May 9, 2010
Revelation 21.10, 22-22.5
+ Lately I have been re-reading the great, and sadly unknown, Episcopal theologian, William Stringfellow. If you do not know Stringfellow or have never read him, I highly encourage you to do so. Stringfellow was not your typical theologian, by any sense of the word. As a lawyer, he defended poor black and Hispanic people in Brooklyn in the 1950s. In the 1960s he defended such unpopular causes as clergy who marched on Selma, as well as Bishop James Pike when he was brought up on heresy charges. In the 1970s, he actually subpoenaed Presiding Bishop John Allin regarding women priests presiding in churches He called for the resignation of Richard Nixon’s presidency years before Watergate. And he spoke out openly against the FBI
His private life too was very radical for its time. Stringfellow lived openly and unashamedly from the 1960s through the 1980s with his partner, poet Anthony Towne. In 1967, he and Towne moved to Block Island, off the coast of Rhode Island, where they developed a semi-monastic life together and were eventually wholeheartedly welcomed into the somewhat insular year-round community at Block Island. But in addition to all of this, Stringfellow was also, brace yourselves, an Evangelical Episcopal Christian. He was an ardent student of the Bible and wrote extensively on how our lives as Christians must be based fully and completely on the Word of God. Mind you, he was no fundamentalist. He was no Bible-thumper. Rather he was a theologian who simply saw all life through the lens of scripture. Or to be clearer: he was, in a very real sense, a prophet. He was the conduit, at times, through which the Word of God was proclaimed.
Stringfellow, who died in 1985, was and is an important theologian for us still to this day. Stringfellow was often described as a stranger in a strange land. I love that description. Let me tell you, I have often felt that same way. Maybe that’s why I like him so much.
So, why this talk of Stringfellow? Well, Stringfellow is important to me because it was through Stringfellow that I began to re-read the Book of Revelation. He helped me claim—or re-claim it—and helped me to read it anew.
In our reading this morning from Revelation, we find some very strange esoteric images—not an uncommon thing when we read Revelation We find this morning these images of angels, of the holy city of Jerusalem, of a place without moon or sun, but a place of incredible light. It is a glorious vision of what awaits us in that place in which God and the Lamb dwell. It is a place of beauty and glory. It is a place of unending life. And that is the important thing to take away from our reading today.
Probably the best aspect of Stringfellow, for me, is his view on the fact that death is not a part of Christian life. Stringfellow saw again and again in Scripture the defeat of death. Or as Stringfellow called “authority over death.” He saw it most profoundly in the life of Jesus. There we see this authority over death most profoundly. We see it every time Jesus healed the sick, calmed the storms, cast out demons, ate with sinners, cleansed the temple, raised the death, carried the Cross. And of course, in the Resurrection.
This view of life over death speaks to us most profoundly during this Easter season—especially on this Sunday in which we plant our Peace Pole, we bless the seeds, and soil and water for renewed life, on this mother’s Day in which we celebrate the woman who gave us life. During this Easter season, what we have found most vital to our understanding of living into this Easter faith is the startling fact that death, truly does not have power over us. We, as Christians, cannot let the power of death control and direct our lives. The world in which we live does, in fact live in a death culture. We are surrounded by death in various forms.
And we, as a culture, give death the ultimate victory. We are a culture that proclaims and holds up war. We are a culture capable of death and destruction with the touch of button or the stroke of a pen. We are a culture that, at times, flies in the face of death, but even by doing so, we deny death. We pretend in those moments, death doesn’t exists—or rather than death for us as individuals doesn’t exists. In those moments, we are allowing death free reign in our lives. In those moments, we are not being truly defiant to death. We are simply ignoring death and deceiving ourselves. Ultimate victory over death is when we can face death honestly. True victory over death is when we can see death only when the light we hear about in today’s reading from revelation, is cast upon death.
Only then do we realize, death has no victory over us. Because of what happened on Easter, because of the Resurrection, because Jesus did die, yes, buy he rose from that tomb, and walked victorious upon the chains of death, we know now death does not have the last word in our lives.
Stringfellow was devastated when, in 1980, he suddenly lost his partner Anthony Towne. It shook him to his core and turned him inside out. But, Stringfellow maintained, he would not allow death to win out. And as long as he was stuck in his mourning pattern—as long as he continued to cling and clutch after Anthony, he was allowing death the ultimate victory. Stringfellow could not grieve forever over Towne. If he, he wrote, “the power of death would not only have claimed Anthony in the grave but would also seize me. Stringfellow refused to let “grief define my living.” Only when he could let Anthony go with Christ and be with Christ did he fully realize the ultimate victory over death.
We all get stuck in mourning patterns. Mourning patterns sometimes—and most prevalently—involve losing a loved one to death. But we also get ourselves in mourning patterns when we devolve into unhealthy nostalgia. In the Church, we hear it all the time.
“Oh my,” I hear people say all the time, “The 1950s and 1960s were the best time to be a Christian in this country. The churches were filled. It was a glorious time.”
Or, we hear: “Back in nineteen-seventy-so-and-so we did this and this and this and that really worked very well.”
What we don’t realize with this kind of thinking is that such hindsight is always through a narrow tunnel vision. And the fact is, if we look back at past years as being so much greater than where we are now, we are not able to look forward to the glory that can await us in the future. It is not 1955 or 1960 or 1977—and it never will be again. That time is gone. It had died and there is no resurrecting it.
But 2011 and 2016 and 2020 do await us and they are filled with potential and hope at what the Church as a whole can be. They filled with a hope and potential at what we, as humans can do. We can stand up against death. We can stand up against war. We can proclaim peace now so that can truly prevail in the future. And when we are doing so, when are looking ahead to those glorious events, when we, like William Stringfellow, the prophet, can see visions of an existence of peace and life, we are truly living. We are striving for a future of life, rather than looking back in sadness and loss.
I, of course, am not saying that we should forget the past or that we shouldn’t celebrate where we were and what we did. We should always keep where we are in perspective to where we’ve been. But, the fact of the matter is, we can’t do things like we did then. Now is now and the needs are different than they were 30 or 40 or 50 years ago.
Faith and the Church and society changes. Thank God they change! And moving forward is essential to life. Yes, living our lives fully and completely can be frightening. We are, after all, heading into the future which is unknown to us.
But that, again, is what I love about Revelation. What Revelation promises to us, through all that poetry and imagery, is that death will lose, hatred will lose, violence will lose, evil will lose, war will lose—and goodness, and holiness and LIFE will be victorious. That isn’t wishful thinking. That’s isn’t being naïve. Rather, this is what it means to be a Christian. This is what it means to follow Christ.
Yes, following Christ means following him to the Cross and to that dark tomb. But it also means following him into the great unknown on the other side of the Cross and the tomb—into that glorious, light-filled, unending life that swallows up death and darkness and war once and for all.
“And there will be no more night,” John tells us in his Revelation. “they”—we—“will need no light of lamp or sun, for the Lord God will be [our] light, and [we] will reign for ever and ever.”
Those are words of absolute and glorious victory. But more so, they are words of life—of a life that goes on forever and ever.
As we travel through these last days of Easter, we celebrate the planting of our Peace Pole, as we bless and celebrate growth and spring, as we celebrate our mothers, whether they are here among us or in that place of light and life, as we head into this week in which we celebrate Jesus’ ascension to that place of life and light, let us do so with true Easter joy. Let us do so rejoicing from the very core of our bodies. We are alive. And as we heard in our collect today, God has truly prepared for us “such good things as surpass our understanding.”
Amen.
Revelation 21.10, 22-22.5
+ Lately I have been re-reading the great, and sadly unknown, Episcopal theologian, William Stringfellow. If you do not know Stringfellow or have never read him, I highly encourage you to do so. Stringfellow was not your typical theologian, by any sense of the word. As a lawyer, he defended poor black and Hispanic people in Brooklyn in the 1950s. In the 1960s he defended such unpopular causes as clergy who marched on Selma, as well as Bishop James Pike when he was brought up on heresy charges. In the 1970s, he actually subpoenaed Presiding Bishop John Allin regarding women priests presiding in churches He called for the resignation of Richard Nixon’s presidency years before Watergate. And he spoke out openly against the FBI
His private life too was very radical for its time. Stringfellow lived openly and unashamedly from the 1960s through the 1980s with his partner, poet Anthony Towne. In 1967, he and Towne moved to Block Island, off the coast of Rhode Island, where they developed a semi-monastic life together and were eventually wholeheartedly welcomed into the somewhat insular year-round community at Block Island. But in addition to all of this, Stringfellow was also, brace yourselves, an Evangelical Episcopal Christian. He was an ardent student of the Bible and wrote extensively on how our lives as Christians must be based fully and completely on the Word of God. Mind you, he was no fundamentalist. He was no Bible-thumper. Rather he was a theologian who simply saw all life through the lens of scripture. Or to be clearer: he was, in a very real sense, a prophet. He was the conduit, at times, through which the Word of God was proclaimed.
Stringfellow, who died in 1985, was and is an important theologian for us still to this day. Stringfellow was often described as a stranger in a strange land. I love that description. Let me tell you, I have often felt that same way. Maybe that’s why I like him so much.
So, why this talk of Stringfellow? Well, Stringfellow is important to me because it was through Stringfellow that I began to re-read the Book of Revelation. He helped me claim—or re-claim it—and helped me to read it anew.
In our reading this morning from Revelation, we find some very strange esoteric images—not an uncommon thing when we read Revelation We find this morning these images of angels, of the holy city of Jerusalem, of a place without moon or sun, but a place of incredible light. It is a glorious vision of what awaits us in that place in which God and the Lamb dwell. It is a place of beauty and glory. It is a place of unending life. And that is the important thing to take away from our reading today.
Probably the best aspect of Stringfellow, for me, is his view on the fact that death is not a part of Christian life. Stringfellow saw again and again in Scripture the defeat of death. Or as Stringfellow called “authority over death.” He saw it most profoundly in the life of Jesus. There we see this authority over death most profoundly. We see it every time Jesus healed the sick, calmed the storms, cast out demons, ate with sinners, cleansed the temple, raised the death, carried the Cross. And of course, in the Resurrection.
This view of life over death speaks to us most profoundly during this Easter season—especially on this Sunday in which we plant our Peace Pole, we bless the seeds, and soil and water for renewed life, on this mother’s Day in which we celebrate the woman who gave us life. During this Easter season, what we have found most vital to our understanding of living into this Easter faith is the startling fact that death, truly does not have power over us. We, as Christians, cannot let the power of death control and direct our lives. The world in which we live does, in fact live in a death culture. We are surrounded by death in various forms.
And we, as a culture, give death the ultimate victory. We are a culture that proclaims and holds up war. We are a culture capable of death and destruction with the touch of button or the stroke of a pen. We are a culture that, at times, flies in the face of death, but even by doing so, we deny death. We pretend in those moments, death doesn’t exists—or rather than death for us as individuals doesn’t exists. In those moments, we are allowing death free reign in our lives. In those moments, we are not being truly defiant to death. We are simply ignoring death and deceiving ourselves. Ultimate victory over death is when we can face death honestly. True victory over death is when we can see death only when the light we hear about in today’s reading from revelation, is cast upon death.
Only then do we realize, death has no victory over us. Because of what happened on Easter, because of the Resurrection, because Jesus did die, yes, buy he rose from that tomb, and walked victorious upon the chains of death, we know now death does not have the last word in our lives.
Stringfellow was devastated when, in 1980, he suddenly lost his partner Anthony Towne. It shook him to his core and turned him inside out. But, Stringfellow maintained, he would not allow death to win out. And as long as he was stuck in his mourning pattern—as long as he continued to cling and clutch after Anthony, he was allowing death the ultimate victory. Stringfellow could not grieve forever over Towne. If he, he wrote, “the power of death would not only have claimed Anthony in the grave but would also seize me. Stringfellow refused to let “grief define my living.” Only when he could let Anthony go with Christ and be with Christ did he fully realize the ultimate victory over death.
We all get stuck in mourning patterns. Mourning patterns sometimes—and most prevalently—involve losing a loved one to death. But we also get ourselves in mourning patterns when we devolve into unhealthy nostalgia. In the Church, we hear it all the time.
“Oh my,” I hear people say all the time, “The 1950s and 1960s were the best time to be a Christian in this country. The churches were filled. It was a glorious time.”
Or, we hear: “Back in nineteen-seventy-so-and-so we did this and this and this and that really worked very well.”
What we don’t realize with this kind of thinking is that such hindsight is always through a narrow tunnel vision. And the fact is, if we look back at past years as being so much greater than where we are now, we are not able to look forward to the glory that can await us in the future. It is not 1955 or 1960 or 1977—and it never will be again. That time is gone. It had died and there is no resurrecting it.
But 2011 and 2016 and 2020 do await us and they are filled with potential and hope at what the Church as a whole can be. They filled with a hope and potential at what we, as humans can do. We can stand up against death. We can stand up against war. We can proclaim peace now so that can truly prevail in the future. And when we are doing so, when are looking ahead to those glorious events, when we, like William Stringfellow, the prophet, can see visions of an existence of peace and life, we are truly living. We are striving for a future of life, rather than looking back in sadness and loss.
I, of course, am not saying that we should forget the past or that we shouldn’t celebrate where we were and what we did. We should always keep where we are in perspective to where we’ve been. But, the fact of the matter is, we can’t do things like we did then. Now is now and the needs are different than they were 30 or 40 or 50 years ago.
Faith and the Church and society changes. Thank God they change! And moving forward is essential to life. Yes, living our lives fully and completely can be frightening. We are, after all, heading into the future which is unknown to us.
But that, again, is what I love about Revelation. What Revelation promises to us, through all that poetry and imagery, is that death will lose, hatred will lose, violence will lose, evil will lose, war will lose—and goodness, and holiness and LIFE will be victorious. That isn’t wishful thinking. That’s isn’t being naïve. Rather, this is what it means to be a Christian. This is what it means to follow Christ.
Yes, following Christ means following him to the Cross and to that dark tomb. But it also means following him into the great unknown on the other side of the Cross and the tomb—into that glorious, light-filled, unending life that swallows up death and darkness and war once and for all.
“And there will be no more night,” John tells us in his Revelation. “they”—we—“will need no light of lamp or sun, for the Lord God will be [our] light, and [we] will reign for ever and ever.”
Those are words of absolute and glorious victory. But more so, they are words of life—of a life that goes on forever and ever.
As we travel through these last days of Easter, we celebrate the planting of our Peace Pole, as we bless and celebrate growth and spring, as we celebrate our mothers, whether they are here among us or in that place of light and life, as we head into this week in which we celebrate Jesus’ ascension to that place of life and light, let us do so with true Easter joy. Let us do so rejoicing from the very core of our bodies. We are alive. And as we heard in our collect today, God has truly prepared for us “such good things as surpass our understanding.”
Amen.
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1 comment:
I like the poem Daniel Berrigan wrote about the funeral for Anthony Towne very much - I think it is one of his best.
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