Whither Christianity?

I'm here now. The new one won't be nearly as wordy.

Delivered this Sunday, June 8th at St. Paul's Ventura

The Spirituality of Parenting

Readings: https://divinity.library.vanderbilt.edu/lectionary/APentecost/aProper5.htm

Something has been troubling my daughter of late. She's bothered by a lot of things: the wrong shoe in the morning, the wrong vegetable at dinnertime, the sheer injustice at having to take a bath every day, go to the toilet every few hours. She's bothered by this incessant demand by her parents that she sleep at night. But lately, what's troubled her are her friends at school. “Lauren and I are friends,” she said the other night. “We like to hug.” “Oh?” “Yes, but the boys do not like to hug.” Sona's mother and I gently explain to her that yes, some boys don't like to hug, some boys like to hug some of the time, but hey, here's daddy, he's a boy, and he likes to hug all the time! Boys who don't like to hug can still be your friends.” Sona looks at us quizzically, takes a breath, and says -- wait for it: “Lauren and I are friends. We like to hug.” So ended the conversation that night.

Thus begins Sona's long journey into the deep complexities of the preschool social scene. Julie and I watch and struggle to decide when to intervene, when to let the children's interaction play itself out, when to speak, when to be silent. We watch Sona, arms extended, running after her best friend Kai, screaming “hug me!” and Kai running as fast as he can away from her, screaming equally loudly, “no!” And I'd be lying if I didn't say that a part of my heart breaks, because I know that this small incident is one of the first of many ordinary rejections and betrayals that she will face in her lifetime. (Now, to be perfectly fair, Sona hasn't been always the emblem of nicety either: Kai has some bite marks and scratches that testify to our daughter's potential-I wouldn't say proclivity yet-for petty violence herself.) Still, as we quietly witness our daughter pushing into the world that sometimes pushes back in ways that don't feel very good, I have the urge to hold her and hold her and hold her, with my hand extended out to the world, with my mouth shouting: Don't you come near her!

Today's gospel lesson left me full both of remorse and puzzlement. First the remorse. A leader of the synagogue comes up to Jesus and begs him to come with him, to revive his daughter who has just died. If we could peek into this man's memoir, what else would we learn? I can barely imagine. I can barely imagine the despair, the terror, the heartbreak, the chaos, that a parent must feel when he or she has just witness the death of their child. I imagine the countless parents holding the hands of their children at Children's Hospital in Los Angeles, the two-day old clothes worn by them as they cling to hope for life, the story book read that tries desperately to hold back the choke of tears. I wonder at the mother or father in the Irrawady Delta region of Myanmar, waiting waiting waiting for water and food to give to their infant, who has just begun to express the symptoms of dysentery or cholera. I can barely imagine the hew and cry of parents in Baghdad, Gaza, Jerusalem, Los Angeles, and yes even places like Oxnard or Ventura, their children hit by rocket fire, car bombs, the stray bullet, the careening car. Jesus, my daughter has just died, but come and lay your hand on her and she will live. What is this man clinging to? Does he really think that this prophet can do the impossible, or did he run to Jesus in an act of desperation, the act of a man whose world has completely imploded?

Second, puzzlement. I was struck by the splicing of these three stories together, in part by the gospel writer and in part by the editors of our lectionary. The story of Jesus raising the dead girl to life is so powerful, why dilute it with these other two? Jesus eating with “tax collectors and sinners?” A woman healed of her hemorrhage by touching Jesus' cloak? Why put these stories together, why deflect our attention away from the crucial scene of this young girl's recusitation? Well, one way to think about this seeming cacophony of story is to take note of the fact that in almost all of the Gospels, children are crucially important, and this isn't to be taken lightly. Let the children come to me, Jesus rebukes his disciples later in Matthew. This isn't Jesus being a good politician, kissing babies. In Jesus's time, children constituted a category of 1st century Mediterranean society of the lowest sort. They were, essentially, nonpersons. Indeed, our contemporary concept of the “child” is thoroughly modern, something constructed during the early twentieth century, what we call the “Progressive Era.” Even in the United States and elsewhere in the modern West, children were largely seen as unproductive, even parasitic members of society. As soon as a child could use her or his hands, that child was put to work, her labor exploited, and in doing so really ceased to be a child. In Jesus's time, one in three children did not make it past infancy, and in a society where the average life expectancy was 25 to 30 years of age (yes, Jesus is considered an old man when he dies), a child's extreme dependence directly correlated to their social status. In essence, children were socially dead even if they were still breathing.

Now keep in mind that this synagogue leader whose child has just died would NEVER EVER set foot in house full of “sinners and tax collectors”-that's why Jesus is chastised by the Pharisees. Tax collectors were social outcasts within the Jewish community; they were symbols of Israel's loss of nationhood under the imperial conquest by Rome. One can only imagine how desperate this man must be, to be willing break so many social taboos in plain sight of the Pharisees. How much loss is this man feeling that he's willing to give up his reputation, perhaps even his position as synagogue leader in order to beg Jesus to come with him? In that very act, he has humiliated himself doubly, first by begging to save the life of a child, a girl child no less, in a society that sees children as expendable because so profoundly weak, and then, by kneeling in front of a person named Jesus who is already unclean by eating with people who are seen as sinners and outcasts.

Are you getting a picture yet? Jesus and his disciples follow this now humiliated man who cares for nothing but the life of his dead daughter, and the gospel passage diverts us again: a woman suffering from hemorrhages for years touches Jesus' cloak. In Leviticus, chapter 15, we have specific instructions directed at women who experience either bloody discharges because of childbirth or menstruation. A woman giving birth to a boy is ritually unclean for 7 days; if a girl, 14 days; menstruation made her unclean, impure for 7 days. A woman with chronic hemorrhage was indefinitely unclean; and anyone who touched an unclean woman became unclean. For twelve years, NO ONE would touch this woman; her touching Jesus makes him, in Jewish law, unclean. Most people would recoil from this touch, seeing as how they would have to ritually purify themselves because of this woman's actions. Jesus turns and says, your faith has made you well. Tax collector, wounded woman, dead child: these are the outcasts, the castaways, the marginal, the nonpersons, the socially dead, of the ancient world. And what does Jesus do with all of them? He eats with them, he touches them, he blesses them. He revives them, each of them. Jesus gives them life, makes them whole in a society that tells them over and over: you're dead.

Who can plumb the depths of the anguish of a man or woman who has lost a child? What are you willing to do to save this child's life? What parent wouldn't completely humiliate her or himself, risk social marginalization, even physical death to save the life of one's child? But if we want Jesus to bring this child back to life, Matthew is teaching us, look at who else's lives are being restored. Scandalous people, despised people, people whom we consider outside our community, outside our family. Jesus journeys from the house of a sinner to the house of a dead girl, and he is teaching us, if you want this girl to live, I've got to save these others too, by telling them that they are well. Outside the man's house, the crowd laughs as Jesus, because raising a dead girl to life is as absurd as letting the tax collector and the bleeding woman into the community. But Jesus does the impossible, the absurd, and raises the girl, and if that's now possible, what else is possible? Who else can be brought back to life from social death?

Our children learn early in their lives that there are conditions attached to their sense of belonging and value. They see it amongst each other, as Sona did amongst her classmates who are now discovering the differential values based on gender. They see it in what we say and do, which neighborhoods we live in and which ones we avoid, the offhand comment at the person walking on the street, the phone call that we decide to screen when we recognize the number. They see it on the internet and television, wherever they go; they learn what it means to be good children and bad children, who are the good parents and the bad parents. And on these conditions they learn to adopt the idea that certain people belong, and others don't. And sometimes, in some places, they take these conditions of belonging to their extreme, like we have, and determine that belonging is also a condition for one's sense of who gets to be human, who gets to be free. Rabbi Sandy Sasso, who has written on the spirituality of parenting, puts it this way: “I think society does a very good job of teaching us how to be consumers and a very good job of teaching us how to be competitors. The question I think parents are struggling to answer is how do we not just teach our children's minds, but how do we teach their souls? We want our children to be gracious and grateful, we want them to have courage in difficult times, we want them to have a sense of joy and purpose. That's what it means to nurture their spiritual life.”

Today's gospel narrative teaches us a way to nurture our children's souls, to become parents in the way God is parent to all of us. Because Jesus tells us and teaches us that there are NO conditions to being part of God's family. Because if you want this little girl to live, you've got to save the other children of God, the woman bleeding made well by a touch, the tax collector made well by a shared meal. Do you want this little girl to live, Jesus asks? Then serve and share a meal on the Avenue. Do you want this little girl to live? Then welcome the person whom society perceives as unclean, those who are victims of violence, poverty, discrimination. Do you want this little girl to live? Then sustain God's world by protecting all of God's creatures, plant and animal, help build the garden that Caren Knutson is teaching St. Paul's children to nurture. Do you want this little girl to live? Touch the person next to you, wherever you are, whoever you are, and tell that person, you are well, you are a child of God.

And if you ever hesitate that it's absurd, too difficult, impossible for Jesus to raise this child up, then recite these words by the former Archbishop of Capetown, Desmond Tutu, who said to a crowd of people beaten by police four days before South Africa's first multiracial election in 1994 these words to salve their broken bodies: “Say to yourselves, in your heart: 'God loves me.' In your heart: God loves me, God loves me. . . . I am of infinite value to God. God created me for freedom. . . . My freedom is inalienable. My freedom is God-given! I don't go around and say, Boss, please give me my freedom. God loves me, I am of infinite value because God loves me and God created me for freedom, and my freedom is inalienable. God-given. Right! Now straighten up your shoulders, come, straighten up your shoulders like people who are born for freedom! Lovely, lovely, lovely!”

My sisters and brothers, at the moment when you think to yourself that you cannot possibly touch, eat with, associate with that person, or those people, or that nation, that it's absurd to the point of laughter to do so, remember that Jesus touches them all, and raises them all to life, to renewed, restored relationship with God and God's community. This is the impossible mystery of God's relationship with God's children, and this is the impossible task of parenting our children without condition, and this is the impossible witness that Jesus shows us and instructs us to do the same. In a moment, we will gather around this table, a table where no one is excluded, all are God's children, especially those whom society outcasts. It is a table that restores us, makes us well, and teaches us that sharing, eating, touching is the way we save the world. Reach out with your palms and take the bread of life Jesus offers you, drink the cup that is shared by all, and know that Jesus welcomes you into his family, whoever you are, without condition. Bring your children to this table, and remind them to recite these words as they receive God's gift: God loves me, God created me for freedom, straighten up my shoulders, lovely, lovely, lovely! And when we say this and invite all to God's table, then we, as God's people, as God's children, will have done the absurdly impossible task of bringing a dead girl back to life.

Two things to mention. First, it's addressed to a right-of-center congregation, so it doesn't go nearly as far as I would've liked. (Still, a couple of older gentleman told me after I delivered it: "That was different.") Second, I haven't come up with a title for the sermon. Suggestions welcome!

Perhaps it’s not the most auspicious way to begin my preaching ministry, but I must start with a confession: for me, there is no other book in the Bible more inspiring and more irritating than the Gospel of John.
Let me start with what inspires. For an English teacher like me, you can’t find a better book to teach students that stories move us not simply because of what they say what happened, but HOW they do so. Metaphor, imagery, allegory, to name a few: the Gospel of John is chock full of the devices that writers use to help readers along in ways that they might not even expect. In no other Gospel do you see so many explicit renderings of Jesus through abstraction and metaphor: Jesus is the Word; the Light of the World; the Good Shepherd; the Resurrection and the Life; the Bread of Life; the Way, the Truth, and the Life. And of course, in today’s lesson, we have Jesus as the Lamb of God, proclaimed by John the Baptist, someone whom we met last week, preparing us and the world for Jesus’s arrival and, during this season of Epiphany, showing us Jesus’s true calling on earth. Today’s lesson begins with John’s bold proclamation of who Jesus is, builds its drama with others—the disciples—and culminates (if you read the first part of the second chapter of the Gospel) culminates in the wedding at Cana, where Jesus performs his first “sign” by turning water into wine. Read slowly, and you’ll notice that the writer is very careful to remind us of the time this drama all unfolds: John proclaims Jesus as the Lamb of God on one day, and by the end of the next day, Jesus has three disciples, two of them named: Andrew and Peter. The following day (the second day of this narrative) two more decide to follow: Philip and Nathaniel. And then the next day, Day Three, is the wedding at Cana.
Here’s the English professor emerging again! John’s proclamation of Jesus as the Lamb of God on Day One which culminates in the wedding feast at Cana on Day Three is what one calls “foreshadowing,” a kind of teaser that serves also to illuminate more powerfully the significance of events later in the story. And, of course, for John’s writer, this more significant event is the death and resurrection of Jesus. It’s John’s Gospel, and John’s Gospel only, that has Jesus die before the Passover meal is eaten, not after it as the other Gospels put it, in order to drive the metaphorical point home. Jesus doesn’t just celebrate Passover as an observant Jew: Jesus IS the Passover, he is the Passover Lamb, the Lamb of God. And what happens to this man who is sacrificed? He experiences a resurrection, an event as joyful and astounding as experiencing a wedding, when two people miraculously cling themselves to one another. The Gospel of John is astounding in both its complexity and unity, and for these reasons, I love it. Here endeth the literature lesson.
On the other hand, there are moments when I can’t stand the Gospel of John. It’s a book whose rhetoric is so sure of itself, so confident in its conviction of Jesus’s true nature, that it leaves so little for us to wiggle, for those of us still wiggling about our faith, our journey with God. I am the Way, the Truth and the Life. No one comes to the Father but through me, Jesus says later. How many times has this claim to be the way and, by implication, the only Way, actually gotten in the way for those who are curious about what Christianity is all about? For John’s readers of the 1st and 2nd centuries, these words were meant to assure believers that, as persecuted as they are by imperial Romans and oppositional Jews, they were doing the right thing, following the right course.
But for readers of the 21st century, and for those of us who know something of the centuries previous, these words have not only been exclusive and intolerant, they’ve been down right deadly. To this day, I remember vividly my conversation with Adam, my sophomore year college roommate, on one otherwise mundane school night. You might guess by his name that Adam was a Jew, a tremendously energetic and ambitious business student who nonetheless displayed moments of tenderness, especially toward those whom he regarded as friends. In the late 90s, about a half decade after we all graduated, Adam quit his high-paying corporate job to care for Stephanie, our mutual friend, who was dying of breast cancer. Stephanie wanted to write a novel before she died, so Adam said to her, “I want to write one too. Let’s write together.” So the two of them, Adam and Stephanie, set to work each day and it was this mutual support that allowed Adam and more importantly Stephanie to complete and ultimately publish their respective novels. Shortly thereafter, Stephanie died with Adam at her side.
One night in college, Adam, in a rather jocular mood, asked me, “So, Jim, you really think that because I’m not a Christian, I’m going to hell?” To which I quoted the Gospel of John: I am the Way, the Truth and the Life. “Yes, Adam. I believe you are going to hell.” Adam’s smile disappeared, his eyes looked at the floor, and I heard a barely audible “OK” as he shuffled down the hallway. As soon as I said it, I knew that I couldn’t believe it, so for years I didn’t open the Gospel of John because deep in my heart, I knew that this wasn’t the truth that Jesus wanted to bring to the world. Deep down, I could feel Adam thinking to himself that my saying he’d go to hell was somehow connected to the fact that his people were sent to death camps in central and eastern Europe two generations before.

In John’s Gospel, we don’t even see John the Baptist baptizing, we don’t hear a voice from heaven. We get the supremely confident statement of Jesus as the Lamb of God. While I know that this current translation is probably more accurate to the Greek, I’ve always been partial to the diction of the King James version. John says, “Behold the Lamb of God, which takest away the sin of the world.” To behold something is to regard it as well as to take hold of it, to see as if to be bound by it. To behold is, in this sense, to be held captive by what one observes, for the imagination to be captured. Our imagination, our way of viewing the world, is captured, captivated by the arrival of Jesus, John tells us, who takes away the sin of the world. And notice that it’s not “sins,” but “sin.” We often interchange the two, in part because our fractal hymn during the Eucharist has us sing, “Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world, have mercy on us.” But, here, it’s sin.
I used to think of sin usually in its plural form too, a list of do’s and don’ts that I’d tally up for a while before I thought to myself, hmm, better ask God to get rid of them, get me clean again, kind of like the dirty laundry that piles up until it gets so stinky you can’t bear but to spend the day washing everything. But what is the “sin of the world?” On your free time, turn to p. 848 of the Prayer Book, and here’s what you’ll find: “Sin is the seeking of our own will instead of the will of God, thus distorting our relationship with God, with other people, and with all creation.” Sin is not really about what one consumes or sleeps with or does or doesn’t say. It’s not a checklist of do’s and don’ts. Sin is about deciding that you and your agenda precede and supercede everyone and everything else, no matter what the cost. And the damage that this autonomy brings can be devastating, even deadly. And all too often we in the Church invoke the name of Jesus and of God to assert our own will, our own agenda, which hurts our relationship with other people, with the world, and ultimately with God. That’s what I did with Adam: I used words originally meant to comfort people as a weapon against him, and in doing so hurt him in ways that I can barely imagine the pain I caused.
John’s disciples must have known something about the destructiveness, the pain of this sin that puts us out of sync with God and God’s people, because they immediately follow Jesus after John pronounces Jesus as the Lamb of God. What drew them so to Jesus? What calls them to Jesus? We don’t know for sure, but I suspect that what calls them is what calls us here this morning: in the dark stillness of the night, as we lie awake with the demons of the day finally dissipating from the chaos of our memories, in that stillness we begin to ask those questions that rarely come to us because if they came more often we’d be paralyzed from the terror of the profundity of the question. What am I called to do? What am I willing to die for? What gives meaning and value to my life? The disciples are searching, searching. They look to John, who points to Jesus. They approach Jesus, and Jesus turns and their hearts beat even faster when he asks them what they’ve been asking all their lives: What are you looking for? What do you want in your life? What are you called to do? These are the first words that we hear Jesus speak in John’s Gospel. And how do the disciples respond? How might we respond? Silence, then maybe a sputter, a stammer, because in those nighttime meditations when we’ve asked ourselves that question, we’ve gotten no response. So, the disciples do what we would do. They ask a question in response: Rabbi, where are you staying?
Now, I’m not yet an expert in Greek, but reliable sources tell me that the Greek word for “stay” can also be translated as “dwell” or “remain” or “abide.” So the disciples are asking Jesus: where does your heart abide? In what place do you dwell? Do you know what we’re seeking too? And do you have an answer for us?
And how does Jesus respond? He doesn’t give them a list of things to do or don’t do. He doesn’t offer rules of engagement, nor does he demand a contract or even a covenant to get right with God and God’s people. He simply offers an invitation: Come and see. Come and see.
Jesus knows what the prophet Isaiah also knew, that God already knows the question you are asking, always: what are you looking for? What am I called to do? And when we turn to God’s will, to the will of God to serve God and God’s people, we are given nothing more and nothing less than an invitation: Come and See. Stay with me, and find out. Find out what adventures and challenges are in store for you. Jesus offers no guarantees, nothing measurable to prove to us once and for all that everything’s going to be OK. He simply invites us to dwell with him, to remain with him, and see what God can do when we stay there.
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., whose birthday and ministry we celebrate tomorrow, knew something about dwelling, remaining, with Jesus. At the age of 26, just one year into his first pastorate at Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama, the bookish King reluctantly accepted his role to lead what would become at the time the greatest nonviolent Black boycott and usher in the great age of the Civil Rights movement. What was King looking for, what did he seek when he moved from pulpit to the street, when the streets became the foundation of his ministry? And where did he dwell? We get a glimpse of where King abided a half decade later, in his famous letter – I might even called it an epistle – which he wrote while staying, while dwelling, in a jail cell in Birmingham, Alabama. Like St. Paul, King writes to fellow churchmen, eight in fact who had written a statement that called for, among other things, an “appeal for Law and Order and common sense,” and against what they viewed as unnecessary racial friction caused by nonviolent civil disobedience against the laws of segregation and exclusion. (One of these clergymen was an Episcopal bishop, by the way.) In his letter of admonishing love, King shows them, and us, where he dwells, where he believes God dwells, and where he thinks the church has sinned: by placing Its will against the will of God that distorts our relationship with God, God’s people, and God’s creation. Toward the end of the letter, King addresses the church directly:
“But the judgment of God is upon the church as never before. If today's church does not recapture the sacrificial spirit of the early church, it will lose its authenticity, forfeit the loyalty of millions, and be dismissed as an irrelevant social club with no meaning for the twentieth century. Every day I meet young people whose disappointment with the church has turned into outright disgust.
“Perhaps I have once again been too optimistic. Is organized religion too inextricably bound to the status quo to save our nation and the world? Perhaps I must turn my faith to the inner spiritual church, the church within the church, as the true ekklesia and the hope of the world. But again I am thankful to God that some noble souls from the ranks of organized religion have broken loose from the paralyzing chains of conformity and joined us as active partners in the struggle for freedom, They have left their secure congregations and walked the streets of Albany, Georgia, with us. They have gone down the highways of the South on tortuous rides for freedom. Yes, they have gone to jail with us. Some have been dismissed from their churches, have lost the support of their bishops and fellow ministers. But they have acted in the faith that right defeated is stronger than evil triumphant. Their witness has been the spiritual salt that has preserved the true meaning of the gospel in these troubled times. They have carved a tunnel of hope through the dark mountain of disappointment.
“I hope the church as a whole will meet the challenge of this decisive hour.”
In a lonely jail cell, King knew what it meant to dwell with the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world. King knew that abiding in the heart of God offered no immediate promises of liberation, but that Jesus’ simple invitation to Come and See was enough. That was what King was asking of his fellow clergymen, to Come and See what God can do, if only we answer honestly to the question that Jesus knows we’re asking, What are you looking for?

Jesus, where are you staying?

In a moment, Fr. Jerry will invite us to re-enact again this exchange, by inviting us around this Table. It is the table that invites everyone—whoever your are, wherever you find yourself on the journey of faith—to cast away the sin of the world, to realign our lives with God and God’s people. It is an invitation to everyone—without a list of do’s and don’ts. It is an invitation even to me, who committed the terrible sin of telling my friend Adam that he wasn’t a child of God, an invitation that is also the hope that someday Adam and I will meet again in the heart of God. Fr. Jerry will say “Lift up your hearts,” and we respond “We lift them to the Lord.” What are you seeking? Rabbi, where are you saying? It is this Table on which Jesus answers our question with nothing more and nothing less than an invitation to remain with him: Come and See. No guarantees. Nothing but the simple act of staying with Jesus and dwelling in the heart of God and God’s people. Come and see. Who knows what might happen? I don’t know, but if you come and see, you might find that it’s in this simple act of staying with God through Jesus that might save your life and change the world. Amen.

This morning my office phone rang, which is unusual. The primary mode of communication for me is email at work, and increasingly at home. I'd say about 30 percent of the calls I receive in the office are wrong numbers, so when I answered and heard silence on the other end, I assumed it was one of those errant thirty percenters. Ten seconds later, the phone rang again. I didn't think, like I do when I get the second call at home, that this was a crank caller, but I was a bit annoyed all the same, since it was cutting into my facebook perusal. Yes, I'm that superficial.

I answered, and this time a young woman's voice: "Is this Professor Jim Lee?"
"Yes."
"Uh, this is *** from your fiction class. I wanted to let you know that I won't be in class this week."
"Ah, but that's OK! Remember, we don't have class this week."
"Oh, I just wanted to make sure. And I was wondering if I could have an extension on my final paper. Because..."

I could hear the tremor in her voice throughout this conversation, but it took her a while to let me know that her father had died that morning. We talked about how to handle the final paper, and I tried to be as supportive as possible. I told her not to worry about the class right now, that it was far more important to be with her family, that this was a time to grieve. She kept trying to tie up the loose ends of the class. I could understand this need to make sure everything was in order before she headed home to face the emotional chaos of the next few moments of her life.

Just before we hung up, I wanted to offer this: "Can I pray for you?" But I knew I couldn't. It's not that kind of school. This is not that kind of class. I'm understandably apprehensive of what the next stage of my process will look like, and nervous about the implications for what this all means to my professional career as an academic. But I face the sorrow of my student, and hear her pain, and know that this is what really matters: to be with her on that side of the classroom, to remind her that the hurt she feels is dreadful, awful, and that it's because this hurt is so dreadful awful that she is no longer just my student and I her professor but that she is my sister and I am her brother.

For brevity's sake, here's a definition of what a postulant is, her state of being.

Julie asked me how I felt. And my friend Bill, who is in the same process, just a couple of months behind me, wondered similarly this morning. I was only half joking about going to pray after I found out. I've barely had time to reflect on the process that led to this event, and part of me wants everything to slow down. (Though it must be said, there is a snarky part of me that screams, "it's about fucking time!")

The corollaries don't quite work. It's not grad school, at least not yet. And I'm still at a loss at what's now expected of me, if there is more expected of me than what was two days ago. Trust me, I'm happy at this outcome, but I have to say that when I got the call on Friday the first thing that popped into my head was this: how much more time do I spend away from Sona and Julie? Sona is a greedy girl. She demands lots of attention, and why shouldn't she? Why shouldn't every 2-year old demand undivided attention from her parents, and deservedly so? My desires are institutionally sanctioned adult ones, no matter what kind of spiritual garb you put on them. Sona's are sanctioned by no office, and are decidedly childish. And for me, that's exactly what makes her demands more human than mine, imperatives not tarnished by the mechanisms we erect to make our lives just a little more regimented than what should be. The child is the father of the man, Wordsworth once said, and that truth is more evident to me than ever before.

So now that I've gotten what I want, I worry again and more. My therapist will roll his eyes and say to me, "So typical of you, Jim." I must trust that all will work out, not because God wills it, but because whatever the outcome, I know that both Julie and Sona will always remind me the first task of being a prospective priest is, which is to be a good deacon, which means to be a good Christian, which means to be a good partner and father, which means to be a good human being, which means to honor all of humanity, which means to cherish that which God calls in her own likeness.

I'm going to get a call from my rector tomorrow, but a friend called me to inform me that I'm now officially a postulant for Holy Orders in Episcopal Church. I guess I should go pray.

Technically, nothing more than an invitation to the next stage. In November, I attend the diocese's Formation Retreat, along with the others seeking what I seek. Over two days, we meet with the Commission on Ministry, a group clerical and lay leaders appointed by the bishop to grill me on all matters and manners of my life. There's some paperwork, mini-essays really, that precede this event, as well psychological examinations that will cost $1500 and background checks. If this goes well, and the bishop approves of the Commission's recommendations, then I'll become, officially, a "postulant for Holy Orders." Stay tuned for November.

Still miles to go before I sleep.

Five minutes after I awoke on Sunday morning, an hour of barely-suppressed terror struck our house in Ventura and my parents' in Wayne, New Jersey. An airplane operated by a low-budget Thai company crashed in Phuket, where I knew my brother and my sister-in-law were honeymooning, but little else. We had no way of reaching Ted directly, so I started calling Thailand. I fumed as I waited for the hastily-produced English prerecording to finish ("One-two-Go Airlines is very sorry for the accident.... We do our best for your convenience.") After 5 minutes, a service agent got on the line, and through a series of mistranslations and a terrible connection, I managed to get her to understand. Is there a passenger manifest? Was Theodore Lee on that plane? And in silence: is he dead? What will I tell Mom? 5 minutes of cheesy Musak cruelly played on, and then the agent came back on the line. "Theodore Lee was not on the plane." Exhale. "Thank God," my mother exclaimed 3 hours later. She was at church, so was unreachable, but apparently my brother had already called her earlier that morning. (Note to self: smack him on the head for not calling older brother.) I couldn't thank God for my brother's life any more than I could thank God for the cruel end of so many others, on that plane, and those that have become evidence of the divine's ordinary betrayals. But I'm relieved, and grateful that I have a little more time to annoy and be annoyed by my younger brother, my Esau to his Jacob.

Sunday morning almost cast a complete eclipse on the illuminations of the past few days. Thursday morning, I met with the bishop of my diocese, to determine whether or not my desire for ordination would proceed. I spent Wednesday in my office, in almost complete silence, as I struggled to "prepare" for my meeting. How does one do so? It's not quite a job interview, and it's not an exam, those two kinds of interrogations that I'm most familiar with. What questions would he ask? About faith? About practicality? About my usefulness or utility to the church? I read aimlessly all afternoon, and finally I settled on a sentence that had the word, "trust." So I closed the book, and just prayed that one word for the rest of the day: trust.

Mind you, you start up a mantra as a way to settle, but that's still not preparation. So while I was busy with my one-word breathing prayer, I had virtually no other words ready for the bishop. I was breaking every rule that I have for myself and for my graduate students when we talk about preparing for any aspect of the professional life: teaching, job stuff, etc.

The rector and senior warden of the parish accompanied me to the Cathedral Center in Echo Park. I'd been there once before, on a kind of haphazard pilgrimage when I was brand new to the Episcopal Church, about ten years ago. Because I went there with no appointment and no definite goal, I never made it past the tiny bookstore. I bought a Korean translation of the Prayer Book then. This time, I had unarmed guards, one of whom was on diocesan staff, so more doors were decidedly open. The church has its gates and gatekeepers. White collars and black shirts replace pinstripes, but the institutional bureaucratic feel is still very much palpable. When I get there, I don't sense discernment, I feel professionalization.

Fifteen minutes elapse, and the three of us are finally ushered by the bishop's deacon upstairs. We enter a non-descript door, and the bishop greets us with his huge physical presence. He's a former cop, a former cop now wearing purple. He and my rector have known each other for years, and the senior warden obsesses over the nugatory details of church politics, and all three begin discussing the status of one of the pending lawsuits for which the diocese is still in litigation. Read the LA Times for that. While they are chattering, I am thinking: I don't belong here. This is a big mistake. I'm sorry we wasted all this gas, these person's time.

The bishop finally turns to me, then back at my rector, and asks, "So why are we here?" My rector formally introduces me as someone seeking ordination, and we're off. The bishop's first question is of my ethnicity. Academic readers of this blog are probably choking on their coffee, since this kind of inquiry is strictly prohibited in our job process, but the church sees it differently, at least this church, at this time. "How much Korean do you know?" "I can probably talk to a kindergartener, if I try really hard." This doesn't unsettle the bishop, and then he takes a breath and asks me how I understand my call. I can't remember how I responded to this question. I do remember thinking to myself, shit, this is the ONE question I know I'm going to be asked, and I can't answer because I was wasting my time yesterday muttering "trust trust trust." Someone has forsaken me, maybe God, maybe my brain, maybe both. I manage two minutes of something. Pause. The bishop then asks, "Jim, if I could do anything for you right now, if you could walk out of here with exactly what you want, what would that be?"

Pregnant pause.

"I would have you ordain me, and send me back to UCSB to help [the university chaplain]."

The bishop's eyes widen. And then silence for more than a beat.

"All the possible answers I have heard when I have asked this question, I have never heard anyone say that. I have no response to what you've just said." He turned to my rector. "He's in."

The interview took a turn. He still asked some basic questions that I should have had an answer to, like "what is your understanding of the sacramental nature of the priesthood?" I think if things had gone differently, my flubbing of that question would have sealed it in another way. We talked about seminary, we talked about the next steps. He stood up, and asked me to close the interview with a prayer, and I stumbled through that. The bishop went into a closet of some sort and handed me two rosary beads, one for me and one for Julie. The four of us walked out of his office, and I was handed over to the next staff person. I tried to figure out how to say goodbye to the bishop: God bless? Thank you? Catch you on the flip side?

I've been struggling to say something profound to people who know about my process, and have graciously asked me about it through the past year. But there was something so absurd about the whole event, so arbitrary, so unmeasurable, that I can't find the words that could convey a sense of gravitas when I recollect Thursday's meeting. I didn't know what to expect, and it was my unexpected words that left the bishop speechless, an exchange that could leave you with the fits of laughter at the silliness of it all. And perhaps that's what will remain indelible about this milestone, that I encountered the absurd giggle of God who revealed that there remains something deeply incalculable, unpredictable, ridiculous, and human in even those things we dress up as institutionally holy.

But the divine is not simply in those extremes, the sacredness of the grief that comes out of Thailand and every other pore of this world, nor the holiness of the laughter that shoots through the pretensions of knowledge and status, churchly, earthly or otherwise. God, I discovered this weekend, is in the swing of the pendulum between those poles, and all that She asks is that we don't let go.