The Presiding Bishop's Noon Eucharist Meditations
Diocesan Press Service. November 3, 1972 [72173]
The Rt. Rev. John E. Hines
Monday, October 30
Siren Kierkegaard defined (really described) the Christian religion as:
1. Unlimited humiliation
2. Unlimited grace
3. Unlimited striving -- out of gratitude.
If Christian experience can be capsuled, one would have to look far and long to find the equal of this definition. Let us look at it more closely.
When we think of Jesus Christ -- as Lord of our life -- as the Shepherd of our destiny -- we do not normally attach "humiliation" to this relationship.
Yet, it is so -- namely that before lost men can come to know Jesus Christ -- and accept Him as Saviour -- that lost man must experience "humiliation."
Do you remember the sudden rise to prominence of the Kansas girl (a generation or more ago) as a soprano with unusual talent? Her Metropolitan debut was almost without parallel -- her name was Marion Talley.
At that time Madame Schumann-Heink was still alive and heard the fresh young voice. When asked to give her opinion she said : "Miss Talley will be a great singer -- after she has had her heart broken!"
The kind of "humiliation " about which Kierkegaard speaks is the product of the " Fact of Judgment. "
It is, in contemporary phraseology, "the moment of truth."
It happened to Isaiah -- when he went up into the temple to pray -- and saw the Lord!
And before the purity and holiness of the most high God understood for the first time his own "impurity and unholiness."
"Woe is me, for I am undone -- for I am a man of unclean lips and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips."
It happened to Saul of Tarsus -- on the Road to Damascus -- breathing fire and slaughter -- only to be turned around by a force that reduced his strength to weakness: -- "Who art thou, Lord?"
"I am Jesus -- whom thou persecutist."
It happened to Peter -- arrogant, cocky Peter : "Depart from me for I am a sinful man, O Lord."
The history of God and mankind is the recitation of a great fact: "Even God cannot do anything with or for people who have no sense of need -- who have no knowledge of their own weakness -- and therefore are unable to minister to the broken-ness of others. "
Yes, the Christian religion is "unlimited humiliation."
The Christian religion is "unlimited grace." Ah! This is its heart -- and the mystery of its salvation. The mystery of the Christian religion is that the same God whose majesty and purity "crushes " us (by driving us to the abyss of human despair in our humiliation) has already picked us up!
This is our God of "prevenient grace."
This is the divine initiative of the God we find in Jesus Christ.
Perhaps the clearest expression of this is St. Paul's insistence: "While we were yet sinners, Christ died for us!"
It is the norm of great humanity that for "good men, other men will die!" But God died for sinners, i.e. worthless people, people from whom He could expect no compensation and no reward -- and no headlines in the newspaper for having served and saved them.
It is not easy to find an analogy for this "graciousness " of God.
I suppose marriage at its most meaningful comes as close as anything. The sensitive, responsive husband will know that he lives in this mysterious love-relationship by the "grace of his wife. " He looks upon her -- and upon himself -- and wonders at the miracle of so great a gift -- a gift which makes the circle of his striving for fulfillment complete. So, he might paraphrase St. Paul:
"While I was in the depths of my un-deservedness my wife gave herself to me -- and for me!"
And for this man there are no limits to the self-giving of his response.
The Christian experience is "unlimited grace!"
The Christian religion is "unlimited striving " -- out of gratitude.
Among his writings Albert Schweitzer describes his first concert to which, by his mother's persuasion, he went. He was eleven or twelve -- and practicing the piano was still drudgery. One of the world's great pianists played in the town where Albert lived. His mother saw to it that Albert was there. Years later this is what Dr. Schweitzer wrote:
"The display of virtuosity at the end, took my breath away. It was for me a sudden revelation of the possibilities of the piano. On my way home I walked as in a dream. The following days I worked on my scales and finger exercises and even struggled with scales and studies with an unprecedented ardor.
"Afterwards I heard the most celebrated piano virtuosi.
"But none of them ever agitated and stirred me as did ERB -- when as a little student in the college I heard him for the first time!"
And this is what happens, but on a deeper level, when we see in Jesus Christ the God Who made us and Who conferred upon us the " freedom to disown him " and whose "unlimited grace" in Christ Jesus makes us what we are not –
For which our new life by faith can only be endless gratitude!
Tuesday, October 31
When Adlai Stevenson lost the election -- as President -- to Dwight Eisenhower -- the first time, in 1952, he quoted the Bible to newsmen the next morning. But the papers had deadlines to meet -- and so went to press without the benefit of their City Desk's identifying the quotation. It was Hosea 2:17:
" From the desert to which I will call her,
I will give her a vineyard she once had,
and the valley of Achor as a door of hope ...
which -- as the reporter commented -- is a nice way of saying -- with ashes in your mouth, "Let's start all over!"
Israel's God was promising Israel a "second chance," after the mess she had made of her prosperity in Canaan.
The Incarnation is the story of man's "second chance." It is the story of man's decisive " second chance. "
It builds, does the story of Jesus Christ, on the majesty of the doctrine of Creation -- "In the beginning God created heaven and earth . . . "
It reiterates the judgmental, reconciling testimony of the Hebrew prophets.
It weeps over the self-will that triggered the captivity -- and estrangement from Jehovah.
It symbolizes the figure of a loving God whose depth of forgiveness is transparent in the refusal of Hosea to forsake his unfaithful wife.
It bleeds in the suffering servant figure in Isaiah -- a figure of compelling integrity and infinite compassion.
And -- it bursts anew -- onto the world scene, in the form of a new-born babe, fresh, fragile, in and of the world, bound in human estate, confronted forthwith by treachery and violence -- compelled to flee for his life -- consort of the poor and power- less -- the fragile, deathless symbol of love and hope and peace. The costliness of the "second chance" that God offers to men is capsuled in the Gospel within the Gospels : "God so loved the world that he gave his only Son . . . . "
We live in a day which has all the characteristics so apparent in the descriptions of the time of the coming of Christ. The people of Nazareth did not see -- on television -- Herod's violence which took the lives of the male children, in the interest of his own security -- but in due time they knew about its terror. Our day transmits the darkness of man's treachery and wickedness with the speed of light.
The events of a Detroit, or Newark, or Watts or Mylai provide a stumbling block to faith. Hundreds died in these explosions, millions of dollars of property were destroyed -- while most of us continue our existence in relative calm and security. What does the "contrast" mean -- if it means anything at all? Or -- is its sole meaning "meaningless- ness " -- the theme of the "theatre of the absurd " ? Is the sum of human existence, whether in Watts or Harlem or in the domain of the Alianza -- an affirmation of the absence of value -- of purpose -- of end?
The mystery of the Christian Gospel says to all men: Life has meaning. There is "will-to-goodness " at the heart of the universe as there is a "will-to-freedom" for all men. Despite its ambiguities and its desperate tragedy, it makes sense. The "down payment" on eventual community and understanding and self-offering for others has been made -- and made by God.
But, let us be certain of one thing -- as we view this mystery -- incarnate in man -- this sign of fragile, decisive "second chance ":
To know who Jesus is, is to be on the road to suffering.
To know Jesus as Messiah, Son of God, is to know the constraint of obedience to His Father -- and ours. It is to know that -- come what may -- we must obey God rather than men. There is no joy in any other commitment.
Somewhere down the road this fragile, innocent child of Bethlehem faced the issue that is at the heart of Christian joy: He decided to let himself be destroyed for love, rather than love himself, and keep from being destroyed. In a sinful world, because of Christ Jesus, we know that love leads to our destruction -- somehow -- always!
And we also know, somehow, in a twisted kind of way, that self-love leads to our preservation.
The difference between the two is an awesome mystery at the very heart of which is a Cross and an empty tomb!
It is this mystery to which the Christian gives assent when, in faith, he says, "I believe. "
And it is the triumph of this mystery that we celebrate wherever two or three are gathered together -- in His Name!
Wednesday, November 1
There appears to be -- in our day -- a resurgence (small but indicative) of interest in the experience of prayer.
To be sure, some of it constitutes a possible alternative to an " exercise in frustration" which some socially-sensitive Christians have felt as their best efforts have yielded few tangible rewards.
But, this category does not exhaust the matter. Far from it. There is a probing into the deeper levels of a relationship which unites the natural and the super-natural. And the assumption is that the super-natural is personal -- not merely mechanical or electronic -- and that it makes a difference measurable in the life of men.
Unwisely, perhaps, I have chosen this difficult but rewarding area for reflection in this House of Bishops on one of the "days of remembering" in the Christian Calendar -- All Saints' Day.
So, I would make the plunge with you by suggesting what may appear to be a strange definition of PRAYER: "Prayer is awareness." Albert Camus, at the age of twenty-three, said, "What I want now is not happiness, but awareness. " Perhaps he would not have agreed, but what he wanted -- even more than happiness -- was to be at prayer. For the issue of open, honest, genuine prayer cannot be other than the extension, out and around, up and down, through and through, of our inclination and willingness to be aware. We will be aware of more things, and the nature of them. We will be aware of more people, and the goodness of them. We will be aware of more of men's triumphs, and the beauty of them. We will be aware of more of men's failings, and the tragedy of them. We will be more aware of the weakness of power, and the puzzle of it. We will be more aware of the power of weakness, and the miracle of it. We will be more aware of the poverty of wealth, and the peril of it. We will be more aware of the wealth of poverty (of spirit), and the glory of it. We will be more aware of who we are as a person, and the somber joy of it. For this awareness is and will continue to be, the surprising, renewing gift of One to Whom we have learned to draw near saying, "Our Father. "
I would like to illustrate what I am talking about by calling upon the deposit of experience of memorable saints of the past -- but I am not going to do that. Saints are supposed to be "that way " -- anyway, and indeed, so they appear to us lesser mortals to be. But there is an illustration with a kind of unusual dimension upon which I would call. Some time ago, there appeared in "Life Magazine " an account of the experience of a man in New York City who suffered a heart attack so severe (while riding a subway) that it all but took his life. You may remember that article which was entitled, "A Man and His Heart. " In my opinion a portion of it fits the theme with which we are dealing at this moment (and I quote from it):
" For two days he drifted between sleep and wakefulness, burning with a fever that once reached 106 degrees. It was here that he was closest to death, and he was not even aware of it. Then, as abruptly as it had begun, the fever left him. He awakened one morning feeling completely alive and aware -- certain for the first time that he would not die. He was in a semi-private room; someone else was there, in the other bed, staring at him curiously.
"He was overcome by a sense of the freshness of life such as he had not known for many years. He looked at the fabric of the bed-clothes, and at his own hands, thinking how marvelously they were contrived. Every object on which his eyes fell was remarkable and new. The identity of the other man in the room seemed -- as it unfolded -- the most remarkable of all. Today -- it seems to have been only an odd coincidence but -- then -- it overwhelmed him.
"A well man, who had not been close to death, would have shrugged it off. But he found the deepest sort of meaning in it all -- although he is now reluctant to put it into words for fear of being thought foolish. It was a great surging feeling of the kinship and common destiny of men, which came close to overwhelming him.
" Today he knows that cardiac patients, and -- in fact -- all men who have gone to the final brink, looked over, and been drawn back -- have such feelings. Children have them as well. It is almost as though these feelings, being found at both extremities of life, seep from outside through the thin wall that encloses life at both ends.
"(He is at home again.) Much of the time he sits reading in the sun, or only thinking.
"He will rest another month or two, and then go back to his work. He looks quietly at his wife, at his three young sons darting in and out of the house. And he watches the grass slowly growing green beside the door.
"His sense of the extraordinary freshness of life is slowly, and to his deep regret, passing away; but there remains a faint, persistent wonder that will not leave him.
" To him the sudden flattening of a patch of grass in the wind could be the very footstep of God. To him the coming of Spring is not the logical result of the ponderous wheel of earth, an annual occurrence scarcely to be noticed, but an enormous personal gift that can bring tears to his eyes."
Perhaps my "amateur status" shows by my attempting to push the analogy too far. But here is a recorded and mighty experience of prayer, mingled, to be sure, with an unforgettable experience of intense suffering. But -- at the heart of it all -- persists the re-discovered knowledge of God as Creator, Sustainer, Redeemer.
W. H. Auden, in another context, gives the whole matter poetic expression when in his " Flight Into Egypt " he has the chorus say of Jesus:
"He is the Way
Follow Him through the Land of Unlikeness;
You will see rare beasts, and have unique adventures.
He is the Truth.
Seek Him in the Kingdom of Anxiety;
You will come to a great city that has expected your return for years.
He is the Life.
Love Him in the World of the Flesh;
And at your marriage all its occasions shall dance for joy."
Prayer is awareness!
Prayer is awareness of the Holiness of God!
Let me draw upon another illustration, one so classical in its form, so familiar in its content that all of you would be able to repeat it as I read it:
"In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw also the Lord, high and lifted up, and his train filled the temple . . . . Then said I, 'Woe is me for I am undone, because I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips, for mine eyes have seen the King, the Lord of Hosts.'
" Then flew one of the seraphim unto me having a live coal in his hand, and he touched my lips with it, and said, 'Lo, this hath touched thy lips and thy iniquity is done away. '
"And I heard the voice of the Lord saying, 'Whom shall I send, and who will go for us? ' Then said I, 'Here am I. Send me.'"
Prayer is awareness of the holiness of God.
I am conscious somewhat of the contemporary attack upon transcendence as a reliable attribute of God. I am somewhat sensitive to the contemporary insistence upon God's immanence as the top-priority divine characteristic. And I am confident that some writers today deal in terms of hyperbole in order to attract attention and hold a place in the shifting theological drifts. But with it all I have to admit that I remain a rather old-fashioned unreconstructed pilgrim on whom, at one time, hands were laid, and over whom prayers were said. And though the house was not filled with smoke, it echoed mightily with the movement of the Most High God, the God of Abraham and Isaiah, and Jesus, and St. Paul, and most of us knew, without having to be told, that we were standing or kneeling upon holy ground.
For "holiness, " as Archbishop Ramsey reminds us, "is the being of God in its intensity, and man cannot bear the weight of it as he approaches. "
I remember the story of a contemporary sculptor who had such a fascination and reverence for ancient Greek sculpture that when he heard of the presence of a work of Praxiteles, peerless Greek sculptor, he simply had to go see it. He entered the room in which the work stood with his eyes closed lest he be distracted in any way. And when he opened them he cried out, before the grace and power and beauty that was Praxiteles' art: " I must not return to my studio until night-fall. For if I do I might destroy every sculptured work within it. "
You see -- by analogy -- this is awareness of the holiness that is beauty and splendor and glory, that seems to emanate from another world, and from another estate. And bears down upon the inadequacies and shabbiness and weakness and deliberate faultiness which, in us, scar and soil the miracle of creation as it is incarnate, a tiny bit, in each and every one of us. The contemporary sculpture saw, for the first time perhaps, the glory of Praxiteles -- and it drove him to the very edge of the abyss of despair. "I must not return to my studio until nightfall. For if I do I might destroy every work within it." Isaiah saw his "Praxiteles " (though the analogy is faulty) -- an even more infinite one, that memorable day in the temple. "Woe is me, for I am undone" -- is the response -- the shattering response -- elicited from him. Peter saw his " Praxiteles " in the Christ whose total self-giving filled his world with a searing, demanding "beauty of being" which he (Peter) knew that he could not match, but to which, now, he would forever be driven by the exquisitely torturous cords of that same selfgiving love. And Peter's shattering response is "Depart from me. For I am a sinful man, O Lord. "
The mystery (and I use the word in the Pauline sense -- "open secret") of the "holiness of God" is precisely that it both shatters and restores. It is like the necessary surgical technique: it cuts away, that healing (wholeness...holiness) may appear. It knocks down. And it raises up. Its terror is also its renewing, transforming power. Rudolph Otto's classic work, "The Idea of the Holy " puts it this way:
" Terror in the presence of divine holiness does not coincide with mere dread of absolute power in the face of which no other attitude is possible than that of blind and abject obedience. 'Thou only art holy' is not the mere stammering of man in the presence of one who represents superior power, but it is also the sentence in which man desires to recognize and exalt that which possesses a value beyond his comprehension. What he exalts is . . . the power which deserves to be served, because it is worthy of the highest service.
The 'holiness of God' shatters us, but only to draw us into new and more effective relationships not alone with God, but in that precious "web of human relatedness" which is the world of God's creation . . . the world of men. Awareness of the holy is ethical through and through. If not, then the Cross is travesty and a delusion -- indeed, sheer horror! Awareness of the holy will not tolerate the self-serving kind of awe of the Mount of the Transfiguration which, at its half-way house, says, "This is so satisfying, so esoteric, so soothingly immobilizing, so locally secure for us who are now privileged to occupy this enclave, therefore let us make the enclave permanent, and our places in it permanent. " No. God says "no. " Jesus Christ says " no. " Awareness of the holy engenders in a man, from whose eyes the scales have been stricken, VOCATION. It impels the mountain-top people to go down from the esoteric splendor of the mountain-top into the plain of desperate human need, a need in which the transfigured also share, and now find it unthinkable to do other than to minister to, not in paternalistic condescension, but in grateful penitence.
For when a man honestly has an encounter with the Most High God, in any form, it is impossible that he will not sense something of the glory, and feel the humiliation voiced by Iago of Othello:
"He hath a daily beauty in his countenance which makes me ugly."
For to be aware is to be drawn into that mysterious relationship so movingly and painfully transparent in the figure of Christ on the Cross, a relationship which St. Paul exposes and discloses in his insistence that "While we were yet sinners, Christ died for us." And when we understand, a little, how it is that a God . . . so peerless, and so glorious, can give, in exchange, his own total self-sufficiency not for the morally pure and the uncorruptible, but for the rejects, the worthless, and the morally bankrupt -- we will have a hand-hold on the meaning of "grace," in which and by which, alone, men and women who seem bent upon working their own death may share, by faith, in the mightiness of a resurrection!
Thursday, November 2
An incident recorded in the 22nd chapter of the Gospel according to St. Luke:
"And he said to them, 'When I sent you out with no purse or bag or sandals, did ye lack anything? '
"They said, 'Nothing! ' Then said he unto them: 'But now let him who has a purse take it, and likewise a bag. And let him who has no sword, sell his mantle and buy one.'
"And they said, 'Look, Lord, here are two swords.' And he said to them, 'It is enough.'"
Some, in the Christian community, have had difficulty with this brief reference in St. Luke's Gospel. The Christian pacifist is perhaps embarrassed by it. The "gung-ho- for-muscular-Christianity " parson is delighted with it. The casual reader of scripture seldom sees it.
In treating this scripture passage I hope I shall not be a "rock of offense " to anyone. For I see this exchange between Jesus and his closest followers as a "talisman" that lets us in upon a facet of Our Lord's "nature " . . . as a facet as indispensable to "redeeming power" as is the "grace of forgiveness." For this gleaming facet is "humor".
We do not, as a rule, connect humor with the exercise of Christian virtue -- so devastating is the lengthening shadow of the Cross as Jesus moves to confront and reconcile the world of men. But we do not often enough remember that it would be impossible to plumb the depths of Christian "realism" -- and not come up with the priceless pearl of laughter -- more quiet than raucous, to be sure -- but warming, like the sun is warming -- and cleansing -- as are the rains of Spring. So, we see Jesus, interpreting for his tiny band of friends "the audacity of God's strategy " for the winning of the world. And, in the face of the thousands upon thousands of swords, that were Rome's naked power -- his friends produce two swords. And Jesus gently, but with the therapeutic of a spontaneous humor, tells them, "Of course, they will be enough." I would imagine that that remark alone, on the part of Jesus, enabled his disciples to establish more precisely the nature of the claims of God's Kingdom upon them, and upon the world.
One of the tell-tale signs of the sickness of our contemporary culture has been the virtual disappearance of the " funnied" from the news media of this generation. Not that they are completely gone, for, if you search diligently enough, and are sophisticated enough, there is still "something" remaining.
But, generally speaking, sparkling perceptive humor has departed from the comic strip. Its replacement has been: violence, and banditry, and warfare between planets, and international cloak and dagger stuff. A nation should have a care about this. For a decline in wholesome humor in a nation's press is a more accurate indicator of the health of the body politic than the rise in the rate of divorce or the increase in sex crimes, or the sky-rocketing of the use of "happy pills " or the ease with which marijuana is secured, or the higher index of highway deaths. Indeed -- a research project which probes for some relationship between these signs of the times just might come up with a discovery of major proportions. For -- there can be no denying that if you take away humor mankind is be- reft of an irreplaceable solvent of life's abrasive irritants. Let our sense of the humorous atrophy and we are less than free men.
In the mid-thirties, sitting in Mr. Grauman's Chinese Theatre one night, I noticed a man, totally out of place (I thought) in the slickly-dressed world premiere crowd, wearing, as this man was, an unpressed sack-suit, and a khaki G. I. top-coat. He was only two seats from me. The manager had announced -- at the beginning -- a novel de- vice: the lapel microphone, and was saying that, in the lobby, any who wished to say a word over the air about the "premiere" could do so, using the tiny mike.
Immediately as the picture ended, an usher hurried up to the "out-of-place-looking" little man, and said: " Mr. Grauman would like for you to say a word or two. " "Aw, " said the man, "Let somebody else talk. I'm talking all the time."
Then I recognized him. It was Will Rogers. Will Rogers' wit -- you will recall -- was "in a class by itself." Never, to my knowledge, did he take advantage of a person's weakness. But, with his disarming pose of innocence, he would gently needle pompous figures in national life -- in the political arena -- stuffy groups -- self-inflated institutions -- until they broke their somber seriousness in gales of laughter and delight. Someone has said of LaRochefoucauld that "his was the needle of wit" that drew after it the thread of thought.
Will Rogers, with his humor, was like that. What a national blessing he was. I know that when he and Jesus met, they understood each other, for they had some things in common!
Did you ever stop to wonder why it is that some things that happen inside a church always seem funnier than these same things would if they happen anywhere else? I think it is because " religious people " tend to take seriousness more seriously than God ever intended that we should. And -- the distortion of reality cries out for redress. And when it comes, in church, in some otherwise mundane incident, or mix-up, that would hardly be noticeable elsewhere, it is amplified into a major break-through -- the good fruits of which, if they are appropriated, are highly therapeutic for any chosen people of God.
One of the most theologically sensitive and accurate publications anywhere is the New Yorker Magazine. Its cartoons, many of them about church, and church officials, almost all of which bear more than a slight resemblance to Episcopal Church officials, are usually priceless exposes of the Church's tendency to over-state her case at the expense of her Gospel. There is seldom more than a phrase, as a text, accompanying such a drawing. Sometimes no text at all, so eloquent is the cartoonist's art!
Anonymously (always anonymously) such cartoons, especially those depicting some pompous bishop, will show up on my desk soon after publication. For which I try to have the grace to say, " Thank you, Mr. or Mrs. Anonymous. Thank you. " For we, whose ordained status makes our stock in trade "holy things ", need (more than anyone else) to be able to see ourselves as we truly are (not as some kindly, dewy-eyed dear old lady imagines us to be) and not as we -- sometimes -- erroneously, assume ourselves to be. What other medium could apply the corrective needle half so well? None -- other than humor.
Perhaps for the next revision of the Book of Common Prayer the Standing Liturgical Commission could suggest some such petition as "God bless THE NEW YORKER" -- and its kind! Or, in our incomparable Litany, " From the hardening of the arteries of our ability to laugh at our foolish pretensions, good Lord deliver us! "
Yes! Jesus would have found much to respond to in THE NEW YORKER of the first century. And He would likely to be the first to say "Amen" to the Devil's astute counsel to Screwtape in the Screwtape Letters just learning the ropes as to how to win Christians, on earth, away from their faith: "Christians who laugh, are poor prospects " is Satan's observation. And, the Devil was never nearer the truth!
You see, humor and religion have something precious in common in that both are evidences of a wholesome security.
Religious faith is evidence of the highest security that there is: treasure -- laid up in heaven, uncorruptible, not subject to loss by theft or accident or circumstance. Likewise -- humor gives evidence of wholesome security. You know, you can joke about things that are secure. You cannot joke about things that are doubtful. If a man is happily married -- and you know it -- you can say to him, "Is your wife still living with you? How does she stand it?" But, if a marriage is near or on the rocks, you cannot joke about it. Better stick to the weather!
The truth is that in our anxieties, in our varied identity crises, that affect our status and role and position, especially those of us who comprise "officialdom, " we have too often shelved much of humor's balancing therapeutic and contributed to the loss (I hope not permanent loss) of an invaluable weapon in the arsenal for furthering permanently good human relations: Gentle humor, wise humor, healing humor!
There is an ancient saying, "Those whom the gods would destroy -- they first make mad!"
Our contemporary world is busy revising it to say, "Those whom the gods would destroy they first take away their sense of humor!"
Well, we are in our Garden of Gethsemane in these engaging -- demanding -- days and we are in it with Jesus, even as were those earliest of believers. The naked power represented by the sword has been magnified into an instrument of total destruction: the ultimate weapon. But, the issue is the same as it was in that hour: Christ -- or annihilation.
Beneath the threat of total catastrophe we have three choices:
1. We can resign from the human race, not really, but symbolically, by a cowardly, abject surrender, and admission of defeat!
2. We can meet whatever comes, stoically, with blind uncomprehending bravado, heads bloody, but unbowed.
3. Or, we can meet it on balance, in sure and certain hope of the resurrection unto Eternal Life -- with a perspective, and a commitment, born of the divine union of humor -- and faith!
So, in the light of our origin and nature, in a healthy sense, we can say: " Laugh or perish!" A strange statement from a church pulpit? Perhaps! But a sense of humor reminds us -- as Jesus so clearly understood and demonstrates, that human existence, at its deepest levels, has to do, not so much with ideas in abstraction as with people in mutual relationships.
Without this there is nothing but silence!
MORNING PRAYERS BY THE PRESIDING BISHOP
1. Thou in whom all the ages are as one time, walk with us as we face the future.
If we are young, and all our hopes and dreams are snarled and tangled in the wild tempest of this world's rage, grant us such wisdom and insight that we may possess our souls with tenacity for a destiny beyond our present sight.
If we are old, and our anxieties and fears are worse confounded by the fury of the age, keep us steady with the strength of such remembrances as we have of thee and thy grace in days now gone, that we may confront the world and the future with quiet minds and resourceful hearts, knowing the victory which is in faith.
And if we stand midway in life, having seen one world depart and waiting for another not yet born, with youth behind us and age before us, we pray thee to teach us how to make all our years ascend from glory to glory until we become as children of the morning in the kingdom of the spirit. Amen.
2. O God of ancient prophets and holy martyrs, pour out thy spirit upon us in this new day, that once again in the hour of our need we may dream dreams and see visions. Drop the plumbline of thy justice beside every wall we have built; weigh in the balances of thy truth all the accomplishments of our skill and science; test with thy consuming fire the permanent worth of our industry and art. If the earth be shaken, and the foundations tremble, grant us courage to look beyond the ruins to that which has not fallen. If judgment falls, and the hollow vanity of much that passed for the substance of life is revealed as nothing, steady us until we lift up our eyes unto thee, and know that our hope is in thee, both now and forever. Amen.
3. Eternal God our Father, in whom all things were first begun, walk with us as we begin this new day. The strength of the morning, the light of the tireless sun, the communion of fellowship, the joy of work, the benediction of worship -- all come from thee. Even as thou hast sent to us these signs of never-failing grace, continue we pray thee to awaken our souls to a larger and more joyous hospitality of thy loving-kindness. We are prone to blindness, easily turned from the wonder of thy presence, and sometimes perverse in our indifference and rebellion against thee. Finish thou the work thou hast begun in us, through Jesus Christ thy Son and the ceaseless labor of thy Holy Spirit. Amen.
4. Thou who art nearer than our own thoughts, who knowest what is in our hearts before it is on our tongues, grant us a clean heart that we may pray with wholeness and integrity. Help us to return from every far country to that home in thee, where mercy greets us while we are yet afar off and great rejoicing fills our undeserving hearts with a peace we could not gain with much labor. Be patient with our slow return, our faltering step, our uncertain hope. Thy grace is still our surprise, the incredible gift beyond our imagining, the bush that burns and yet turns not to ashes. Give us open hearts as thou dost welcome us in love, that with ready spirits we may serve thee joyously and humbly, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
5. For bread broken in the glory of a common joy; for truth living beyond the barriers of time: for fellowship made out of an understanding of eternal things; for humble circumstance and simple deed in which the ineffable miracle of love is perfectly revealed; for mysteries by which we have been exalted and for knowledge by which we have been humbled; for souls in whose living we have seen no death, and for those who, having died, live forever -- we give thee thanks with great rejoicing, 0 God our Lord. Amen.