Common flesh

Christian faith can so easily slide into a head-only existence. Christianity lives in a tension between flesh and ascesis. When it loses that balance, Christianity often slides into a disregard of the flesh. Sometimes this disregard takes the form of benign neglect, sometimes an active hostility towards the material world.

The celebration of Christ's birth continually pulls us back to the material world, to the flesh we have in common with everyone else, and now with God as well.

fascism

Anyone familiar with the history of Orthodox Christianity knows that one of its besetting temptations is to embrace nationalism. The nineteenth century saw the condemnation (1872) of phyletism: making nationality (in particular, ethnic identity) a condition of church membership. Although nowadays we talk a good game about the embrace of people of all nationalities in the Body of Christ, in general we do a poor job of making that claim a reality at the parish level. This is one reason why in the past I have criticized the distinction Afanasiev makes between a so-called "Ignatian" catholicity-in-depth and a Cyprianic "catholicity-in-breadth." Orthodox theologians since Afanasiev have tended to claim that the "Ignatian" vision of catholicity is somehow  more Orthodox. In my view, what this conversation about catholicity reflects more than anything else is the history of Orthodox-Catholic relations. "Ignatian" catholicity all too easily can become a convenient excuse for a narrow localism, bringing phyletism in through the back door.

I think about this theological debate when I read about the rise of Golden Dawn in Greece. Yes, there have been courageous bishops and other clergy in Greece who have spoken out against the resurgent fascism of Golden Dawn. Why have there not been more Orthodox voices outside Greece condemning Golden Dawn and what it represents as un-Christian, and contrary to the Gospel? A quick search yesterday revealed an October 2012 communique of the Holy Eparchial Synod of the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America. But where are the voices from Finland, from Russia, from France, from the UK, from the rest of Orthodoxy in the United States? Readers, if you know of any such statements from here in Finland or anywhere else in the world, please tell me!

The age we live in cries out for Orthodox to proclaim with the loudest voice possible that the stranger is not an enemy to be purged but a beloved sister or brother, the object of our love and hospitality in a world marked by forced migration, violence, alienation, suffering, and death. For my part, I would rather that we Orthodox set aside our beloved "catholicity in depth" and open our arms wide to the stranger who enters the doors of our churches, to the foreigner, to the asylum seeker, to the person who looks or acts or speaks somehow different from us. We must not forget that our own salvation as well is at stake: "I was a stranger and you welcomed me," the Lord will say to those on his right side at the great day of judgment (Matthew 25:35).

 

Golden Dawn and groups like it are the antithesis to the Gospel. The Gospel is life. Golden Dawn and what it represents is death.

Where do we go with ecumenical dialogue?

Yesterday I made the rather bland observation that I had been gone for a while. The best way to put it is that for a long time I have been wrestling with the effects of not having a full-time job. By that I mean not a full-time job in academic theology, but any job. I have not had a full-time job since July 2010; I have had less-than-part-time employment here five out of the last six years. If you have been unemployed or underemployed for a longer period of time, perhaps you know the shredding, crushing effects such an experience can have on things like self-confidence, and the dusty cloud of depression that can settle over all of life. After a while, one can begin to feel that everything that has befallen one is one's own fault: it is too easy for shame at one's situation (and indeed, shame in oneself) to insinuate itself into one's outlook on the world, shutting one off from friends and possible ways out  of the darkness.

That wrestling has affected my writing, among other things. But recently I have come to see that the way forward sometimes is simply to do, to reach out, and not worry beyond that. I'm taking small steps in that general direction now. Thank you for your patience with me.

***************************

As I said in yesterday's post, last fall I was elected to the board of directors of the international aid, development, and missions agency of the Orthodox Church of Finland. A month or so after that, I was appointed as a representative of the church (one of two) to the national Faith and Order Commission here in Finland. As you may know, Faith and Order deals with outstanding theological questions separating the churches.

The task of reconciling the divided, sometimes alienated, members of the body of Christ has been a passion of mine for a very long time. A couple of my earlier posts here expressed my frustration with the current state of the ecumenical movement. So much seemed on the cusp of happening in the 1970s and 1980s. We have incredible, mind-blowing agreements on issues that once bitterly divided churches (for example, the Catholic-Lutheran joint statement on justification). Perhaps more obscure, but no less earth-shaking, changes have been taking place in sacramental theology (for example, the affirmation by the Catholic church that the celebration of the Eucharist using the Anaphora of Saints Addai and Mari, which contains no institution narrative, is sacramentally valid). Huge changes have been taking place. Most recently, Pope Francis's emphasis on his title as Bishop of Rome and his reaching out  to us Orthodox in the ways he has since the start of his pontificate have game-changing potential in the fraught area of Catholic-Orthodox relations. (In saying this, I don't intend to take away from the fact that Pope Benedict XVI also emphasized Catholic-Orthodox relations, and showed a deep knowledge and appreciation of of Orthodox theology and liturgical practice.)

But on the ground, as it were, what fruits do we see of all these encouraging developments? Let's be honest: there isn't a lot to see. Reconciling the body  of Christ remains the pastime of professionals. Our talk is good, and important, and it does not cost us much.

We need something new. A new way forward.

If you read about the history of the ecumenical movement, you will see that friendships across ecclesial traditions played a large role in the formation of what would become the World Council of Churches and other organisations devoted to reconciling Christ's body. This is no less true today than it was eighty years ago.

But today we need more. I find it difficult to believe any longer that in my lifetime there will be a radical reconciliation of churches at the level of common ministries, shared structures of common life, a shared Eucharist or baptism. The world and its powers (in a Pauline sense) have too thoroughly found a home in our ecclesial hearts. Of course we must still work toward that reconciliation, in spite of the seeming futility of the task. It's not optional. It's an obedient response to the Lord's prayer that all his followers might  be one.

What might this "more" be? We need individuals who are called to the work of transgressing the boundaries we have set up over the course of our history. We need people with the courage not only to think, but to live in terms of crossing the boundaries that keep us apart. Perhaps you could call this a prophetic stance; the difficulty with putting things this way is that it is all too easy for prophecy to become grandstanding.

This is where I think the idea of kenosis could be especially useful. Some (not all!) strains of Orthodox theology have emphasized the self-emptying of Christ (see Philippians 2) as a central, organizing motif for Christ's followers. Think of the icon of Extreme Humility. Kenosis is transgressive.

Paul says to the Philippian church that they should have the same mind that was in Christ, who did not think equality with God was something to be grasped at, but emptied himself, taking on the form of a servant. To have the "same mind" as Christ's in this way gives us the necessary antidote or counterbalance to the dangers and pitfalls of prophecy alone.

This is what we need: prophecy and kenosis made tangible in real, complex, faithful people motivated by love to act in new ways not simply for the life of the church, but for the life of the world.

I know this all sounds vague, theoretical, perhaps even ethereal. But ethereal it is not: we know that Christ's self-emptying was anything but theoretical. If this vision speaks to you as well, come help me flesh out its meaning for our lives here and now .

Giving and receiving

I have been away a while. Now that the autumn is upon us I hope to revive my writing here regularly.  This post and the next will be about work I have begun to do here in Finland related to international aid and ecumenical dialogue.

I don't recall if I've mentioned it before but last fall I was elected to the board of directors of the international aid and missions organization of the Orthodox Church of Finland. This organization is called Filantropia. It carries on the work of an earlier organization called OrtAid; the name was changed effective January 1 of this year.

Filantropia is a good name for the development, assistance, and missions agency of the church. It emphasizes something that the earlier name did not: namely, that what we do in reaching out to help another person is an expression of love for our fellow human being. In the Divine Liturgy we proclaim God, who loves the human race. The work of Filantropia is one expression of that love God has for us. Mission is part of that work, but it too must be seen in the light of the love of God for all human beings, as part of the larger missio Dei embodied in the Incarnation of the Word of God.

One of the difficulties with giving money or time to the relief of people elsewhere in the world (or right next-door, for that matter) is that the action can often be curiously one-sided. We give, and we feel that we have done our duty. But there is far more to the matter than that. There must be reciprocity.  Pope Francis recently said something to this effect, that we must look the person who needs our help in the eye, we must touch their hand as we give: otherwise we do not make contact with the flesh of Christ. (I will find the quote for my next post.) This reciprocity is true for every instance of giving, no matter what the religious tradition of the person who receives our help. In the case of when we help other local churches, the necessity of reciprocity is especially urgent.

If, for example, we contribute to a development project run by the Orthodox Church of Tanzania, we should not be content simply to have funded important work providing clean water or preventing human trafficking or helping women to start small businesses.  Our giving needs to make possible an opening towards the other. We are one in Christ's body, we are joined by bonds of love in the Holy Spirit. Our giving ought to invite our sister or brother to come to us, so that we might learn from their life in Christ where they are, so that we might more fully live out and express the unity, catholicity, and holiness of Christ's body.  It is so easy to live in isolation! Our giving can be a means of overcoming some of the fragmentation of our age.

Where did you find life there?

Apologies for my silence. As you know, sometimes life has to take precedence over writing. I now have more time for blogging than I did in May or most of June.

Since I last wrote, the question of estrangement from the church has continued to eat at me. I have a few more thoughts to offer, but nothing in the way of An Answer.

After suffering in an abusive relationship, a person needs distance from the former abusive partner. Distance can provide perspective; it also builds a necessary space between one's former suffering and one's current life.

In the case of suffering at the hands of the church, it may be necessary to stay away. Staying away does not mean that you have been abandoned by God.

But while you are away, if for no other reason than for healing's sake, I think it is important to ask yourself where, if anywhere, you found life (or where life found you) in the church. If you can name those places where you found life in the church, then seek those things where you are now.

It's possible to do this because we don't live in a dualistic, Manichean world where the only light to be had is in the church. If we are to believe the scriptures, God is working elsewhere in the world than only the church. One way to discern where the leaven is working in the world is to extrapolate from any lifegiving experience you had in the church. God was, is working in that particular place; it is a sign of God's working in similar lifegiving ways outside the boundaries of the church.

And if you cannot name any such lifegiving places in your experience of church, that's okay too. The very fact of your finding life outside the boundaries of the church is itself a witness to God's loving work and compassion.

Eucharist and ethics: an example

During my days in grad school at Notre Dame I had the good fortune to be a member of Broadway Christian Parish in South Bend, Indiana. Under the leadership of a series of remarkable pastors beginning in the late 1970s, this United Methodist congregation decided to celebrate the Eucharist every week in its one Sunday service.

Those who are not United Methodist, or have not been United Methodist at some point in their lives, may not be able fully to understand just how radical and courageous a decision that was.  For not a few United Methodists, a weekly Eucharist was something "Catholic," something very un-Methodist. Of course, such critics tended not to know that the original Methodist revival in the eighteenth century had been a Eucharistic revival as much as it was an "evangelical" revival.

For this congregation, restoring the weekly Sunday celebration of the Eucharist had as much to do with ethics as with liturgy. The congregation had existed since the teens of the twentieth century, and over the course of several decades the congregation's neighborhood changed. Closures at the Studebaker auto factory had hit the residents hard. By the late 1960s what had been a middle-class neighborhood had become an area of inner-city poverty.

Unlike other mainline Protestant congregations at the time and later who responded to such change by moving to the suburbs, Broadway stayed in the neighborhood of its birth.

Accompanying the decision to restore the Sunday Eucharist was a decision to serve the residents of the neighborhood, members or not, as an ethical act flowing from the celebration of the Eucharist itself.

One of the several things this decision meant in practice was to begin a community meal to be held each Sunday after worship. This meal, prepared and served by members of the congregation, was to be open to anyone who wished to attend. As part of an extended period of theological reflection on the Eucharist and the life of the congregation, members decided that such a meal was a natural, even necessary, extension of the feast of the Eucharist. Receiving the body and blood of the Lord entailed going from the altar of the Eucharist to the altar of the poor (St John Chrysostom or St Basil the Great, I'm working from memory here).  The community meal was an act of love and service born of the experience of receiving Christ in the Eucharist.

I was privileged to share in this life, and I have to say that I have not found a Christian community like it since.  The closest I have come was an Orthodox parish in St. Petersburg, Russia, in which the theological renewal associated with the martyr Fr Alexander Men' had taken root. Doubtless there are others; I would love to know of them. In much of mainline Protestantism in the United States, the liturgical movement was eclipsed eventually by the contemporary worship movement. Congregations like Broadway are still a tiny minority.

But although Broadway is in the minority everywhere, it still serves as an example for Christians of all traditions, one worth examining closely, emulating, and thanking G-d for.

Eucharist and the Other

In the Eucharist we encounter the face of Christ: in receiving his body and blood, and in the liturgical encounter with fellow members of the liturgical assembly.

Is it Levinas who says that in the face of the Other we encounter an absolute ethical demand?

Have we for whom, to whom,  the Eucharist has been given - have we experienced that absolute obligation towards the Other?

Eucharist and ethics

We Orthodox have rightly insisted on the centrality of the Eucharist for ecclesiology. Have we as strongly insisted on the importance of the Eucharist for ethics?

Exile and ecclesiology

Is the concept of exile helpful in understanding and interpreting the experience of alienation from the church that can follow from suffering at the hands of the church?

Back soon

I'm down with a really bad cold, will return in the next day or so.

Broken-hearted

There are many kinds of bitterness a person can feel. In a sense each specific disappointment precipitates its own unique bitterness.

Here I want to reflect on the bitterness felt by those who have deliberately chosen the church over other religious (and non-religious) options and then suffered at its hands. Such people have given themselves wholeheartedly to their new (or, sometimes, renewed) faith, sometimes becoming church leaders. To have given oneself only then to suffer in the beloved community is a grave wound to the soul. Disappointment, disbelief, anger, resentment, alienation, sadness remain in the heart, a broken heart.

Estrangement from the church is sometimes the fruit of this experience.

A common response to this situation is to say that the church is "only human," and that it is a mistake to view the church as different from any other organization. I think saying this throws overboard a lot of Christology, ecclesiology, and soteriology I'm not (yet) willing to abandon.

Putting the matter in terms of heartbreak and estrangement immediately evokes marital and relationship metaphors. Should we then consider the language of divorce? Separation? Are there better, more useful metaphors?

I hesitate to use the metaphor of divorce or separation. Why? More in the next post.

Human kindness

It sometimes seems that the church is the very last place one finds human kindness.

Sure, I know that "human kindness" isn't on any list of theological virtues, nor is it to be found in the scriptures.

And yet, that fact is not license for cruelty, indifference, lack of compassion in the church.

Yes, we have candied the concept of love, made it a syrupy emotion.

That is no excuse to turn love into its opposite.

As Christians, we ought to look as these matters in light of the Incarnation. One way to understand the Incarnation is in terms of acknowlegement and recognition. In Christ, God chose not to ignore us. In Christ, God's eyes see us, acknowledge us and all we are. Those eyes are compassionate eyes, eyes that do not pretend not to see.

Our understanding of church is that we are the Body of Christ, in a most realistic sense. It is not simply a metaphor.

This means that our eyes must also shine with compassion, recognition, acknowledgement. Salvation means that our eyes have been opened, have been transformed, to so shine.

When we do not find that human kindness in the church,  we need to find places where it does exist, create places where it is able to exist, and take refuge.

More than encouraging

From his first words on the evening of his election, Pope Francis has offered incredibly positive signs towards the Orthodox Church. His language about the Church of Rome gives hope that he might,  just might, view the papacy and its exercise in a way that Orthodox could embrace. 

Should that indeed turn out to be the case, would we be ready to accept it?

Invitation to Pilgrimage

I have been rereading Elisabeth Behr-Sigel's biography of Lev Gillet, better known as A Monk of the Eastern Church.

When I worked in Cambridge, I wanted to make a pilgrimage to his grave in London. I didn't manage to do it before I left the Institute.

Gillet, if you do not know of him, was a saintly, complex, prophetic man whose life embodied the hopes and disappointments in the search for the unity of the Church in the twentieth century. His importance has only increased since his death in 1980.

Reading again the life of Fr. Lev has rekindled my desire to make that pilgrimage.

Anyone interested in coming on pilgrimage with me?

Pope Francis I

First on a practical note: last week my Twitter account was hacked. My apologies for any phishing messages you received. I changed my password, hope that solves the problem. Please let me know if you continue to get spammed from my account. Last but not least, thanks again to all who alerted me.

***********

I was not surprised at the difference in the responses of the Ecumenical Patriarchate and the Patriarchate of Moscow to the election of Pope Francis I. If you haven't yet seen the news,  Bartholomew will attend the Mass of installation (I need to look up the Latin title; "installation" doesn't sound quite right), along with Metropolitan John (Zizioulas) and if I remember right, the archbishops (Ecumenical Patriarchate) of Argentina and Italy.

In terms of the dialogue between Rome and Constantinople, the Patriarch's attendance is a huge sign, as is the attendance of Metropolitan John. Some commentators are saying that it's the first time since the Great Schism that a Patriarch of Constantinople has attended a new Pope's inaugural Mass. I'm not sure ... after the lifting of the mutual anathemas did the Patriarch at the time attend those of John Paul I, John Paul II, or Benedict XVI?

When I heard the announcement that the new Pope had taken the name Francis, I immediately thought of Seraphim of Sarov. Both saints are commonly seen as representatives of a "spirituality of light." How might Orthodox and Catholics here in Finland live in new ways together - in that Light?

For Lent

Read this.

Convergence vs. consensus

Like Baptism,  Eucharist and Ministry, the new Faith and Order text on the Church is a convergence document, not a consensus. In other words, it articulates a point the churches have reached in their dialogue: a point at which they are ready to send their work forward to their members for further reflection and comment. It does not represent agreement.

The challenge now is to get the member churches to reflect and comment on this text in a way that stimulates critical, constructive thought on the Church today. We Orthodox have insisted on the visible unity of the Church;  how can we convince our fellow pilgrims on the way that this visible unity is as essential as we say it is?

A new convergence text on ecclesiology

Is this the first convergence text since Baptism,  Eucharist and Ministry (1982)? Could be. In any event, this is a major document whose appearance couldn't be more timely. I'll have more after I've read it through.

More on ecclesial reflection

A bit more on what I said yesterday about reflecting on the church in this transitional period.

Obviously, the main means of participating in another church's process of discernment is prayer. It may seem odd to speak of the prayer of Orthodox Christians as "participation" in the discernment leading to the election of a new Pope. However, our koinonia (however incomplete due to our sin) in the Spirit makes it possible. Not only possible, but necessary as an expression of love in Christ.

Second, this period of waiting (especially emphasized as it is by its taking place during Great Lent) ought to move us Orthodox to deep reflection on the church, our common life, our mission, where we fail to embody in our ecclesial structures the fullness of God's love and the giftedness of all who are baptized into Christ.

In sede vacante

What an odd, transitional feeling there is in the air at the moment. The beginning of March here in southwestern Finland brings hints of spring borne on the breezes blowing over the crusted, dirty snow. The See of Rome is now vacant, and the world waits for the announcement of a new occupant of the Throne of Peter.

I'm uncomfortable with calling this period an "interregnum," as some bloggers I've read have. My discomfort is shared by not a few Catholic theologians who have reminded their readers recently that the Bishop of Rome is the successor of a fisherman, not an emperor or king.

Whatever we call this in-between time, we can use this Lenten time to join our Catholic sisters and brothers in reflecting on the church, its mission, and its form in the world - the face it shows in the world. What happens in the coming days will assuredly affect us Orthodox as well. How can we most lovingly and humbly join in the ecclesial self-reflection happening now?

New pope on the way

With the unexpected resignation of Pope Benedict XVI comes an opportunity for us Orthodox to make visible the bonds of love which bind us both to each other in Christ. Let us support the Catholic church with our prayers in the coming days. We can also give our support by renewing our commitment to and zeal for full, visible communion with our Catholic sisters and brothers. We have it in our power to make that commitment and zeal visible at the level of everyday life - our personal lives as well as the life of our parishes. If our love isn't made visible at that level, how can we hope for restoration of communion?

tweets and intentions

I read an article today about a Franciscan province that has begun allowing prayer intentions to be tweeted to the friars who then will pray for the intention. I haven't looked closely into the precise mechanism. This isn't entirely new: I've seen a site that allowed people to email petitions to be placed in the Western Wall, and another that accepted emailed petitions for placement at the grave of the Baal Shem Tov.

I don't have anything against these practices although I think that they do raise interesting questions about networks, communication, and the ways we define communities of prayer.

Does anyone know if any of the hierarchy here in Finland have twitter accounts? Or the Ecumenical Patriarch? Or any other patriarch, for that matter? (And yes, I know Pope Benedict has a twitter account, though I wonder if all his tweets, like that of not a few public figures, are written by him.)

Theophany

In the Byzantine tradition, the feast of the Theophany is perhaps most associated with the blessing of the waters - a tangible way of bringing the Jordan to every place celebrating the manifestation of God's compassion to humanity. Or, better yet, in blessing the waters, the church thanks God for the baptism of Christ in the Jordan and acknowledges its saving power for us today, asking God to be merciful and save us. Although on the surface it might seem that the feast of the Theophany is less incarnational in emphasis than the feast of the Nativity, I don't think that's actually the case. Both feasts center upon Incarnation, although each in its own way. In a sense Theophany is the more earthy of the two; the material element of water and the image of Christ's submitting to the waters of his baptism emphasize the materiality of the mystery of Christ in a unique way.

light

Today is the feast day of my patron saint, Seraphim of Sarov (1759-1833). There is much that could be said about this starets: he was a contemporary of the Enlightenment, the birth of modernity and of the consciousness of tradition.

As many have noted, he is an exemplar of the so-called "spirituality of light" in Orthodox Christian tradition.

Evoking the ancient "return to Paradise" motif in ascetic theology, one of St. Seraphim's most famous icons is of him feeding a bear that had wandered out of the woods to his hermitage.

One of his most famous sayings is (I'm quoting from memory, the right book not easily locatable and I'm too lazy today to check the Internet): "Acquire inner peace, and thousands around you will be saved."

I've always found that exhortation to hesychia a fruitful, active, challenging response to modernity.