A Storm is Coming. Let us pray!

Almighty and everlasting God, You who are always more ready to hear than we are to pray, and who are willing to give more than either we desire or deserve: Pour down upon us the abundance of Your mercy, forgiving us those things that cause guilt within us, and giving us those good things which we are not worthy to ask, except through the merits and mediation of Jesus Christ, Your Son, our Lord. Amen.

This past Sunday we prayed this Collect of the Day. In our tradition, it is the prayer we are called to pray throughout the week of Trinity 12. What a fitting prayer at this time! Especially the second clause, “You who are always more ready to hear than we are to pray,...”. What a word of truth we find here. Our God is always more ready to hear our prayers than we are to pray them. As I sit here waiting for the storm to arrive in our city I find myself still doing as I spent the day yesterday doing ...praying. Even as I like many of you moved items into safer locations and made those last minute preparations for the storm, I prayed. As I am sure that you all did as well. Here, in this hour, following on what Deacon Jarrett shared with us this past Sunday, we are confronted with the truth from which we so often shy away: We are not actually in control of so much. Today you and I live in the palm of the hand of God. This is always the case but today we are reminded and made more powerfully aware of this reality.

And IT is the reality. That we are actually in charge of all things, in control of all things, can order all things according to our wishes, … that is the illusion and not the reality.

There are certainly inconveniences and even dangers involved with some of the effects of such storms, especially the loss of electrical power, that are obvious causes for concern. But what I sense we really loath about the loss of power is the commensurate loss of the sense of a control we never really had in the first place.

A dangerous weather system has spawned a storm in the Gulf of Mexico. And, in response, many have prayed and are praying even as I write these prayerful words of reflection. And in the hours ahead many will pray as the obvious danger of this storm draws nearer and nearer. But here is the thing, there is always a “storm” drawing near. Many of the “storms” of this life cannot be forecast with Doppler radar and yet they are just as real and they often come without warning. These storms of life can leave a path of destruction and harm in our lives more long enduring than the effects of capricious tropical weather. And yet for many of us they seem less real and less worthy of prayer that seeks a Holy God's intercession.

The Disciples asked our Lord to teach them to pray. And throughout the Scriptures we are taught to pray: the Psalms, in Our Lord's prayer, and in m any other places we see the model of an open communication line with the Creator of the universe laid before us. So, let us pray!

And when this temporary storm passes on and our lives are “restored” to what we had before the storm...Let us pray!

When we find ourselves focused on ourselves...LET US PRAY!

Today, yes, let us pray that this storm is dissipated by the almighty hand of our merciful Father. Not because we deserve such favor but so that we might ascribe to Him the glory. Yes let us prayer for such mercy. But what of tomorrow and the next day? Let us pray. Let us pray to our Father not on the basis of our merits or worth but upon the worth and merits of our Lord Jesus Christ. Let us pray. A storm is coming. A storm is always coming in this life. So let us pray to the One who is always more ready to hear than we are to pray. Let us pray!

TEC General Convention, Gay “Marriage”, Chik-Fil-A, and Absolute Truth

So I haven't posted a blog in a quite a while. My earlier “commitments” to be more diligent not withstanding. The problem I face is that I am often stymied both by the sheer number of things going on in the world about which I am often tempted to comment  and a serious doubt that I have anything really worthwhile to contribute to the noise on the internet. That being said, a series of events in the news of late coupled with an interchange I had with some friends on another list-serve have led me to this moment of commentary.

The events are the TEC General Convention during which the leadership of that once great and faithful part of the Church treated the last vestige of orthodox belief like a vampire and drove a stake through it's heart. Then there was the crescendo of noise surrounding the “civil rights” of gay marriage. To even question the practice is to be immediately labeled a hater. Take the controversy surrounding Chik-Fil-A and the statements of the owner of the company's simple adherence to biblical norms. It seemed an unquestioned foregone conclusion that any company that had any association with a someone who held to a biblical standard regarding sexual morality is “clearly” a bigot and must be punished for his “alternative” view. All of these things remind me of my own first encounter with this kind of “thought crime” logic.

In the late 80's I was an Undergrad in the University of Houston Honors Program (now the Honors College). Near the beginning of one semester it was announced that we had a visiting lecturer coming from Oklahoma to teach a senior seminar level class on comparative religion called "Dialogue Among World Religions". We were encouraged by the head of the program to sign up, if our schedules allowed, for what was to be a guaranteed stimulating intellectual experience. Sounded interesting and I had that slot open in my class schedule so I signed up.

Now it must be strictly understood that I really did not have in any way a living faith. I was not a part of a church, let a lone THE Church, at best, I questioned almost every central tenet of the Christian faith's claims. I was not raised in the Church in any way, nor could I have honestly given any assent to the most basic Christian doctrines. Although I had read the bible and was familiar with its contents. Its message and meaning were lost on me. I could not even have articulated any significant difference between Roman Catholics and Protestants except one group drank alcohol and the other forbade it. On paper I was a perfect fit for such a class.

On the first day of the class we were greeted by a warm and gracious man in his mid-fifties or so ( I was in my twenties then so anyone older than me was lumped into only one or two age categories = older and older-er:) He dressed in casual clothes and sported an interesting silver ring with a cross shape cut into it. He said he was an Episcopalian. Which meant about as much to me as if he had said he was from Lilliput. I simply had no context. It turned out during our class conversations that he was some kind of minister and was on staff in some capacity, I did not really understand, on the campus of OU.

The class was small. We had a couple of young men who were Muslim, a couple of Americans who thought they were Buddhists, some agnostics, one person who was an avowed atheist, a practitioner of the Baha'i faith, a couple of annoying folks who kept referring to themselves as "evangelical" (which I of course equated with the dudes and dudettes with big hair on television and thus steered clear of them after class), a really intense but seriously nice guy from some local campus ministry who was the neatest dresser I had ever met, a couple Roman Catholics, and me. I was just there out of curiosity.

Oh yeah, I was also studying Plato's Republic that semester in a Political Philosophy class.

Well to make an already too long tale a bit shorter let me say, I made every class (class discussion and attendance were to count for 90% of our grade and 10% on a paper in which we explored a faith not our own (which of course left the door wide open for me:)

I received an A+ on my paper on global Islam. I was an active participant in all of the in class discussions. At the end of the semester when I received my grades I was shocked to see that he had assigned me a grade of A-. Surely this was an error. I made an appointment with him to discuss my grade. During said meeting he explained my grade. It was the result of one statement that I had made during one of our in class dialogues. I had not even thought about it since making it. What disturbed the professor/priest so much was that I had concluded on the basis of reason that there was a possibility of an absolute truth somewhere in the cosmos. That's it. Not that I knew what the absolute truth was, I would never have claimed such a thing. But I was willing to grant that there just might be one and if there was such a truth extant in the universe, it was worth seeking. He explained to me that since the whole point of the class was that it be a "dialogue" among world religions, having such a position precluded my ability to engage in real authentic dialogue with other religions or worldviews.

Needless to say I was flummoxed as I wrestled with that little bit of logic.

I lacked the context to associate his own worldview with the Episcopal church at the time and did not really think about that connection until years later when I was for a short period of time a part of the Episcopal Church. It was during my discernment process for the ministry that the connection was made for me and I realized that what I experienced with the professor/priest was not an anomaly at all. I was the anomaly for holding a belief, however tenuously, that threatened his own. And in the brave new world people like me are a problem for people like this teacher/priest.

Little did I know, at the time, the path God had started me on. What Socrates accepted as a possibility I have come to know in a living way. Now I know that there is not only a chance that there might be an objective absolute truth in the cosmos... I know who He is. I know His name and so, it seems, does Mr. Cathy of Chik-Fil-A. And the name is Jesus. 

IHN

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