Second Terrace

read Jayber Crow

My whole purpose here is to get you to read a book, and that book is Jayber Crow by Wendell Berry.

It’s one of those rare books that when you read the last few words in the last sentence, you want to take a step back and take a new different look at things.

Recipient of the National Humanities Medal in 2010, Wendell Berry is the author of 25 books of poems, 16 volumes of essays, and 11 novels and short story collections. Since 1965 he has lived, worked, and farmed a plot of land on the Kentucky River with his wife and children. He and his family tried their utmost to subsist completely on what they harvested from their farm, going to the store only for the most necessary un-harvestable things.

As far as I know, Berry, who is all of 86 years of age, continues to till the fields with his horse and plow.

Wendell Berry’s main theme is that people change the land by living in it. And the land changes them. If the land is used well, and if other people are dealt with in a kindly fashion, then those changes will be good, or at least not so bad. He’s been a longtime critic of modern individualism, wasteful consumerism, self-aggrandizement, and conspicuous consumption.

He is a Christian writer who “tries to take the Gospel seriously,” but he makes partisans on both sides uncomfortable: no ideology can claim him. No one in the culture wars wants to hear, nowadays, words like these: “Rats and roaches live by competition under the laws of supply and demand; it is the privilege of human beings to live under the laws of justice and mercy” (from his essay “Economy and Pleasure” -- which is a very fine reflection on the great John Ruskin).

Rightwingers chafe at his pacifism and environmentalism. Leftwingers get hot and bothered by his lack of enthusiasm for abortion rights. Though most  contemporary conservatives (who are really libertarians) would not agree, I think Berry is very much an old-fashioned conservative -- so old that the moderns can't recognize him. But the same thing could be said of Christianity in general these days.

In this mean season of social media, techno-reality, and frenetic restlessness, Berry bucks the tide by his quiet insistence that there is no human life without community and nature. One’s life and work ought to be rooted in and responsive to one's place, and the people around him or her. 

Enter Jayber Crow, who did just that.

Wendell Berry is an acerbic critic in his essays. But in his novels, he’s a gentle artist. He portrays the citizens (or, what he calls the “membership”) of his fictional town of Port William with compassion. Even the villains, who betray human fellowship and violate land and nature, are still treated with humane-ness.

Port William is one of the most richly imagined communities in literature, certainly on par with Faulkner’s Yoknapatawpha County or Harper Lee’s Maycomb, Alabama. In every one of his novels and short stories (and a few of his poems to boot), Berry has populated this town with honest depictions of human nature, good and bad.

There are joys and there are sorrows. Jayber Crow, as the sole barber of Port William, has gotten to know these stories first-hand from the confessional that old-fashioned barbershops used to be. Jayber (whose name is really Jonah) was orphaned at the age of ten, and was moved to an orphanage in central Kentucky. From there he attended Bible college in Pigeonville, as he had felt, at the time, that he had received the call to become a preacher.

But in Bible college, he wrestled with too many hard questions to allow him to preach in good conscience. “You have been given questions,” his wizened NT Greek professor told him (whose nickname was “Old Grit”), “to which you cannot be given answers. You will have to live them out -- perhaps a little at a time.” 

There’s more than a little of Berry himself here. He’s a Christian, yes, but certainly not what you’d call a “denominationalist.” He is one of many who has justifiably struggled with the organized church. Thusly, he had Jayber opine that “Some of the best things I have ever thought of I have thought of during bad sermons.”

Jayber left Bible college and wended his way to Lexington. After a few adventures and misadventures, he ended up back in his hometown of Port William, and set up shop.

He became the oral historian of the town. Oral history is the best kind of history, as it proceeds from the deep collection of community memory. “Telling a story,” Jayber reminisces much later, as he’s retired and over seventy at the time of his narration, “is like reaching into a granary full of wheat and drawing out a handful. There is always more to tell than can be told. As almost any barber can testify, there is also more than needs to be told, and more than anybody wants to hear.”

The thing I like best about Jayber Crow is his growing -- and glowing -- recognition of his community in Port William, and what that community means, and the beautiful, poignant thing that community can be. 

Despite his honest problems with religion, Jayber comes to his clearest vision of God and his community -- ironically for him -- in church. Uncle Stanley Gibbs was the church janitor and gravedigger, but had been lately getting himself into trouble with his questionable vocabulary and his being too open about his plans for becoming a tomcat again once his old wife passed on. 

Jayber became Uncle Stanley’s successor, and cleans the church each Friday evening in anticipation of Sunday morning worship. He had avoided attending church for years, but now he sits quietly in the back. He loves the singing (“In the sweet by and by” is his favorite) despite his withering critique of most of the sermons.

One night while cleaning the church, Jayber gets sleepy and lies down on the floor. He closes his eyes and sees all the people of his cherished Port William -- people he observes and loves. The chapter concludes, “They were just there. They said nothing, and I said nothing. I seemed to love them all with a love that was mine merely because it included me. When I came to myself again, my face was wet with tears.”

Now that’s community. That’s what a town can be and should be. Jayber’s best friend, Burley Coulter, says this of what being a “member” of Port William is all about: “The way we are, we are members of each other. All of us. Everything. The difference ain't in who is a member and who is not, but in who knows it and who don't."

The "membership" of Port William consists of any person who recognizes his or her place among -- and responsibility for the well-being of -- all the land, animals, and all the people of the place. It’s being totally pro-life as in “all life.”

Port William is, or should be, your town and my town. Your family and my family. Your church and my church. Your neighborhood and mine.

democracy and authoritarianism

I had an interesting discussion yesterday. "Interesting" here is a euphemism.

 

I had proposed that in looking at contemporary moral problems, that we should deepen and broaden our gaze -- well beyond the "hot-button" issues that have been exploited by partisan politics for about five decades.

 

One issue has to do with the American form of government. We are a constitutional republican democracy. The constitution makes it clear that the government derives its power from the consent of the people governed -- hence, "We the People," etc.

 

I proposed that such a political system is a superior, and more moral, form of government than any other in history.

 

In general, all other forms give power to individuals or small groups who do not have the consent of the governed. These systems are "authoritarian."

 

Authoritarian governments come in different forms: monarchies, oligarchies, plutocracies, and theocracies.

 

What is troubling is that there are many American Christians (Protestant Evangelicals, Roman Catholics, and Eastern Orthodox) who prefer authoritarian systems over democracy.

 

They do this for various reasons. Democracy itself is blamed for allowing, even encouraging, the advance of secular modernism. Democracy, it is said, advances the loss of Judeo-Christian morality and the rise of atheism.

 

"If only we could have a Christian king, or a tsar, or some kind of theocracy," the thought goes.

 

This thought is hardly unprecedented. It has a long and terrible history. People who have advanced this thought, more or less innocently, have unwittingly aided and abetted the rise of tyrants who may have started out benefiting their Christian sponsors but ended up betraying them, too -- eventually sending them off to concentration camps, canceling their own liberties of speech, freedom of movement, and even religious assembly.

 

Christians who support authoritarian politics (that is, who adopt the ideology of authoritarianism) are naive.

 

And they are also engaged in immorality. Democracy -- as secular and liberal as it indeed is -- is based on the fundamental idea of individual liberty. This priority of individual concern is deeply related to, and completely reliant upon, the "personalism" of the New Testament.

 

"We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal" is an essentially Christian statement. It could never have been possible without the Lord saying "Inasmuch as ye have done it unto the least of these My brethren, ye have done it unto Me."

 

Christians should be thankful that they live in a democracy. Yes, it is a "liberal democracy," as democracies must be. There is no such thing as a democracy that prefers or advantages Christianity. A democracy cannot permit or tolerate the establishment of any religion: it must be essentially "secular."

 

Democracy must, for it to remain democratic, separate church and state.

 

The church has no business colluding with the state, as the state must wield violent and dominating powers of coercion, even the power to inflict death. The early church, in its first generations, refused to permit its members to enlist in the government just because that required participation in death.

 

Many Christians forget this -- or, more likely, they deliberately disregard that historic truth: the "Seven Mountains of Influence" folk (C Peter Wagner's "New Apostolic Reformation" group) ... Roman Catholic Neo-Integralists like Adam Vermeule at Princeton ... Orthodox monarchists (or "neo-tsarists") ... so-called "Christian Nationalists" (which is a terrible oxymoron).

 

I worry that too many of my fellow clergy and co-religionists are so tired and fearful of modern challenges that they pine away for some easier, more "Christian-friendly," society. Like a nice theocracy. The trouble, though, with "theocracies" is that there is the real "Theos" is never present, but is represented by tyrants who might give ceremonial lip-service to God, but don't really know Him.

 

I suggest to clergy and laity, hierarchs, prelates, and big-box church CEO's that it is a far, far better thing to be Salt and Light in the world as it is, rather than wishing for a fantasy. It is better to make like the catacomb Christians who really did turn their world upside down, than to play, like basement nerds, ecclesiastical D&D.

Seminaries ought to spend a lot more time in theological education preparing new clergy for a confident, winsome witness to the Gospel in liberal democracy. They should get away from fostering a cult of grievance and withdrawal. In my own community, Orthodox seminaries should never promote the unhelpful cliches of the so-called "culture wars" or ridiculous notions like "soft totalitarianism." Is it too much to expect that seminaries, at least, ought to be able to distinguish socialism from communism, to critique materialistic philosophies (both communism and capitalism). Instead of hiding behind the white picket fence of hot-button issues, or complaining about universalism and the penchant of certain authors for their rhetorical style, it would be more profitable to ask why infernalism has become such a positive emphasis. Or how trinitarian kenosis has become eclipsed by power and domination. Or how the aristocracy has made so many inroads in a community that originally formed around a penniless itinerant prophet.

These questions should be more prominent in "priestly-formation." Better this than edifice-complexes and marching off to insurrections.

I am burdened with the anxious sense that Orthodox seminaries have abdicated their responsibility of authentic prophetic critique, and have latched on simplistically to the easy and broad path of fundamentalist complaint. 

The fundamentalist theocratic agenda is a deliberate preference for authoritarian ideology. And, it must be said, ideology always displaces theology. The desire for a "Christian strong man" is not only unpatriotic. It is also simplistic fantasy.

 

The trouble with political fantasies is that the antichrist feeds off such fever dreams.

 

So, I proposed that any attempt to supplant American democracy with a more authoritarian form is immoral.

 

Not surprisingly, a few correspondents carted out that old and boorish non-rebuttal (and very non seqitur) "I don't know what authoritarianism means."

 

Well, now you do.

on violence, masculinity, and the righteousness we've forgotten

False masculinity and violence

We in the Christian community, especially clergy (and in my case, Orthodox Christian clergy), need to have a long and deep conversation about masculinity, what it should be and what it is not.

There are Christian writers who suggest that males growing up in America are somehow neglected, somehow repressed in their masculinity. Somehow they suffer because their "boyhood" is not celebrated enough, because they haven't been encouraged to go out and play in the dirt, play cowboys and indians with popguns and later, discouraged from wielding and shooting their weapons of choice.

There are some Christian writers who insist that men possess a divine right to dominate their relationships, especially with women and their families and institutions -- a domination that others like me who recognize as oppression and tyranny.

And there are Christian writers who encourage this mythical arc of grievance, these narratives of self-pity, and identify the "enemy" of masculinity as the liberal secular order of egalitarianism -- an order that displaces the male with "others." And since the male-dominant order is said to be divinely-established, the liberal secular order should be resisted and replaced.

Such writings, which may be putatively "Christian" and are merchandised by Christian publishers and websites, are not actually Christian.

Christian masculinity is not defined by oppression and domination -- even in its own New Testament setting. If headship is discussed, it is immediately re-defined and radicalized as complete self-sacrifice and denial of ego. At no moment is the Christian male ever permitted to demand his own position of power or his own "rights."

Simply put: there is no such thing as "Christian male libertarianism."

The masculinity that is thrown around in discussions of "complementarianism" and "headship" is most often a complete distortion of the simplest meaning of discipleship, of following Jesus Christ and bearing His Cross.

In this culture of grievance and extremism and the weekly tragedy of mass shootings, in which young adult males fester and languish in Discord and 4Chan sites, where they gather into fascist cults and willingly commune with cults of nihilistic violence,

We clergy need to step up to our moral responsibility.

We need to tell young adult males that they are replacing the Gospel with a religion of grievance and nihilism.

We need to redefine Christian masculinity in terms of meekness, servanthood, and the kenosis of bearing one's cross.

We need to preach against the cult of domination and violence and extremism as the "new pornography" -- because that is exactly what those themes are.

We need to foster a culture of peace and true righteousness -- a righteousness defined not by the simplistic notions of the culture wars, but a righteousness defined by the Sermon on the Mount.

Why, why have so many of us in the pulpit on Sunday mornings spent so much time railing against liberalism and secularism, CRT and BLM, and not nearly enough time teaching about the Beatitudes?

I think we preachers, all of us, are guilty of allowing a corrupt definition of righteousness to fester and rise, a definition that contradicts the Gospel and is mostly a libertarian promotion of self -- self-identity, self-pity, self-costuming, self-arming, self-defending, self-vengeance-taking.

Righteousness (and its counterfeits)

Righteousness.

Now there's a term that conjures up, all too often, images of judgementalism and legalism. A litany of "Thou shalt not's." The infamous "Church Lady" on SNL. Ragged apocalyptic echoes of Michael York acting out John the Baptist in the desert.

These are, it can be argued, very "Old Testament" images of righteousness, and they don't even do the Old Testament justice.

Not only is the term "righteousness" misinterpreted, so is the Old Testament in general. For Christians, the event of the Incarnation changed everything. The LXX and the Masoretic text, from that moment onward, were to be interpreted Christologically. "Enemies" in the Psalms could no longer be interpreted as human, but only as the spiritual oppression of the demonic (without any attempt at ontological definition). Genesis could no longer be confined to the human materialistic conventions of science and history. There could no longer be a "literal" interpretation of the genocidal accounts in the Pentateuch, Judges (especially), and I & II Samuel, I & II Kings, I & II Chronicles.

Everything had to be subjected to a deeper, higher, more spiritual interpretation, only in terms of the Godman, Jesus Christ, the Ascended Lord.

And this Lordship is of a radically different governance. It is not the power of coercion and death-wielding. And it is the revelation of what "Judge" (i.e., "shaphat") really means -- not how it was almost always reduced to in history, like Gideon and Ehud, and especially its worst reduction of all, the "king."

"Judge" means "establisher of righteousness" and "restorer of justice." The meaning of that term is a far, far larger concept than the weak Western courtroom image of a black-robed figure, wielding a gavel, handing down impartial (hopefully) decisions of guilt or innocence.

The righteousness of the Old Testament is also a concept that is far larger than the cartoonish images that we associate with legalism and fundamentalism (of all religious stripes).

Righteousness, of course, is climactically defined by the Lord in the Sermon on the Mount. But it should have come as no surprise as it grew in meaning, depth, and scope through the ages of the Old Testament, as can be seen here.

The righteousness proclaimed by the Prophets is a far more humanistic theme than what is usually depicted. And it is only an assumption (and I think a very wrong one) that we depict John the Baptist as a half-crazed wailer in the desert, shrieking like an amalgam of Savanorola and a hellfire-and-brimstone camp meeting preacher.

Are we that sure that the Forerunner, the Friend of the Bridegroom is not meek as the One Who said “Blessed are the meek”?

And here is the exact point at which we clergy have not stepped up to our moral responsibility.

We have preached a "righteousness" that is too individualistic, too subjective, too confined to what many call the "mystical."

We have modeled a "righteousness" that is too much on display as an outward, costumed antagonism against "society," at the expense of the winsome persuasion, in love and servanthood, as "salt and light" in the neighborhood of our world.

We have reveled in dark utterances like "death to the world," wrongly-interpreted apocalyptic texts and feasted on schadenfreude-laden eschatologies.

How is it possible that out of the same mouth can proceed “Death to the world” on one side, and “Beauty will save the world” on the other? Not to mention “For God so loved the world.”

We have told the world that since it's going to hell, and that we are the ark of salvation, then it doesn't matter how high we perched the door of the ark and how steep we've made the ramp up to it. We compass sea and land to make one convert, and when he is made, we've made him twofold more the child of hell than ourselves.

What is the righteousness that the prophets (and their successors, the Apostles, and the Fathers and Mothers of the Church) prophesied upon and called society toward?

The standard of judgment is and always has been the Personality of the Holy Trinity itself.

And that Personality is full kenotic love, of self-donation without reserve. A servanthood, feet-washing love.

And the Creator desires that this Personality be reflected, mirror-like, in Creation and especially in His Image.

So real, true Righteousness must be the objective of our preaching. Righteousness is the peace that passes understanding. Righteousness is mercy and forgiveness. Righteousness is the establishment and restoration of justice. Righteousness is the stewardship -- not consumption -- of the Six Days of Creation, the land and sea and the air and everything that is situated therein.

Righteousness rejects violence. It will never bless guns or tanks or submarines. It rejects the sword -- and everything that this sign of death symbolizes.

Righteousness is a spirituality that knows no clear divide between the individual and the social. Righteousness rejects any materialistic economy.

Righteousness admits only the hierarchy of servanthood, the first being last, just as it is so in the celestial hierarchy. There can be no Christian imposition or coercion from above.

Righteousness is hopeful of human endeavor and work in the world.

We are horribly wrong in condemning any progress in civilization as hopeless or meaningless. We have no God-given warrant for saying that peace is hopeless until the Second Coming: Jesus is present with us, and He said "Blessed are the peacemakers" for the here and now. We default on the Great Commission when we do not try and hope for peace at every level -- in our personal relations, in our neighborhoods, in the nation and the world.

"Seek ye first the Kingdom of God and its righteousness" is an imperative that extends far beyond and above the stereotypes of the culture wars.

Expedient politics can never be the object of true righteousness (even under the rubric of “the common good”). True righteousness can never participate in “single-issue” or extremist politics: we teachers and preachers and authorities will have to answer for each and every earnest soul who has been earnestly wrong, and marched down the evil road to violence.

Because of what we've said. Or left unsaid.

But it is indeed and always has been the "substance of things hoped for, the proof of things not seen."

It is indeed the city that we long for, the New Jerusalem descending.

It's high time we all preach that way.

notes on righteousness in the Old Testament

Righteousness in the Old Testament

“Generally, the righteous man in Israel was the man who preserved the peace and wholeness of the community, because it was he who fulfilled the demands of communal living. Like Job, he was a blessing to his contemporaries, and thus צדק is sometimes correlated with “mercy” (Hosea 2.19). He cared for the poor, the fatherless, the widow (Job 29.12-15; 31.16-19; cf Deuteronomy 24.13; Proverbs 29.7), even defending their cause in the law court (Job 29.16; 31.21; cf Proverbs 31.9). He gave liberally (Psalm 37.21, 25-26; Proverbs 21.26), providing also for the wayfarer and guest (Job 31.31-32), counting righteousness better than any wealth (Job 31.24-25; Psalm 37.16; Proverbs 16.8). He was a good steward of his land (Job 31.38-40) and work animals (Proverbs 12.10), and his servants were treated humanely (Job 31.13). He lived at peace with his neighbors (Job 31.1-12), wishing them only good (Job 31.29-30; cf 29.24). When he was in authority, his people rejoiced (Proverbs 29.2), and he exalted the nation (Proverbs 14.34). He was a joy to his family (Proverbs 23.24), his path was like the dawn (Proverbs 4.18), and his very memory itself was a blessing (Proverbs 10.7). When it went well with him, the whole city rejoiced over his welfare (Proverbs 11.10). He was an immovable factor for good (Proverbs 10.25, 30; 12.3, 12), who knew blessing (Proverbs 10.6; Isaiah 3.10) and long life (Psalm 92.12; Proverbs 10.16; 11.19; 12.28), posterity (Psalm 37.37-38) and prosperity (Proverbs 13.21, 22, 25; 15.6), the fulfillment of his desires (Proverbs 10.24, 28; 11.23), and deliverance from trouble (Proverbs 11.8; 12.21; 24.16). He lived in peace and prosperity, because he upheld the peace and prosperity -- in short, the physical and psychical wholeness -- of his community by fulfilling the demands of the communal and covenant relationship (cf Psalm 15.2-5; Isaiah 33.15). For this reason צדק sometimes stands parallel with שלם (Isaiah 48.18; 60.17; cf Psalms 72.3, 7; 85.10). For this reason it can be translated “prosperity” (Proverbs 8.18). And for this reason, too, its meaning can be “truth” (Psalm 52.3; cf Proverbs 12.17), for right speech upholds the covenant relationships existing within a community (Psalm 15.2-4; Proverbs 8.8; 10.11, 20, 31; Isaiah 59.4; cf 45.19); it is righteousness.”

-- E R Achtemeier, “Righteousness in the OT,” in Interpreter’s Dictionary of the Bible (Nashville TN: Abingdon Press, 1962), p 81

“... the demands of communal relationship are determinative. That which is right in a legal sense is that which fulfills the demands of the community relationship, and the sole function of the judge is to maintain the community, to restore right to those from whom it has been taken (2 Samuel 15.4; Psalm 82.3). Thus righteousness as a forensic concept is not an impartial decision between two parties, based on a legal norm, such as is known in Western law, but protecting, restoring, helping righteousness, which helps those who have had their right taken from them in the communal relationship to regain it. Righteousness is the fulfillment of the communal demands, and righteous judgements are those which restore community (Exodus 23.7-8; Deuteronomy 1.16; 16.18, 20; Psalm 82.3; Proverbs 17.15, 26; 18.5; 24.24). Thus the constant plea of the prophets is for righteousness in the gate, for a restoration of the foundations of the communal life (Isaiah 5.23; 29.21; 59.4, 14; Jeremiah 22.3, 15; Amos 5.12; Habakkuk 1.4; cf Psalm 72.2; Proverbs 31.9). In such contexts there is no difference between ethical and legal standards. They are one, both equivalent to the demands of community. 

Not only was it the function of the judge to uphold the community in Israel, however. This was one of the main duties of the king. He, too, was responsible for protecting and restoring the right (cf Hosea 13.10). This was his covenant duty, to preserve righteousness, and in so doing, he himself was righteous (2 Samuel 8.15=1 Chronicles 18.14; 1 Kings 10.9;=2 Chronicles 9.8; Psalm 45.6-7; Proverbs 16.12; cf 2 Samuel 23.3-4; Isaiah 16.5). Thus in Psalm 72 we have a picture of the peace and prosperity wrought by a king who judges righteously, and Jeremiah’s appeal to the despotic Jehoiakim is for justice and righteousness (Jeremiah 22.3, 15). Further, when the Messiah comes, his kingdom will prosper through righteous judgments (Isaiah 9.7; 11.3b-5; Jeremiah 23.5-6; 33.14-16; cf Isaiah 16.5)”

-- E R Achtemeier, “Righteousness in the OT,” in Interpreter’s Dictionary of the Bible (Nashville TN: Abingdon Press, 1962), p 81

the warrior Jesus

This is a rare icon. It is a fresco in the Monastery of the Ascension of Christ in Kosovo.

It is being used as a defense of weapons, carrying guns, and aggression in general. Often, when points like these are made, several passages from the Old Testament about Israel's wars are deployed, also for the same purpose of justifying "righteous violence," and in the defense of the "right to bear arms" within the American gun debate.

Such use of the above icon is really abuse. The sword in the hand of Christ is a reference to Matthew 10.34: "Do not think that I have come to bring peace on earth; I have not come to bring peace, but a sword."

This sword refers to the mission of the Son of God to cut away, or to remove, sin and death from humanity and the rest of Creation. It is the same sword that is depicted in the Apostle John's Apocalypse: "from His mouth issued a sharp two-edged sword" (Revelation 1.16). And this: "From his mouth issues a sharp sword with which to smite the nations, and he will rule them with a rod of iron; he will tread the wine press of the fury of the wrath of God the Almighty" (Revelation 19.15).

This is apocalyptic language, and it is meant to be taken symbolically. The attempt to wrest a "literal" meaning from these images ends up completely distorting Holy Scripture.

The symbolic meaning of the sword in Christ's hand is the removal of the corruption that stems from the Fall of humanity.

It has nothing to do with military force, or really any force at all.

The Kingdom of God expands and arrives not by coercion, but by persuasion. That has always been true. It will always continue to be true.

It is a curious thing that many believe otherwise. Many, if not most, think that at the Parousia, the Second Coming of the Lord, the character of Christ and His Kingdom will be completely different. When He appears in glory, it is assumed that the force of His unavoidable presence will drive everyone to their knees. 

And that is how the great conclusion of St Paul's stirring Christological hymn is understood:

"... that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father" (Philippians 2.10-11).

The bowing of every knee and the confession of every tongue is assumed to happen, on one hand voluntarily for those who already believe, and on the other hand involuntarily for those who do not.

But the presumption of involuntary coercion at this point is a major inconsistency and a profound departure from the Christology of the Gospels. 

“Jesus called them to him and said, “You know that the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their great men exercise authority over them. It shall not be so among you; but whoever would be great among you must be your servant, and whoever would be first among you must be your slave; even as the Son of man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many” (Matthew 20.25-28).

There is no basis for the supposition that Jesus will be any different upon His Return from His Gospel ministry, when the Prophet Isaiah said of Him that "He will not break a bruised reed or quench a smoldering wick" (Isaiah 42.3, quoted in Matthew 12.20). 

And this: "Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me; for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls" (Matthew 11.29).

Jesus does not impose the Good Will of the Father upon any human or any creature. God is omnipotent, but He is not coercive. The Returning Christ will not differ from the Feetwashing Christ -- it is an abject error in theology and Bible reading to suggest otherwise.

But that error is readily embraced and applied at many levels. The violent "warrior Jesus" is used to justify violence in Christian politics and warfare. It is deployed in many ideologies that purport to be Christian in superficial speech and behaviors, from neo-integralism to theocratic authoritarianism to even in Orthodoxy, with a small but very loud fanbase pushing monarchism and white Christian nationalism.

I wonder what came first. Was it the misinterpretation of Jesus' sword that gave rise to these extremist ideologies? Or is it the other way around -- that the ideologies that offer power and cultic identity came first, and manufactured such virulent unorthodox readings of the Gospel? 

Eschatology is a story of infinitely deepening and broadening divine beauty, and of our participation in that Kingdom, whose New Jerusalem is descending even now.

It is also the story of divine invitation and human free participation.

But it is still the story, as it always was, of the Kingdom of the Christ Who "is the same yesterday and today and for ever" (Hebrews 13.8).

The sword yielded by Jesus in the icon above is the "the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God" (Ephesians 6.17).

That this icon is misused as warrant for Christians to take up arms or engage in the culture wars, or the violence of partisan extremism is indeed scandalous and heterodox at best, if not something far worse.

But more tragically, such abject misinterpretation obstructs the misinterpreter from the true power of the real sword, and offers the naive crusaders only the hard cold realities of "for all they that take the sword shall perish with the sword" (Matthew 26.52). 

 

 

the beginning of prayer on Spirit Day

It's really too bad that the phrase "thoughts and prayers" has become a cliche, and has produced the general notion that prayer is a default "last resort," that it is weak or even meaningless.

It is true that prayer is not an instrumental thing, where some sort of higher power can be manipulated into accomplishing something the pray-er demands. That sort of instrumentality is more like magic than prayer.

Just as it is helpful to understand "person" not first from human experience, but from the Trinity (where Personhood is first established), so also is Prayer understood first within the Divine World of the "Tri-unity" of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

The best and really only word that we can use to describe the relationship between the Son and the Spirit on one hand, and the Father on the other, is exactly that word: Prayer. The Son prays to the Father, as is seen repeatedly in the Gospels, and is seen most recently in the ten days between the Ascension and Pentecost. The Spirit prays to the Father and searches out the infinite depths of the Father, groaning with words beyond the comprehension of any creature in supplication for Creation.

So it can be said -- indeed, must be said -- that "all good gifts" which comprise Creation (and Creation is only this, as evil is only privation of the good) are indeed the answer of the Father to the supplication of Son and Spirit.

Prayer in the Trinity is the complete -- with nothing left in reserve -- outpouring of Self to the Other to the point where there is a complete, indwelling of the Son and Spirit in the Father and each other.

And part of this outpouring is supplication, the presentation of all concern and desire for healing and the good.

But involving all of this and more than this, is the full participation in the Personhood of the Other, in the consubstantiality of Love that is the essence of divinity.

That is Prayer in divinity, in the Trinity.

And insofar as we humans participate in that very coinherence, we pray. We offer -- as an offering -- everything we are, everything we worry about, everything we desire that is good no matter how small or how impossible seeming.

We follow the more familiar example of the Virgin Mary, who interceded for her own family (likely her own sister) who ran out of wine in Cana. That is the model for "intercession" -- the essentially Christian act of praying for need in history.

And when we supplicate, we call upon the Father in the Name of His Son to realize the Son's Presence and Glory through the action of the Spirit -- which is precisely what happens in the Divine World.

In his majestic book "The Comforter" (truly the finest volume on pneumatology in the modern age), Fr Sergii Bulgakov gives wonderful, poignant advice on how we should pray in the modern age -- which is full of promise and peril, light and darkness, moments of goodness but tinged with seasons of tragedy.

We all know (or should know) that we are called to pray the Jesus Prayer with every breath we take (that is the goal):

"Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me a sinner."

Sometimes this prayer is shortened. Sometimes, simply to the extent of just praying the Name "Jesus," which is exactly what I think every child knows how to do even before they learn how to speak.

But on this day after Holy Pentecost, which we call "Spirit Day," it is important to remember that there is another prayer that should accompany every breath at the beating of our hearts.

And that is the Holy Spirit Prayer:

"O Heavenly King the Comforter, O Spirit of Truth, Who are everywhere present and fill all things. Treasurer of blessings and Giver of life, come and dwell within us, and cleanse us of every blemish, and save our souls, O Blessed One."

I pray for everyone and everything and anything. I do not worry if it is proper or theologically correct. I'm quite sure that God Who is infinitely wise, Whose Will is only a Good Will, is able to edit my prayers.

I never worry about the cynical phrase "Be careful what you pray for." God only blesses, never curses.

All good things are only answers to prayer.

Let us pray. Love -- the greatest work -- proceeds only from prayer, from Divinity to Humanity through the Godmanhood of Jesus and His Body.

Pray, because "with God all things are possible." 

another open letter to clergy

Dear fellow clergy:

I am writing this letter on the eve of the Orthodox celebration of Holy Pentecost. We celebrate and remember and experience the Personal Descent of the Holy Spirit, Who has come to make our hearts "streams of living water," to make us shine with the "light of life," as Jesus has come into the world of darkness as the Light.

We are accustomed to diagnosing the darkness. We are well-practiced in proclaiming the usual denunciations of transgressions like abortion, sexual sin, violence (at least, the violence of "others" who don't look or sound like us), and challenges to our own influence and power.

But the real darkness has always extended far beyond this diagnosis. And now, in these last few years, the superficiality of our "hot-button" denunciations has become painfully obvious.

While we march confidently in the National Right to Life March against abortion of unborn children, we are silent about the abortion of fourth-graders in Uvalde and grocery shoppers in Buffalo. 

While we record podcasts on Ancient Faith against Critical Race Theory and against classroom discussions about non-traditional families, we record nothing about voter suppression and white nationalism.

Brothers, if we're going to be prophetic, then let us be faithful to the complete prophetic ethic of Scripture and Tradition. If we're going to busy ourselves with cultural denunciations, then let us be brave enough to denounce also the sins of social injustice, wealth protection and capital accumulation, environmental degradation, and masculine domination. 

Shame on us for ever calling these concerns "liberal."

But there is a burgeoning darkness today. You and I stand on the cusp of a bleak generation.

We've been blessed in America to live in a democratic republic, a liberal democracy that insures the liberty of religion and individual rights.

But now, America is gripped in the clenched fist of rising extremism and authoritarianism. 

It is not the ridiculous notion of "soft totalitarianism," a notion that is oxymoronic at best and is more likely to be slavishly devoted to the likes of Orbán and Putin. 

Today, we face a monstrous wave of fascism outright -- a seething mass of intolerance, extremism, cultic and conspiratorial myth-driven mob identification. It cloaks itself in superficial religiosity that has nothing to do with the Gospel and everything to do with the worst moments of our long history in the world.

I ask you, brothers, to consider something. Not to join the partisan opposition. But simply this:

Let us preach the Beatitudes. Let us be characterized by the care and character of the Mother of God, who said "Behold the handmaiden of the Lord, be it unto me according to your word."

Let us rebut and refute the ideologies that beset our communities -- the irrational conspiracies of stolen elections and pedophile cults; the libertarianism of radical weaponization; white nationalism and fundamentalism;  authoritarianism and racism; chiliasm and "non-monastic monasticisms"

Let us at least turn off the oxygen to the fires of masculine domination. And let us, even, step boldly into the moral necessity of putting down QAnon cult theories by demanding that such accusations must be confirmed by "two or three witnesses" (i.e., the witness of rationality, in a spirit of careful and peaceful discernment).

Let us preach the Apostolic Gospel of the feetwashing Jesus, the kenotic power of the Ascended Lord.

Let us not be goats but sheep who recognize the Theanthropos in every face.

Let us work for the night is coming -- and come it most certainly will if we don't do our job.

Fr Jonathan Tobias

 

the reign of the ascended lord

The Promise of His Presence

At the end of the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus said this to the eleven disciples:

“All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, even unto the close of the age” (Matthew 28.18-20).

The Gospel of Luke ends in a seemingly different way:

“And behold, I send the promise of my Father upon you; but stay in the city, until you are clothed with power from on high.” Then He led them out as far as Bethany, and lifting up his hands, He blessed them. While He blessed them, He parted from them, and was carried up into heaven. And they worshiped Him, and they returned to Jerusalem with great joy, and were continually in the temple blessing God (Luke 24.49-53).

In Matthew, the Lord promises that He will never leave His disciples. In Luke, He “parted from them and was carried up into heaven.”

Is this a contradiction? Certainly not, but it is what Orthodox theologians call an “antinomy” — i.e., something that only seems to be contradictory from our limited point of view as creatures, but is not in God’s infinite and transcendent Love.

The principal Orthodox hymns of the Feast of the Ascension resolves this apparent contradiction::

“You ascended in glory, O Christ our God; You delighted the Disciples with the promise of the Holy Spirit. Through this blessing they were assured that You are the Son of God, the Redeemer of the world” (Ascension Tropar).

“When You fulfilled the plan of salvation for us and united all things on earth to those in heaven, O Christ our God You ascended in glory, never leaving us, but remaining ever present. For You proclaimed to those who love You: ‘I am with you and no one else has power over you’” (Ascension Kondak).

It is the “promise of the Holy Spirit” that solves this apparent contradiction. The Holy Spirit makes the presence of Christ even greater, without limit, and fulfills Christ’s promise to never leave. It is by the Spirit that fulfills the wonderful, powerful promise in this most glorious Kondak: “I am with you and no one else has power over you.”

Christ's Request After Ascension

Christ is now at the right hand of God the Father: “The Lord said unto my Lord: sit at My right hand until I make Thine enemies Thy footstool” (Psalm 109.1 LXX). The Apostle Peter quoted this verse in the very first Christian sermon that was preached on Pentecost (Acts 2.34-35). He explained what had just happened at 9 am that very morning: “Being therefore exalted at the right hand of God, and having received from the Father the promise of the Holy Spirit, He has poured out this which you see and hear” (Acts 2.33).

At the Ascension, Jesus presented His redeemed humanity to the Father: “Then through the greater and more perfect tent (not made with hands, that is, not of the creation) He entered once for all into the Holy Place, taking not the blood of goats and calves but HIs own blood … Who through the eternal Spirit offered Himself, without blemish to God” (Hebrews 9.11-12, 14).

In the mysterious and silent ten days between the Ascension and Pentecost, this was the request that the Son made to the Father for the sending of the Spirit. “And I will pray the Father, and He shall give you another Comforter, that He may abide with you for ever” (John 14.16). “It is to your advantage that I go away, for if I do not go away, the Comforter will not come to you; but if I go, I will send him to you” (John 16.7).

Christ Reigns Through the Holy Spirit

It is by the presence of the Holy Spirit that Christ is with us, and that He reigns.

The reign, the kingship, of the Risen Lord Jesus Christ is the present reality.

The present reign of Jesus Christ, Who is sitting at the right hand of God the Father, is a central theme in the preaching of the Apostles in the Book of Acts. In fact, the present reign of Christ is the central theme and theology of Acts.

Here are the Apostle Peter’s words in the second Christian sermon, which he proclaimed immediately after he and the Apostle John healed a man lame from birth near the Temple gate that was called “Beautiful”:

“Repent ye therefore, and be converted, that your sins may be blotted out, when the times of refreshing shall come from the presence of the Lord. And He shall send Jesus Christ, which before was preached unto you: Whom heaven must receive until the times of restitution of all things, which God hath spoken by the mouth of all his holy prophets since the world began” (Acts 3.19-21).

Jesus is Personally (i.e., “hypostatically”) in heaven at the right hand of God the Father “until the times of restitution” — this refers to the Parousia, the Second Coming of the Lord, when finally God “will be all in all.”

The Subjection of the Enemies

The Apostle Paul writes of this present reign, of what the Lord is doing at the right hand of God the Father until that moment at the end:

“Then comes the end, when He [Christ] delivers the kingdom to God the Father after destroying every rule and every authority and power. For He must reign until He has put all His enemies under His feet. The last enemy to be destroyed is death. ‘For God has put all things in subjection under His feet’” (1 Corinthians 15.24-27).

The present reign of the Ascended Lord is the constant process of Jesus Christ, the Son of God seated at the right hand of God the Father,“putting all His enemies under His feet.” It is the ongoing process of “All things being put in subjection under Him.”

The Apostle Peter said in his sermon at the Beautiful Gate that the prophets in the Old Testament had spoken of this present reign.

The most important of these prophecies is by King David: “The Lord said to my Lord: sit at My right hand until I make Thine enemies Thy footstool” (Psalm 109.1 LXX).

It is extremely significant that Jesus Himself quoted this very verse in response to the Pharisees, who were challenging His theology and His authority: “If the Messiah is the son of David, then why does David call his son the Lord?” (Matthew 22.45).

There is a most important clue here as to the character and meaning of Jesus’ “politics,” the character and meaning of His power — Jesus is identifying His own divinity and authority in the context of Love! He had just spoken of the two greatest commandments — to “love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and … you shall love your neighbor as yourself” (Matthew 22.37, 39).

The only answer to this riddle, of course, was that Jesus was already eternally existing as the Son of God. But the even higher truth, that David only saw glimmers of, was that after the Gospel events of the Incarnation — including His Crucifixion, Resurrection, and Ascension — was that He would be reigning at the Divine Right Hand until all His enemies would be put into subjection under His rule.

The Apostle John writes poetically and apocalyptically of this rule:

“He Who conquers and Who keeps My works until the end, I will give Him power over the nations, and He shall rule them with a rod of iron” (Revelation 2.26-27).

The Ways of Jesus’ Reign

How should this Reign be understood? What character is it?

I should tell you that there are more than a few these days who take “Reign” in entirely worldly terms. For them, they take what they know of the world’s power, violence, and domination, and they extrapolate those sinful patterns onto the Lord Himself.

As a particularly grotesque example, there is a so-called “Rod of Iron Ministry” that is growing by leaps and bounds in Pennsylvania, Texas, and Tennessee. Led by the son of the infamous Sun Myung Moon, this cult states explicitly that the present reign of Christ is a reign of violence and physical warfare.

One of the leaders recently said “We believe that the kingdom of heaven is a kingdom of armed citizens, so we believe that everyone in the kingdom should be armed.” The very weapons that were used in mass shootings in Uvalde TX, Buffalo NY, and Tulsa OK are carried in weddings and brandished in “church” services in this cult (which has recently welcomed as keynote speaker a candidate for governor of Pennsylvania).

I’m not exaggerating or being unreasonable. This cult is only one example of a rising tide in American culture — a tide of violence, racism, domination, and authoritarian power.

It is a “heterodox” and heretical falling away from Biblical Christianity that has forgotten all about the Jesus Who washed the feet of His disciples, Who called Himself gentle and forbearing, Who called His followers to meekness and peacemaking, self-denial and Cross-bearing.

The Apostle Matthew makes this clear in his Gospel:

“Jesus called them to him and said, “You know that the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their great men exercise authority over them. It shall not be so among you; but whoever would be great among you must be your servant, and whoever would be first among you must be your slave; even as the Son of man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many” (Matthew 20.25-28).

Popular Misinterpretations

Nothing changed when Jesus ascended into heaven. The “self-pouring-out” and servanthood character of Love continues and will always be so, even after the Parousia, Jesus’ Second Coming. For this is the “personality” of the Body of Christ that can only be like the Head of the Body, Jesus Christ Himself. This is always and only the very order of the New Jerusalem. This is the civic life of heaven — “My life for yours.”

This is a radically different “political theory,” so much upside-down from the realpolitik of the “wars and rumors of wars” of the world.

And this is most important — especially in a time when the Name of Jesus is being abused by so many who want to assume violent power, domination, and oppression as “Christians”:

There will never be a time — at present or in the future — when Christ and His Body will wage violence and domination. Christ’s power will never — forever — be characterized by violence and extermination.

This goes against the too-popular idea that most have about the End Times, when the Lord comes back. They like to imagine that when He comes back, He will be completely different from the humility and meekness of His First Coming. This time, they say, He will come back to take revenge. And He will satisfy the demands for vengeance of all His followers who had been disadvantaged or put down by the world.

This demand for vengeance is not only unbecoming and immature. It is only contrary to the self-denying, servanthood character of Christ’s Reign. Such an expectation of Jesus (that we hear from the likes of Hal Lindsay and the ridiculous Left Behind series by Timothy LaHaye and Kirk Cameron), when He comes back, “to pay back the sinners just what they deserve,” is exactly the same as what many of the Jews wanted from the Messiah in Jesus’ First Coming.

Protestant pre-millennialists are fond of quoting this passage from the Apostle John’s Apocalypse:

“Then I saw heaven opened, and behold, a white horse! He who sat upon it is called Faithful and True, and in righteousness he judges and makes war. His eyes are like a flame of fire, and on his head are many diadems; and he has a name inscribed which no one knows but himself. He is clad in a robe dipped in[a] blood, and the name by which he is called is The Word of God. And the armies of heaven, arrayed in fine linen, white and pure, followed him on white horses. From his mouth issues a sharp sword with which to smite the nations, and he will rule them with a rod of iron; he will tread the wine press of the fury of the wrath of God the Almighty. On his robe and on his thigh he has a name inscribed, King of kings and Lord of lords” (Revelation 19.11-17).

This particular passage is one of the chief reasons why Revelations is not read in the services of the Orthodox Church. It is so easy and common to be grossly misinterpreted. On the face of it, it looks militaristic, violent, and triumphalist.

But Revelation was written by the Apostle John as a source of encouragement to his fellow persecuted Christians. It was deliberately written in apocalyptic language, and thus it is certainly not to be taken literally — i.e., in a simplistic, superficial, “plain reading of the text.” This terrible Bible Study mistake is precisely where so many protestant pre-millennialists go so wrong in their End Times prophecy teachings.

Jesus Conquers Only by Love

Since the Spirit conducts the Presence of the Reigning Christ, then it is up to us to voluntarily participate -- in synergy -- with the Spirit's indwelling. Our work is not sufficient, but it is certainly necessary, for the Presence of Christ to be actualized in our own life.

This is the "talent" that the Lord gives us in our lifetime. This is the work by which we shall be judged. 

Suffice to say that our own self-aggrandizement in domination, wealth, and power, our own penchant for violence, our own extremist acts, are all opposed to the presence of the Holy Spirit. We thus resist our own theosis. We participate -- in the satanic egoism of violence and domination -- in the spirit of antichrist.

The true "politics of Jesus" admits no such egoistic spirit. His realpolitik is the politics of feetwashing -- as it was, is now, and ever shall be.

In the above passage from Revelation, the Returning Jesus is described as having a “sharp sword issuing from His mouth with which to smite the nations” (19.15). It should be obvious that this is figurative language, as a literal reading is ludicrous.

The “sword” is the overwhelmingly persuasive Word of the Lord. Now matter how dark the world, no matter how sinful the sinner, Jesus’ persuasive Gospel will, at the end, utterly overcome all selfish argument, the original sin of satanism.

The Godmanhood of Jesus, out of Trinitarian Love, is so beautiful, so good and true, that every creature will, by the end, freely bow and freely confess that Jesus Christ is Lord.

That, and nothing less, is the “sword of the Lord.” That is the light of the world that is the “flame of His eyes.” That is His crucified Love, which is why He is wearing “a robe dipped in blood.” That is His outpouring Grace and Victory, which is why He wears the diadem.

That is why He is called Faithful and True.

Satan and all the powers and authorities of the fallen world and of the Antichrist can only be dislodged by kenosis, by the Christological pouring out of self by self-denial and the servanthood of love (Philippians 2.5-11).

So we pray. So we work and witness. So we love.

In the Mean Time

So until that Day, the Last Day, we have faith. This is exactly, in the context of the Loving Servant, Jesus the Divine and Feetwashing Friend, how we should understand His curious words “Truly, I say to you, whoever says to this mountain, ‘Be taken up and cast into the sea,’ and does not doubt in his heart, but believes that what he says will come to pass, it will be done for him” (Mark 11.23).

The “mountain” Jesus is referring to is much bigger, much harder than a physical and literal mountain. It is much bigger than personal obstacles (which is the usual interpretation of this verse).

The “mountain” here is nothing less than the very powers and principalities that are being made into the footstool of Jesus.

These “mountains” — no matter how monstrous and depressing — are always moved by the conquering power of Love Divine.

I wish we would pay more attention to the New Testament than to political speech on TV and rallies — power that counts on violence, hatred, anger, and extremism. The Apostle Paul knows the true character of the greatest power, which is Divine, the conquering ways of Love:

“For though we live in the world we are not carrying on a worldly war, for the weapons of our warfare are not worldly but have divine power to destroy strongholds. We destroy arguments and every proud obstacle to the knowledge of God, and take every thought captive to obey Christ” (2 Corinthians 10.3-5).

We Christians — who recognize Jesus in our neighbor’s face and act like Him — live in the world and love the world (because “God so loved the world”), we witness to the world as Salt and Light as the world is now, not as we want the world to be. We do not run away from the world, as is the fashion of some popular Christian and even Orthodox writers today. We do not engage in extremist partisan politics to demand that people become more familiar, more agreeable to our political tastes. We do not clamor for powerful Strong Men who will make us feel safer.

Jesus’ Present Reign as the Ascended Lord, seated at the right hand of God the Father, is a Reign of meek and humble love. He washes our feet now as He once washed His disciples’ feet in the Upper Room, and He always will.

He does so because the Trinity is just that way — each Person giving away Self completely to the Others.

And we are called to do the same.

And the world will know that we are Christians only by our love.

We have no King but Jesus. He alone is our King of Kings and Lord of Lords.

— Fr Jonathan Tobias, Ascension 2022

memory and the rose

Though it was a little on the warm side, the biennial Easels in the Gardens tour  in Edenton fulfilled high expectations. Where else is there so exquisite a blend of art on canvas and porcelain, get-up-and-dance music on Broad, and verdant, blossoming gardens in splendor?

Where else can you hear while wandering in a Victorian garden, like I heard at Beverly Hall, echoes of “When the Roll is Called Up Yonder?” It was Gabriel’s Men singing out of the long corridors of singspirations and brush arbor meetings, Christian Endeavor on Sunday nights.

I knew right then that time was tuned this day to a different key.

At one moment, I’m listening to my artist friend Patrick, in his and Lorrie’s courtyard, list about twenty specific hues of what I would have called, like a Philistine, a “pretty orange hibiscus,” the subject of his current canvas. Only an artist could narrate a mystical journey from the persimmon fringe of the petals down toward the glowing amber heart.

An artist, or a gardener, does not merely “know about” a flower. For any poet, knowing a flower is a matter of communion. Memory is never mere information: it is always a present relationship in the here and now, no matter how far it seems removed in the past.

In another moment, a few blocks away, Marsha and I are walking with Craig, a town councilman, down the pea pebble path of the garden at Coffield House. More hibiscus, even bougainvillea.

“Sure is different now.” His speech had turned wistful. Memory had flown back to September 6, 2003, on a fateful Thursday afternoon. Two weeks without power or water. Pecans and oaks torn down by the hurricane gales. So much damage, so much destruction to homes, historic buildings, especially at the historic Kadesh AME Church, which had been front and center of the African-American community hereabouts. 

Neighbors banded together. The whine and roar of chainsaws and heavy machinery filled the air, along with the charcoal fires of hotdogs and hamburgers smoking on the street. A lot of “ties that bind” were forged as the gardens healed, homes and buildings repaired, and trees replanted.

“Leaders lead, they do not drive,” I suggested, because that is exactly how the aftermath of Hurricane Isabel sounded like to me, a time-traveler bystander, who was just listening in on what Hilaire Belloc once described as a “climacteric moment,” when spiritual realities are unveiled and brought out into the open, if only for a fleeting glimpse.

Memories are like ghosts. It takes but a magnolia leaf, the wisp of jasmine, the shoulders of an ancient skyscraping oak, the scent of a field of roses, to take you back to a time that does not diminish but grows in vision and aroma as gardens of the past waft and wave under the breath of the Spirit hovering over the face of the waters before time ever began.

“I woke up this morning feelin' fine. I woke up with Heaven on my mind.” Gabriel’s Men again, this time in the finely wrought bower of Bruce and Marilyn’s Chapell House. It was stepping in the light, stepping into the living green everlasting: it was Eden again.

My friend David died on Saturday, the second day of Easels, in the fourth watch of the night in upstate New York. He was found in his easy chair, having “shuffled off this mortal coil” sometime in the dead of night, likely of a coronary event. 

So I took him with me, in memoriam, as my better half and I drove off to the Jubilee estate to visit the gardens of Cy and Nancy.

There was something meet and consoling about the magentas, the delicate fuschias, the opals and the array of petals that comprised – if you squinted your eyes just right in the silver sun against the azure sky – a fresh-cut peach, with its pink flesh exterior and crimson depths.

These were the timeless roses. I wondered, in melancholy reverie, just how many angels it’d take to wrap their arms around the titan trunk of the century elm to make it stand for a hundred years. The undulating waves of the finely sculptured boxwoods, framing the archetypal frame of the Jubilee main house, reminded me of the wild romance of Capability Brown at England’s Stowe.

“Hey David.” 

“Hey Jonathan. You might have heard.”

“Yes.”

“I could have announced this on Facebook. Like ‘You won’t believe what happened to me today.’ Just think: I would have gotten a thousand likes.”

“Sheesh, Dave.”

“I know, I know, it would have been in bad taste.”

David and I had styled ourselves as Statler and Waldorf on the Muppet Show, plagued by upstart whippersnappers who execute new programming and what-not and are afflicted with the unfortunate sense that the world had been waiting for just their generation to solve all its problems. When we saw these newly ordained clerics walk by, who were always getting younger and increasingly less responsive to our clever allusions to the Beatles and to Shakespeare, we shook our heads and muttered darkly about the state of education these days.

I took him with me to Jubilee, which is a deeply Old Testament name, chockful of time and redemption. “Things change, David, but the beautiful things remain.”

“Da, brati,” his baritone uttered, “Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose.” The more things change, the more they stay the same. Or, in a more hopeful key, the longer the memory, the more beauty, goodness, and truth, remain and obtain.

Marcel Proust, in “Swann’s Way,” wrote that the ancient Celts believed that the souls of the departed lingered in a stone, a leaf, or a flower, until you passed by and looked deeply into that pool of memory. Then the living soul of your friend would speak then, in a lyric deeper than rational thought, in chthonic sonorities that plumb the depths of the heavenly spheres.

We carry the dead with us into the roses, the fragrance and the petals, the leaves of Eden whispering in the wind, hoping to meet the Risen Gardener.

We carry, these days, so many dead. So many children and the innocent.

So I wandered out into the symmetrical garden of my friends, Russ and Elizabeth at the Skinner-Paxton House, and communed with the roses. As expected, my dad was there, who in his preacherly peregrinations all his life ever cherished the rose, his ever present but ever elusive aspiration, standing at my side.

“This is a most excellent rose garden,” he said with satisfaction. “Look, son.”

On the borderlands of the Sound and sky, that metaxological threshold between the pastel turquoise firmament and the slate and indigo Albemarle, there he was. David, my old friend.

“Hey.”

“Hey, Dave. You’re like, on the horizon.”

“Cool. Yeah, I’m unstoppable now. It’s okay.”

Gardens and paintings, in their constant flirtation with mystic beauty, are perilous realms. They are haunting. There are ghosts indeed. Terrifying, even, but they are sweet and saving.

More than any other place, a garden is a vestibule of earth and sky, a sacred liminal space of memory rooted and blooming into art and memory. At Mary Ann and Jack's garden, I rejoiced to hear Bob Dylan’s “Don’t Think Twice It’s All Right” – utter perfection as we wended our way through the matriarchal primrose, the artichokes and fennel, the roses. And of course, the still and silent copper burnished angels, sculpted, hovering, silent.

Then we fared our way to Deanne and David’s place.

There she was, statuesque in a quiet shaded corner, crowned in May wreath, choired in antiphonal glory by the Madonna Lily. Bowered from the blazing sun, sheltered in timeless coolness, under the veil.

It’s all right, she said. It’s okay. “Mother Mary comes to me speaking words of wisdom. Let it be. And in my hour of darkness she is standing right in front of me. Speaking words of wisdom. Let it be.”

That’s what the flowers said. Memory and the rose.

i am not a liberal

I am not a liberal. 

At least, not in the way that some people think.

Having grown up in the evangelical community, someone who was “liberal” meant that he did not believe that Jesus is God, or that He was born of a virgin by the Holy Spirit, or that He rose from the dead, or that His crucifixion saved humanity from sin, or that the Bible stories of miracles are true, or that Scripture is authoritative and communicates God’s Word.

I believe all these things.

In this sense, when I became Orthodox, I became even “less liberal.” In addition to the above, I also believe things that are even older than the evangelical community. I believe in the necessity of baptism for the remission of sins. I believe that the Eucharist is the bread and wine transmuted into the Body and Blood of Christ. I believe in the continuing presence of the saints, led by the greatest worshiper, pray-er, and worker of all, the Virgin Mary.

But there has been something of a “confusion of categories.” In the aftermath of the mass shooting of 19 children and 2 teachers on Tuesday (May 24th), I was called “liberal.” Why? Because I called for the minimum age for gun purchase to be raised to 21, nationwide. Because I called for universal background checks at every gun purchase – including gun shows and private sales. Because I called for the ban of the sale of military weaponry – including assault rifles – to civilians.

This, I’ve been told, is “liberal,” despite the fact that I have never once called for the repeal of the Second Amendment. Despite the fact that I support the right to civilian handguns for protection and long guns for hunting. Despite the fact that all these reasonable gun safety measures are supported by the majority of Americans.

But in the minds of many (too many), any mention of public gun safety puts me in the same category as those who cannot endorse the tenets of the Nicene Creed.

I shouldn’t be too surprised. I’ve wrestled with this difficulty for some time now. I oppose abortion, but I try to be consistently “pro-life” in my opposition to abortion, extending from before birth to after birth. Thus I support universal healthcare and safety nets of all sorts. I believe that there must be stewardship in the care of the environment and that global warming and climate change are real things. I believe in the necessity of public health policy in addressing pandemics, and that data from mainstream science takes precedence over minority conspiracy theories. I believe in socioeconomic justice (like the Prophets, the Apostles, and the Saints, and the Lord Himself), and that our three centuries of American slavery has deeply affected our past and present and needs to be taken seriously.

And I disbelieve in the “stolen election conspiracy theory.” I disbelieve in the QAnon pedophile conspiracy theory. I disbelieve in racial replacement theory. I disbelieve in male-centered domination and what is known as “complementarianism.”

And for all this, I am called a “liberal.”

I will own up to that label in that I am deeply committed to universal suffrage – i.e., one adult, one vote. I am committed to the freedom of religion and the complete severance of the church from any collusive ties with the state. I think that neo-integralism (and all theocratic theory) is not only anti-American, but that it is deeply anti-Christian. I am committed to the eradication of autocracy and oligarchy and every kind of tyranny and totalitarianism. I despise all racisms. I deeply distrust all nationalisms and ideologies.

No nation-state is elected by God for a special purpose, neither Russia (as in the ridiculous notion of the “Third Rome”), nor America. I’m thankful for my country indeed, but I do not put my religious belief in it.

And I think there can no longer be any earthly monarchy: I have only one King, and that is the Ascended Lord, Jesus Christ, King of kings and Lord of lords.

Historically, then, on the bases of the political opinions in the last three paragraphs, it would be correct to call me a liberal.

I would argue, though, that these particular "liberal" beliefs – including my arguments for commonsense gun safety – are rooted in faithfulness to the Gospel. Call it what you will, whether conservative (as in old fashioned) or radical (as in deeply rooted), I hold these truths, that “all men are created equal,” that every human wears the Face of Christ, that Creation is loved and desired by the Creator -- Who commands the tending of His garden -- just because I believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Saviour of the world. 

Liberal democracy is rooted, fundamentally, in the personalism of the Gospel. We are persons only because the Trinity is a Unity of Three Divine Persons. We are democratic only because of the integral humanity of the Son of God. Our communion with divinity in the Body of Christ has affected and ordered all our relations – even and especially in politics.

Call me liberal, if my politics bother you. But the libertarian insistence that there can be no public imperative for safety and civility, that there should be no mandate for epidemiological measures, that there can be no restriction of military arms sales, that the reason for mass shootings is mental health or video games -- anything but guns -- such libertarian insistence is grossly liberal. Libertarianism is precisely what happens when liberalism is severed from its Christian roots. Libertarianism is nihilistic as it is antagonistic to the self-denial that is necessary for the life of any community.

(Unlike well-meaning "post-liberals" like John Milbank and Adrian Pabst, I draw a sharp distinction between essentially Christian liberal democracy and essentially non-Christian extremely liberal libertarianism. I harbor no nostalgia for "Christendom.")

I do not suggest that anyone espousing libertarian doctrines (like unrestricted gun sales and use) is “not Christian.” Anyone on any day may hold to opinions that digress from the Christian faith, and no one can determine the precise boundary when one has excommunicated himself for that reason.

But I can say this. The espousal of libertarian doctrine, and the partisan support of authoritarianism, and the adherence to celebrity and personality cults, are beliefs that are far more modernistic than my own so-called “liberal” notions.

My call for gun safety, in these heartbreaking days after the slaughter of children in Texas, indeed is “political.” Of course it is. Everything that has to do with community and relationships is political. Jesus' saying, 
"Inasmuch as ye have done it unto the least of these My brethren, ye have done it also unto Me," is a profoundly political statement.

But the very accusation that I and others are “politicizing” this tragedy (a charge made by Senators Cruz and Rubio and the boisterous mayor of Uvalde) because we are trying to prevent this sort of "American carnage" from happening again and again and again -- is the most politicized (and heartless) action of all.

ideology and bullets at buffalo

The shooter in Buffalo on Saturday, 2:30 pm, did not show up at the scene of the crime by accident. He had used census data to locate his target: a grocery store in a predominantly African-American community.

He left no doubt as to his motive. In a long screed -- a "manifesto" -- he complained about the falling "white birth rate," even using demographic statistics culled from any one of a myriad of sources on grievance internet sites. He referred repeatedly to a conspiracy theory about the white race being displaced through intermarriage, immigration, and violence. It is a deeply anti-Semitic theory, as – like Tsar Nicholas II’s “Protocols of the Elders of Zion" – it fantasized that powerful and rich Jewish men were behind the conspiracy of “replacement.”

And so this 18-year-old was going to do something about it, armed with an assault rifle, body armor, even tactical headgear. His assault rifle was modified with a kit he purchased on the internet. He scrawled, with a permanent marker, racial slurs all over the gun. 

He got in his car, driving three and a half hours and over 200 miles, from Conklin New York to Buffalo. He tried live-stream his brand of “racial justice” on Twitch.

Ten people were murdered (including an 82-year-old widow) for the sake of white nationalist ideology -- an ideology that stokes itself into a frenzy about changing demographics -- that whites will no longer be dominant; that the American version of Protestantism will no longer have the influence it once had; that socialism is somehow replacing libertarian capitalism.

Ideology is not merely one "option" out of many possible opinions, a "freedom of choice." Ideology is not just intellectual laziness (which it is). Ideology supplants Christian theology -- it drives out faith and belief and charity.

Ideology rips apart community. Ideology always turns extreme.

Ideology turns human persons into inhumane agents of wrath and destruction. 

I say this because the “replacement” manifesto of a murderous 18-year-old is exactly the sort of screed I received in an email I received some years ago. The benighted author lived in the DC area and was employed somewhere in the federal government -- he told me in "intelligence," which I found hard to believe, given its oxymoronic character.

He was trying to get me -- an Orthodox priest -- and other conservative clergy to sign on to a letter to "the Bible-believing church leadership" – begging them to demand of the US government protection of "the white Christian establishment." 

This man, too, deployed statistics and was wringing his hands over the "diminishment of American white Christianity."

I replied simply and concisely. I told him there was nothing Christian about his concern about “white Christianity.” He could say this as a radical ideologue, but he could not spout “replacement theory” as a Christian.

There is no such thing as “white Christianity.” The minute these words are uttered, that language might be white but it is certainly not “Christian”: “In Christ,” St Paul said, “there is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free” (Galatians 3.28). And, neither white nor black. Race – as demographically defined by loudmouth TV pundits today – is a modernist construct and has nothing to do with faith.

I told him that Christianity need not be so cowardly, that it had nothing to fear about any demographic change. That Christianity was robust enough to walk into any secularism, any sort of liberal democracy. I told him, too, that he hadn't a clue as to what socialism was (especially as he was conflating that with communism -- an all too common and uneducated error that too many politicians leverage). 

And lastly, I told him that his white nationalist thinking makes racist violence likely, if not certain.

Well, here we are.

If I were writing to him today, I'd say that at least one of the bullets of Buffalo yesterday had his name on it.

But years ago, when I wrote him back, I told him to never contact me again. That is, until he had repented of his wickedness in sackcloth and ashes.

Today, it is grievous that my own Orthodox community seems to attract many who hold to this "replacement theory" ideology. This is part of a larger trend in American Orthodoxy in particular, along with American Christianity in general, of a lurch toward rightwing authoritarian ideology.

It should be impossible to believe in a feetwashing and crucified Jesus in one part of the heart, and to embrace racist authoritarian ideology in another part.

To do so is to fail to discern the Body of Christ, St Paul says, and "That is why many of you are weak and ill, and some have fallen asleep" (1 Corinthians 11.30).

In Orthodoxy and elsewhere in Christianity, in America and in the world, we have to work hard and bravely for the Holy Apostolic Tradition -- and thus we have to denounce replacement theory, QAnon theory, stolen election theory, and all sloppy extremist-driven conflations of socialism with communism, conservatism with rightwingism. We have to stand up for Jesus and denounce authoritarians, and their ideological fifth columns.

Why is this so? Why has ideology taken the place of theology and belief in so much of American Christianity?

Because Tucker Carlson (and his ilk) have more influence than your congregation's preacher, or your Sunday School teacher, or your neighborhood Bible Study leader.

Or, more likely, the Bible has less to do with too many preachers and Sunday School teachers and Bible Study leaders say than what they've heard on extremist TV. 

People would rather hear "do you want to get mad?" stuff on cable rather than theology from the pulpit. People would rather hear evangelists spit and crow about pedophiles in the deep state, and not the red-print of the Gospels.

While we've long complained of leftwing radical ideologues, we've closed our eyes to eyes to the steady and "nativist" march of rightwing ideology and its punditries. Perhaps these talking heads looked too much like us for us to notice.

So. Every single real Christian preacher has a sacred responsibility to resist extremism in their congregation and community.

Every single Christian leader and teacher is called by the Holy Spirit to proclaim the truly-traditional Gospel of peace, rationality, and justice. True Christology. True Trinitarian faith.

And every single Christian has heard the truth that every human face is the Face of Christ: “Inasmuch as ye have done it unto the least of these My brethren, ye have done it unto Me.”

Demographics and ideology hide this Face.

Because when a shooter shoots, he shoots Christ.

Pray that we don't end up being complicit.