ORDINARY DAYS

Last Sunday was Pentecost, and I worshiped at Good Shepherd Lutheran Church in Hernando, Florida. If you live in that area or happen to be visiting, join them on a Sunday. There is worship creatively done in the Lutheran tradition and sound preaching from Pr. Kenneth Blyth. This past Sunday happened to be the congrega- tion’s 30th anniversary so Bishop Robert Schaefer was the preacher. You can always count on a good sermon from him as well. There was one sad moment for me when the Paschal candle was extinguished. For those unfamiliar with the custom, the Paschal candle is a very large candle lit for the first time at the Easter Vigil and then at each service during Easter. Pentecost is the end of the fifty days of Easter. Monday marks the return to ordinary time. 

People at most liturgical churches don’t notice the change until the green paraments appear. Here in Florida we can see the signs of ordinary time by the departure of the snowbirds for the north. Parish life settle back to a routine only interrupted by the explosion called Vacation Bible School. 

Since I follow Benedictine Daily Prayer, I suddenly stumble into the midst of Job in the Office of Readings for the eighth week in ordinary time. Ugh! I know Job is supposed to be a great existentialist work which some Biblical scholars have spent a lifetime studying, but I just want to get through it in a hurry. I once summed up the book of Job this way: “A decent man has whole life fall apart. His ‘friends’ come by to tell him what his problem is. He complains to God who tells him ‘who do you think you are?’ And they all lived happily ever after.”  I know that’s not what it’s really like, but it’s just never been something that grabbed my attention. 

Years ago renown preacher Edmund Steimle worte a sermon titled “The Peril of Ordinary Days.” I don’t have the book the sermon was in. (I foolishly loaned it to someone who lost it.) I do remember the gist, however. The greatest threat to faith is not when things are very difficult, but rather when they are running along in their usual routine. We take God for granted when everything is going along just so. 

As much as I admire Steimle, I am only partially persuaded by him. I have seen so many people who crumble under adversity. That’s something that goes back to the old days of martyrdom. We read about people who faced the most terrible of situations and remained faithful, but you read between the lines and realize there must have been a good many people who caved under pressure. There was a big debate in the early church over whether to let the lapsed back into the fold after they had given up the faith. Fortunately, most of the church decided on forgiveness There are people who flourish during ordinary days.

I can also see Steimle’s point. Every church has seen people just drift out the backdoor as we say. They start missing a Sunday here and there and then vanish all together. It’s hard to win these people back, because they have discovered they can do very well without the church. They will tell you they haven’t lost their faith, they’ve just gotten out of the habit of worshiping. In fact, some will tell you they don’t need any of that “formal worship stuff.” They can manage just find praying on their own at the beach or the gold course, except they really don’t pray at the beach or the golf course. They don’t give God much thought one way or another.

They are right, however, about getting out of the habit. Worship of God ought to be habitual. I know people who would get bent out of shape by that comment. They insist that we should only worship God out of conviction, not habit. I can tell you, though, habit gets you through a lot of hard times when conviction is pretty weak.

For years I have tried to emphasize the importance of persistence for young people, especially teenagers. If you want to get on in life, you have to be persistent. You have to show up and do your part whether it’s exciting or boring, whether it is easy or hard. I remember hiring a teenager to clean the church. He lasted about six weeks and quit. “Every week it’s the same. I clean the floors and throw out the trash and next week I have to do it again.” That’s true for most of life. It’s true for worship. You praise and thank God on Sunday and next Sunday come back and do it again. And if you’ve got that down right, it’s what you will do for eternity.

Persistence is a virtue, and all virtues are matters of habit. They get you through the ordinary days. It’s like a journey: one step after another until you get to your destination. If you quit, you never make it.

May the Lord bless you on your journey and greet you on your arrival. 

Wayne


The picture is from Gloria Dei Lutheran Church, St. Paul. Lighting a paschal is a nightmare for any acolyte under 6'8" tall.

ORTHODOXY

I bought a new book: Nicodemos of the Holy Mountain, A Handbook of Spiritual Counsel. Nicodemos was a Greek monk on Mount Athos (the Holy Mountain) who lived in the later half of the 18th century. About half of the spiritual advice in his book has to do with guarding the senses. Not eating too much, for example, or not looking at one’s reflection in a mirror. I don’t suppose any of this is going to go over in the hedonistic western world, but there is certainly value in not getting so absorbed in worldliness that the spiritual side of a person doesn’t have a chance. 

I’m exploring the book because I don’t have much understanding of Orthodoxy spirituality. As is usual with me, I have several books in progress at the same time. Anthony Bloom’s Living Prayer is a collection of articles on prayer written by the late Archbishop and Metropolitan of Surozh and Exarch of the Russian Patriarch in Western Europe. (Try fitting that on your business card.) His writings are thought-provoking and fairly easy to follow perhaps because he was accustomed to dealing with western Christians. Not so The Mystical Theology of the Eastern Church by Vladimir Lossky. I bought this book forty years ago and set it aside because it was such dense reading. It hasn’t improved with age, then again, maybe it’s me who hasn’t improved. I haven’t gotten any wiser. 

To tell the truth, I have a very limited understanding of the Orthodox churches. I did take a course in Orthodoxy and have attended Orthodox worship, but that doesn’t even scratch the surface. Most western Christians (Roman Catholics and Protestants) have little understanding of Orhodoxy, though Roman Catholics may find it more comprehensible than Protestants. My eleven-times great-grandfather, Jacob Heerbrand, engaged in an exchange of letters with the Ecumenical Patriarch Jeremias II on behalf of the Lutheran theologians at Tubingen during the later part of the Reformation. It didn’t go very well. The Lutherans had some understanding of Orthodoxy and had hoped for support for their theological positions. The Patriarch had little understanding of Protestantism and didn’t like anything he did understand. 

There is a lack of appreciation for Orthodoxy among Protestants. I know some people who for years went to Russia to evangelize the people. Did they work through or with the Orthodox church there? Of course not. I’m not sure they recognized the Orthodox as being Christians. How can people who don’t sing “How Great Thou Art” possibly be Christians? I belong to an interfaith group where the one Orthodox priest stopped coming to meetings as one of the most liberal participants wrote off any form of Christianity that depended on tradition over reason. 

It’s a shame we don’t have better contact with the Orthodox because they  have a great deal to teach the rest of Christianity. They know what it is like to be persecuted–some by Turks, some by Communists, some by other Christians. They have understood how to adapt to different cultural situations without losing what is essential. You can worship in Greek or Romanian or Arabic, but the faith is the same. Yet they aren’t prone to incorporating fads into worship. The Orthodox church is growing, but I don’t think you could find an electronic video  screen or drum set in any Orthodox church–items which church growth people assure me are necessities.

I’m going to pursue my exploration of Orthodox spirituality with an open mind. How can a person advance is wisdom if he or she doesn’t allow new ideas to penetrate the little grey cells?

May the Lord bless you on your journey and greet you on your arrival.

Wayne

IT'S BEAUTIFUL

We’ve been fortunate to have three exhibitions of impressionist art works here in central Florida in the last few months. I’ve been fortunate to visit all of them. The first was  “Renoir to Chagall: Paris and the Allure of Color” at the Tampa Museum of Art. They didn’t have a catalog for the exhibition so I find myself rather vague about which paintings were there. I believe all of them were from Dixon Gallery and Gardens of Memphis. I had not seen any of these so it was worth going there. 

The second was “Monet to Matisse on the French Coast.” at the Museum of Fine Arts, St. Petersburg. This was the most disappointing exhibit. There was one Monet, “The Customs House at Varengeville,” but I had seen that many time at the Art Institute of Chicago. There were two Renoirs that I had not seen before except in books. The third exhibit was “Monet and American Impressionism” at the Harn Museum of Art in Gainesville. There were lots of interesting works by American artist. This exposed me to quite a number of new paintings and prints. For a lover of impressionism, this has been a good season.

I became interested in impressionism when my father took me to the Art Institute and showed me Seurat’s “A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte.” Dad called it the “dot painting” because it is mad of tinny dots of paint laid next to one another. What you see isn’t exactly what’s on the canvas. From a distance (and you need to be at a distance because it is a huge painting) the separate colors merge. It produces a sort of shimmering effect–just what you might have on a warm summer day.

I find the impressionist paintings pleasant to look at. It’s a combination of the subject matter and the technique and the color. I suppose people who teach art appreciation or aesthetics would look down their noses at me for having such unsophisticated reasons for liking something. I just know it makes me feel good to look at these works. Is that such a bad reason for liking them?


I own two contemporary paintings in impressionistic style. (Before anyone sets out to burgle my place, the most I paid for one was $125.) I like to have these pleasing things in my home. There is so much ugliness (both physical and moral) in the world that I value an escape. I go to places where there are beautiful things. I walk in a park almost every morning. I look at building when I walk down streets hoping to find an interesting architectural turn. I read some things just because the language is entrancing. I go to concerts, especially those featuring sacred choir music because they are inspiring in the literal sense of the word–spirit filled. Those things don’t consume all of my life (though I hope to devote a bit more time to them in retirement), but I value them.

Does it make me less a good citizen that I don’t spend all my energy trying to improve life for others? Does it make me a lesser Christian because I don’t spend every waking moment trying to save souls? I don’t think so. Martin Luther played the lute and sang. Albert Schweitzer played the organ. Gerard Manley Hopkins wrote poetry. Madeline L’Engle wrote books for young people.  I don’t see that any of them were lesser persons for pursing what is beautiful. To the contrary, they were better people, maybe better Christians, because of these pursuits. 

I can’t paint or draw. My art teacher said I was a waste of paint. But I can look at what is beautiful. I’ll keep along this path as long as I can.

May the Lord bless you on your journey and greet you on your arrival.

Wayne


Top picture: “La Toilette” by Richard Emil Miller
Center picture:   “A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte” by Georges Seurat

I'M BACK

After several years, I finally have time to write a blog again. Why do I have time? Because I’m retired, or at least in the final steps of retiring. May 3 was my last Sunday at Our Saviour Lutheran Church in Ocala. I’m still doing visitations and dealing with emergencies and cleaning out the office and getting things ready for the interim pastor to start, but I have actually had some free time already. 

Why retire now? I’m old enough and I can. I always think of my father who had to retire at 64 for health reasons and then died 3 years later. I’d like to have some time to enjoy myself in retirement. I can tell I’m slowing down. I don’t deal with problems as well as I once did. I don’t have new ideas. The congregation deserves better. I know it was hard for everyone to accept my leaving, but I felt it was necessary.

I also truly long for some time for myself. There are projects I want to work on like transcribing the letters between my mother and father during WWII. I want to do some more investigating of the early history of the Lutheran church in Florida since it centered here in Ocala. And I want time to tend to my own soul.

When I was ordained the pastor of my church Glen Ernst cautioned me not to lose my spirituality. I, of course, said that wasn’t possible. I had ways of taking care of myself. How wrong I was. St. Gregory of Nyssa bemoaned that becoming a bishop put his own soul at risk because he has such responsibilities for other. That is exactly what happens to clergy–at least to me. It slips past you. I have for some years followed the Daily Office and read the rule of St. Benedict every day. I have practiced centering prayer, but it seems to have slipped away from me somehow. Next week I’ll start a program that will refresh my experience of centering prayer as I learn how to teach it to others. 

I have to be intentional about a life of prayer. You’d think for a pastor that would be natural, but it isn’t. The ego takes charge and says, “You have many important things to do. People depend on you. You mustn’t spend time on selfish things.”  The result is that you disconnect from the Holy Spirit. No wonder things don’t work right.

I’ll try again with this blog, although I am having  tremendous difficulty getting into it and writing anything. Technology seems to have run past me, and I can’t catch up. Ah, well. 

May the Lord bless you on your journey and greet you on your arrival.

Wayne