March's Letter from the Bishop

Forty days and forty nights

thou wast fasting in the wild;

forty days and forty nights

tempted, and yet undefiled.

That Lenten hymn came to life for me about a year ago during our diocesan pilgrimage to Israel.  Our bus was driving west from the Dead Sea, on a route that would take us to Beersheba (associated with the Patriarch Abraham) and then up to Jerusalem.  As our bus climbed the hills that rise from the Dead Sea, I noticed how bleak the landscape is:  dry, barren, lifeless, and frankly unattractive.  No one in his right mind would live there.  Suddenly, off to the right side of the bus, a line of camels and their Bedouin masters made their way up the hill, parallel to the road.  It occurred to me that nothing much has changed in two millennia.  People then, and now, eke out a living in the wilderness.  Somehow, in that stark and waterless place, Jesus himself encountered the forces of darkness – and the Power to resist evil.  It was here, or somewhere very nearby, that Jesus for forty days and forty nights was “tempted, and yet undefiled.”

As the Lenten season begins, Jesus invites us to join him in the wilderness.  While we live far from the desert, we can create (so to speak) a desert in our hearts, a place to face down evil and seek the Power of transformation.   The Ash Wednesday liturgy is wonderfully specific.  “I invite you, therefore, in the name of the Church, to the observance of a holy Lent, by self-examination and repentance; by prayer, fasting, and self-denial; and by reading and meditating on God’s holy Word” (BCP, p. 265).  There’s a refreshing directness in the Prayer Book’s prescription for Lent.  Carve out for yourself the time and the place – the desert – where you can gaze into your heart and ask the difficult questions that the Litany of Penitence poses (BCP, pp. 267-268).  That litany, in fact, that be an outline for self-examination.  Where, Lord, have I gone wrong?  How have relationships soured?  In what ways have I excluded you from my life, denied the Lordship of Jesus, gone my own way?  Where do I need you to shine your painfully searching light?

The Lenten desert is also a place to pray.  It’s quiet there.  Can we find a place of quiet in our lives?  It can be a few minutes in the morning, or at the end of the day, or when we’re walking.  (Sometimes, to create quiet in the midst of noise and chaos, I put on earphones, connect them to my iPhone, and turn on a “white noise” app!)  Lent wisely reminds us that our experience of prayer is enhanced in the disciplines of fasting and self-denial; when we say No to an appetite, it’s a reminder that we are utterly dependent upon God.  Here’s a quote from the late Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen, a beloved media figure in the 1950s and -60s: “The Church fasts; the world diets. Materially there is no difference, for a person can lose twenty pounds one way as well as the other. But the difference is in the intention.”  Yes, we can certainly (and rightly) deny ourselves for the sake of physical health.  Given the Law of Nature – “Where The Bishop Is, There Will Be Food” – this is a reality in my own life!  But fasting takes things deeper.  We step back from an appetite for a time in order to turn our attention to God.

Re-directing our attention includes, the Prayer Book reminds us, “reading and meditating on God’s holy Word.”  Many of you are already doing so in a significant way through the Bible Challenge.  Even if you are not, Lent opens a door.  Perhaps you might read the Daily Office readings appointed during the Lenten season (BCP, pp. 951-977; we’re in Year Two).  However large or small the chunks of scripture you read, you can’t lose.  The Lord can touch your heart in long readings or short ones.  Remember that in the desert, as Jesus wrestled with evil, he called upon scripture as he faced down temptation (Matthew 4:1-11).  The Bible had been planted in his heart.  May it be planted in ours!

For forty days and forty nights, Jesus fasted and prayed in the wilderness.  The desert’s bleak landscape was transformed into a place of struggle – and triumph.  May our time in the desert lead us more deeply into the heart of Jesus.

Yours in Christ,

February's Letter from the Bishop

Dear brothers and sisters,

Glorify the Lord, O chill and cold,

drops of dew and flakes of snow.

Frost and cold, ice and sleet, glorify the Lord,

praise him and highly exalt him forever.

- Canticle 12 (BCP, p. 88)

Rarely has a Prayer Book text seem more apt!  I have never before devoted one of my monthly letters to the weather; but then, I have never before experienced a winter quite like this one.  Northern Indiana veterans tell me that the winter of 1978 by far exceeded this winter in sheer overwhelming ferocity.  That may well be so.  But as a relative newcomer, a mere 14 years, I’m still coming to terms with the daily grind that Mother Nature (or Old Man Winter) has set in our path.  We can all, I imagine, tell stories about the demands that winter has placed before us . . . snow blowers perpetually fired up, dogs shivering in the cold as we take them for brisk (and hopefully brief) walks, travel plans cancelled and re-cancelled.  In South Bend the city has twice banned all but emergency vehicles from the streets and threatened $2,500 fines for those who violate the prohibition.  I’ve had two Sunday visitations scrubbed because the long-distance driving simply wasn’t safe.

So the Prayer Book text indeed seems apt – apt, and also ironic.  How can “chill and cold . . frost and cold, ice and sleet” actually glorify the Lord?

The Bible makes a surprising claim about the natural order, about the landscape and the weather and the cosmic and seismic phenomena that we must inescapably confront:  that the natural order reveals something about God’s character.  Thus the psalmist can say, “The heavens declare the glory of God, and the firmament shows his handiwork” (Ps. 19:1).  The many-splendored lights in the sky point beyond themselves to the Creator.  So does the earth and its wonders:  “I lift up my eyes to the hills; from where is my help to come?” (Psalm 121:1).  Gazing at the mountains, the Psalmist ponders the One who made them.  The Apostle Paul himself makes a connection between nature and God’s self-revelation.  “What can be known about God is plain to [the Gentiles], because God has shown it to them.  For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made” (Romans 1:19-20a).

Nature is not fool-proof, however, as a source of God’s revelation.  The prophet Elijah – fleeing from his enemy, King Ahab – stands on Mount Sinai and experiences a dizzying variety of natural phenomena.  “A great and strong wind tore the mountains and broke in pieces the rocks before the Lord, but the Lord was not in the wind.  And after the wind an earthquake, but the Lord was not in the earthquake.  And after the earthquake a fire, but the Lord was not in the fire.  And after the fire the sound of a low whisper.  And when Elijah heard it, he wrapped his face in a cloak” (1 Kings 19:11b-13a).  Sometimes nature speaks to us in God’s voice, the Bible tells us – but sometimes not.  Most profoundly we experience God’s presence in Jesus, the Word Made Flesh.  “For the God who said, ‘Let light sine out of darkness,’ has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ” (2 Corinthians 4:6).

Then what of winter’s fierce onslaught?  Is God speaking in “chill and cold . . . frost and cold, ice and sleet”?  I must be careful not ascribe too much to the Polar Vortex.  But in any case, I’ve learned some valuable spiritual lessons.  Nature is uncontrollable, a reminder that God himself cannot be tamed.  (Aslan, Mr. Beaver tells Peter, Lucy, and Susan in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, is not a safe lion; but he’s good.)  Nature too reminds us that God is a God of surprises.  He intervenes in our lives when we least expect him, helps us to see our utter dependence upon grace.  Winter, in fact, has been filled with grace – like the time a few weeks ago when a neighbor, without my asking, cleared my driveway of snow.  “Why did you do it?” I asked him.  He shrugged and said that he had a “hunch” that I needed the help.  Where did the hunch come from? 

Even in the bleak midwinter, when earth is “hard as iron, water like a stone,” when “snow [has] fallen snow on snow, snow on snow” (Hymn 112), we catch glimmers of the all-powerful God who loves us with love beyond our imagining.

Yours in Christ,

+Ed

Christmas Letter from the Bishop

Dear brothers and sisters,

All my heart this night rejoices

As I hear, far and near, sweetest angel voices.

 “Christ is born,” their choirs are singing,

Till the air everywhere now with joy is ringing.

Paulus Gerhardt’s hymn – written in 1656, and still found in older hymnals – captures something of the joy of Christmastide.  Our own praises at the Christmas Eucharist join the praises of the heavenly chorus as we sing of the Word Made Flesh.  God’s greatest gift is to be born among us.  Gazing into the manger, we behold the Master of the Universe, now enfleshed, a tiny, helpless child.

Hark! A voice from yonder manger

Soft and sweet, doth entreat, “Flee from woe and danger!

Brethren come!  From all doth grieve you,

You are freed; all you need I will surely give you.”

On Christmas Jesus invites us to bring ourselves – our hopes and fears, our successes and failures – to the One who will experience all of life with us:  its tragedies and triumphs, its yearnings and its betrayals, a life that encompassed death, a death that led to Life.

Come, then, let us hasten yonder!

Here let all, great and small, kneel in awe and wonder!

Love him who with love is yearning!

Hail the star that from far bright with hope is burning.

Perhaps it is kneeling in silence before the manger, contemplating the divine humility that would visit us in such a surprising and unexpected way, that we most profoundly experience the meaning of Christmas.  Simply gaze at Jesus.  “Lord, you came here – for me.”

Thee, dear Lord, with heed I’ll cherish;

Live to thee faithfully:  Dying, never perish;

But abide in life eternal

Where with thee I shall be filled with joy supernal.

We begin and end with joy.  It is not surprising that so many of our Christmas carols use the word or some variation.  “Joy to the world, the Lord is come!”  “Good Christian friends, rejoice!”  “Joyful, all ye nations rise, join the triumph of the skies!”  “God rest you merry, Gentlemen!”  May your Christmas celebration be filled with joy unceasing, joy beyond words, joy that draws you into the very heart of Jesus.

Yours in Christ,

+Ed

December's Letter from the Bishop

Dear brothers and sisters,

“Read it again, Daddy!” my son would demand.  And so, once again, we’d make our way through Green Eggs and Ham or The Cat in the Hat or (let’s be pre-seasonal) How the Grinch Stole Christmas.  It’s been well more than three decades since I read and re-read and re-re-read those books, but the words are emblazoned in my mind.  “I do not like green eggs and ham.  I do not like them, Sam-I-Am. . . . I do not like them in a box.  I do not like them with a fox.  I do not like them in a house.  I do not like them with a mouse. . . “  Over and over and over.  Words have the power to become part of our inner life, accessed at any time and in the most surprising ways.  If you begin reciting a Dr. Seuss book in my presence, I’m likely to chime in.  I won’t be able to help myself.

All of which, I suppose, seems a long way from the Bible Challenge, but it really isn’t.  Many of you joined me in reading the Bible cover to cover, Genesis to Revelation, in 2013.  But now here’s a secret.  Well, not a secret:  I’ve been up front about this from the very beginning.  The Bible Challenge is not a one-time event – as though, next year, we’ll move on to some other great peace of literature, perhaps War and Peace or the Iliad and the Odyssey.  No, the Bible Challenge in 2013 is only the start of a life-long project.  My intention, as we enter the new year, is to begin all over again, with Genesis 1 and God’s first recorded words:  “Let there be light.”  I invite you to join me for Bible Challenge II.

The goal, of course, is to internalize the Story, to take it into our hearts and make it our own.  That can only happen when you read and re-read and re-re-read, an ongoing journey rather than a single intense immersion.  In other words, Bible reading is a project that we never complete.  There’s never a time when we can “check it off” and move on.  Like the Christian Year, we continually start afresh – and, like our experience with the Christian Year, we are often surprised by new insights, elements of the Story that we’d missed, passages that we skimmed last time around and this year grab our attention and demand our obedience.

Again we’re sending to each parish copies of the Bible Challenge reading list, a systematic way of approaching the Scriptures.  You can also sign up for a Diocese of Northern Indiana Facebook page, and for weekly Bible Challenge e-mailings (http://ednin.org/bible-challenge/).  The reading list is based on a pattern of three chapters of the Old Testament, a psalm, and one chapter of the New Testament each day.  (The pattern actually slows down toward the end of the year, with shorter daily readings.)  If the entire Bible is too big a chunk for you in 2014, you could simply do the New Testament readings.  If you read the Bible in 2013, you might consider a different translation, or a version with study notes.  Whatever pattern you choose, you can’t lose!  Forming a habit of daily Bible reading will help you, in time, to make the Story your own.

“Read it again, Daddy!” – and eventually, over time, I hardly knew when I was reading and when I was reciting from memory, the words had so burned themselves into my mind.  Will we ever get to that point with the Bible?  It is, admittedly, a much more complex book than anything written by Dr. Seuss!  But we should never underestimate the Bible’s power to get into our bones, so to speak, and change our lives.  Nor can anything replace the day-in, day-out reading of the Bible as a way to deepen our faith, strengthen our walk with Jesus, and challenge us faithfully to follow where he leads.  May Bible Challenge II draw us ever near to the heart of our Lord himself. 

Yours in Christ,

+Ed

November's Letter from the Bishop

Dear brothers and sisters,

It doesn’t speak well of me (or maybe it does?) that I especially enjoy murder mysteries – the more puzzling and gruesome, the better.  Oh yes, I do a good deal of conventional reading as well:  theology (my vocation) and history (my avocation) in particular; but left to my own devices, I’m happy to curl up with a brain-teasing, criminally fueled mystery.  So it’s been a special joy to discover a number of home grown mystery writers in the Diocese of Northern Indiana.  They’ve enhanced and deepened my appreciation of the genre!

Jeanne Dams, a member of St. Paul’s, Mishawaka, has written a series of mysteries featuring Dorothy Martin, an American married to a retired British chief constable; the most recent in the series:  Murder at the Castle.  Ruth Foster from St. Andrew’s, Valparaiso, writes mysteries set in late 14th Century England and starring a delightful – and insightful – noblewoman named Lady Apollonia (Ruth’s “pen name” is Ellen Foster); the first installment is entitled Effigy of the Cloven Hoof.  Thom Satterlee, a member of Gethsemane, Marion, recently published The Stages; his detective is an American living in Copenhagen, and the mystery centers on the writings of Soren Kierkargaard.  Not precisely in the mystery genre, but appropriate for inclusion in this list, is Fr. John Houghton, a priest of our diocese who teaches at The Hill School near Philadelphia, who has written a “supernatural thriller” titled Rough Magicke, set in a fictitious Diocese of Michigan City.  While the purpose of this letter is not to sell books, I’m delighted to add that all four authors can be found at online sites such as Amazon.

Why mysteries?  Many of you, I suspect, are also drawn to this genre of literature – and rightly so!  Mysteries are more than a “guilty pleasure”.  They parallel in surprising ways God’s unveiling of his purposes and his nature.  The New Testament regularly uses the word “mystery” to refer to God’s self-revelation.  “Think of us in this way,” St. Paul tells his friends in Corinth, “as servants of Christ and stewards of God’s mysteries” (1 Corinthians 4:1).   To the Christians in Ephesus he adds:  “With all wisdom and insight, he has made known to us the mystery of his will, according to his good pleasure that he set forth in Christ” (Ephesians 1:8b-9).  Slowly, over time, God has been revealing himself:  to our spiritual ancestors, the Jews, during nearly two millennia of Old Testament history; to the confused and often dense band of disciples who followed Jesus around Galilee and ultimately to Jerusalem; to those who witnessed the death and the resurrection of Jesus; “and last of all, as to one untimely born, he appeared also to me,” St. Paul says (1 Corinthians 15:8).  The faith was not revealed suddenly, in one lump sum, but piecemeal, bit by bit, as God’s plan became more and more clear.

It is no surprise that the celebrant says:  “Let us proclaim the mystery of faith” (BCP, p. 362).  Nor is it a surprise that the Easter Vigil reminds us:  “Through the Paschal mystery, dear friends, we are buried with Christ by Baptism into his death, and raised with him to newness of life” (BCP, p. 292).  As followers of Jesus, we are immersed in mystery.  God has revealed his heart to us in Jesus.  He has revealed himself in scripture; in the sacraments; in the ongoing life of the church; indeed, in the eyes of the poorest of the poor.  Our life is one of unveiling mystery.  “All of us, with unveiled faces, seeing the glory of the Lord as though reflected in a mirror, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another”  (2 Corinthians 3:18).

And so mysteries offer us a glimpse into God’s methodology.  Truth is discerned – though often slowly, piece by piece.  A pattern emerges and suddenly, surprisingly, we grasp what was formerly hidden from us.  Bits of evidence that had seemed random and unrelated come together as a coherent whole.  “Open our eyes to see your hand at work in the world about us” (BCP, p. 372).  The scales fall off and, like St. Paul, we see (Acts 9:18).  In an odd (and probably imprecise) sort of way, we are detectives – with this difference:  the object of our search is not the bad buy, but the Good Guy par excellence; and the object of our search is not seeking to evade us, but rather yearns for us to discover him, know him, love him, and follow him.                                                                 

Yours in Christ,

+Ed