Eastertide

Posted on April 8, 2024 by awtraughber

Yesterday, a week after Easter Sunday, church was mostly “back to normal.”  Which is both understandable and unfortunate.  At least with some version of Advent, and the desire to keep the tree up a little bit longer, Christmas gets to feel like a period of time and not just a moment.  As a low-church evangelical, I feel some loss in not getting to sit a little but longer at the empty tomb and its implications.  Nevertheless . . .

The morning prayer readings for the week after Easter Sunday this year were resurrection day readings from across the Gospels.  They were paired with a return to the Old Testament readings from the book of Exodus, picking up with the final plague and the institution of the Passover meal.  And then the New Testament Epistle readings were mostly from 1 Corinthians 15, Paul’s great chapter on the resurrection.  The Monday morning psalm to kick off the week was also well chosen:

1 The Lord reigns, he is robed in majesty;
the Lord is robed in majesty and armed with strength;
indeed, the world is established, firm and secure.
2 Your throne was established long ago;
you are from all eternity. (Psalm 93, ESV)

So I’m going to linger a little while in this period known as Eastertide (which “technically” ends with Pentecost).  Here’s a clip of my favorite modern Easter song, Christ is Risen by Matt Maher and Mia Fieldes.  I am always grateful when we get to sing it Easter Sunday at church.  It retells the turning point of God’s story and reminds us of our place in it.

Posted in Church, Faith, Holidays, Life in the Fifth Act, Scripture | Tagged | Leave a comment

The Resurrection Optic

Posted on March 31, 2024 by awtraughber

Over the Lenten season I’ve posted some short reflections on Erik Varden’s The Shattering of Loneliness.  I think it appropriate to link to his Easter reflection, which I found to be short and sweet.  You can read the whole thing here.  One of my favorite snippets:

It seems to me that we, as Christians, more easily identify with Jesus’s Passion than with his Resurrection. We should do something about that. Life is what is definitive. That’s what we’re made for.

We don’t inhabit a world of pretence. But we live in a redeemed world. No death is final.

Posted in Church, Faith, Life in the Fifth Act, Scripture | Leave a comment

Easter Sunday Refrain

Posted on March 31, 2024 by awtraughber

A song for Easter Sunday:  deep reminder of how big the day is and how utterly important is the One we celebrate it.

Posted in Church, Faith, Music, Scripture | Tagged | Leave a comment

Remembrance Part Six

Posted on March 29, 2024 by awtraughber

Varden LonelinessThroughout The Shattering of Loneliness, Erik Varden brings to attention a number of instances in the Biblical Story where remembrance is key.  He started with the Ash Wednesday reminder that we are dust.  From there he revisited call to remember slavery in Egypt, the fate of Lot’s wife, Jesus’ words in the Last Supper, and the promise of the Spirit (who would “call everything to mind”).  In the final chapter, Varden looks back to earlier in the Biblical Story and attempts to go deeper and wider in what he wants readers to remember.

The chapter title comes from a moment early in Deuteronomy, right after the giving of the Great Commandment and as preparation for entering the Promised Land.  The full paragraph from the ESV:

10 “And when the Lord your God brings you into the land that he swore to your fathers, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, to give you—with great and good cities that you did not build, 11 and houses full of all good things that you did not fill, and cisterns that you did not dig, and vineyards and olive trees that you did not plant—and when you eat and are full, 12 then take care lest you forget the Lord, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery. 13 It is the Lord your God you shall fear. Him you shall serve and by his name you shall swear. 14 You shall not go after other gods, the gods of the peoples who are around you— 15 for the Lord your God in your midst is a jealous God—lest the anger of the Lord your God be kindled against you, and he destroy you from off the face of the earth.

In his reflection on this command, Varden brings in the chief monastic task to “remember God” while also bringing in the poetry of Rainer Marie Rilke and the theology of Athanasius, particularly as they all point towards the idea of longing as key in the Christian life:

Human beings, says Athanasius, are conditioned to long because they are structured in such a way that nothing in this world can satisfy them.  Made in the image of the Word of God, they find no peace outside of a sustaining relationship with the Logos who, alone, can bring them satisfaction.

A precursor of C. S. Lewis, for sure.

From there, Varden sets out to tell the story of our longing as it relates to God’s nature, the creation of the world and humanity, and the affect of the Fall on our God-given/God-directed longing.  Over the course of the chapter, Varden tells the story well (thus making it difficult to replicate in a quick reflection).  Varden summarizes:

There is a distinction to be drawn between our heavenly, ‘logical’ longing and our earthbound, ‘illogical’ desire.  Yet the fundamental principle holds: any authentic longing, any longing that, even implicitly, points towards eternity, is a possible path towards God.  Dying, Christ declared a sentence of death on death.  Death alone is dead.  In Christ, we go beyond what is ‘natural’ so that our nature, one with the Word, is no longer what it used to be.  The condition of newness, which corresponds to what at first we were, makes us, too, possible epiphanies.  ‘Our arguments,’ says Athanasius, ‘are not composed merely of words, but have the proof of their truth in experience itself.’  On this basis he concludes by professing the principal result of the Word’s incarnation: ‘He became human that we might become divine.’

All this to say, I suppose, that one way Christians can and should engage those around us is through an “apologetics of desire.”  Or, perhaps as Jamie Smith would say it, helping us realize that “we are what we love.”  I’ll be the first to admit that I find the argument appealing and of the utmost importance . . . and that I find very few good examples of its effectiveness in contemporary Christianity (at least of the evangelical sort).  I suppose we often hear it as some version of the “God-shaped hole” approach, though that’s not quite it.  Varden is convinced, though, that the approach of longing is key in the 21st century, for a people who either do not know or have forgotten to remember who it was and is that delivers us from slavery into a good and pleasant land.  Varden claims:

Our time is wary of words.  It shuns dogmas.  Yet it knows the meaning of longing.  It longs confusedly, without knowing what for.  But the sense of harboring a void that needs filling is there . . . The gospel does not obliterate our longing.  It validates it, assuring us that what we long for is real and substantial.

Because what we truly, deeply long for is Who made us and What we were made for.

There is more to say about this, of course, and Varden does a good job throughout the chapter.

+ + + + + + +

Over the course of this Lenten season, I’ve attempted to trace some of Varden’s key thoughts on remembrance.  In remembering well, it seems, we might be able to “shatter loneliness.”  It’s not quite the clearest connection or thread for book title and content, but I think I sense what Varden was going for.  Because when we remember well, we can be less lonely.  We remember the God who is always present and always at work, who has not left us even when it feels like He has.  Each of these ways of remembering call us back into a story and a reality that is far too easy for us to forget (which takes me back to what Lewis said about faith and remembrance and the importance of keeping things in front of our eyes and hearts).  It is fitting to end these reflections on Good Friday, I believe, a day in a season ripe with opportunities to remember.

Posted in Books, Faith, Life in the Fifth Act, Scripture | Leave a comment

John’s Maundy Thursday

Posted on March 28, 2024 by awtraughber

Tonight I had the opportunity to attend a beautiful Tenebrae service at a local church where a dear friend serves on the worship team.  It was a service full of good music, poignant testimonies, and full readings from the Gospel of Mark.  One of the last songs sung was one I hadn’t heard or sung in a very long time: “Lead Me to Calvary,” also called “Lest I Forget Gethsemane.”  It was a fitting way to mark the evening.   Tomorrow I’ll walk up the street for a Good Friday service and then Sunday I’ll celebrate Easter at my own church.

+ + + + + + +

I did really appreciate the set of readings from the Gospel of Mark.  It was good hearing the narrative from the Last Supper to the burial of Jesus.  As I sat there and listened, I couldn’t help but think it would also be a great thing to do something similar with the Holy Thursday narrative in John.  Many Maundy Thursday services do that, often picking up John’s inclusion of the washing of the disciples’ feet as an act of great significance.  Quick research reminds us that Maundy comes from the same root as our word for “mandate,” which has to do here with Jesus’ clear command to his disciples:

12 When he had washed their feet and put on his outer garments and resumed his place, he said to them, “Do you understand what I have done to you? 13 You call me Teacher and Lord, and you are right, for so I am. 14 If I then, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another’s feet. 15 For I have given you an example, that you also should do just as I have done to you. 16 Truly, truly, I say to you, a servantis not greater than his master, nor is a messenger greater than the one who sent him. 17 If you know these things, blessed are you if you do them.

A little later in John 13 he gets to the “new commandment”:

31 When he had gone out, Jesus said, “Now is the Son of Man glorified, and God is glorified in him. 32 If God is glorified in him, God will also glorify him in himself, and glorify him at once. 33 Little children, yet a little while I am with you. You will seek me, and just as I said to the Jews, so now I also say to you, ‘Where I am going you cannot come.’ 34 A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another: just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another. 35 By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”

Jesus comes back around to it in John 15, after foretelling Peter’s denial and promising the Spirit and talking about vines and vinedressers and branches:

12 “This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. 13 Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends. 14 You are my friends if you do what I command you. 15 No longer do I call you servants,for the servant does not know what his master is doing; but I have called you friends, for all that I have heard from my Father I have made known to you. 16 You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you that you should go and bear fruit and that your fruit should abide, so that whatever you ask the Father in my name, he may give it to you. 17 These things I command you, so that you will love one another.

Where the synoptic gospels are rich in the various moments of Jesus’ final evening before his death, John’s Gospel takes time to dig in, to embrace the obvious moment while also pointing ahead to what is next and to what is beyond.  Thursday evening in John is a long chunk, of course: 5 full chapters, 7 if you go all the way to the crucifixion.  But there are some great twists and turns in John’s account of Jesus’ final discourse and his closing prayer.

Anyway, it’s just a thought.  Lots of churches do things differently in the days leading up to Easter, and John obviously gets good attention in some (probably many) in various and sundry ways.  Definitely something worth thinking about for the future, though.

Posted in Church, Faith, Friendship, Life in the Fifth Act, Scripture | Leave a comment

Spring Break Photostream

Posted on March 27, 2024 by awtraughber

I’ve spent the last few days over in Fresno, California visiting friends.  Pictures to the right in the photostream for receipts, right?  The pictures are from a Monday afternoon hike to Pincushion Mountain Peak, which is just outside Fresno.  The day was beautiful, the company top notch, and the view from the top was worth it.  I’m still feeling the burn from the trip up, but we made our way down on a different, more gentle route, which was also nice.

Besides that, I found some great used CDs at the Mad Monk and a Frederick Buchner book and a paperback-and-revised copy of A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius by Dave Eggers. I finished Rowan William’s Passions of the Soul and made good headway in O’Donavan’s Disappearance of Ethics (whose cover currently appears on the side there ->).  I hope to finish DOE by Easter Sunday.  And I’ve got one more reflection on Varden’s Shattering of Loneliness to put together.

I’m writing this in the A-gate food court at the Phoenix Sky Harbor International airport.  The final leg of my journey looks like it will leave on time, which puts me into HNL in the early evening.  The trip has gone well, though PHX isn’t really the kind of airport you want to have for a longer layover.  Just not many places to sit and relax.  Granted, that’s not what airports are for, but one can dream.

Posted in Books, Friendship, Travel | Leave a comment

Remembrance Part Five

Posted on March 22, 2024 by awtraughber

Varden LonelinessOver the weeks of this Lenten season, I’ve tried to do some reflection on successive chapters of Erik Varden’s The Shattering of Loneliness.  The book begins with the call to “remember that we are dust,” which fits perfectly with Ash Wednesday as the beginning of the season.  From there, Varden moves through a selection of other calls to remember: remember you were a slave in Egypt, remember Lot’s wife, and celebrate the Lord’s supper as a way to remember.  Varden’s fifth “remembrance recollection” starts off the morning of the resurrection, when the angels at Jesus’ empty tomb tell the women to remember:

5 And as they were frightened and bowed their faces to the ground, the men said to them, “Why do you seek the living among the dead?6 He is not here, but has risen. Remember how he told you, while he was still in Galilee, 7 that the Son of Man must be delivered into the hands of sinful men and be crucified and on the third day rise.” (Luke 24:5-7 ESV)

Varden asserts: The proclamation of life’s victory over death is followed immediately by a summons to remember.  The same happens later to the two disciples who unknowingly meet the risen Jesus on the road to Emmaus when He basically retells them the Biblical Story through the interpretive lens of His life and mission.  Varden again:

The first mission of the nascent Church was to engage in a prodigious exercise of remembrance.  We can follow it step by step in the Acts and Epistles.  The Hebrew Bible was re-read from start to finish, scoured for sign’s of Jesus’ gospel.  A newness of perspective ensued as the disciples, still rubbing their eyes, reached certainty that Christ had risen from the dead.  It cast its radiance on ancient things, too.  The Easter proclamation brought about a hermeneutic shift that affected knowledge at every level.  Nothing was the same.  Al things had to be recalled, reconsidered, reinterpreted.

Varden chooses a line from the Gospel of John for the title of this chapter: the Counsellor Will Call Everything to Mind.  Why?  Because “to perform this remembrance is to being to live life in the Spirit.”

+ + + + + + +

This chapter includes one of my overall favorite moments in what I’ve read of Varden so far.  It comes as a quote and a paraphrase from Irenaeus via the Catholic catechism concerning God’s revelation of Himself to humanity:

St. Irenaeus repeatedly speaks of this divine pedagogy using the image of God and man becoming accustomed to one another: ‘the Word of God dwelt in man and became the Son of man in order to accustom man to perceive God and to accustom God to dwell in man, according to the Father’s pleasure.’

Or more simply put, this is Irenaeus’s “notion of God and man getting used to each other.”

I don’t totally track with God having to “get used to us,” but I understand the overall sentiment.  It’s a great summary of the Biblical Story: of a God who wants to dwell with the creation that rebels against Him continually, and yet He will not relent.  And the Holy Spirit, who will “call everything to mind” is key for us as we live in the fifth act of God’s Story.  Perhaps more than any other chapter in Varden’s book, this chapter moves us into the here and now of our day everyday.

Posted in Uncategorized | 1 Comment

Remembrance Part Four

Posted on March 18, 2024 by awtraughber

Varden LonelinessIn one of two chapters on the theological virtue of faith in Mere Christianity, C. S. Lewis encourages his readers to see the battle of faith as being between “faith and reason on one side and emotion and imagination on the other.”  He is particularly concerned with helping his readers understand that power of mood and the importance of training “the habit of Faith” to combat mood’s power.

At this point in his argument, Lewis asserts that

if you have once accepted Christianity, then some of its main doctrines shall be deliberately held before your mind for some time every day.  That is why daily prayers and religious readings and church-going are necessary parts of the Christian life.  We have to be continually reminded of what we believe.

“Do not most people simply drift away?” he asks.

Which is why the fourth chapter of Erik Varden’s The Shattering of Loneliness is such an encouraging challenge.  After encouraging readers to remember that they are dust, that they were once slaves in Egypt, and that they should remember Lot’s wife, Varden brings the readers to one “habit of Faith” that most Christians practice regularly (though often at different intervals): Jesus’ “last supper” command to “do this in memory of me.”

In the chapter, Varden begins by “drawing a picture” of the world Christ entered: a world of man’s violence against another.  He writes:

This is the world we live in.  It is the world God came to save.  The world for which Christ suffered was no made-up world.  He had no illusions about it.  He knew what he would suffer on entering Lamech’s territory.  On the night he was betrayed, he anticipated the events that would out him to death.  He did it by means of symbolic action, within the setting of a meal.  He allowed his friends to partake, somehow, of his impending oblation, though the sense of his gestures and words would become clear only much later.

There is much difference, of course between the Catholic and the low-church Protestant view of what is happening every time we reenact and retell the story of that Maundy Thursday meal, where Jesus breaks bread and pours out wine and challenges his disciples to remember as a way of living into the future.  For many of us, we see “communion” through the lens of Paul’s writing in 1 Corinthians 11, where Paul retells the events of Jesus’ last supper and then writes:

27 So then, whoever eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty of sinning against the body and blood of the Lord. 28 Everyone ought to examine themselves before they eat of the bread and drink from the cup. 29 For those who eat and drink without discerning the body of Christ eat and drink judgment on themselves.

I like Varden’s assertion, in my own low-church Protestant way, that “Christ’s performative presence . . . demands a present response” and that “we must live differently now, not proffer past alibis or future conjectures . . . To be worthy is not to be blameless: the Eucharist is not a prize for good behaviour.  To be worthy is to assent to the realization of Christ’s example in my life- to commit to the newness of it.”  I like Varden’s next assertion a lot:

The Lord does not seek instant perfection.  But he requires coherence in the way we live.

Coherence, I think, is a good word for what we strive for (and often fail to achieve in the day-to-day.  I cannot help but think of what James wrote near the beginning of his epistle”

22 Do not merely listen to the word, and so deceive yourselves. Do what it says. 23 Anyone who listens to the word but does not do what it says is like someone who looks at his face in a mirror 24 and, after looking at himself, goes away and immediately forgets what he looks like. 25 But whoever looks intently into the perfect law that gives freedom, and continues in it—not forgetting what they have heard, but doing it—they will be blessed in what they do.

Jesus’ command to “do this in memory of me” is not just word spoken; it is also cup poured and bread broken.  It is an almost-living reminder of the hurt and hope of what Christians will celebrate around the world next week.  It is a vital reminder for us as we go through these days.

Posted in Books, Church, Faith, Life in the Fifth Act, Scripture | Tagged , | 1 Comment

Spring Break Scramble

Posted on March 16, 2024 by awtraughber

This last week has gone by in a blur.  That’s to be expected, of course, at the end of a quarter or semester.  The week has been packed with classes and grading and meetings and trying to wrap things up nicely so as to keep my mind off of work for a few days.  I think (hope) that I’ve done a good job preparing for the next two weeks in that way.

But, as you can tell from the lack of posts over this last week, there’s not been a lot of creativity in the day-to-day.  I have been enjoying working my way through O’Donavan’s The Disappearance of Ethics.  And thanks to a random comment from the Franciscan Friars, I’ve finally gotten around to reading Nouwen’s The Return of the Prodigal Son.  I finished the story of Joseph in Genesis (and now onto Moses and the Exodus in line with Easter), which has also been encouraging.  So quality input, just not much, if any, output.

I did listen to one interview while grading this past week that I think is worth sharing.  I’ve mentioned Andrew Root before on the site.  He’s quite the prolific writer, so it’s always good to find succinct accounts of his thinking.  Here’s an interview with “Ryan and Brian’s Bible Bistro” that brought out some of the key themes of Root’s work.  Once again, I don’t agree with it all, but there are some things that I think Root is seriously getting right.

I’m hoping to be a little more prolific myself not that the meetings are over and the grades are in.  I’m a little behind on my Shattering of Loneliness reflections.  There are two weeks to go before Easter, which lines up nicely with our break this year.  Hoping that helps me make the most of things, too.

Posted in Books, Church, Faith, Life in the Fifth Act, Organizations and Institutions, Teaching | Leave a comment

Remembrance Part Three

Posted on March 9, 2024 by awtraughber

Varden LonelinessPerhaps the most sobering of Erik Varden’s reflections on remembrance in The Shattering of Loneliness comes in the third chapter.  The chapter is centered on Jesus’s command in Luke 17 to “remember Lot’s wife.”  

The command to remember Lot’s wife is set in a long talk from Jesus about “the coming of the kingdom.”  It’s not coming in a way that can be observed.  There will be people pretending to point to it, but they are wrong.  The sign of Noah is given- people aren’t going to realize what’s actually happening in the world around them.  The same with Lot:

28 “It was the same in the days of Lot. People were eating and drinking, buying and selling, planting and building. 29 But the day Lot left Sodom, fire and sulfur rained down from heaven and destroyed them all.

30 “It will be just like this on the day the Son of Man is revealed. 31 On that day no one who is on the housetop, with possessions inside, should go down to get them. Likewise, no one in the field should go back for anything. 32 Remember Lot’s wife! 33 Whoever tries to keep their life will lose it, and whoever loses their life will preserve it. (Luke 17 NIV)

Varden uses the language of conversion throughout the book.  By this he does not mean an initial “conversion experience” so much as conversion of life as it is lived over time.  It is, perhaps, a kind of working out of our salvation (reference).  He spends time in the chapter retelling the story of Lot and his wife and brings to bear a few difference approaches to the story: how she turns and looks back even though she has been commanded not to.  And thus she becomes a pillar of salt.  What might that have to do with us today?  How do we engage with the Old Testament story and Jesus’ gloss on this side of both?  How do we keep moving forward instead of pausing and looking back? Varden asserts:

. . . to maintain a forward momentum, we need to be honest enough to discern and unpick our complex motivations; to enquire what arises from our passions, what may stand a chance of being from God; then to enact a prudent, gracious response. 

He goes on to say:

. . .  conversion must be constructed in aspirational, not reactive, terms; as an option for what is good, not against what is thought bad— or dangerous.

So we have and are allowed to use the critical distance of centuries to mindful of how we live in our own time.  Not that we know better or that human nature has changed, but that we have more to draw from.  We have the Spirit.  But as Lent reminds us, we are never far from temptation, whether to look back or to give up or to give in.  Varden challenges his readers to be careful when addressing the temptations and passions that could lead us to turn around when we ought not:

The Desert Fathers, though innocent of Freud, insisted on the interconnectedness of the passions: the most libidinal may voice what is really a spiritual malady, which is why it is futile to combat them in isolation.

I mentioned that this chapter was the most sobering of the book.  Part of that is, of course, the nature of the Genesis story and Jesus’ capturing of it.  The other part is how Varden employs Father Sergius, a story by Leo Tolstoy.  I don’t want to say more about the story because of how embedded the story is into the argument that Varden has been building.  It is his most effective use of a cultural artifact in the book (and it is one among many).  It reminds us, in the end, of this sobering truth:

Apparent success must never seduce us into thinking we are beyond temptation’s reach . . . It is never to late to turn into a pillar of salt.

And so we remember Lot’s wife.

Posted in Books, Faith, Scripture, The Long Story | Tagged | Leave a comment