Advent: Buy the Ticket of Repentance (eCrozier #282)

On December 11, 2015, in advent, culture, St. Augustine, by bishopbenhase

Lord, grant me chastity and continence, but not just yet. – St. Augustine of Hippo

Advent is a season of preparation to welcome the birth of God in our midst. This Church season then has been marked traditionally by a time of repentance in the lives of Christ’s disciples. Indeed, the Scriptures of Advent shout out for us to repent, to change our whole way of thinking and acting so we might be a vessel for God’s mission in the world.

Of course, while we engage in such spiritual work we’re surrounded by a so-called “season of giving” where we try to be less Scrooge-like compared to the rest of the year. We assuage our consciences by collecting canned goods or volunteering here or there during this “season.” This gives us internal permission to check off the box that says: “I am a generous person.” But, I’m not interested in a seasonal harangue. Too many of us use this time of the year to judge others for not celebrating the real “reason for the season.” We can hardly expect others to do so when we’re so confused ourselves about what God becoming flesh means to our own lives as disciples of Jesus.

And that brings us to Blessed Augustine. He, maybe more than any saint of the Church, personally lays it all out there. His desire to repent and take on Christian virtues, two of which he names as chastity and continence, “but not just yet,” is as honest as it comes. And if we’re honest as well, we do the same thing, especially during this season of repentance. So, we might ask God, for example, to grant us the virtue of generosity. Or, it could be another virtue like forgiving others, but let’s just stay with this seasonal virtue of generosity. We ask God then to help us become more generous. And we wait and we wait and we wait. And it never seems to come. We then shrug our shoulders, move on, and conclude that it might never happen.

There’s a story of an old priest who retires after nearly 50 years of serving poor mission churches. He asks God each morning as he says the Daily Office to allow him to win the Super Lotto so he’ll be more comfortable in his retirement. He prays this each day for a month. Nothing happens. He never wins the lottery. So, one morning while praying he cries in loud voice: “Lord, I served you for nearly 50 years and now I’d like some comfort. Why won’t you do this one thing for me?” Total silence. But then a loud voice from Heaven shouts: “Buy a lottery ticket, you fool, buy a lottery ticket!”

In our repentance, if we desire the virtue of generosity, then we should start by really practicing generosity. If we practice it again and again, we’ll wake up one day and discover we’ve become a more generous person, not all the time (we are, after all, sinners), but much more so than we had been before. The same is true for other virtues that are a part of our repentance. If we want to be more forgiving, then we should start regularly forgiving others. When it comes to repentance, we “live in our heads” way too much. We overly spiritualize what it’s all about, which means we probably will never actually do it. And the new year will come and we’ll wonder why we never seem to grow much as disciples of Jesus Christ. For the love of Christ: “Buy a ticket!”

+Scott

 
0 Comments
Leave A Response

Brian Williams, St Augustine, & Me (eCrozier #250)

On February 13, 2015, in grace, love, news, sin, St. Augustine, by bishopbenhase

When I was about 14 years old, a group of guys I desperately wanted to hang out with invited me to an overnight party where the boy’s parents would be out of town. I made up some lie to my parents assuring them that there’d be adult supervision. So, I went hoping to fit in with this group. The party turned out to be boring. We played cards and listened to music. Someone brought beer. As so often happens when teenage boys mix beer and togetherness, someone had a “bright” idea: “Let’s go steal some road signs!” We went into the garage, found some tools, and set off to steal. I don’t recall how many road signs we took that night. Who knows what kind of danger we put motorists in during the weeks that followed? Why did I steal those road signs? I wanted acceptance. I wanted to be part of the cool kid’s group. I’m ashamed of my behavior even to this day.

In his Confessions, St Augustine tells about a time as a teenager when he and some friends scaled the wall of a neighbor’s pear orchard. While there, they picked a pear tree clean of its fruit. St Augustine says his group did this “not to eat the fruit ourselves, but simply to destroy it.” Why did he and his friends engage in such pointless destruction? Were there “double dares” declared? For St Augustine, the answer for why he did such a thing was clear: our inherent human sinfulness. OK. But I also wonder, was the pear tree incident about him wanting acceptance by the other boys? Did he just want to fit in with the cool kid’s group? He, too, was ashamed of his behavior.

And that brings us to Brian Williams, the NBC News Anchor, who is currently being pilloried in the media for his lies about his record as a TV journalist in Iraq during the war and in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. He apparently embellished his record citing deprivations and dangers that were simply false. We don’t know how he really feels about these embellishments. So far, his response to being exposed hasn’t been quite “confessional.” He hasn’t said why he felt he needed purposely to misrepresent his resume. Why would someone who has achieved all he has feel a need to lie about his record? My hunch is there’s something inside telling him that what he’s achieved isn’t good enough; that embellishing his resume would make him more loved and accepted; that the lies he told would assure him of a seat at the cool kid’s table. He didn’t steal road signs or destroy pears, but I hope on some level he’s ashamed of his behavior.

There’s something profoundly human about the need we have to be loved and accepted by others. We all long for others to love us. We desire their acceptance. But such longing and desire can become consuming and twisted because it can never be fully satisfied this side of heaven. Just how much love and acceptance do we need? We may get plenty of both, but we may never feel that’s enough. That’s the power sin exercises in our lives. That’s why we shouldn’t be so snarky about Brian Williams’ situation. He’s just struggling with the same issues with which we all struggle, that is, if we’re honest with ourselves. Even accepting God’s grace-filled acceptance of us through the mediation of Jesus on the cross doesn’t keep us from longing to sit at the cool kid’s table. My prayer is that Brian Williams and all of us finally realize how truly unimportant that is. God’s grace is more than sufficient for all of us.

+Scott

 
0 Comments
Leave A Response

eCrozier #77

On February 18, 2011, in Body of Christ, mission, St. Augustine, by bishopbenhase

My life shall be a real life, being wholly full of Thee – St. Augustine in Confessions

The world is full of phonies – Holden Caulfield in The Catcher in the Rye

Historically in our culture people turned to St Augustine to read about a life well-examined and well-lived. Then, at some point, Holden Caulfield became a more popular source for such meaningful introspection and living. It is an irony of our time that Augustine, Bishop of Hippo, is a real person while Holden Caulfield is the fictional creation of J D Salinger. So it goes, to quote Kurt Vonnegut.

But the irony is deeper than that. For many people today, church is last place they look for truth, beauty, and meaning. There are many reasons for that. My hunch is you and I could debate why it is many people these days have rejected the church as a source of what is really real in life. My further hunch is that we would have substantial data to support our contentions for why this is so and we would both be right for the most part.

However interesting that would be, I don’t believe it would add much more than further bemoaning the loss of the Church’s influence. But what if we instead called people to a real life, as St Augustine wrote? What might people need to experience in church for that to happen? Here are some helpful questions for such a call.

When people enter our churches do they experience hope? Do they sense the possibility of a new and different life? In Biblical language: Do they get a glimpse of the Holy City? Do they get an inkling of what God has intended all along for God’s creation? Do they experience worship of such grace and beauty that they find themselves drawn into the very life of Jesus? Does this worship gladden their hearts? Does it open their eyes to see God’s action in the world? At the exchange of The Peace and at Coffee Hour do they sense among us a real humility, gentleness, and love?

Regardless of size or shape, every church can faithfully address those questions. Our common life on Sundays should be shaped by how we intentionally respond to those questions. When churches do so, a buzz begins among members and visitors alike and that then is organically carried to others because there is something that strongly touches and moves them. This happens spontaneously. It’s grounded in a passion about who we are as a local outpost of the Body of Christ.

Holden Caulfield was right at least in his contention that the world is full of phonies. Well, maybe not full, but full enough that people today take a much more cynical stance to their lives. They are turned away by what they see as the hypocrisy of the Church. And we bear our share in the causality of such a stance.

I believe people are still longing in their lives for truth, beauty, and meaning. Our call is to live real lives wholly full of God. Our common life on Sundays needs to reflect such a real life. That will make all the difference in the world to people we have yet to meet.

+Scott

 
0 Comments
Leave A Response

eCrozier #54

On September 3, 2010, in St. Augustine, by bishopbenhase

Last week we celebrated the Feast of St. Augustine of Hippo. Augustine, probably more than any other western theologian, helped us all try to make sense of (and theologize about) human behavior.  In the second volume of his Confessions, Augustine relates how as a young boy he and some friends stole pears from a neighbor’s orchard.  Augustine wrote: “We took away an enormous quantity of pears, not to eat them ourselves, but simply to throw them to the pigs.” They also threw some of the pears against a wall. In his Confessions, Augustine did not dismiss this as a “boys will be boys” episode in his childhood. As an older and wiser Bishop, he looked back on this episode introspectively asking: “why did we do that?” His eventual answer was that sin is pervasively present in all humanity. He later acknowledged: “The evil in me was foul, but I loved it.” It seems there is nothing original about Original Sin.

What has prompted me to remember Augustine and the pear tree is the story of Roger Clemens, maybe the greatest baseball pitcher of recent times. He was recently indicted for lying to Congress. In his sworn testimony, he insisted he never, ever, used performance-enhancing drugs. Trouble is, there is corroborated testimony that says he clearly did. So, with Augustine, I ask: why did he do that? And why does he hold so fast to the fiction that he did not do it? It calls to mind former President Clinton’s strident statement: “I never had sex with that woman, Miss Lewinsky.”

Pete Rose, the greatest baseball hitter of all time, exhibited similar stubbornness to the truth. He was banned from baseball for betting on the game (a capital offense in baseball). But Rose, like Clemens continues to do, denied for 15 years that he did anything of the sort. A few year’s back, he finally admitted what he had done. When asked recently why he denied gambling on baseball for all those years, Rose replied: “I didn’t think I’d get caught” (in his denial).

We are complicated creations, aren’t we? Like Augustine, Pete Rose, Bill Clinton, and Roger Clemens, we try to outrun the truth. But, since the truth never gets out of breath, we can’t outrun it. The Bible is singularly helpful here. In 1 John 1:8-9 we find: If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, he who is faithful and just will forgive our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness.

We live in a time when many of us expect more truthfulness from politicians and sports heroes than we expect from ourselves. And when we discover they are just like us, we are crushed and exile them, either figuratively or literally. Now, I am not suggesting for a minute that we should not expect truthfulness from ourselves and from others. We should.  But we should tone down our shock and outrage that they do what they do (that we do what we do). There is nothing original in any of this. Let’s be truthful with one another. And then let’s extend to others the same grace and mercy God extends to us through Jesus.

+Scott

 
0 Comments
Leave A Response

Go To Top »