Below are the 12 most recent journal entries recorded in Rev. Leander S. Harding Ph.D.'s LiveJournal:

Wednesday, March 10th, 2004
10:03 pm	Review of Mel Gibson's Passion A Shaky Chair And A Sturdy Table A Review Of Mel Gibson’s “The Passion Of The Christ” By The Rev. Leander S. Harding, Ph.D. Artists often insert a self reference into their works. Michelangelo famously put his face into the scene of the Last Judgement in the Sistine Chapel. Alfred Hitchcock would make cameo appearances in his films. It has been much in the news that the hand pounding the nail into the hand of Christ in the film “The Passion” is the director’s own. This is a powerful moment of self- reference and the proper Christian answer to the question, “Who killed Christ?” To this question the Christian’s faith forces the answer, “ I did.” But there is another moment of self reference in this film that gives a key to understanding the filmmaker’s connection to the subject and the artistic vision that informs this remarkable film about the death of Christ. In an earlier Gibson film, “The Patriot,” there is a scene that appears several times in the movie. Gibson’s character is trying to build a Windsor Chair. The chair is delicate and strong, maximal strength with minimal wood and considered then and now a test of the furniture maker’s art. In the movie, Gibson finishes a chair he has obviously been working on for a long time, surveys his work with satisfaction and gingerly sits down upon it to test its virtue. It holds him up just long enough for the expression of contentment to set on his face and then change to stunned embarrassment as the chair and its occupant collapse in a heap of spindles. This happens more than once. In “The Passion” there is also a furniture building scene. Jesus is shown at home in Nazareth. He is skillfully putting the finishing touches on a mortise and tenon joint with a mallet and chisel, then as now a test of the woodworker’s skill. It is a table leg and the strong young carpenter in the prime of his life, joyfully confident in his skill, manfully upends a rugged but finely worked table and without hesitation throws himself upon it, taking his seat as if on a throne, smiling all the while at the sturdiness and beauty of what he has made. Mary comes and mother and son look at each other through the cross-like latticework on the table as Jesus puts the final touches on his work. Later in the film we notice that the Cross is from the same wood, worked in the same way. This scene is an example of the dense imagery of this movie. At the most obvious level it gives us the most believably human Jesus yet in film, a real man, with real skills, at home in his body, delighting in the practice of his craft, at home in the web of human relationships, both tender and teasing with his overfussing mother. Washing up, Jesus throws water on his mother and they laugh. In a few quick strokes the director and actors give us a sense of genuine and authentic human and familial warmth. At the same time the theological images pile up. Jesus is making a table by careful design and with great skill, a table that is strong, that holds its maker, that can hold up any man, including the man whose attempts to hold himself up with the work of his own hands have collapsed in a jumble. This is the table where the church, in the figure of Mary, looks at her Lord through the figure of the cross and where the Lord shows his face to his church through the figure of the cross. This is a table which is an altar and therefore a place of sacrifice and purification and which both spiritually and in the scene being acted before us is table around which there is joy, cleansing and love. The artist is telling us that he is devoted to this table, and is making a film which is a work of religious art whose purpose is an artistic presentation of spiritual realities and especially the mystery of Christ’s bearing away of the sins of the world. His artistic strategy is a recognizable one which he shares with the painter Caravaggio who is so often visually quoted in the film and that is to show the invisible by showing the visible. Also with Caravaggio Gibson shares the approach of throwing light on the divinity of Christ and the supernatural dimension of his person and work through a careful drawing of the humanity. Gibson also uses a technique used in the iconography of the Eastern Church of at times exaggerating and distorting normal proportions in order to depict a reality which can be depicted no other way. This use of proportion and perspective also makes the viewer part of the reality being depicted. Gibson is trying to show us something about the relationship between Christ and his church by lingering on the human relationship between Jesus and Mary. Gibson is trying to show us something about the invisible and supernatural meaning of the Passion and Crucifixion by lingering on a very physical description of the events. But show is not the right word. The film is shot in such a way as to draw us into the realities, including the spiritual realities being depicted. It is within the basic strategy of showing the divinity by showing the humanity of Jesus that the brutality of the film finds its logic. It is indeed graphic and bloody but not I think unrealistic or if it is unrealistic it is so in the sense of this convention of some religious art which exaggerates the visible in order to describe the invisible. I found the treatment of the violence of the scourging and crucifixion more reverent than I expected based on the controversy surrounding the film. Part of the drama of the film is the struggle of Mary, the Lord’s mother, the figure of the Church and of the Christian soul, to witness the sacrifice and suffering of her son who is also her Lord. Neither the camera nor the mother are unflinching in their gaze. She looks away. She flashes back. She remembers. Some of these flashbacks are personal to Mary, her memories of him as a child. Some of these memories are memories of Mary as the church, memories of his healings, his teachings, his words at that supper on the night in which he was betrayed, his washing of the disciples feet. Mary looks away when it is too hard to look and we look away with her and with her find the strength to turn our gaze again to an all too human spectacle, the spectacle of a man being tortured, suffering for us and our redemption. The elaborate physical detail of the suffering is in the service of the artist’s strategy of bringing out the divinity of Christ by focusing on the humanity. We are forced to see that the suffering is real and that the one who bears it is very human. His body trembles involuntarily as do the bodies of all torture victims. By lingering on the physical torment Gibson is trying to depict the invisible battle that God is waging in Christ with the sin and evil of the world. It is like any artistic endeavor a risk, an aesthetic calculation with the danger of failing by too much or too little. Some will think Gibson has gone overboard. I believe he has gotten it right and shown us something about the terrible burden of sin which Christian theology says the saviour bears upon the cross and something about the love which bears it. By giving us so far in film, the most human Jesus, even and especially in his suffering, Gibson has given us so far in film, the most compelling figure of the divine Son of God. Here I think the preconceptions we bring to the film may make it especially difficulty to appreciate the artistry of Gibson’s portrayal. There is so much explicit theological imagery in this film that secular critics will miss much of what the film attempts. There is as much difficulty if we bring too much or too rigid a theological framework to the film and insist the film render the meaning of the suffering and death of Jesus according to our preconceptions and thus do not allow the artist the creativity of his exploration. Both for religious and non -religious people there is a stereotype of the cross as the place where an angry God punishes Jesus instead of us. Many of the critical reviews of the movie castigate the movie for promoting this stereotype. But this is not the story of the cross that Gibson is telling. In the beginning of the film when Jesus is tempted in the garden by the Satan figure, the temptation is “that one man can not bear the sins of the world.” The burden that Jesus bears in the film is not the burden of the Father’s anger but the weight of sin, the piling up of human hatred and evil, from the banal calculating evil of Pilate and Caiaphas to the stupid, intoxicated blood lust of the Roman soldiers. It is quite the point that this evil is laid on and on to the point where it seems incredible and unbearable. As good as the special effects are, the actors deserve great credit for showing the immensity and horror of the burden. And yet Jesus bears it and bearing it conquers it, bringing into the midst of this debacle a transforming love and working through the physical sacrifice of the cross an invisible victory over the sin and evil of the world. The Cross is not the apotheosis of the Father’s anger but the measure of His love and of the lengths He goes to transform and redeem. That is the familiar Christian story that I believe the filmmaker is trying to tell. This makes sense of a scene in the movie which has perplexed some reviewers. As Jesus makes his laborious way toward Calvary always at the center of a whirl of hate, mockery and abuse, his strength ebbing, the Satan figure appears and taunts both Mary and Jesus by raising up a deformed child, what the ancients called a monster. It is a brilliant image, depicting the design of Satan to confound the work of Mary and her son to bring forth a renewed humanity, a truly human humanity freed from the distorting and disfiguring reality of sin. Satan in the film in this brief image says in effect, “you came to make them beautiful and look how the monstrosity piles up, look how I use you to make them over into my image.” It is the image of a demonic Bethlehem. In a flash we get a window into the spiritual suffering that is under and behind the physical torment. The counter image comes toward the end of the film when Mary in a visual quote from Michelangelo’s Pieta, holds the body of Jesus which has just been taken down from the cross. She holds her human son who is, according to faith, the divine saviour, who by a sacrifice of love has born away the sins of the world. Mary has overcome her struggle to witness the suffering of her son and has encompassed in her gaze both the monstrosity of sin and the spiritual significance of the one who takes it onto himself and conquers it with a sacrifice of love. She holds up to the world her son and is at the same time the church holding up the crucified Lord who is both the divine judgement on the world’s sin and its antidote. Catholic Christians are bound to think of the Monstrance(the word is from the same root as monster and means literally showing the power of God) used in the services of the church which holds the Eucharistic host, the sacramental presence of Christ, for adoration, an image held aloft of the overcoming of sin and the healing of humanity. Mel Gibson has given us a powerful and effective work of Christian, religious art. His project has been to retell a story that we think we know in such a way as to shock us out of a familiarity with the story that keeps us from encountering its power. His strategy is one which causes him to flirt constantly with melodrama, going repeatedly to the edge without going over. In my judgement he overwhelming succeeds. Occasionally he paints too big and goes over the line. I thought the torment of Judas overdrawn and I found the depiction of the Resurrection not as successful as the rest of the film, though this is perhaps the most difficult problem of all in Christian art. But I give the film very high marks indeed. Gibson takes away an easy and sentimental Christian triumphalism and gives us back the drama of the battle between good and evil in the Passion of Christ and a fresh appreciation of the victory of the Cross and the depth of the divine love. (Comment on this)
Friday, January 2nd, 2004
3:11 pm	Comment On New York Times Magazine Article On "Episcopal Backlash The best part ot the article is that it breaks down some stereotypes. The reporter is quite surprised to find that Martin Mimms reads books and is thoughtful and complex and even likes things New York, that sine qua non of virtue. I continue to be astounded at the bracketing of the empirical question of the origins of homosexuality. Bishop Lee gambles the future of his diocese on the off hand remark of one psychitrist. I doubt he would risk minor surgery without a second opinion. The utter disinterest in a rigorous investigation into the origins of homosexuality is such a striking fact of the controversy that one can only conclude that powerful subconcious forces are at work. Either homosexuality is a variant of normal development or it is not. The claims of tradtional psychology that homosexuality is the result of developmental trauma are either true or false. These things can in principle be proven (as I think they already are with some nuancing for inheritable temperment and other predisposing factors) or disproven. Why the blinders. Why the searching investigation that extends to asking your local cultural left psychiatrist and your wife and excludes a serious engagment with a book like Satinover's "Homosexuality And The Politics of Truth." The clue is in what the psychiatrist told the bishop,"you do real harm to homosexual people when you tell them they are defective." Here we touch a taboo of middle class American culture. This myth must be preserved at all costs. People with jobs and houses and college educations never harm their children in ways that have profound and lasting consequences. We are ok and our children are ok. Parents must be defended at all costs from the knowledge that even with the best of intentions they sometimes fail their children. Theologically this means that an artifically propped up innoncence is presented as the answer to guilt rather than the diagnosis of sin and the answer of repentence, forgiveness and redemption. Admiting that something can be habitual, irresistable and even productive of some pleasure and even intermediary moral goods, like friendship and human solidarity, and still be sin would bring down the whole idol of the religion of moral improvement and mental hygine. But the diagnosis of the New Testament is that "if we say we have no sin we deceive ourselves." And that sin is as much like a habit and an addiction as it is thoughtful and intentional rule breaking. The other clue is Bishop Lee's remembering of his shame at being slow in identifying with the civil rights movement. There is a desperation here to be a good person, a desperation that is familiar to the New Testament but that can not be helped by any attempt to make ourselves rightous, including being on the right side of the right issue at the right time. If I am correct and homosexuality comes in large part from disturbed and disordered human development in which parents, other adults and older children play a signficant role. The rights of little children are being trampled in the stampede of people who are desperate to be thought progessive and with it. In this stampede structures of oppression and violence are being given new sanctified cover by the chaplains of the establishment. This is a sobering picture of human sin. By my analysis Bishop Lee is doing the exact thing he hopes not to do which is be an agent of injustice and oppression toward the powerless, in fact toward the most defenseless of all, children. Lord have mercy. (Comment on this)
Friday, December 19th, 2003
9:22 am	Christmas Sermons Christmas Blessings. Check out my Christmas sermons at http://www.stjohns-stamford.org/Pages/sermons.html Teddybears, Flying Saucers and New Life are the Christmas sermons. (Comment on this)
Monday, December 15th, 2003
1:16 pm	A Rebuttal of Revisionist Biblical Interpretation I am the convenor of a group of scholars, pastors and laity known as the Northeast chapter of The Society For Ecumencial And Anglican Doctrine, SEAD. For several months we have been working on a reply to a document produced by the Episcopal Church in New York which attempts to provide biblical cover for same sex blessings etc. Their conclusions do not follow from their argument and involve many inaccuracies about both classical and current biblical scholarship. In addition to rebutting this particular attempt at justifying heterodox principles of biblical interpretation our response is a neat compendium of classical Anglican principles of biblical interpretation. Go to http://orthodoxanglican.org/seadnortheast/ and click on the reply to LRU. (Comment on this)
Thursday, December 4th, 2003
8:59 pm	The American Relgion and Homsexuality Homosexuality And The American Religion Harold Bloom, an iconoclastic literary critic at Yale, wrote a book published in 1992, with the title The American Religion. Using an argument developed by Msgr. Ronald Knox in his magisterial work on Enthusiasm and by the Presbyterian theologian Phillip Lee in his book Against The Protestant Gnostics. Bloom makes a convincing case that the real American Religion that is the unofficial but actual spiritual mythos which gives shape to the American worldview and energy to the American religious quest is some form of Gnosticism. The Gnostics, ancient and contemporary, teach that the true and deepest self is a spark of divinity which has become lost and imprisoned in a corrupt world. The drama of salvation is the drama of rediscovering this secret self and reuniting this spark with the divine one. This is accomplished by access to a secret knowledge or “gnosis” which is unavailable to the uninitiated. Gnostic versions of Christianity have been a problem for the church from the earliest times. The struggle with Gnosticism caused St. Irenaeus (130-200 A.D.) to write his chief work “Adversus omnes Haereses.” Gnosticism is hard to kill and has many contemporary fans including the scholars of the Jesus Seminar who champion the Gnostic Gospel of Thomas. Bloom thinks that it matters little what is on the label, the flavor of the product is more often than not Gnostic. "Mormons and Southern Baptists call themselves Christians, but like most Americans they are closer to ancient Gnostics than to early Christians. I have centered on Mormons and the Southern Baptists than on other major denominations . . . butt most American Methodists, Roman Catholics and even Jews and Muslims are also more Gnostic than normative in their deepest and unwariest beliefs. The American Religion is pervasive and overwhelming, however it is masked, and even our secularists, indeed even our professed atheists are more Gnostic than humanist in their ultimate presuppositions. We are a religiously mad culture, furiously searching for the spirit, but each of us is subject and object of the one quest, which must be for the original self, a spark or breath in us that we are convinced goes back to before the creation.” (The American Religion, p. 22) The quintessential American Religion is the quest for the true and original self which is the “pearl of great price,” the ultimate value. Finding the true self requires absolute and complete freedom of choice unconstrained by any sources of authority outside the self. Limits upon personal freedom and choice are an affront to all that is sacred to the American Religion. When the self determining self finds “the real me” salvation is achieved and the ultimate self has achieved contact with the ultimate reality. Finding your true self is to the contemporary Gnostic the same thing as finding God. For the Gnostic the purpose of the religious community is to facilitate the quest and validate the results. The contemporary Gnostic church, which can appear in both conservative and liberal forms, is the community of those who know that they have found God because they have found their own uncreated depths. For both the Southern Baptist and the latest devotee of the New Age salvation is a matter of personal experience, which can only be validated by those who have had similar “deeply personal” experiences. Notice how perfectly the contemporary presentation of homosexuality fits the American Religion. A person who discovers that he or she is Gay has recovered his or her true self and “come out” and come through what the Gnostics called the “aeons” in this case levels of personal, familial and social oppression that hinder and constrain the true self. It is a heroic and perilous journey of self-discovery which would be familiar to a first century Gnostic like Valentinus. That the means of liberation is sexual practice is even a familiar theme. Some ancient Gnostics were ascetic but others counseled sexual license. Both stratagems can come from the same contempt of nature and are different ways of asserting the radical independence of the self. Here is the point. Gene Robinson was elected Bishop of the Episcopal Church in New Hampshire not in spite of being Gay, not as an act of toleration and compassion toward Gay people, but because he is Gay and as such is an icon of the successful completion of the quest to find the true and original self. He has been chosen for high religious office because he represents high religious attainment. He is being recognized and receiving regard for being an accomplished practitioner of the American Religion. According to this Gnostic logic divorcing his wife and leaving his family to embrace the Gay lifestyle is not some unfortunate concession to irresistible sexual urges but an example of the pain and sacrifice that the seeker of the true self must be willing to endure. That natural, organic and conventional restraints must be set aside is time worn Gnostic nostrum. From the point of view of this contemporary Gnosticism, if the church does not validate such a noble quest for enlightenment then it invalidates itself and shows that is no help in the only spiritual struggle that counts, the struggle to be the “real me.” Because Gene Robinson has “found himself” he has according to the Gnostic logic of the American religion found God and is naturally thought to be a truly “spiritual person” and a fit person to inspire and lead others on their spiritual journey which is to end in a discovery of the true self which is just so the discovery of the only real god, the Gnostic god. Seeing the elevation of Gene Robinson through the lens of the mythos of the American Religion explains some of the fanaticism of his defenders, explains why so many bishops of the Episcopal Church including the Presiding Bishop would be willing to take such institutional risks. Here is a paradigm of salvation that echoes deeply in the American soul and promises to restore a sense of purpose to a mainline church which has lost confidence in the story of salvation told by the orthodox tradition of the church. Inclusion becomes the fundamental value for the church because it allows the church to have a real purpose of validating that people have indeed found their true identity, and thus found God. Gay people become icons of hope. These people have “found themselves” and hence by force of Gnostic logic “found God.” To celebrate Gays in the life of the church, not accept but affirm and celebrate, is to celebrate the church as a truly spiritual community with real spiritual power which can facilitate and validate the salvation of souls. The church leaders who are risking everything for Gene Robinson are in their own way and according to an heretical but powerful vision trying desperately to find a spiritual vocation for the church that has some liveliness and connects deeply with the deepest yearning of the American soul. The Presiding Bishop and his company of supporters think they are regaining the lost keys of heaven. That these newly discovered keys are not the real thing but Gnostics imitators of the keys of St. Peter will be lost on those who are intoxicated with the promises of the American Religion of the true, free and uncreated self. This analysis is a caution to those of us who think of ourselves as conservative. The fault line in the current church controversy is not between orthodox “conservatives” and revisionist “liberals,” but between versions of the American Religion preferred by the cultural right and the cultural left and a tradition of genuine orthodoxy that is everywhere subverted to the service of the idol of the radically independent and uncreated self. There is much loose talk about the Holy Spirit and claims of “a personal word of the Lord” which are so obviously heterodox on the lips of the new bishop of New Hampshire parallel routine claims made in “conservative” circles. In many cases we read the Bible in a highly individualized and devotional way with a complete indifference to its original context in the life of the people of Israel and to its ecclesial, social-political and doctrinal implications. A “personal relationship” with the Lord is vital to true religion but this relationship can be conceived in ways that discount the relevance of sustained study of scripture and doctrine or make them practically irrelevant. The famous 20th century Revivalist, Billy Sunday, was fond of saying that he didn’t know anymore about theology than “a jack rabbit knows about ping pong.” It is unlikely that similar enthusiasms in our own time will be able to resist the lure of the idol of the American Religion. At the moment we are astounded by enormities provided by the subversion of the Faith by the proclivities of the cultural left. There is no particular reason why the Gnosticism of the cultural right should not produce different but equally astonishing enormities. The antidote is the same it has ever been; close attention to the story of Israel as Israel, to our Jewish roots and close attention to the teachings of the Church Fathers, the Reformers and other exemplars of the Great Tradition. (Comment on this)
Monday, December 1st, 2003
3:49 pm	Meditation On The Holy Eucharist Cont, THE WORD OF GOD The next heading that appears on page 355 in the prayer book is THE WORD OF GOD. If you leaf through the entire service you will see that this size type is used again on page 361 for the words THE HOLY COMUNION. Again by the typography of the prayer book the typology of the service is made clear. So here we begin the service of the Word, the first of the two equal and indispensable parts of the service. As we go through the service we will see that the liturgy is dense with symbols. Over and over we will come across words that evoke more than one passage of scripture, more than one moment in the history of salvation, more than one theological theme. It is as we begin to hear this rich harmony and become aware of this rich texture that we appreciate what a thing of inexhaustible beauty and meaning the liturgy is. I have already alluded to the way in which the Eucharistic service evokes the story of Emmaus and vice versa. In this first part of the service there is another biblical location that comes to mind. It is also recorded in the Gospel according to St. Luke in the 4th Chapter in the 14th verse. Jesus has just begun his ministry after being tested in the dessert. He begins to preach in Galilee and to teach in the synagogues. One Sabbath he goes into the synagogue in his home town of Nazareth and, "He stood up to read, and the scroll of the prophet Isaiah was given to him. He unrolled the scroll and found place where it was written,"The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good new to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lords favor." And he rolled up the scroll, gave it back to the attendant and sat down. The eyes of all in the synagogue were fixed upon him. Then he began to say to them,'Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.'" In the first part of the service of the Holy Eucharist we are with Jesus in the synagogue as he reads these words from the prophet Isaiah and startles the people present with the incredible assertion that these words have come true in their hearing--in our hearing. Notice how Christian worship incorporates the worship of the synagogue. It was the custom of the people of Israel to come together on the Sabbath to read the Word of God, to ponder the Torah, the way as the five books of Moses were called. The heart of the Torah is the Ten Commandments. On the Sabbath the Jewish people would hear again the Torah that was given to them by God through the prophet Moses in order that they might live always as free people and not fall back into slavery.(Ex 32:15-16, Duet 10:1-5) They would also read the story of the history of Israel and of how God over and over guided, protected and saved God's people. They would also read the prophets. The ministry of the prophets was to recall the people of Israel to the Torah when they departed from it as they often did and went whoring after false God's and became immersed in immorality and impiety. This reading of the Hebrew scriptures, what we call the Old Testament, with commentary by elders and teachers was the standard Sabbath worship in the Jewish synagogue. The portion of scripture that Jesus reads on that Sabbath morning at the beginning of his ministry is of special interest to us as we try to understand what we are doing at this point in the Eucharist. This portion of the prophet Isaiah was written almost six hundred years before the birth of Jesus. It is from the time of the Babylonian Exile. Jerusalem and the Jewish kingdom had been conquered by the Babylonian Empire under King Nebuchudnezzar(605-562 B.C.). The walls of the city were broken down and the Temple, the heart of Jewish religion and worship was destroyed and defiled. In order to keep the region from becoming a threat again its inhabitants were forcibly relocated to Babylon. This kind of forced resettlement is a favorite tactic of harsh and nervous victors. Our own government practiced it against American Indians and Hitler, Stalin and the Khmer Rhouge have all found it useful. It is a devastating experience for the vanquished. We might think of American Indians struggling to retain their dignity and culture in urban centers to give us a clue about what it was like for the people of Israel. Psalm 137 gives us some insight into this moment. Apparently the Babylonians asked the poets and musicians of the Hebrew court to sing some of the famous songs of Zion(Jerusalem). It was the same sort of unthinking cruelty that asks American Indians to perform sacred dances for the entertainment of tourists. The Psalmist says that they answered by hanging their harps in the trees by the banks of the river of Babylon,"For how could we sing the Lord's song in a strange land."(v. 4). After they had been there almost three generations there arose a prophet called Isaiah.(possible footnote on three Isaiahs.) This prophet promised that a Messiah, a Saviour, an anointed one was coming. Messiah means anointed one and Christ is the Greek word for Messiah. This leader, anointed like the Kings of old with the Holy Spirit of God would lead the people back to the holy city of Jerusalem and restore the Temple and the fortunes of Zion. Isaiah is proclaiming to the captives in Babylon that the Saviour is coming to set them free from their bondage and return them from their exile. The new and restored Kingdom will truly be the the Kingdom of God where the Torah is truly kept. This new Kingdom will be a Kingdom of Shalom of peace. Shalom means not only the absence of violence and oppression but also the satisfaction of every spiritual and physical need. The time of the Messiah and the Kingdom of God will be a time of healing, of sight to the blind, of the lame walking, of the poor being fed. It will be a time when men and women are restored to right relation with God and with each other. In their exile and captivity six hundred years before Christ the prophet Isaiah consoled the people of Israel with the promise that this King and this Kingdom would soon come. They were not to lose heart. They were not to forget the Torah. They were not to become easy in Babylon. They were to get ready to go home, to leave this alien land and to return to their true abode where they could rightly worship God and live in the way God intended for them to live, enjoying the blessings reserved for God's people. This prophecy was at least partially fulfilled for the people of Israel. In about the year 580 B.C. after Babylon had been conquered by the Persian Cyrus the people of Israel were allowed to return. Under Nehemiah and Ezra the Temple was rebuilt and the Kingdom was restored. You can read about this in II Chronicles and in the books of Ezra and Nehemiah. The restored Kingdom never reached the physical splendor nor the moral and religious vitality of the prophet's vision. Subsequent Kings proved to be increasingly corrupt and disappointing and the people of Israel longed for the coming of the true Messiah. John the Baptist very purposefully evoked the words of Isaiah in his ministry warning people to get ready for the coming of the Messiah. At the time of Jesus the people of Israel had been conquered many times since the restoration of the Temple. First by Alexander's Greek Empire(356-323 B.C.) and most recently by the Romans. Their existence was very much like the existence of the people of Eastern Europe before the collapse of communism. They lived as vanquished and humiliated people under foreign occupation with foreign troops stationed on their soil, their economy depressed and impoverished by the taxes and trade policies that favored the victor nation. It was especially galling for the Jews that the victors were idolaters and polytheists. The pious Jews of this time longed with all their being for the Messiah, for liberation, for the renewal of the Kingdom. Some of them realized that the Messiah and the Kingdom of which Isaiah spoke could not be brought about by purely political means it must be an act of God even a supernatural act. Some thought the Messiah, the Son of Man would come on the clouds with an army of angels to judge the wicked, redeem the righteous and establish the Kingdom. Against this background you can see what an incredible thing it is that Jesus says when he says,''Today this scripture has been fulfilled in you hearing." It is at one and the same time incredible good news, unbelievable and an offensive blasphemy that toys with the hopes of desperate people. In High School Biology class I learned that ontology recapitulates phylogeny. That means that the individual in its development retraces the developmental stages of the species. You may remember pictures of the human embryo that look like tadpoles. This principle also holds true for the life of faith. Both the church as a corporate reality and the individual believer must in their development retrace the history of Israel, of the people of God. Now as we begin the Eucharist we are like the people of Israel in the time of Jesus, and that time was like the exile in Babylon. The world we live in is a world where God is mocked and where the Torah is forgotten. It is easy to be at ease in Babylon and to forget our identity as God's people, as people of the Way. It is easy to be overwhelmed by the evil and corruption. It is easy to forget the songs of Zion, to forget how to worship, to forget even that we were made for worship. Yet, we know that things are not as they ought to be. We know that our relationship with God is not as it ought to be and that our relationship with our fellow human beings is not as it ought to be. Increasingly we are becoming aware that our relationship with the rest of God's creation is not as it ought to be. In this bondage and exile we remember the prophets, we remember the deliverance of old and long for the perfect fulfillment of Isaiah's promise and we listen with astonishment to Jesus as he says,"Today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing. Today God has acted for our redemption and sent us His Messiah, The Christ. Now obviously the world has not been completely remade. Christians believe that in Jesus the Kingdom has been initiated and through his death and resurrection and the coming of his Spirit the church is called and empowered to witness to the Kingdom which will come in perfection with Christ at the end of time. The life of the church and especially its worship and especially the Eucharist is a foretaste of the Kingdom. As we enter the time of worship we leave the time of the world, the time of Chronos, the time of ticking clocks and we enter the timeless time of God, the time of Kairos, time of the Kingdom and of the Messiah. The Eucharist is a witness to us of the important truth that ordinary time can become the time of the Kingdom and that bread and wine can communicate to us the very life of God. The Eucharist celebrates the transformation of this ordinary life, this fallen and sinful world into that extraordinary life and sacred world for which we were made. All of this is in the background as we enter upon the service of the Word and enter into the travail, hope and deliverance of Israel. (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Saturday, November 29th, 2003
1:43 pm	Russell Crowe The New John Wayne I just saw Master And Commander, The Far Side Of The World starring Russel Crowe. I have been a fan of the O'Brien books for years and have read the whole series. The film is excellent and very faithful to the book which centers on the contrast in character between the Captain Aubrey, the simple but true man of action, natural leader, a naturally attractive character and the introspective and intellectually complex doctor and on their very profound friendship. The film can't possible get the depth of the character study and the deep contemplation of the morality of serving the common good through imperfect institutions. It is far better a dramatization of a book than we have recently seen. This is an important film because it signals a retreat from the posture of caustic irony that pervades so much contemporary culture and from the subtext of disdain for any ultimate sense of goodness, beauty and truth. Heroism makes a comeback in the film in the very humanly and humanely rendered characters of the doctor and the captain and in the men in their command. There are things worth dying for and such a thing as real competence and courage even if there are seldom completely pure motives. Crowe starred in another important film, The Gladiator, which signaled the return of interest in the afterlife and of the moral significance of the belief in the gods and the life of another world for goodness and courage in this world. The drama of the Gladiator is the drama of a man losing and regaining his gods, his faith, his sense of dignity and his courage and hence the ability to act. Whatever the quality of Crowe's personal life he has had the instincts and the good fortune to be cast in starring roles in two of the most hopeful signs on the horizon of popular culture. He may be the new John Wayne, liked not only for his abilities as an actor but for the knack of personifying the "angels of our better natures" as Lincoln said. (Comment on this)
1:37 pm	Meditation On The Eucharist This is an installment of my long meditation on the service of Holy Communion in the 1979 American Book Of Common Prayer. ( Part 2 ) (Comment on this)
Thursday, November 27th, 2003
8:46 am	Meditation On The Holy Eucharist Over the years I have been working on a meditation and guide to the Holy Eucharist. This is a work that is in progress but I have decided to put up on the net here in small installments. Feedback which is aimed at improving the usefulness of this presentation for the reader is much appreciated. I am indebted to many authors in preparing this but especially to Fr. Alexander Schmemann whose "For The Life Of The World" is still the most powerful introduction to the liturgy of which I know. I am also indebted to the liturgical presentations of Sofia Cavelletti. Copyright 2003 Leander Harding+ ( A MEDITATION ON THE HOLY EUCHARIST ) (Comment on this)
Saturday, October 18th, 2003
10:20 pm	Reply to Article On General Convention by Harvey Cox The recent op ed piece by Dr. Harvey Cox was brought to my attention by one of my parishioners. I had Harvey Cox as a teacher when I was a student in Boston in 1971 and later in 1976. He came to fame for being part of the “Death of God” theology and writing a famous book called “The Secular City” which cheerfully predicted the withering away of traditional religion in contemporary society. He is a witty and perceptive observer of religion in America but I think a curious source of authority for understanding the traditional Anglican approach to interpreting the bible. With regard to Dr. Cox’s dismissal of the biblical prohibition against homosexual acts, the biblical argument against homosexuality does not depend on one or two proof texts. Proponents of blessing same sex relationships often cite the Leviticus text, lump it in with things like the prohibition against pork and then knock the straw man down. Also in Leviticus is the prohibition against incest. Is that to be thrown out as well because it is in the same part of the bible that talks about dietary restrictions? The compelling case against homosexual acts in the bible comes from the whole sweep of biblical narrative that God makes them in his image “ male and female” and for this reason “a man leaves his mother and father and cleaves to his wife and the two become one flesh” Jesus intensifies the teaching about the sacredness of marriage and the vision of the proper use of sexuality in the OT. The new teaching that God makes homosexuals in the same way as God makes male and female is at the least unbiblical and represents the development of an entirely novel theology of creation. Ridiculing Leviticus can not make this teaching biblical. Most responsible biblical scholars including scholars that promote the gay agenda recognize that the bible both in the Old Testament and the New Testament is unambiguously against homosexual practice. With regard to his discussion of the sources of authority, Anglicans have traditionally not been biblicists and have believed that the Bible must be read within the tradition of Apostolic Christianity. For Anglicans Tradition means something quite specific, it means the unbroken witness of the church’s first 600 years. Therefore Patristic scholarship has always been an Anglican specialty. The bible is more generous in its treatment of homosexual acts than the writings of the Church Fathers. Some of the Church Fathers thought it an especially heinous sin while the bible teaches that it is one symptom among many of the disorder of human nature which is common to us all. The reference to Cardinal Newman is a kind of intellectual slight of hand. There is no coherent way to get Newman’s theory of the development of doctrine to justify the church suddenly realizing that its entire teaching on a topic has been completely wrong. In any event Newman is not part of the Tradition that has been a classical locus of Anglican authority. Newman used his theory to justify Roman Catholic doctrines, to which it is unlikely that Dr. Cox subscribes, such as the Immaculate Conception of Mary, which can not be proved biblically and which no Anglican can be required to believe, since our clergy vow that we believe the holy scriptures contain all things necessary to salvation. Tradition in Anglicanism is a lens through which to read the bible not an independent source of authority which unexpectedly, from time to time, issues radical new teachings. Reason is also a traditional source of Anglican theology but is in its historic forms subordinated to scripture. When the scripture is silent you consult reason. But reason classically is the capacity of the human heart to apprehend natural law, not the self evident correctness of the latest opinions of the chattering classes. The natural law tradition of ethics is unambiguously negative with regard to homosexual acts. Experience is often brought forward as another norm of Anglican Theology. This is a move by revisionist theologians who want to invalidate the witness of scripture as being the artifact of ancient culture and want to supplant its authority with the “experience” of contemporary culture. The term is borrowed from John Wesley and the Methodists who by it meant the ecstatic experience of the Methodist revival. This assertion of experience was rejected by Anglicans and is one of the sources of the Methodist/Anglican split. One of the most grievous examples of revisionist history of which I know is the revision of the entry in “Lesser Feasts And Fasts”, the book we use for saints days, for Richard Hooker, 1553-1600. Hooker was one of the great apologists for the English Reformation and is revered for setting forth the standards of Anglican authority as scripture, tradition and reason. This is often presented as the “Anglican three legged stool” as interdependent loci of authority of equal weight. In reality Hooker was very clear that Scripture was the first and foremost authority, that it should be read in the church according to the authoritative tradition of the Church Fathers and in the light of reason which is the light of natural law available to all people. The revisers of the “Lesser Feast and Fasts” added to the blurb on Hooker the phrase “scriptural revelation, ancient tradition, reason, and experience. Italics added. The word can not be found in Hookers original argument. The article assumes that homosexuality is not an objectively disordered desire which is the result of a disturbance in development. I think the scientific and clinical evidence is that it is indeed a developmental disorder. The scientific debate is a long way from being settled though the evidence is less ambiguous than is often reported. But the article finesses the issue of the origin of homosexuality and its status as a human good quite apart from specifically religious argument. If it is true and this is a question that can in principle be answered factually, that homosexuality is a disorder of human development, telling people that God made them that way and blesses this mode of life would be an act of false prophecy and pastoral cruelty of the highest order. Dr Cox refers to the fact that many people who identify themselves as gay and lesbian are members of our churches and that they are faithful and contributing members. This is certainly true and I most emphatically believe that the church must offer a wide welcome to whomsoever would come. The church is made up of all kinds of people with all kinds of sins and human brokenness. This includes me and thee. Our faithfulness at prayers and other good works are not evidence that God blesses our sins and brokenness. In his article Cox says that we do not care about the sexual practices of our pilots and brain surgeons but only that they are competent and then applies this argument to the issue of homosexuality in the clergy. I think many people will tend to see this issue as an issue of civil rights and equal opportunity for access to career and advancement and not understand the symbolic role of the clergy. For those outside a sacramental tradition it will be hard to understand the significance of associating in a public way particular sexual behaviors and modes of life with the sacrament of Holy Orders and sacrament of Holy Matrimony. By the association it is declared that these things are themselves in God’s plan and sacred. For many faithful Christians this is bound to seem the profaning of something sacred. Leander Harding+ The Rev. Leander S. Harding, Ph.D. Is the rector of St. John’s Episcopal Church in Stamford, CT He holds a Ph.D. From the Institute For Religious Education and Pastoral Ministry at Boston College and writes about the relationship between psychology and theology. (1 Comment |Comment on this)
10:14 pm	Reactions to General Convention General Convention And The Flat Earth Society On more than one occasion I have been involved in discussions about homosexuality and the church which have been characterized by appeals to scripture and tradition on one side, and appeals to personal experience on the other. I have taken a particular interest in what the social and natural sciences have to say about homosexuality. On more than one occasion, in the midst of a spirited debate I have asked if anyone is interested in the state of the topic in scientific circles and have been greeted with a chorus of “no.” Traditionalists are often satisfied that the scripture closes the discussion on the topic, and revisionists seem to vacillate between being convinced that there is conclusive scientific evidence that same sex attraction is fixed at birth and is irremediable or that science has really no idea what causes homosexuality and it doesn’t matter anyway when compared to the experience of homosexual persons that their orientation is God given. Disinterest in the science on the part of traditionalists make them seem indifferent to human suffering. The ideological approach to science on the part of revisionists causes them to be blind to human suffering that is not directly attributable to social oppression and to mistake sentimentality for true compassion. In the midst of this exchange of rhetoric it is easy to miss the fact that a theological judgment about the nature of homosexuality involves the church in factual judgments which can be demonstrated to be true or false in the same way that the statement, “the earth is flat,” can be shown to true or false. Here is the logic as I see it. To bless same sex unions and to declare that such unions represent a “wholesome example to the flock of Christ,” implies that homosexuality is part of God’s creation, part of God’s original plan for the natural order. While traditional theology does not accept that everything that occurs in nature reflects the plan of creation, something which is claimed to be part of the creation must at least occur by natural processes. To be part of the order of creation homosexuality would have to be at the least shown to be fixed at birth according to some natural processs like genetic inheritance. Here is a question that can be put to the test and has been. In principle, with enough investigation and information it can be determined whether and to what degree genetic, hormonal or other biological processes affect the development of homosexuality and to what degree psychological, sociological and cultural factors come into play. The overwhelming majority of contemporary researchers, including those researchers who are proponents of the gay agenda, agree that the evidence for genetic causation is scant and that environment plays a significant, even preeminent role and that a model of simple biological determinism must be ruled out for complex human behaviors. (The Gay Gene, Revisited, Scientific American 1995. NARTH.Com carries news of emerging research in this area.) To say “God makes people homosexual just as God makes some people male and some female,” when human agency in some form is thought by most competent researchers to be a significant cause is bit like saying, “the earth is flat,” just as Columbus is setting sail for the Indies. It is inconceivable to me that a faithful and wise strategy for the pastoral ministry of the church can come from such a failure to take reason seriously. Maps created by the Flat Earth Society are of limited usefulness and ultimately dangerous to travelers. I am gravely concerned about the accuracy of the maps we are preparing to give our children to guide them through the journey of human development. The Rev. Leander S. Harding, Ph.D. The author is the rector of St. John’s Church in Stamford, CT. He holds a Ph.D. from the Institute For Religious Education and Pastoral Ministry at Boston College. His doctoral thesis was on the theology and psychology of childhood. (Comment on this)
10:02 pm	Reactions to General Convention Homosexuality, The Church, and Truth And Justice For Children By The Rev. Leander S. Harding, Ph.D.* The current debate in the church about homosexuality is often presented as an issue of justice. Clearly the church should be on the side of respect for individual civil rights and upholding the innate dignity of all human beings as made in the image of God. Often this discussion is focused solely on the rights of adults to free expression and to have equal access to the goods of society and to the goods of the church including the controversial issue of access to the sacramental rites of Holy Orders and Holy Matrimony. In these discussions, the issue of the origins of same sex attraction is often bracketed. It is argued that it matters little whether same sex attraction comes from nature or nurture if homosexual orientation is experienced as a fixed and defining element of an individual’s identity. The justice issue that presents itself is how to treat this identity group with equity. But there is another justice issue which presents itself and will be easy to miss in a society that routinely overlooks the suffering of its children. For this issue the origins of same sex attraction cannot be bracketed but must be vigorously investigated. This is the issue of doing justice to the suffering of little children. A number of clinicians who work with homosexual clients believe that painful interactions in very early childhood between the child and the parents of both the same and opposite sex contribute to homosexual development. They also believe that for some children experiences of sexual abuse by older children and adults may also be a factor. (For a compelling set of essays on this topic see the website of the National Association For Research And Therapy For Homosexuality, NARTH.Com) If these observations are at all credible, and vigorous investigation can in principle corroborate these clinical observations, the church should be very wary of saying explicitly or implicitly by its actions that homosexual orientation comes from God or nature when in fact it may come in no small degree from the experience of suffering in childhood. Children may suffer as a result of intentional abuse or neglect. Children may also suffer as a result of the unintentional and inadvertent actions of their parents. Children are very resilient. They can recover from many of the challenges and difficulties they encounter in life. Keen observers of children know what many therapists know and what many who work for justice know; that the beginning of justice, reconciliation and healing is the willingness to witness to the truth. This can be something which both victims and victimizers resist and all the more so when witnessing to the truth requires us to confront the unintentional harm we do our children. The church should suspect the agenda of any ideology or theology which pronounces, with little evidence and in such a way as to discourage further investigation, that the cause of homosexual orientation is nature or God (or some other code word for Fate) as being in the interests of a society which routinely overlooks the suffering of its children and desires to spare the feelings of parents at all costs. Such ideas should be suspect as ideological blinders to the truth of the suffering of little children and should be subjected to the most rigorous testing. It is a matter of justice. *The author is an Episcopal parish priest who holds a Ph.D. from the Institute For Religious Education And Pastoral Ministry at Boston College. His doctoral research was on the theology and psychology of childhood and he writes about the relationship between theology and psychology. (Comment on this)