Friday, December 23, 2011

Worship is boring...

...the only thing worse than actually worshiping is being in a church full of Christians…

…at least, that what you’d think looking at all the other things people choose to do on Sunday morning. It’s easy to understand why some think that: the music in church is sometimes insipid, the sermons can be dull, and the language incomprehensible. Given this, the funny papers do seem like a more entertaining way to spend Sunday morning.

Except for this: worship isn’t supposed to be entertaining. Worship isn’t about us, but God. That doesn’t mean it has to be insipid or dull or incomprehensible: it shouldn’t be, because God isn’t insipid or dull (He IS, admittedly, incomprehensible!).

Worship is boring because our beliefs about God can be boring. We want God to be boring, cause that way He’s safe and controllable and predictable. We don’t really want God; we want Santa Claus. It’s not terrifying to fall into the hands of Santa. When we encounter God, when we really encounter Him, our hair stands straight up. He’s not what we expect, or want Him to be.

If we worship God with music from a rock concert and talk to Him with the same language we use to order at McDonald’s, should we be surprised if it bores us—or God?

This Christmas, go to church. Go to worship God, not to be entertained by the music or “get something” out of the sermon (nothing wrong with any of that, but neither one is worship). Go to worship the One Who made the far-flung galaxies but Who became a helpless Child for love’s sake. That isn’t boring—it’s unbelievable. But that’s for another time.

A holy Christmas--Fr Gregory Wilcox

This is the as St Joseph's ran in the New Braunfels newspaper this Christmas

Sunday, December 18, 2011

The Fullness of Time…

We all wait in our own ways: some fidget, glancing impatiently at their watches, drumming their fingers; they have other things to do. Some wait passively, with slumped shoulders and resigned stares; in our current sociological lingo, these are the “unempowered.” Some don’t mind waiting and keep themselves entertained, or at least occupied, while doing so. Some grumble, some smile, some chat, some are sullen. We wait the way we live.

Of course, how we wait depends on what we’re waiting for. A little boy waits for Christmas with expectation and excitement; a grown man waits for his appointment with the IRS auditor with an altogether different set of feelings. The bride before her wedding (and the groom before his!), the old lady in the checkout line of the grocery-store, the parents waiting to hear the outcome of their son’s operation, the prisoner who has already eaten his Last Meal: all wait—each one waits, knowing something is going to happen.

The Advent season has a variety of nuanced meanings and insights for us to discover, but at its heart it has a simple but important lesson to teach: wait.

We wait for things we can’t make happen ourselves: the paint to dry, a child’s first word, a check to clear, the verification of our numbers from the State Lottery Commission. We wait for these things because we can’t do anything else.
Advent teaches us we have to wait for God. He won’t be rushed.

God is beyond, or outside, or above time. For God there is no past, present or future—with God, all is now.

But He made His creatures and worlds subject to time. Suns sputter out, granite turns to sand, dinosaurs disappear, we grow up, then grow old. But you and I are different than dinosaurs or daisies. God has breathed His life into us. He made us to be creatures living in time, but destined for something else. He breathed immortality, but we don’t quite believe it. We live in the world of time He created, but we live as prisoners. We trap ourselves in time, define ourselves by clocks.

Advent says, wait. Wait. Be patient, God is doing something, and you’re part of it. Trust Him with yourself, with your time. Advent calls us to wait for God. What He does is often so subtle it escapes our notice, but He is here. If we learn to wait with Him and watch, we might catch a glimpse of Him as He passes.—Fr Gregory Wilcox

Saturday, December 10, 2011

“He Shall Come Again, with Glory, to—gulp—Judge…”

I like to be praised. On those occasions when I am, I think finally somebody has realized my true worth. They’ve seen me as I am and given me the recognition I deserve.

—or at least, they’ve seen me as I think I am.

When I’m criticized, I’m almost always certain my critics are quite wrong: they don’t know me and they don’t know what they’re talking about.

But there are those rare occasions when I actually ponder my critics’ words—even pause to consider the possibility they may be right. And when I do, when I discover the truth of other’s judgments, I blush, even if I’m by myself in the dark.

One day, a day I’m sort of looking forward to while at the same time hoping to delay, I believe I’ll be judged by a Judge Who knows me like I’ve never known myself. When I stand (if I’m able to stand—I reckon the verb describing my posture will be closer to “grovel”) before Him, not only will He see me as I am—I’ll see me, for the first time, as I really am. On that day everything I’ve ever done or said will be recounted. The Lord Jesus has given me fair warning: “I say to you, that every idle word that men shall speak, they shall give account thereof in the Day of Judgment.” In the Lord’s presence every idle word I’ve spoken, every sneer and snub I’ve given someone (“as you have done it unto the least of my brethren, you have done it unto me”), every malicious thought, every greedy impulse, or self-serving deed of mine will be remembered and exposed.

We’ve all had that Unhappy and Unforgettable Moment in our lives when we’d wished the floor would open and swallow us. Beloved, on that Day there will be no escape, no gaping earth to receive us, no place to hide. We’ll know ourselves as we are known. No wonder the old medieval hymn calls it the “Day of Wrath, O Day of Mourning”!

But for all that dreadful day threatens to be, our day of judgment is also our day of freedom. The One Who sees through our charades and shame is the One Who came to raise us up from all that. As I hear the soul-twisting words and deeds of my life recounted, what really matters at that hour is not what I’ve done but who I’ll blame.

Around the Table, on the night in which our Lord Jesus was betrayed, each of the Apostles asked Him “Is it I, Lord, who will betray you?” One of them knew the answer before he asked the question; only Judas left the Table justifying himself.
As we recite the words of the Creed, “…He shall come again, in glory, to judge both the quick and the dead,” remember now and then, that you’ll be there. When the gaze of the Just Judge fixes itself on you, what will you say? Again, the hymn shudders its words: “What shall I, frail man, be pleading? Who for me be interceding, when the just are mercy needing?”

The Prayer Book collect for Christmas Day petitions: “grant that as we joyfully receive Him [today] as our Redeemer, so we may with sure confidence behold Him [on that Day] when He shall come to be our Judge…”

The One Who will judge our sins is the One Who longs for our redemption. His Advent warning is our Christmas Hope.—Fr Gregory Wilcox

Saturday, December 3, 2011

Death, Judgment, Heaven and—especially—Hell

It’s early Advent, that cheery time of year when our thoughts turn to Things Immortal. This is the customary time for us to ponder the above-mentioned “Four last Things.”

The first Sunday of Advent was medievally called “Doom Sunday,” just to make sure things got off on the right foot. In those days, “doom” didn’t have the same connotation as it does today. It wasn’t something like “we’re doomed, boys, none of us is gonna make it outta here alive.” Doom was the Anglo-Saxon word for “judgment”—as in the famous “Domesday Book” compiled for William the Conqueror. In the medieval churches of England, there was everywhere a standard painting above the Altar rail where people knelt to receive Holy Communion. It was a picture of the “Doom”—the Last Judgment, depicting the Lord Christ, enthroned in Heaven and dividing the people left and right—those to His right going into eternal felicity, escorted by angels, those to His left being dragged by demons straight to hell. I regret we don’t have them anymore.

Most of us nowadays are too smart to believe God would ship anybody off to hell—excepting only politicians, perhaps. Certainly He wouldn’t send me. He loves me, right?

Yes, He does.

He always will. My problem is I don’t want somebody to love me—not real, honest-to-God love. I want people to indulge me. I have only a threadbare idea about what love really is.

I usually don’t want to go where the Lord leads me, and most often I don’t want to do what He has in mind. Fortunately for me, He loves me enough not to leave me to my own devices, imagining I know not only what I want but certain I know what I need. Like a loving father, sometimes the Lord has to use a switch on me.

He does that (St Paul says, “those He loves, He chastens”) because He knows the reality of hell (whether I’m too smart to believe in it or not), He loves me and He doesn’t want me roasting on a spit eternally. That’s why bad things happen—to us as individuals, as families, as parishes, as nations and as human beings. Bad things are God’s way of saying “Uh—you’re not really getting this, are you?”

Bad things don’t come from God—hell included. The bad things that come my way don’t come because God is plotting against me, but because I’m proud, envious, angry, greedy, gluttonous, lustful and slothful. Left to myself, these are the character choices I’d make. So God doesn’t leave us to ourselves. He butts into our lives over and again, trying to turn us from the broad and easy paths we so often choose.

Heaven, of which the Church is the earthly and imperfect image (eikon), is, like the One Church, a communion. Heaven is the perfect communion of the redeemed with God the Three-in-One and with each other.

Hell is the opposite. There is no communion, either with God or anyone else. Hell is Me, Me, Me. Its Biblical symbol is a sulfurous, bubbling lake of brimstone and fire. The image is unappealing—it’s downright unpleasant!—but the reality is much worse. My guess is that hell isn’t a terrifying playground of devils, with pitchfork-wielding imps in red leotards, as much as it is dull. Eternal boredom with Me at the center, unable to love, unable to give (in hell there won’t be anybody to give to) or share of ourselves. Hell is a pathetic “communion” of one—Me with myself.

Hell is peopled with those who made the choice of Me, Me, Me over and again throughout their lives; they don’t know how to make any other.

Next time you kneel at the Altar rail, picture a medieval “doom”—the Lord Jesus separating His sheep from His goats. And be a little grateful for the troubles of the past week. He’s working on you—to make sure Someday, when He’s divvying up His stock, you go off happily, bleating with the sheep.—Fr Gregory Wilcox