Saturday, October 27, 2012

Preaching on the Household Codes

For my first preaching assignment at Saint Peter's Church, where I am currently a vicar, I was asked to preach on the texts listed in an older Catholic lectionary used during their Wednesday evening peace mass: Ephesians 6: 1 - 9, Psalm 145: 10 - 14 and Luke 13: 22 - 30The Ephesians text, as one version of the household codes, is a very difficult text, and thus I decided to focus on it.  Please provide me with some feedback and I'll incorporate it into my sermon this Wednesday.  Thanks so much!

Source: Wikipedia
While I’ve been a vicar at Saint Peter’s for about a month and a half now, even before starting here, I was very excited to start preaching in a real parish, so you can imagine my joy when I was asked me to deliver today’s homily.  Upon looking up the proscribed texts for today however, particularly the Ephesians’ passage, my joy turned to dismay…  “Children, obey your parents in the Lord” doesn’t seem that bad, but what about “slaves, obey your earthly masters with fear and trembling…” You heard it right folks, “slaves, obey your earthly masters with fear and trembling.”  Boy, it seems pretty tough to find the good news in a line like that, no matter what follows it...  For my very first preaching assignment of the year, I was asked to preach on the household codes.

The two hierarchical commands of children to obey their parents and slaves to obey their masters in today’s passage of Ephesians, combined with an additional command in the preceding verses for wives to submit to their husbands, form a set of instructions known to Biblical scholars as the household codes.  These codes are reflected in the Epistle to the Colossians and have similar counterparts in 1 Peter and Titus as well.  Despite being written in the Holy Scriptures, one cannot help but find the household codes heartbreaking, particularly in a country still haunted by a dark past, and in a few cases, a current history of slavery, along with contemporary racism and sexism.  Even more heartbreaking is the way in which these verses have frequently been used throughout history.  Many Civil War-era preachers used the codes to encourage African Americans to remain submissive under the dehumanizing yoke of chattel slavery.  Christians often cited them as a way to encourage wives to stay with battering husbands.  Children have been advised by the Church to obey their parents and remain silent about physical and sexual abuse because of an overly simplistic reading of verses like the household codes.  In many Christian communities, similar abuses of the Scriptures and human dignity continue to this day.

My sisters and brothers, perhaps the most heartbreaking thing about the household codes is not just how they’ve been misused throughout history… but how they’ve been misused throughout Christian history… throughout your history and my history… throughout our history.  The oppression and dehumanization wrecked upon the world by the misuse of passages like the household codes prove one of the most rotten spots in the collective story of our faith as Christians... and people know about this part of the story.  This is one of the reasons why many of our churches are shrinking rather than growing.  In my own life this is one of the reasons why many of my friends questioned why I would ever want to be a pastor, and I imagine many of you have been hurt by messages of intolerance inspired by misuse of the Scriptures as well.  The misuse of verses like the household codes is one of the main reasons why many see the Church as an oppressive force in the world, rather than a force of loving-kindness.

There is however good news in tonight’s text from Ephesians, at least if read with the proper historical lens in mind.  You see, for the earliest Christian communities, the structure of the household codes would have sounded very familiar.  Aristotle wrote about the very same three pairs of social classes, as did first century philosophers like Josephus and Philo.  This hierarchical pattern of unilateral control with man always at the top was in fact expanded the throughout Greco-Roman social order all the way up to Caesar.  Patriarchy was thus seen by most as the main source of peace and stability, as essential to society as most of us would consider the rule of law today.

Most critical scholars would agree that Ephesians was written at a relatively later date than most of the Pauline epistles.  Its audience was thus not focused on Jesus’ immediate return but was instead concerned with how to live out their lives in a world where the kindom of God was, as it is today, in-breaking but not fully realized.  While the household codes would have been familiar throughout Greco-Roman society, they never would have been accompanied by admonitions for husbands to love their wives as their own bodies or for fathers to be kind to their children as they are in Ephesians.  The author is thus critiquing the patriarchy, oppression and empire of the so-called Pax Romana by instructing his audience about God’s in-breaking kindom… a kindom where there is neither Jew nor Gentile, slave nor free, male or female in Christ.  The author is doing so simply under a rubric that wouldn’t have been as suspicious to Roman authorities.

The household codes therefore do not support patriarchy and oppression in the name of God but rather provide us with an example of what Christianity truly is… a subversive faith.  Yes, my sisters and brothers, the good news in tonight’s Ephesians text is that in Christ all are free and all are equal.  In Christ we have a faith that subverts oppressive power and that turns any unjust social system that would tell us otherwise upside down.  While horrible misuse of the household codes is part of our collective Christian history, so are the stories of subversive saints like the writer of Ephesians, like Dietrich Bonhoeffer, like Dorothy Day and like the Honduran woman I met last week at the UN, who is organizing rural peasants against an illegitimate administration that is grabbing their land and selling their rivers to trans-national corporations.  Yes, the stories of these and other subversive saints, while instructive, even more importantly demonstrate to us that the kindom of God is indeed in-breaking, and it is a kindom where all are free, all serve one another and all are forgiven.

Dustin is currently a vicar at the Lutheran Office for World Community and Saint Peter's Church in Manhattan, having recently completed his second year of a Masters of Divinity program at the Lutheran Theological Seminary at Philadelphia. While seeking ordination in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, his focus is on the intersection between worship, service and justice building in de-centralized faith communities unencumbered by a traditional church building. In his free time, Dustin likes playing frisbee, hiking and pretending to know how to sing.

Tuesday, October 16, 2012

Your Chance to Weigh In on 'The World We Want'

What follows is a cross-post I recently wrote on behalf of Ecumenical Women at the United Nations.

In 2000, world leaders came together to set quantifiable goals for global development to be reached by 2015 in eight areas. Some have described the goals that came out of that summit, the Millennium Development Goals, as the world’s greatest promise. The good news is that three years out from the goals’ deadline, three targets for reducing extreme poverty, improving clean water access and helping people move out of urban slums, have already been met. While there has been partial progress in some areas, such as moving toward gender equality in access to primary education, there has been little movement toward other targets like reducing the maternal mortality rate.

As the world inches closer to 2015 deadline, the United Nations is also working to analyze successes and failures of the Millenium Development Goal program overall, and most importantly, beginning to discern what’s next after 2015… and that’s where you come in. In partnership with civil society, the United Nations is currently leading a growing conversation with people all over the world who are contributed their input about how we should move forward as one global community. This conversation is happening on the World We Want 2015 web platform, and the topic for this week is gender inequalities.
How can you contribute to the conversation? First, talk with folks (especially girls and women) about gender inequalities in your local community, with a particular emphasis on how such problems are related to inequalities based on income, race/ethnicity, age, location, disability, and sexual orientation. Next, spend some time brainstorming how the post-2015 development framework could address the needs of specific groups of women, especially those from the most marginalized groups and those facing multiple forms of discrimination.

Once you’ve spent some time talking about and reflecting on the topic, you can post your input here. The conversation is currently being monitored by Emily Esplen from Womankind Worldwide, Nicole Bidegain from Development Alternatives with Women for a New Era (DAWN), and Rosa G. Lizarde from the Feminist Task Force (FTF) of the Global Call to Action Against Poverty, and they’ll also be responding to your comments. The recommendations emerging from you contributions will be included in a report presented at a high-level meeting in Denmark in February 2013 on inequalities and the post-2015 development agenda. Make sure to contribute soon though, as the comment period for this topic will end on October 24th. Thanks so much for contributing to The World We Want!

Dustin is currently a vicar at the Lutheran Office for World Community and Saint Peter's Church in Manhattan, having recently completed his second year of a Masters of Divinity program at the Lutheran Theological Seminary at Philadelphia. While seeking ordination in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, his focus is on the intersection between worship, service and justice building in de-centralized faith communities unencumbered by a traditional church building. In his free time, Dustin likes playing frisbee, hiking and pretending to know how to sing.

Saturday, October 13, 2012

NH 4000 Footer Essay (Pt. 1): It's Not the Path That Changes Us

A path over Mount Pleasant.
What follows is part one of the five-part essay I'm writing for the NH 4000 Footer Club.  You can find part two here.

I first heard about having to write this application essay for NH's Four Thousand Footer Club sometime about a third of the way through hiking all of the Granite State's forty-eight peaks, and frankly, I've been trying to figure out what to put down on paper ever since.  I really enjoy pretending to be a good writer and thus I fancied whatever I'd come up with to be a sort of 'road tale,' a frequently employed plot device- sort of coming of age story where the protagonist sets off searching for maturity or meaning and generally ends up finding it... think Huckleberry Finn or in a more contemporary form Easy Rider... even Homer's Iliad, the oldest narrative in the Western canon, reflects much of what's in a road tale.  An inherent part of the road tale though is not just personal growth and discovery, but growth and discovery through experience.  A central message of such stories then is that the road literally does something to you... whether left wounded, reborn or somewhere in between, one cannot help but be changed by the beauties and terrors of the road.

From Mount Tripyramid.
With the grandiose notion of becoming the best White Mountain road tale writer since Brad Washburn lodged firmly in my noggin, I set off on every subsequent hike enthusiastically trying to answer the question "how is this exactly changing me?"  I sure experienced a whole lot of beauty (afternoon clouds billowing over Mount Isolation for instance) and even a couple minor terrors (realizing its almost 9pm with two miles to go coming off Middle Carter with a bum leg and a freshly dead headlamp) but unfortunately, trying to figure out how such experiences were changing me became a distracting and fruitless effort.  Especially after I began solo hiking in the summer of 2011, one could often find me standing on a mountaintop trying to convince an increasingly skeptical inner-self that I was experiencing something profound and life-changing.  After each of these sort of episodes, I'd usually leave the summit both proud of my accomplishment and frustrated that nothing was happening.  I'm currently a seminarian studying to be a pastor in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, so I wasn't seeking just growth or meaning in those mountains, but God as well.  Unfortunately, while I'd often marveled at Her handiwork during my mountaintop experiences, God Herself didn't seem to really want to show up... or at least it felt that way.

On top of Mount Carrigain's fire-tower.
I'm now sitting in a Starbucks in Queens, far away from my cherished mountains.  I deeply miss those stoic old giants... especially over this past summer, they became some my closest friends.  Still though, I can't honestly say the path over them changed me.  I met some amazing folks and some annoying folks, I marveled at God's creation and stood helpless against Her fury, I even learned a lot in the mountains, but no, they didn't change me.  It wouldn't be accurate though to say I wasn't growing and changing during the eight years I took to hike the Whites.  I started my journey on top of Mount Pierce in 2004, freshly out of high school and working for my second summer as a camp counselor for Calumet Lutheran Ministries.  I finished my journey late this past August atop Mount Carrigain's fire-tower, at the end of a longer summer break and two years into a Masters of Divinity degree.  Many of the kids who were with me back in 2004 later grew up to be counselors themselves... some even became good friends of mine.  I definitely changed over that period, perhaps I even came of age, but it wasn't the mountains that changed me.  Rather, my path over NH's forty-eight big peaks ended up providing the space I needed to reflect on my relationship with God, the course of my growth and my relationship with the ever-evolving world all around me.  While not the rule, I do think this is typical... it's not the road, the journey or the path that usually changes us.  Instead, the paths we trod in life simply serve as vehicles through which we can realize the growth (or potential for growth) already stirring within and around us.  What follows then, perhaps isn't road tale at all, at least in the traditional sense... it's a collection of a few stories in which I realized that since the last time I was up above the clouds, things looked pretty different...
 
Dustin is currently a vicar at the Lutheran Office for World Community and Saint Peter's Church in Manhattan, having recently completed his second year of a Masters of Divinity program at the Lutheran Theological Seminary at Philadelphia. While seeking ordination in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, his focus is on the intersection between worship, service and justice building in de-centralized faith communities unencumbered by a traditional church building. In his free time, Dustin likes playing frisbee, hiking and pretending to know how to sing.

Thursday, October 04, 2012

Plenty of Faith in the Heart of the City: Prayer Labyrinth @ 5Pointz

It's nice to see Biggie each morning.
For about a month now, the first hour or so of most of my days here in New York have started the same: The alarm on my decade-ish old flip-phone goes off, I quietly lament to myself that the world starts too early, take a quick shower, put on one of two suits I still feel fairly uncomfortable wearing, run out the door and then down a few blocks to hop on the 7 train that takes me into Manhattan.  I rarely find a seat but can usually still get a good view of the cityscape in front of me through the crowd of other commuters, a view that almost always includes a chance to check out 5Pointz.

I didn't know much about New York before moving here (and probably still don't)  so the first couple times I glimpsed the structure through still sleepy eyes, I figured it was just an old factory covered in graffiti.  Quickly though I realized it was an intentional work of art, a living gallery really, and ever since that time I've spent a couple minutes each morning trying to spot new characters crowded amongst increasingly familiar pieces and signatures.  Frankly, it's a pretty awesome way to start my day.


A labyrinth, bottom left of the picture.
It was only today though that I spotted something at 5Pointz that definitely wasn't expected: a prayer labyrinth!  A type of contemplative prayer space that has been used for centuries by folks of many different faiths (a bunch of medieval cathedrals still have them), the labyrinth isn't a maze but rather a single path one slowly walks, praying at each turn and then quietly listening in the center to what God might be saying back.

The history of 5Pointz, for me at least, makes the presence of a prayer labyrinth there all the more important.  Termed "The Institute of Higher Burning," 5Pointz began in 1993 not only as graffiti art gallery but also an affordable studio space for over 200 hundred artists.  What was formerly an old industrial complex ended up becoming a global meeting place for a diverse mix of artists... rappers, break-dancers, filmmakers and photographers in addition to the folks who have stunningly covered the walls of the place.  Unfortunately, after someone was injured by a fire escape collapse in 2009, the art studios were closed, and it appears that the entire complex will be demolished in September 2013.  That said, boy, for as long as 5Pointz still stands, the prayer labyrinth there provides a powerful testament that faith is for all sorts of folks, not simply the clean-cut or typically defined as well-behaved by society.

While I think things have improved a bit in recent years, for far too long the city in general has been cast as place of vice or that which is "not-Christian" by way too many (usually) well intentioned believers.  Although I had a taste of how inaccurate and unhelpful such views were before moving here, the little time I've spent in New York so far and especially my exposure to sacred spaces like the prayer labyrinth at 5Pointz has further strengthened my conviction that the city is a place where faith is alive, well and constantly dancing into new and exciting forms of expression.  Thanks so much!

God's peace,
Dustin

Dustin is currently a vicar at the Lutheran Office for World Community and Saint Peter's Church in Manhattan, having recently completed his second year of a Masters of Divinity program at the Lutheran Theological Seminary at Philadelphia. While seeking ordination in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, his focus is on the intersection between worship, service and justice building in de-centralized faith communities unencumbered by a traditional church building. In his free time, Dustin likes playing frisbee, hiking and pretending to know how to sing.