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

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

“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

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

Tithes, Offerings and Alms

Money, money, money—everybody’s interested in the topic. It’s the grease that oils the wheels that keep the machinery of our society turning.

Buried treasure, pirate loot, mattresses stuffed with cash, casino jackpots, multi-state lottery prizes—these are the stuff dreams are made of. We dream about riches innumerable and wealth untold because we believe riches and wealth will not only solve our problems but make us happy.

Many Christians, and other people of good sense, will say that’s not so; they’ll insist money can’t buy happiness. But when we watch what they do, rather than listen to what they say, we discover a disconnect. Our actions betray our words. No surprise. The love of money, against which St Paul warned us, the desire for money, the trust in money, these are ingrained in us by the society in which we live. These entice us from the Gospel.

So the Church applies her remedies. Some of us take vows of poverty, become poor for the Gospel’s sake. Most of us don’t. We have other obligations, some sacred—as to our families—and some secular. But all Christians are called from the love and desire and hankering after money, and each of us—Bishop, Priest, Deacon, little old lady in the pew, big businessman on the Vestry, Sunday School teacher, choirboy and Sunday School student—has to come to terms with that hankering and what that means in our life. We all face the temptation to love and desire and trust money.

Like every other temptation, we have to resist it to grow in the Spirit we’ve been given, to become spiritual adults.

How? What do we do?

Please buckle your seat belt.

Some of us choose complete poverty. Like St Francis of Assisi, they “embrace” poverty as a mistress. That’s not for us all. But embracing some poverty is for us all. I know this is probably as close as it’s possible to come to being a social heretic, but nonetheless, it’s the call of the Gospel of Jesus.

We’re not to put our faith and trust in our money, or power, or connections, or beauty, or knowledge (not even in our books!), but in Jesus, the Son of Mary the Virgin of Galilee.

So what do we do? We give some of our money away. We don’t give it away so we’ll get more—sort of “investing with God”—but so we won’t have so much. What we give needs to be planned, as with so much else in our spiritual lives—receiving the Sacraments regularly, coming to Church on Sunday, saying our daily prayers—if we hope to actually grow in grace.

So the Church has a plan for not having so much. She calls on us to give a selected portion of our incomes away. The old Anglo-Saxon word is “tithe”—a tenth. Yeah, that’s a lot. Especially if you love and trust in what that tenth could buy you. That’s just why we should give it away.

There are other words, too, for what we give away. “Offerings” aren’t tithes but gifts made from our abundance. We offer something in thanksgiving for what we’ve received, a way of sanctifying the blessings God has given us. When we have a windfall, we should make an offering to God. “Alms” are something else, something we give for pity’s sake, to the poor and suffering. Our offerings and alms are not our tithes, but gifts above and beyond them.

Money isn’t evil, anymore than is a flashy car or a new house or that beautiful fifteenth-century hand-copied version of Cicero’s De Amicitia on permanent display at the Huntington Library. But putting any of these things in the center of our heart and mind, trusting in them, is, for the Christian, idolatry. And we are a people, in this world, who are at war with idolatry. In our arsenal, along with charity and mercy, prayer and the Sacraments, are tithes, offerings and alms.—Fr Gregory Wilcox

God and—gulp!—My Money

Money and Religion, in the minds of many, don’t mix. They shouldn’t have anything to do with each other. God doesn’t need my money: it’s only the Church that wants it—especially the clergy, who shouldn’t be trusted with it in the first place.

Just think of any TV “evangelist,” who spends a lot of air time talking about “love gifts” or, more Bible-sounding, “tithes and offerings.” Nobody is surprised when sooner or later and one after another, these fellas end up on TV surrounded by IRS agents or a bevy of bimbos. That’s all the proof we need that religion and money don’t mix.

And there’s that Bible verse, isn’t there? “Money is the root of all evil?”

First, I’m sure you know this frequently quoted verse doesn’t really exist. What St Paul actually said was “The love of money is the root of all evil.”

He knew what he was talking about.

The Gospel is not about money or power or prestige. It centers around giving, not taking, which is another way of saying charity, which is another word for love. St Paul growls “It’s the love of money” that’s the problem. When any of us, Bishops, vestrymen, Priests, ladies in the pew, Popes or Sunday School children love money, we’re loving something Jesus told us not to.

Money isn’t evil—it’s stuff. Necessary stuff, with real uses, like manure. Useful, but not lovable. St Paul isn’t worried about my loving money in and of itself; he’s warning me that money is always a sign (we might even say a “sacrament”) of something else. The danger is that I’ll enthrone one of those something elses where God should be. Whatever my heart circles around—power or pleasure, importance or security—if I love money it’s because I believe money can give me what I want.

It can’t, though. Money can buy me a lot of stuff—even friends (of a sort)—but sooner or later (sometimes not till we’re on our deathbeds) that loving money “costs” something. We pay its price with our souls. What we love shapes us: “Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.”

So for a minute, forget about the money-grubbing rector and the smarmy TV preacher and think about the spiritual reality of money.

What we do with our money is a sign of what we think is important.

We all have to keep up our mortgage payments to the bank and buy our groceries at the HEB, we’ve gotta have clothes to wear and books to read (not necessarily in that order), and in our society that means we have to “make” and use money. But money means more than that. For us, money means status and influence and power. We tell each other who we are by what we do with our money.

We tell God, too.

The TV “evangelist” promises his marks that if they’ll send him their money, God will reward them with more money. This slimy message, worthy of the ole Serpent, is “Give so you can receive more.”

Dearly beloved, we give so we’ll have less. That’s Gospel giving. We give to God as He has given to us. Without expecting a reward, giving so we can be one with the One Who gave Himself to us. At the Offertory at Mass, while the Priest prays for the Whole State of Christ’s Church, the alms bason rests on the Altar, alongside the Altar Book and the bread (soon not to be bread) and wine (which will likewise be shortly undergoing a Change). In that collection plate, we are putting ourselves on the Altar of God.

That’s true Gospel giving.—Fr Gregory Wilcox

The Holy Church

“Holiness” is one of the four marks of the Church. The Nicene Creed says “I believe in One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church.” When we say these are the “marks” of the Church, we mean that they are her four necessary characteristics. These marks say who she is and what she is. Problem is, they don’t seem to be accurate.

One Church? Look in the phone book under “church” and you’ll find “churches” innumerable: Baptist, Lutheran, Pentecostal, Anglican. Churches by the bunches.

Holy? You’d have to be Rip Van Winkle to be ignorant of the myriad of accusations of un-holiness made about the Church—particularly those specially entrusted with her guidance and welfare—over the past decades. A little knowledge of the Church’s story from the earliest days (remember St Paul’s sharp letters to the Corinthians?) reminds us she has always been unfaithful to her calling to holiness.

And so with her Catholicity and Apostolic character. From the first the Church has been marked with failure. She has never appeared to be the spotless Bride of the Lamb about which the Book of Revelation sings. Over and again she’s been tempted and repeatedly seduced by the Seven Deadly Sins.

In spite of her failings, though, she is, always has been and always will be, the Church, One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic. It’s essential to her nature, which comes, not from her imperfect members, but from her Head, the King of kings and Lord of lords.

In this Octave of All the Saints, it’s a fair time for us to pause and consider the least questioned but probably also least understood of the Church’s marks: her holiness.

It’s important that we not hide her flaws, the Church’s failings and imperfections. As long as there is a Church here on earth, the Church Militant, the Church still struggling and at war (and she is at war, impolite as it may be to point it out), she’ll be marred with scandals. Squabbles will erupt; the Seven Sins will attack. Sometimes they seem to beat her down.

The Church is Holy, because God is holy, and she is His. Try as we might, from the corrupt Borgia popes to the avaricious Tudor kings, we can’t overturn her holiness. It flows like a crystal stream from God, feeds us in the Sacraments, lifts us to heavenly places—with angels and archangels—in our worship, consoles us in our prayers and opens our eyes to the beauty and grace God has infused in creation.

Holiness is not the pinched piety of the Puritan but the exuberant song of the redeemed. It seeks to find the desire for goodness each human soul, no matter how cramped and selfish and miserable, has buried inside.

The saints are those among us who hunger for grace, who seek the Pearl of Great Price and will give all they have for it. The saints are those among us to whom the Kingdom of God has come now.

The rest of us fumble along, hankering after the wrong things, mistaking God’s gifts for God, imagining that God must want what we want because, after all, He loves us and wants us to be happy, doesn’t He? And so the Church seems to fail, because so many of her members fail. She must be corrupt because some of us are corrupt.

St Athansius, the Archbishop of Alexandria 1600 years ago put things in perspective: “God became like us,” he said, “so we could become like Him.” Or, as the Creed called by St Athanasius’ name says so succinctly, our salvation comes “not by the lowering of Godhood to flesh, but by the raising of Manhood to God.” The holiness of the Church is the holiness of God. Slowly, in the daily sorrows and challenges and joys of our lives, He is “raising us” to Himself.

The Church looks so imperfect because we see and understand so imperfectly: “through a glass, darkly.” We see with a flawed vision. God alone sees things as they are. The holiness of the Church is not the holiness we bring but the holiness God gives. He is creating His spotless Bride—you and I are the stuff He has chosen to work with. There’s the real mystery! A blessed Hallowtide.—Fr Gregory Wilcox