, I helped organize Earth Day events in Dallas. In the 1990s, I stood and prayed with pro-life demonstrators. While these activities may seem at odds with each other to some, to me they are all about the same thing: preserving, protecting, respecting, and defending God's greatest creation... human life.
LIFE
My full name is Paul Michael Summer. I am a rarity, in that I am a white male, college educated, fifth generation Texan... WITHOUT a trust fund. This is a result of having school teachers and Methodist circuit riders as 19th Century forebears. In the 20th Century, my family tended towards starting new business ventures immediately prior to economic downturns.
Much to the discomfort of many of my acquaintances in the Church, I often say that I have been an Episcopalian for almost 50 years... and a Believing Christian for the last 16. The early 1980s found me embarked on a two career path: I was a Creative Director for a small Advertising Agency by day, and an exhibiting Conceptual Artist by night. Bill Bernbach and Marcel Duchamp were my respective role models and career icons. Johnny Walker and Jack Daniels were two of my best friends.
I was very creative and terribly unhappy. I was divorced, and didn't know why. I drank too much, but was deathly thirsty. I was a dead man who walked.
I had quit going to church when my "trial wife" of 8 years left me for someone she met while doing graduate research in Mexico. Prior to that, I had been teaching Jr. High Sunday School at an Episcopal church here in Dallas, serving as Usher and Server, and mindlessly moving my way up the ranks of Parish Involvement. But when my unfaithful bride walked out on me, I too walked out on the Groom to whom I had never really been faithful.
One night (while working in my studio), I had the distinct impression that I was in the embrace of Satan, and that he and I were dancing together. This dance was a spiral dance, a closing circle, a labyrinth, and it went down to Hell. In sudden awareness that my soul was in danger, I fell to my knees on the floor.
I felt a great need to pray, but I didn't know how. Not being a particularly religious man, but an Episcopalian, I reached up to the bookshelf beside my workbench and took down a 1979 Book of Common Prayer that my deceased grandmother had given to me. It opened right up to Thomas Cranmer's 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 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."
It was a beginning. Just a few days later, I knelt in a pew at a small Episcopal Church in Denison, Texas, and asked Jesus to forgive me, and to come into my life and take control of it. I surrendered to Jesus my pride and my arrogance. I asked Him for a drink of that Living Water with which I would never thirst again. He came into my heart that day, and that is why I stand before you this day.
I have always felt that Satan, in his pride and arrogance, showed himself to me just a little bit early. But lately, I have begun to realize that it was also Jesus Christ shining His light into my life that allowed me to see where I was going.
THE UNIVERSE
Air Quality and Urban Sprawl:
Today I am a bureaucrat, an Urban Transportation Planner whose goal is to get people out of single-occupant motor vehicles and into mass transit, or on to foot, or on bicycles. The Dallas area has but one primary cause of air pollution: the internal combustion engine. All other sources of air pollution COMBINED come in a distant second. I came to work for the City because I wanted to do "good" work: I wanted to do work that would benefit people's lives in some way, not get them to buy something they might not need.
The reason we have such serious air pollution (and don't kid yourselves: it is VERY serious) is because we drive our cars, trucks, and SUVs all over the place. The DFW Metroplex has the LOWEST population density of any metropolitan statistical area in the world. We act as though we INVENTED the term "conspicuous consumption". We are now building high-dollar housing developments where people have to get in their cars to pick up their MAIL because there are no sidewalks, and the mailboxes are a quarter mile away! As an example of how wedded to this lifestyle we are, the residents of a local suburban town made up almost exclusively of these half-acre lot home-sites have blocked the construction of a planned mid-density planned community within their city limits as not being "compatible" with their community (this was to have been much like Florida's Seaside community featured in the motion picture The Truman Show).
These "new towns" as they are called, are designed around encouraging interaction between its residents. The streets, sidewalks, parks, residential neighborhoods, types of residential facilities, accessibility to shopping and professional services, and community centers are all designed to ENCOURAGE the creation OF a community. Cars are discouraged within the community by making walking and cycling more attractive. Neighborhoods are designed to encourage NEIGHBORS, not just the anonymous family in the next housing unit. Different levels of economic conditions are encouraged so that the "community" can be a diverse community.
These are called "livable communities", and "sustainable growth". In many ways, they reflect the kind of development that was promoted around the monastic centers of the medieval age. In many ways, they realize that for a "community" to exist, there must be "communion". People in communion with each other have fewer clashes, less crime, less violence. They are united ACROSS their conditions.
Incarnational Theology and the Pollution of the Earth:
Why do I care about the environment and the community of man? Because God made it, and He saw that it was good. Because He made us as a community, as brothers and sisters. And He made creation for us to ENJOY, not to abuse. When we abuse the earth...when we blacken the air, sterilize the soil, and poison the water...we are showing our Creator just how little we value His handiwork. He gave us the fertile earth for our pleasure and for us to cultivate it, not for our carnal lusts and to rape it. We cannot live in a right relationship with God when we live in a wrong relationship with His Creation.
Genesis 1:31 God saw everything that he had made, and indeed, it was very good. And there was evening and there was morning, the sixth day.
Adam and Eve were the first despoilers of the environment. It was their abuse of the gift of Eden brought about by their prideful disobedience that was the first pollution. And God was not pleased. His displeasure with our pollution of His creation continues. In the Old Testament, God said to Moses, "Do not pollute the land where you are. Do not defile the land where you live and where I dwell, for I, the LORD, dwell among the Israelites." Numbers 35:33-34
Pollution of the Spirit:
But Jesus says in Matthew, that the source of pollution is the heart of man.
"Don't you see that whatever enters the mouth goes into the stomach and then out of the body? But the things that come out of the mouth come from the heart, and these make a man 'unclean.' For out of the heart come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false testimony, slander. These are what make a man 'unclean'; but eating with unwashed hands does not make him 'unclean.' " Matthew 15:17-20
Pollution of the Body:
My oldest daughter is 23. She and her husband live in Austin, a town that supports their vegetarian life-style. She recently told me (thinking I'd be proud, or outraged, I'm not sure) that for the first time in her long life, she had become politically active. She and her husband had joined the Green Party. I decided to check out the Green Party's National Platform. All I really knew about them was that their presidential candidate was Ralph Nader.
I went to the internet and checked out the Green Party's website and their platform. Under Environmental Action, they pledge to fight the Greedy American Industrial Giants whose pollution kills thousands of children each year (primarily due to respiratory disease). Just below that was their Reproductive Freedom plank, where they are committed to insuring a woman's right to have an abortion as a matter of choice.
The irony is inescapable. Thousands of children die each year due to industrial pollution, and certain American corporations' greedy refusal to consider the health of others, especially those who are too weak to defend themselves. But four thousand babies are dismembered EACH DAY in abortion clinics in the United States, due to the American public's careless attitude toward sex, and its greedy refusal to consider the lives of others, especially those who can't speak for themselves. Baal Moloch must be satisfied.
For those who aren't aware, Baal Moloch was the Canaan god of harvest and fertility. The Canaanites had made a huge bronze idol of this local deity. They would build a big fire inside it until it glowed. Then they would place their first born infant children in its fiery hot arms, and watch as their newborn infants burned to death. This was to placate the god of the harvest, and secure their financial well being. This is also why God demanded that the Israelites utterly destroy Canaan. What we do today for the sake of our own selfish interests is little different.
I grew up an Anglo-Catholic Episcopalian in the Diocese of Dallas during the 1950s and 60s. I recall how we were taught to believe that we were a "thinking man's" religion. We prided ourselves on not being Fundamentalists like our Southern Baptist brethren, nor superstitious like our Roman Catholic relations. Our "via media" was the enlightened (and sophisticated) way. We were "refined" not by the fires of martyrdom that Cranmer, Ridley, and Latimer endured, but by the gentile grooming of the English landed gentry and our own East Coast upper class. We were proud of the number of College Presidents who were Episcopalians (not to mention Presidents of the USA, and Supreme Court Justices).
This was all summed up nicely in the 80s by the Church Ad Project out of Minnesota. Very slick and clever ads were produced (and are in use today) with themes like, "Whose birthday is it anyway?" (picture of Santa Claus), and subtle cultural themes like, "In the Episcopal Church, we don't believe that a woman's place is in the kitchen" (picture of female celebrant at the altar), and the most culturally relevant one, "In the Episcopal Church, you don't have to check your brains at the door" (picture of Holy Bible).
These all appealed to our inflated sense of intelligence, wisdom, and modernity... not obedience. Generation after generation has been soaked in this brine of self-conceit until ECUSA is now pickled through and through.
My parish, a nominally Anglo-Catholic parish in Dallas, continues this tradition today. The tract rack in the narthex has a tract from Forward Movement called "The Episcopal Church: A Faith for Thinking People". It is a subtle, and flattering piece. In it, we are told that the REVELATION of God continues to unfold through biblical research and scientific study. God changes as our understanding of God grows. To human ears, this is great flattery. It is worshiping a plastic god who can be transformed and molded by each new generation to reflect itself. It is Man creating God (not a new theme in pagan history). It is also death.
What's needed? A hitchhiker's guide to the cosmos. Holy Scripture.
The Deconstructed Church and the Pollution of the Body of Christ:
Listen to what the Prophetess Judith had to say when the Assyrians threatened Jerusalem (Judith 9:8), "Break their strength by your might, and bring down their power in your anger; for they intend to defile your sanctuary, and to pollute the tabernacle where your glorious name resides...". Pollution in the Temple has always been a serious issue with God. We, as the Church... the Body of Christ, are the Temple of God today. The pollution of this new Temple is no less serious.
Human Beings after the Fall are like brand new cars whose front ends are out of alignment. You get behind the wheel, start the engine, turn on the air conditioner, insert a CD into the car stereo, and take off. But even though you hold the wheel straight, the car starts drifting. Maybe it's a slight drift, say, one foot for every 1000 feet traveled. Or maybe it's a severe drift: one foot for every ten feet traveled. Either way, you are soon off course if you don't constantly correct the steering wheel. If you were driving out in the Great Salt Flats of Utah where you had no references, you'd be driving around in a circle and not even know it.
But in civilization, we DO have references. In our car, we call them roads, road markings, and maps. By watching the stripes and curbs, we can tell how much we need to adjust the steering wheel to keep on a straight course. As Christians, we have the hitchhiker's guide to the cosmos, the Holy Bible, as our reference. It tells us when we need to correct our direction to keep on the straight and narrow path.
We've all heard the references to Richard Hooker's supposed "three-legged stool" of Anglicanism: Scripture, Reason, and Tradition. Church Revisionist Liberals have placed "reason" above the rest (and that they have adopted the forth leg of "experience" from the Methodists as an equal). Many of us have also read that Hooker didn't envision a three legged stool, as much as he saw a three-columned churchmanship that placed "scripture" at the cornerstone, followed by tradition and reason.
My dear wife (wise beyond her years and my ways), pointed out to me the other day that it is not "reason" that the revisionists hold above all else (or even "experience"), but it is "the tradition" that they value most, and it is the tradition that they will fight to the death for. By this she meant (and I agree), that in order to preserve the traditions of Anglicanism (most especially Anglo-Catholic Ritualism), accommodations must be made with the culture. If the culture can't reconcile itself with Holy Scripture, then Holy Scripture must be reconciled with the culture by tailoring it to the current climate.
Common sense "reason" tells us that homosexual sex and abortion are unreasonable and counter-productive activities. Even a Darwinist must admit that for the survival and strengthening of the species, these practices can only be seen as having a negative impact. If it is reasonable for a species to do all that it can to continue and to thrive, then promoting the killing of children and the practice of unnatural sex works in the opposite direction.
Whether in the form of Natural Law or of higher mental activity, reason is God's gift to us. Scripture is also a gift from God, inspired by His Holy Spirit for our instruction. Tradition, however, comes from man, and can be a vain thing. Now by tradition, I don't mean the traditions of our fathers handed down to us faithfully... the passing of the baton from one generation to the next. No, I mean everything from certain snippets of Elizabethan language, neo-gothic architectural styles, and tab collars vs. band collars, to cassocks, copes, mitres, crosiers, prayer books, hymnals, liturgies, "orders of ministry", apostolic succession (which has often become more apostate than apostolic), and almost anything else that you'd find in an Episcopal church on Sunday morning, but not in the world on the other six days of the week.
In other words, everything that the Reformers railed against has come back to haunt us (and I of a pronounced Anglo-Catholicism!) and to separate us from God's Will and His plan for us.
Spong, Browning, and Griswold would never dream of doing away with the priesthood and the episcopacy, and instead are willing to fight for their survival in the face of a culture that threatens to sweep it away in a flood of psychology-as-religion, dubious self-help strategies, and old-timey "new age" religions. It is "the tradition" that they are upholding... "our" unique tradition of feeling over faith... enlightenment over revelation... nice over good. They point to the common "god" of humanism, with which they feel we can't compete unless we adapt to that pluriform god. And so, in the name of pluralism and diversity, we bow down and worship it in our culture's multiform marketplace. Pluriformity is simply a return to paganism; a paganism where we make sacrifice to "our" household god to protect us from "their" household god, both of whom dwell in the same pantheon.
Indeed, they correctly see the tradition threatened, and seek to incorporate the "entitlement" of the individual and his or her rights into the tradition to save the tradition; a reverse osmosis of the Church's early strategy to win the world for Christ. They love the tradition, adore the tradition, and rely upon the tradition for their self-understanding and place in the cosmos. They uphold and defend the tradition in accordance with their ordination vows, while fulfilling their renewed baptismal vow to seek and serve the christ-ness in others (and in other's religions)... to "christen" the world, but no longer to Christianize it.
This is why John Spong can write of "Why Christianity Must Change or Die" while denying ALL the basic tenets of Christian Faith from the Virgin Birth to the Resurrection of Jesus, and why Frank Griswold can speak of "my truth meeting your truth" at a common understanding of "the divinity within us", while approving the Church's participation with Wiccan and Voodoo cults in New York. Indeed, that is why we move closer to the publishing of a "Book of Common Truths" to replace the Common Prayer book (some say we arrived there in 1979 when we adopted a baptismal covenant that contains elements not found in the Creeds of the Church). In these "common truths", we can ecumenically worship as we choose the mother-father-brother-sister-earth-animal-spirit god, each focusing on the part of the god we identify with, while seeking and serving the christ within each of us. Perhaps we will even add a new creed that begins, "We hold these common truths to be self-evident..." The Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist has become "the real presence" of our self-importance in the liturgy.
But in churches like the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York, the outward and visible "tradition" remains: acolytes and crucifers lead a solemn procession of clerics dressed in fake medieval costumes down the aisles of imitation Norman and Gothic buildings, leading a liturgy that has about as much to do with the Last Supper as the local Masonic Lodge has to do with the Freemasons of the first millennial roll-over. Cranmer, Latimer, Ridley, and Bilney probably wouldn't be shocked that their flames that ignited England have become cherished embers cupped in the hands of proud worshipers. These same worshipers have the sign of the cross placed upon their foreheads in the martyr's ashes (after the embers have gone cold), not as a sign of repentance, but as a sign of pride in "good" liturgy (this is the same pride that puts an Episcopal shield on a car, but balks at an ichthus).
This helps to explain the unseemly spectacle, as happened in Brockton, MA, recently, of bishops throwing a congregation that upholds Holy Scripture out on the street while fighting to keep the church property in the diocese. Upholding and protecting the tradition means keeping all your marbles in the bag. After all, tradition is almost universally identified with historic buildings. Anyway, surely one would have to have lost his marbles to worship a Living God, virgin born, raised from the dead, who knew you by name.
John Spong rightly raises the question as to who is doing the better job of stewardship. Is it the shrinking diocese who's losses are less than the white-flight induced desertion of the urban northeast (i.e.; his Diocese of Newark), or is it the growing diocese that falls short of the overall growth in their region (i.e.; our Diocese of Dallas). Obviously, one can be both a heretic and a good churchman at the same time, if good churchmanship is defined as keeping it together in the face of the cultural onslaught. Increasingly though, what is not so clear is whether or not one can be a faithful follower of Christ Jesus and an Episcopalian in good standing at the same time.
We are caught up in preserving the outward form by abandoning the inner content, just as a ship in high seas might dump its cargo to keep from capsizing. In our case, the cargo is FAR more precious than the ship, but we are being called to sacrifice the cargo for the sake of the ship. Isn't that precisely what happened off Malta two thousand years ago? Recall that in the Book of Acts the Roman guards wanted to kill Paul and throw him overboard. But Paul convinced the Captain of the Guard to drive the ship onto the shoal so that the passengers could all escape before the ship broke up.
AND EVERYTHING
For the last few years, Lent seems to have been a time for me to meditate on my relationship and faithfulness to my Lord and Savior Jesus Christ as a member of the Episcopal Church and of my particular diocese. The first couple of years were spent in introspection: who am I, and who do I think I am?
But this last Lent (and perhaps last year to a lesser degree), has been spent on "who are they, and who do they think they are?" The "they" in my query relates to otherwise orthodox Episcopalians (mainly clergy and bishops) who associate, cultivate, and go along with revisionist clergy and bishops and their teachings.
One morning in prayer, I was given the following understanding. Most of the clergy and bishops I have had the opportunity to work with (and to get to know) seem to think that we are on some kind of a spiritual journey...that God has set us in this little (or big, depending upon how you see Jesus) boat on God's River. The river flows to God. It does have sandbars, and eddies, and coves, and marshes and swamps. These can all trap and misdirect our boat (and the boats of others), but the river also has progressively more advanced harbors and bays along one shore.
Boats can be capsized, they can be run aground, they can even collide with each other. But it is unclear if one can drown. Certainly, any kind of faith in some kind of God will keep even those who have fallen overboard afloat. An individual, clinging to an inner tube of inner spirit, will float along the river toward the eventual destination of God (modern predestination?). But the Great Christian River (known as the Great Spiritual River to some, just as the Rio Grande is also called the Rio Bravo on the other side) has many boats journeying down it, some seem very strange to our eyes. Barges, skiffs, fishing boats, junks, sampans, and flagships all drift along in the River of God. We are told that God's Will is God's River, drawing us all toward God. And while we feel that our boat is the best boat, the safest boat, the truest boat, and the boat most like God intended, we still think that these other boats are still flowing in the right direction. Even when we see a boat headed in the opposite direction, we know that the flow of the river will eventually bring them to God.
You can operate your boat by strict Royal Navy procedures, or you can be a leisure craft. How you run your boat, and how neighboring boats run, is less important than knowing that you are heading toward God. Adm. Swing and Adm. Stalwart might even agree on the direction, although Adm. Stalwart might say that Adm. Swing is taking far too many liberties with Royal Navy Protocol, and perhaps he should leave the Navy and join a Cruise Line. But we agree that, however mistaken our leadership, all are heading toward God on God's River.
But what if it's not a river? What if it's a lake, or a small sea? What if it's the Sea of Death?.
On one shore stands Jesus, preparing a breakfast for us of fish and loaves. On the other shore stands hell. But it looks pretty good, because hell has all the good restaurants, dry docks and piers... and some nice casinos, too. Broiled fish and flat bread, or Las Vegas? Which do you want for shore leave?
A breeze blows first one way on this lake, and then another. White caps and calm seas lie close beside each other. Boats are blown this way, and then that way, as the prevailing winds blow. The ship captains don't worry about it too much, because they believe that the current of God's River draws them to God. As a matter of fact, they believe that it is very important to stay in the current; in the flow of the main stream. In a way, they try to remain as CURRENT as possible within their traditions.
At Jesus' feet are lines that are connected to every life preserver on every boat in the lake. Even every inner-tube around every inner-spirit tuber drifting alone among the boats is attached to the lines at Jesus' feet. He says, "Come and get it!" and those who say in return, "Yes Lord, bring me to your feast" are pulled ashore. Because of the shifting winds and under currents of the water, nobody can swim to shore on their own. Because of the lack of piers, no boat can make it to shore, either. At some point, the individual must get into the water and let Jesus pull them ashore.
But here's the point: what seems to our admirals, captains, and navigators as a river on which we journey toward God, is actually a lake that separates Hell from Heaven. Those that chose to dock at Hell only do so because they think they are on their inexorable way toward God (toward God's judgment, unknowingly), and they let the Current take them to Hell's Port. Those who chose to join Jesus for his meal must make the decision on their own, regardless of the type of boat they are riding in. And because there is no pier, no boat can be saved: only the souls on the boat. The boat will drift with the current, or break apart like that little boat of the Maltese coast.
It would be a brave and loyal captain indeed who intentionally ran his boat aground and told the passengers and crew to call to Jesus to save them from the shipwreck, and to jump for their lives. It would be a brave and loyal captain indeed who did not blindly follow the tradition of going down with his ship -- but leading by example -- calls upon Jesus to save him and jumps into the water first, urging the others to follow.
I'd like to close with this quote from Douglas Adam's "Life, the Universe, and Everything". I think it relates well to our present state of affairs on the S.S. Episcopalian.
"On the way back, they sang a number of tuneful and reflective songs on the subjects of peace, justice, morality, culture, sport, family life, and the obliteration of all other life forms."
Life, the Universe, and Everything
Douglas Adams
Hello. My name is Michael, and I am a sinner. Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner.
Thank you.
# # #
P. Michael Summer
simul iustus et peccator