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Day: November 25, 2006

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Current Events,

Pray for unity, peace, healing, and God’s protection

Metropolitan Nicholas of the American Carpatho-Russian Orthodox Diocese has directed all priests of the Diocese to include the following special petition in the —Triple Litany— after the Gospel in the Divine Liturgy:

O Holy Father from Whom all blessings flow, we come before You in meekness and bow down: humbly we beseech You to look kindly upon the meeting of Patriarch Bartholomew, Archbishop of Constantinople, and Pope Benedict, Pontiff of Rome. For too long, there has been division and alienation in the Church, when there should have been the unity of the Body of Christ. We beg Your mercy and wisdom, O Lord, to provide for the welfare of the holy churches of God and for their union. Let this occasion of fellowship be for the healing of old disputes. In Your infinite power, protect these Shepherds of the Great and Holy Pasture of Christ. Shield them, and all who attend, from the peril of harm. And in Your matchless grace, establish a bright new work in these latter days, so that the world might see the Face of Christ; so that men and women might repent, believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and be saved in the Apostolic Church of God. For these supplications, we humbly beseech You, Holy Father, hear us and have mercy.

Let us join in this prayer.

Many thanks to Huw Raphael, Ben Johnson, and Subdeacon Benjamin for pointing to this.

Everything Else

Set us free, put it off no longer

O Radix Jesse,
qui stas in signum populorum,
super quem continebunt reges os suum,
quem gentes deprecabuntur:
veni ad liberandum nos,
jam noli tardare

O Root of Jesse,
who stand as a sign for the people,
kings stand silent in your presence,
whom the nations will worship:
come to set us free,
put it off no longer.

O Korzeniu Jessego,
który się wznosisz jako znak dla narodów,
przed Tobą zamilkną królowie,
a ludy będą się modlić do Ciebie,
przyjdź nas wyzwolić
już dłużej nie zwlekaj.

A shoot shall spout from the stump of Jesse’s tree. From a nation of no account, in human terms, the Savior shall come to us. From what appears to be a dead nation, a shoot of new life, Life that will redeem all life.

God comes to us in ways and forms that are unexpected. He came to Moses in the burning bush, He wrestled with Jacob, He came in a whisper to Elijah, and as a child in a manger among the outcasts.

Jesus the enigma, the God-man whose depths we barely plumb, can only be met in worship, the collective action of a community committed to Him.

Worship is our stance —“ arguments about kneeling, standing, prostrating notwithstanding. We, king or pauper, can do nothing more or less than worship God our Father, the Son our King, and the Spirit our life. It is the only response we can make. Our words are but senseless groaning before the throne of the King of kings. But he deigns to hear us, to love us, to incorporate us, and to free us.

Come Lord Jesus, put it off no longer. We are waiting.

Current Events, Media, Perspective, Poland - Polish - Polonia

Commenting on ethnicity

One of the newsgroups I recently joined over at Yahoo! is the Polish American Forum. There has been quite a discussion going on around the play Polish Joke by David Ives.

The play is currently being staged by the University of Detroit Mercy (a Jesuit university) and the University’s Theater Company to protests from many in the Polish-American community.

The play has been out for a while and the Polish-American community has frequently commented on it in the negative (see the American Council for Polish Culture’s response by Marek Czarnecki for an example).

The problem with the play, and its current staging, as I see it is threefold:

A Failure in Plot and Development

It is an attempt to examine a serious issue —“ self identity and the affect nativist thinking and philosophy has had on intercultural relationships in the United States —“ done poorly. Cheap humor that buys into nativist stereotypes, while effective as a foil (how many cringed when we recently heard about Michael ‘Kramer’ Richards outburst at two black men) is useless as comedic cover for a poorly developed plot.

The Village Voice reviewer Michael Feingold covers that well in Partial Births: Parks Faces Tragedy; Ives Masks Comedy

David Ives … [s]triving to write a full-evening comedy … has fallen victim to the defensive impulse to make it funny. As a result, he’s filled Polish Joke with skits to the point where you hardly notice the play he’s trying to write. As staged by John Rando, with a quartet of able comedians gleefully headed by Nancy Opel and Walter Bobbie, the skits are often extremely funny indeed. The Irish skit, which runs on a little too long for me, is most people’s favorite; as a Smith & Dale fan, I prefer the doctor sketch. But what I’d really prefer most would be the play Ives apparently intended to write, on the American dilemma of ethnicity versus assimilation, which is centered on his fifth character, a Polish American who doesn’t want to be a Polish joke. Not only interesting in himself, this character is played by Malcolm Gets with touching sincerity and grace, as a human being living a nightmare rather than a straight man in sketch comedy. This is unfair; either Ives should build a play around the character or Rando should show the actor how to walk this way. (If he could walk that way, he wouldn’t need the talcum powder.)

Instead, Ives’s hero proceeds from sketch to sketch, the punchline of his joke life being that he marries the only utterly unhumorous person in the play and settles down with her in Poland. Which may be a handy way to wind things up, but says little about how Ives feels we should live in this nation of immigrants. Like Parks, Ives lets his inner preoccupations usurp, rather than interact with, external reality. But where Parks has at least pushed the outer doors open, Ives farcically slams them shut.

A Failure of Ideals

The play is being put on by a nominally Catholic University, not that I should expect anything different. The R.C. Church in the United States grew up under clerics who heavily bought into nativist stereotyping. In addition, allegedly Catholic universities, such as Notre Dame, regularly sponsor plays like the Vagina Monologues and have a tendency to discipline students who exhibit Catholic witness —“ perhaps out of fear of their own weak witness. Even so, when I hear the word Catholic and think of the faith of the Poles who have contributed time, talent, and treasure to build up the R.C. Church in the United States, I do expect different. To some extent, that is why I am a member on the PNCC, I couldn’t take the regular doses of cognitive dissonance. The R.C. Church in the United States has a long track record of relegating Polish-Americans to third class status —“ and it continues to this day. Pray, pay, and obey everyone because you know, we have a pope.

A Failure to Examine

The play fails to examine the pain that nativist stereotyping has caused. Economic deprivation, leaving many Polish-Americans a generation behind their peers, families turning their ethic identity into a closely guarded secret through a series of name changes and other assimilation techniques, self-hated, glass ceilings, and I could go on. The age old question of identity and its relationship to culture is lost for those from whom their very identity has been hidden by their parents and grandparents. If Mr. Ives has pain, he should explore it more seriously.

The affect of nativist stereotypes on Polish-Americans has been either negative assimilation (a complete washing out of any historical-cultural connection) or abject defensiveness. Join a Polish-American society, and as in the play, be regaled by stories of Kościuszko, Pułaski, Pope John Paul, Marie Curie, and a list of names and events miles long. Polish-Americans of that stripe are so busy defending themselves, their history and culture; they’ve lost sight of the future.

The arts should explore the full gamut of human emotions and relationships. Some of it, like nativism and stereotyping are dark corners of this nation’s psyche, little explored. Mr. Ives and the University of Detroit Mercy would do better to explore these areas in a way that challenges our complacency, our latent discrimination, and our identity politics rather than buying into them*.

*NOTE: Leaders within the Polish-American community took the initiative to confront the University and they ‘agreed’ to open a public forum on the issues raised. Ref. Deal Made On “Polish Joke” At University from the Polish Falcons website.

Homilies

Christ the King

So Pilate said to him, “Then you are a king?”
Jesus answered, “You say I am a king.”

Do we know what to do with Jesus? How do we compartmentalize Him? How do we classify Him? Is He an enigma, a question, an unsolved riddle, a mystery beyond our comprehension? Is He just a man, a teacher, a thinker of good and great thoughts, words to live by?

Knowing what to do with Jesus is our lifelong mission.

Start with faith. You have been given the gift of faith by your baptism and faith is necessary unto salvation —“ for absolute knowledge of God is impossible. Each Sunday we say: I believe in God… as an act of faith. Begin in that faith.

The next step in furthering your search for Jesus is Holy Scripture.

In today’s Gospel Jesus’ reply to Pilate was simple —“ you classify me as a king, but here is the reality of it:

“For this I was born and for this I came into the world,
to testify to the truth.
Everyone who belongs to the truth listens to my voice.”

Jesus came to us, sent by the Father, to reveal the truth of God to us. A powerful and overwhelming truth, that God, eternal and all powerful, would condescend and die for our salvation. We celebrate this fact every Sunday here on this altar.

The great Christological hymns of the New Testament confess this. In Philippians 2 we read:

Christ Jesus,
Who, though he was in the form of God,
did not regard equality with God
something to be grasped.
Rather, he emptied himself,
taking the form of a slave,
coming in human likeness;
and found human in appearance,
he humbled himself,
becoming obedient to death,
even death on a cross.
Because of this, God greatly exalted him
and bestowed on him the name that is above every name,
that at the name of Jesus every knee should bend,
of those in heaven and on earth and under the earth,
and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord,
to the glory of God the Father.

God took the form of a slave to die an ignominious death for us. For this obedience the Father exalts His Son and has given Him everything to be under His power.

In the Letter to the Colossians we read that the Father:

…delivered us from the power of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved Son, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins. He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation. For in him were created all things in heaven and on earth, the visible and the invisible, whether thrones or dominions or principalities or powers; all things were created through him and for him. He is before all things, and in him all things hold together. He is the head of the body, the church. He is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, that in all things he himself might be preeminent.

There is a whole branch of theology called Christology. Christology attempts to define Jesus the Christ. Christology isn’t concerned with the minor details of His life; rather it deals with defining Jesus’ very nature, the Incarnation, and the major events of His life. Christology tries to define Jesus’ human nature, His divine nature, and the interrelationship between these two natures; how they interact and affect each other.

Christology delves into Christ’s nature by studying the titles and names attributed to Him. He is Christ the prophet, teacher, priest, sacrifice, the Son of Man, God incarnate, the Word, the new Adam, the Lion of Judah, the Lamb of God, the first born of the dead, and the King of Kings, Lord of Lords —“ all titles from scripture.

From scripture we know the names and titles of the Lord. We know His actions and His work. We have a solid starting point and a whole branch of theology to help us understand Jesus. But yet, what do we do with this Jesus. We are still unclear.

Perhaps the problem and the danger was best captured by Dietrich Bonhoeffer when he urged people not to think of God as a stop-gap for the areas in our life that are incomplete.

If we see our knowledge as lacking —“ well, God knows all. If our love life is lacking —“ well, God loves me. If I see myself as poor —“ God will provide riches. As Bonhoeffer notes; we typically think that as our knowledge increases, or as our love, success, and riches increase, we need God less. We push God back as we advance. God retreats because we do not need Him as much.

Bonhoeffer’s tells us that we are to recognize God not only in the mystery of what we do not know, or as the source of that we do not have, but in what we do have, in what we do know. God, revealed to us in Jesus, is to be part and parcel of every aspect of our lives. He said:

God is no stop-gap; he must be recognized at the center of life, not when we are at the end of our resources; it is his will to be recognized in life, and not only when death comes; in health and vigor, and not only in suffering; in our activities, and not only in sin.

He goes on to say:

The ground for this lies in the revelation of God in Jesus Christ. He is the center of life, and he certainly didn’t ‘come’ to answer our unsolved problems.

That is how we answer our question. That is how we discover what we are to do with Jesus. From faith, through scripture and theology, to the realization of God, our God, Who permeates every aspect of our lives.

Jesus is indeed the King who must be at the center of our lives. The Lord over all we are. Not the stop-gap or the go-to guy. Not the pinch hitter or the backup quarterback. Not the magic genie or the cosmic slot machine. Not God for only the mysterious and lacking.

When we accept God as our king and as our all, when we are regenerated in and pledged completely to our King, our life will change. We will be changed and His kingdom will be one step closer to its realization.

To my question: Do we know what to do with Jesus? How do we classify Him?

The answer: He is the center of our lives, our all-in-all. Our God and King.

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