The Wanderer: A Poem of Love and Longing

There is an Old English poem called “The Wanderer”[1] dating from somewhere around the 6^th or 7^th century that I find quite moving. The poet writes long after a disastrous battle. The lord and leader of the comitatus has been slain along with most of his followers, save for one young warrior who is cast adrift wandering lonely over the sundering seas. The comitatus is a warband, a brotherhood of warriors whose love and loyalty is focused on their lord who in turn rewards them with gifts, and a sense of belonging and purpose. The intensity of that bond is voiced in “The Battle of Maldon” where facing certain death, a follower of Brytnoth cries out,  

Our minds must be stronger, our hearts

Braver, our courage higher, as our numbers

Shrink. Here they slew our earl

And he lies in the dust. Whoever longs

To run from this field will always regret it.

I’m old. I want no other life.

I only want to lie beside my lord,

Near Brytnoth, who I loved so well.

The wanderer, filled with grief, “follows the frost-cold foam . . . sailing endlessly, aimlessly in exile,” looking for a home, for a new lord, for a new warband to belong to and give his life meaning. In poignant words he expresses his grief and longing,  

Sometimes it seems I see my lord,

Kiss and embrace him, bend my hands

And head to his knee, kneeling as though

He still sat enthroned, ruling his thanes.

And I open my eyes, embracing the air,

And see the brown sea-billows heave,

See the sea birds bathe, spreading

Their white-feathered wings, watch the frost

and the hail and snow. And heavy in heart

I long for my lord, alone and unloved.”

There are many in the church who are wandering today, lost and alone, adrift on the sundering seas. They have lost the church of their youth and they are filled with grief and longing, looking for a home, a comitatus, and a stable leader who will not be tossed to and fro by the stormy winds of the times. What is tragic is that while the church splits apart there are those who are dismembering the church by the failure to embrace what has been believed always, everywhere, and by all, and are busy suing those they have driven away.  

There is a recourse for our predicament in the very nature of the comitatus. One of the saints said, “Militia probat Christianum”[2], “The warring one is the Christian.” Warfare is a necessary part of Christian life, but it is perilous to strike out alone by yourself on the perilous seas. You may be surprised by the fact that warfare is a necessary part of Christian life, but consider the situation of ancient Israel as it struggled to establish its claim over Canaan. In Judges we find this remarkable assertion, “Now these are the nations that the LORD left, to test Israel by them, that is, all in Israel who had not experienced all the wars in Canaan. ² It was only in order that the generations of the people of Israel might know war, to teach war to those who had not known it before” (Judges 3:1-2).   

Such is the nature of fallen humankind that we really don’t learn much without the stimulus of conflict. The problem usually is in how we feel about the conflicts that so often surround us. It here that the quality of our faith is revealed, and it is here that we can find our growing edge if only we will. It is precisely here that the genius of David is revealed as he prays, “Blessed be the LORD, my rock, who trains my hands for war, and my fingers for battle; he is my steadfast love and my fortress, my stronghold and my deliverer, my shield and he in whom I take refuge, who subdues peoples under me (Psalm 144:1-2).

There is a hidden danger that needs to be recognized. Sometimes we get so used to conflict that we see it even where it is not, or perhaps even produce conflict where it doesn’t exist. In all moments of fear hear the words of Jesus as he says so frequently, “Fear not!” Conflict real or imagined calls for fresh surrender to the God who redeems our human experience.

Our comitatus, the Church, is broader and deeper than the warband lost by the Wanderer, as even the Wanderer himself was aware.  At the end of his poem he prays,

It’s good to guard your faith,

nor let your grief come forth

Until it cannot call

For help, nor help but heed

The path you’ve placed before it.

It’s good to find your grace

In God, the heavenly rock

Where rests our every hope.

The Wanderer bids us not to let our grief overpower us so that we cannot call for help, but instead he bids us to place our faith in God our heavenly rock. There is a proverb that says, “a man without self-control is like a city broken into and left without walls” (Proverbs 25:28). While it is occasionally helpful to share our griefs and burdens with each other, as Christian we are called by grace through faith to rule our emotions, not to let our emotions rule us.

Unlike the predicament of the Wanderer we have some realistic options for fellowship. One of those options is the possibility of making an Oblation of one’s life in an abbey or monastery of the Order of St. Benedict, or here in the Dallas area the option of joining our own group of Oblates and Companions of St. Benedict and St. Scholastica. Whether you are an Oblate or Companion, or just an interested friend you have the opportunity to live by a simple Rule of Life. A Benedictine Rule of Life reminds us to pray the Daily Offices, to practice the awareness of the perpetual Presence of  God, and to gather with the Church in frequent Eucharist. The Daily Offices include Morning and Evening Prayer from The Book of Common Prayer. Even praying just one office a day will add great stability to your life.

There is a distinct benefit in affiliating with an ancient comitatus that goes back for centuries; a fellowship that was foundational in the beginning of the Anglican Communion. After all St. Augustine of Canterbury was a Benedictine. That provides us with a double anchor for our lives with one anchor firmly in the Anglican Communion and the other in the Order of St. Benedict.    

Even in the midst of the stress of these days do not sell the Anglican Communion short.  The theologian Karl Barth reminds us that one of God’s miracles is that the Church still survives. The Anglican Communion has been around for centuries and throughout the centuries it has had its times of struggle and its seasons of unbroken peace. Frankly the problems of this day in the life of the church are pale in comparison with the antics of Cardinal Wolsey who was the almoner for Henry VIII. When you get worried over whether or not the Church will survive, read a little Church History; it’s quite refreshing. The stuff that’s going on will eventually go by. As long as you are firmly grounded in the faith and history of the Church you will be secure.

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[1] Wanderer quotes are from  Burton Raffel,  Poems and Prose from the Old English, (New Haven: Yale University Press) 1998.  Burton is fine translator with considerable poetic skill.

[2] Johann Arndt

Bloody Warfare: The Christian and the Graphic Depiction of Violence

         

 Who on earth could take pleasure in a graphic and bloody depiction of war?  Some do.  At what point does violence exceed the bounds of propriety? I know that such things happen and that at times ordinary men and women have to face horrible things, but I do not consider that the depiction of blood, guts, and death to be a valid or safe form of entertainment. 

There is a moral issue involved. How does the depiction of graphic violence affect the soul, the interior man? Does it harden him against “what is whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable?” [Philippians 4:8]. 

For some it may create courage, for others terror, but for others it creates a distaste bordering on disgust. Some by sad experience have become inured against the horrors of war; after all, after you have watched several people die a bloody death, what’s a few more? For the average person is such a process of hardening a healthy thing, or does it draw him needlessly into a dark place where he ought not to have gone without special preparation?

Take for instance the movie The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. Emotionally and spiritually defenseless people who feed on the violence and immorality depicted in that type of film will eventually come to accept it as within the bounds of normal morality.  During the Vietnam conflict we saw on the evening news the first video cut of a kneeling soldier being shot in the head. Now that kind of violence is the everyday bread and butter of American moves and media news. Let me quote a friend of mine who walked out of a showing of a war movie and said, “That’s too violent for me. I don’t need to expose myself to that.” That is a wise man with a healthy respect for his everlasting soul.

There is violence in many books, but you are not subjected to it visually. Word pictures are only words and the pictures they invoke in the imagination are only those that can spring from your own imagination. In a graphic and violent movie you are subjected to terrible things that extend far beyond word pictures. You know the old adage; one picture is worth a thousand words?  The question is; do you really want to do that to your inner person, your soul?  Eventually we become what we continually behold.  That is a sound spiritual principle.

0-40; 40-200; 200-450; 400-800; 800-1800+

       What do these numbers mean to you?  To those of us familiar with Church Growth methodologies we recognize that they represent church growth sizes: House Church, Small Church, Medium Church, Large Church, and Mega Church.  We are told that the Mega Church is the sought after dream and we are told that they are successful because they satisfy the following needs: Excellence in quality of programs, Wide choices of programs and styles of worship, Openness to change that attracts younger people, Low pressure on visitors, and Being Multi-Cultural.

       The first and most obvious observation is that this Church Growth analysis is not biblical.  The assumption that God wants each Church to grow numerically is too simple.  God wants His Kingdom to grow, but the prevalent New Testament pattern is the multiplication of smaller Churches, not necessarily the growth of Mega Churches. 

       Second, there is considerable arrogance in the assumption that small churches cannot have excellence in their worship and programming, or that they are not open to change, or that they are not multi-cultural.  What is true is that each individual small church will of necessity not provide a wide variety of options; unless of course they are related to other small churches that have access to “diocesan” programming.  The other thing is the implication that low pressure on visitors is necessarily a positive value.  I would venture to suggest that the prevalent Church Growth philosophy is determined by American cultural triumphalism rather than by biblical theology.

The Apostasy of Division

           There is a great misunderstanding being promoted by conservatives who have left The Episcopal Church, a misunderstanding that is the flip side of the revisionist heresy of the liberals.  Conservatives think that by forcing a change they can re-establish old truth.  Liberals think that that by forcing a change they can establish new truth.  Neither side has theologically, or biblically, thought the issues through. 

In part the mistake of the revisionists is that you can’t drive out the impurity by expelling conservatives from your midst.  You will, in your own way, become the new conservatives, a new cast of fundamentalist liberals. That is already clearly happening and in some dioceses those with conservative views are not tolerated and have been driven from the church.

The great misunderstanding of some of the conservatives who have willingly, perhaps even eagerly, left The Episcopal Church is that you can’t come out from amongst them and be clean; you take your sins with you.  If they have left a diocese with a godly bishop there is no excuse for their actions, nor should they glibly slough off the words of Jesus, “Holy Father, keep them in thy name, which thou hast given me, that they may be one, even as we are one” (John 17:11). 

Trapped in the middle is the greater part of what used to be The Episcopal Church.  Some have been driven out with the conservatives who have left seeking purity; some have stayed to struggle in the midst of a church which is increasingly in danger of becoming apostate.  All are wounded and grieved by the actions and attitudes of rigid militants on either side.

Both sides of the coin are reacting emotionally rather than rationally, establishing on either side what they “feel” as the foundation on which to build a new purified church. 

The hope for health for the Church is in those who are trapped in the middle.  It is not enough to wait passively.  Waiting passively will only contribute to the current decline in the Church.  Those trapped in the middle must find their voice and let their views be known.

Not only that, but what they say must be based on a sound biblical theology that is informed by the tradition and history of the Church.  This voice must reflect not only a love of the truth, but a love of Him who alone is the way, the truth, and the life.

Acceptance AND/OR Approval

We have a serious problem within the Church that healthy parents of children usually don’t make.  There is a difference between acceptance an approval.  In the current debates on sexuality there is a strong lobby in the media and in the Church, not defending, but propagating alternate life styles.  

From the viewpoint of this intense pressure we are told that if we don’t approve of alternate life styles we are rejecting those who practice them.  That is a bald faced lie!  Many within the Church do actually accept sinners of all stripes because we know that we are cut from the same piece of cloth. 

What we don’t accept is that either our sins or the sins of others are acceptable before God.  It is not a matter of sexual orientation.  That is pure malarkey.  It’s a matter of what we think and what we do.  If our sexual orientation is towards fornication, adultery, pedophilia, sodomy, or any of the other varieties of sexual practice, we should not be surprised; after all we are all fallen creatures. 

So you have discovered that Scripture proclaims that you are a sinner?  Well and good, the question is “What comes next?”  St. Paul said, “And such were some of you. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God” (1 Corinthians 6:11).   Scripture is quite clear regarding sexual immorality in all its forms, but the world and the world within the Church does not accept the clear word of Scripture. 

The offer is acceptance, not approval, and the gift and grace of transformation.  But the children of world and the world within the Church say, “I don’t want be transformed.  There’s nothing wrong with me. Don’t just accept me, approve of me; I’m not doing anything wrong.” 

The problem posed for faithful Christians is simply this: If we accept our own need for repentance and transformation how can we say to others that Scripture doesn’t matter; you don’t need to be transformed?  A common and no longer unique form of judgment is allowing each other to wallow in our sins without offering the grace of forgiveness and growth in transformation.  That in itself is an exceptional cruelty.  

The world and the world within the Church militate against the call to sanctification because is cuts rudely across accepted social practices and viewpoints.  What the Church should be saying is, “We accept you; come and be transformed with the rest of us sinners!”

Dietrich Bonheoffer observed:

The old world cannot take pleasure in the Church because the Church speaks of its end as though it had already happened—as though the world had already been judged.  The old world does not like being regarded as dead.  The Church has never been surprised at this, nor is it surprised by the fact that again and again men come to it who think the thoughts of the old world—and who is there entirely free from them?  But the Church is naturally in tumult when these children of the world that has passed away lay claim to the Church, to the new, for themselves.  They want the new and only know the old.  And thus they deny Christ the Lord.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Creation and Fall, translated by John C. Fletcher. (New York: Macmillan, 1959), p.11

A GAFCON Observation

I am deeply troubled not only by the growing apostasy of the American Episcopal Church, but also by the influence of American Evangelicals and Charismatics who have exported their theologies to the African scene.  

The problem is this: 

Many of us who had significant conversion experiences and experiences of the Holy Spirit in the sixties and seventies had our basic theological training in American seminaries with little exposure to classical Systematic Theology or Church History, and in some cases no Ascetical Theology whatsoever.  The positive work of the Holy Spirit fell upon those who did not have enough of grounding in the theology and history of the Church to understand what had happened to them.

Some of these men have risen to positions of leadership in the Church and I know personally of some who have had, and still have, a strong influence on the African Churches.  Some of the ones that I have known personally have demonstrated serious problems with authority and when I see them leading the fray I am disheartened.  It is enough that we are exporting the Prosperity Gospel to Africa, but we are also exporting a shallow view of the Church along with a “come out from among them and be ye clean” mentality.

I have some familiarity with Uganda and Nigeria and enough experience to know that by and large, where they are unaffected by us, they are soundly orthodox; but often their orthodoxy rests on the same shallow foundations as that of their American advisors. It is fashionable among American Evangelical Christians to view the African scene through rose coloured glasses.  In point, the East African Revival is a movement of the Holy Spirit in the past and what we are now looking at is the heirs of that Revival who are strongly influenced by American theology with all of its problems.  Do not idealize African seminary training; guess who they have been trained by.  

When GAFCON meets it runs the danger of perpetuating a divisiveness born in the American Church scene.  There are some good reasons why many of us with Evangelical of Charismatic backgrounds have remained within the Episcopal Church.  Despite all claims, the grass is not greener on the other side.

Reflections of an Immigrant

I had a student visa when I married my wife Diana who is from Philadelphia and I had received my Green Card, when we moved to Watertown, Massachusetts where I became the rector of an Episcopal Church.  During our time there, the height and the fall of the Nixon era, I realized that to continue to minister in an American setting I needed to take a greater responsibility by applying for citizenship.  The process was somewhat onerous.  Among other things I had to return to Canada and apply at the United States Embassy in St. John, New Brunswick.  Never having been to that part of Canada it seemed odd, but one does what one has to do.

            I remember four questions from the interview for citizenship.  One was the question, “Are you now, or have you ever been a Communist?”  Like many young Canadians in my generation I voted NDP [New Democratic Party] because it was the Socialist-Communist coalition and I was a Fabian Socialist, but I also realized that I had never joined the Communist Party; so the answer was, “No!”  Putting that in context for today, voting NDP was like voting for Obama.  I felt like asking, “Why don’t you ask, ‘Are you now, or have you ever been, a Fascist?’”  Experience shows that many of us who voted socialist in those days slid to the right the longer we were employed and the saner we became. 

The second question, stemming from my application form that included questions on memberships was “What is Foreign Missions?”  My answer was not at all interesting to the interviewer.

The third question was “Are you now, or have you ever been a habitual drunkard?”  It was clear from my application that I had joined AA several years before.  So I said, “Alcoholism is a disease, not a habit.”  The interviewer said, “Just answer the question.”  So I answered, “No.”  By the way as of this July I have been sober for 44 years, so I guess my answer was right. 

The fourth question, or rather demand, was, “Please say in English “I would like to become an American citizen.”  I retorted, “I speak better English than you do!”  The interviewer was not happy and said, “Just say it!”

When Nixon was pardoned by President Ford I wrote Ford a letter explaining that as the Rector of an Massachusetts Episcopal Church, and as a Democrat who had voted for Ted Kennedy, I was of the opinion that although Nixon was pardoned rather than brought to the bar of justice that the country had had enough of the whole painful saga and that Ford had done the right thing.  I was amazed to receive a thank you letter from Ford who also let me know that he had forwarded my letter to Ted Kennedy.  Subsequently I received a scathing letter from Kennedy asking how, as a man of God, I could take such a sinful position?  To which I replied that as one who had voted for him, but was not as wealthy as him, I wasn’t sure that justice had been done at Chappaquiddick, and if I were he I wouldn’t say anything.  Shortly after that two men in conservative blue suits turned up during a Sunday morning Eucharist, took notes through the sermon, and left at the passing of the Peace.  My guess was that, like many dissenters during that era, my name was on a list somewhere.

I was never really asked where my true allegiance lay.  My allegiance lies with the Kingdom of God and with its King, Jesus Christ the Son of the Living God.  That allegiance determines the nature of my response to citizenship in the United States.  By the way, yes, The United States of America is the land of opportunity, and for immigrants who are willing to go through a legitimate application process, speak the language and work hard the rewards are great.