Never Been Easy

Losing your self has never been easy.

The age hasn’t yet come, nor will it ever, when self-denial will be convenient, or taking up a cross comfortable.

In our culture of expressive individualism and the modern sacred self, Jesus’s call in this week’s Gospel stabs at the very heart at best…or at worst just sounds culturally incoherent and stupid. Who will we be, after all, if we hand our selves over to a Lord who demands all of us? Nice. Neat. Bland. A soul dressed in beige every day, for ever.*

But the triune God who made heaven and earth, the sea and everything in it—and created us in their own image—is absolutely not a God of beige, as any field of wildflowers will attest. He is the God of the orchestra and the dance who made a world shimmering with diversity yet held together in him. A God who can make anyone part of a grand whole, but never swallowed up; a member of a worldwide body, but with a distinct role; one among billions, but with your own beautiful part to sing in a colossal chorus.

Die to your self and you will find the true you, Jesus says.

See you Sunday.

Steve+

*“In heaven, all the interesting people are missing.”—Friedrich Nietzsche

Trinity Sunday

Those of us of a certain age—and who also liked Led Zeppelin—will remember Larry Norman. He’s considered a pioneer of Christian rock music and released more than 100 albums during his career. A lyric from one of his songs I still remember almost five decades later goes like this, “The Beatles said all you need is love. Then they broke up.”

It’s true. Though it’s difficult to maintain—and we really struggle to get it right—love is the thing we all know we need. We’re literally made for love because we're created in the image of a God who is love.

But “God is love” only makes sense if God is Trinity.

A solitary God cannot be love. He may yearn for love. He may even learn to love. But he cannot himself be love, since love requires an object. It requires relationship. It requires community.And this has an implication or two for our lives together.

See you Sunday.

Steve+

Joy Together

A lot happened at Pentecost when the Holy Spirit was poured out upon the followers of Messiah Jesus. There were flames of fire, rushing winds, miraculous languages. The gift of the Holy Spirit was so important, in fact, that Jesus said that it was to our advantage that he ascended to heaven so that the "Helper" would come to us and "guide you to all truth...and declare to you the things that are to come." (John 16).

The Spirit unites us to Christ, makes Christ's presence known to us and in us. We are empowered to experience Jesus and to enjoy the fellowship that comes from participating in the love of our Triune God.

Pretty amazing stuff. But sometimes it can remain abstract or distant. Scripture gives us many examples of how God weaves together the threads of our lives into the fabric of His grand tapestry. It is important for us to understand how God is present to us, in particular...in our circumstances, in our histories, in our daily lives. It is important for us to grasp our own stories, remember the ways in which God revealed Himself to us, and learn to see Him and hear Him in the concreteness of our experiences.

God has graciously given us many ways to encounter His Spirit...through His word and table, through fellowship, through engagement with those in need. Many of us who participated in our Lenten small groups practiced sharing "gratitude memories." We are going to pick that theme up again on Sunday to dig a little deeper into how sharing our stories of gratitude with each other can help us strengthen our bonds of love with Christ and each other.

I look forward to being with you,

Steve Engstrom+

The Absence of Christ

I’m writing a day early because today is Ascension Day—40 days after Easter and ten days before Pentecost.

After his resurrection, Jesus spent 40 days with his disciples, and then “while he was blessing them, he withdrew from them and was carried up to heaven.” (Luke 24:51)

On Ascension Day 2020—when we were all working from home—a friend quipped that Ascension marks the day that Jesus also started working from home. It was a funny thing to say at the time, but imagine the roller coaster ride for the disciples, from their despair at Jesus’ death, to their elation at his resurrection—only to have him leave.

If we attend to it, Ascension Day helps us live in that moment. Jesus really did leave. In an important and powerful sense, he is absent.

We know that he promised to send another Comforter, the Holy Spirit. We know he is spiritually present in the Eucharist, which we call his Real Presence. We know that the Church is the Body of Christ. We know that when two or three are gathered in his name he is in their midst. And we know that he promised never to leave us or forsake us. We are not alone, and he is manifesting his presence with us through the Holy Spirit, through the Sacraments, through his Word, and through each other.

But…he is absent as well. He hasn’t yet returned, and though his kingdom has been inaugurated, it has not yet fully come. We live in the tension of now and not yet. And tension is the right word, I think.

This feels especially real to me today, and I’m sure to you, on the heels of two mass shootings this month, in Buffalo, NY—ten black people dead and three others injured at Tops Friendly Market at the hands of a radicalized, conspiracy-believing white man; and in Uvalde, TX—at least twenty-one dead including 19 children and two adults at Robb Elementary School. Both attacks manifestations of what can only be called evil.

It’s not necessary to enumerate all the other cultural and political and sexual confusion and dysfunction and malevolence we’re experiencing in these days, because you already know it and feel it. In fact, everyone knows it and feels it: this is simply not as it ought to be.

Jesus knew that we would live in the tension of now and not yet. He knew that we would feel his absence. So, he gives us the gift of peace within that tension. We can bear the tension of the “now” knowing we are not alone even as we wait for the “not yet”. In fact, our task is to be at peace within the world while seeking to bring the transforming love of Jesus Christ to it.

The Ascension of Christ is the is a perfect blend of sadness and joy. The sadness is there, and we can’t deny it. We want to be with Christ, and we want him to be with us. And the joy is there, too, because he has not left us alone.

Christians can live in this tension with peace. Peace, because he is Lord. Peace, because he gave us a Comforter. Peace, because he will return to us. Peace, because he has grafted us in to his Body on earth and we can take his grace and presence wherever we go. We can bring the peace that passes all understanding to a world desperately in need of it.

The challenge of Ascension Day is to rest in the tension of the absence of Jesus and at the very same time receive his presence right now. This paradox of faith is often uncomfortable and difficult to describe, but it is real. The disciples understood this in some way, even with all their confusion. After Jesus ascended, they “worshipped him, and returned to Jerusalem with great joy; and they were continually in the Temple blessing God.” (Luke 24:52-53) They knew his ascension wasn’t an end, but a beginning. It was a call to worship and a call to serve—a call to make his presence known to the ends of the earth.

Steve+

Beyond Memento Mori

At the celebration of a Roman military triumph, the public would have their eyes glued to the victorious general at the front of the ranks—one of the most coveted spots in that day. Only a few would be mindful of the aide just behind the commander, quietly, continuously, whispering into his ear, “memento mori”—“remember death,” a sobering (and wise) thing to hear at the height of glory and victory.

Try as we might to avoid it, we all need this reminder from time to time. As Anglicans we get it at least every Ash Wednesday as ashes are imposed on our foreheads with the words, “Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return.” There’s no avoiding it.

It’s a good reminder, but it’s not really the ultimate point, is it? Because those words—and the seasons of Lent and Easter—have a telos, an aim. They point us to an even deeper reality beyond death: resurrection. New bodies, new life, new desire for Jesus, new heavens, new earth…in fact, all things new (not all new things). An unimaginable continuity between now and not yet, but only just a hint of something unimaginable.

As we conclude our five-week time in the book of Revelation, we’ll look at why memento mori is just part of the story.

Steve+

You’re Still Lost

Pretty sure you’ve heard the one about the airline pilot who comes on the PA about two hours into a flight and says, “Well, folks, I’ve got some bad news and some good news. The bad news is we’re lost. The good news is we’re making great time.” It doesn’t matter what great time you’re making if the supreme thing—the destination in this case—isn’t the supreme thing. You’re still lost.

This is a little like something St. Augustine wrote in The City of God where he called the “proper order of our loves” (order amoris) the “brief and true definition of virtue.” According to this order, we must love everything in creation only according to its proper relationship to God, which means loving God above all—as supreme—and not inordinately loving anything else as our ultimate end. Everything must be measured in relationship to God’s supremacy. No exceptions. Get this wrong and it doesn’t matter if you're ‘making great time’. You’re still lost.

In this week’s Epistle, the Apostle John, striving to encourage seven churches besieged by the abject evil of the Roman Empire—when it was looking like everything was lost—reminds them of this: everything must be measured in relationship to God’s supremacy.

He was writing to us in our day, too.

See you Sunday.

Steve+

The Dance

One of my favorite poets, Wendell Berry, uses the metaphor of a couple dancing to describe twists and turns of life.  In his poem, “The Dance,” he asks: 

What is fidelity? To what

does it hold? The point

of departure, or the turning road

that is departure and absence

and the way home? What we are

and what we were once

are far estranged.

How would you answer the question?  Are we grounded in the origins of our journeys or the destination—or something in the middle?  Berry describes what we all experience in the ebb and flow of our relationships: departure, absence, return, change.

For Christians, the “point of fidelity” isn’t abstract: it’s grounded concretely in the promise of a New World that brings all of our journeys to their proper destination.

In the Book of Revelation, all of the threads that originate from the very beginning in Genesis 1 and that are woven throughout Scripture find their way into John’s vision.  There, the story of God and people come to resolution.  

That’s why the Book of Revelation has the unique statement that “blessed are those who hear it and take to heart what is written in it…”  (Rev. 1:3).  Jesus the Messiah is the Alpha and the Omega—the Beginning and the End, “the point of departure…and the way home.”  

I look forward to seeing you on Sunday to discover more about the dance and the way home.

Steve Engstrom+

Truly Admirable

I got to spend most of Wednesday evening with someone dear to me who was in town on business. Not only do I love him as a friend, but I have come to experience him as a truly admirable and excellent person. I can’t tell you simply why this is because it’s not simple. He possesses very diverse qualities that stand, not in opposition, but in complement. He’s a career warrior, and shockingly tender-hearted. He’s financially frugal, and unflinchingly generous. He’s fiercely loyal, and uncompromisingly straightforward as regards accountability (but always kind). He makes me both relaxed and exhausted.

The balance—or maybe better, tension—of these qualities is complex, but over the last few decades I’ve come to realize that the highest and deepest and most admirable people in my life are simply not “simple”. They’re a coming together in one person of often seemingly opposed qualities. And that’s much of what makes them beautiful.

In this week’s Epistle, St. John, in an apocalyptic vision, is taken to heaven’s throne room where Jesus is announced as a Lion—an animal who makes prey of others, is strong, wild, majestic and dangerous. But when he's finally allowed to see him, is a Lamb—easy prey, weak, harmless, lowly, and killed for our food. Seemingly opposed qualities that make Jesus beautiful, and excellent, and truly admirable.

See you Sunday.

Steve+