Louisiana Episcopal parish to hang yellow penalty flags this Sunday for the social injustice done to their Saints

If you don't follow football, you won't understand this, but to bring you up to speed, the New Orleans Saints football team recently lost  was cheated out of the NFC Championship game by four referees from Southern California, one from the same county where the winning team, the Los Angeles Rams, hail from.

Saints fans and the nation, with the exception of Southern California, are outraged. Some have gone so far as to sue the NFL. United States Senator Bill Cassidy, who I happened to mentor once upon a time decades ago, stood up in the Senate and called for justice.

What else can you do?

Pray!

Darn Gantt at "Pro Football Talk" posted this recently,

"Saints fans can turn to the Lord with their prayers for better officiating"

If the NFL isn’t going to throw a flag, Christ Episcopal Church will.

One of my relatives was a member of that parish in the past.

"Via Kim Chatelain of the New Orleans Times-Picayune comes the latest installment in Saints fans finding a way to vent their anger and process the grief of being jammed out of a trip to the Super Bowl.
Rev. Bill Miller, the rector of Christ Episcopal in nearby Covington, is doing his part to help distraught fans channel their feelings in a more productive way during services Sunday.
'Folks will be encouraged to wear black and gold,' Miller said. 'And we will distribute yellow penalty flags during the service but will turn them into prayer flags on which they can write an injustice or a challenge they wish to change, or work toward changing.'”

I wonder how many will write down the injustice the Saints endured two weeks ago. I don't think anyone will write down the injustice done to the churches of the Diocese of South Carolina by the Episcopal organization.

"After the service, fans can leave to the tune of 'When the Saints Go Marchin’ In' and hang the symbolic flags on prayer lines outside the church.
'It’s really important that Saints fans take the high road and not stay stuck in the unhelpful place of anger and frustration,' Miller said.
If any good comes out of reminding his parishoners to focus their attention on solving a societal problem rather than griping about a football game, then that can only help."

Oh no, the social justice mantra. They should be hanging up rainbow colored flags instead because that is what that mantra always leads to.

"And if the gimmick helps goose attendance during the lull between Christmas and Easter for the non-regulars, that’s fine too."

That parish already has pretty good attendance. As their annual report attests they are "an anomaly" in that they have grown (except for taking a step back last year). Perhaps they are doing well because they claim to be,

"a sacramental and altar-focused community, biblically centered, and mission-driven. We are called to proclaim the good news of God in Christ". 

Indeed, I find nothing on their web page to suggest they would hang the rainbow flag.

Good luck to them. They'll need it because the name of the game in the Episcopal sect is, play by the rules of the progressive agenda or else you will, like the New Orleans Saints, lose everything.

Cœli enarrant

The Psalm appointed for this Sunday us Psalm 19,  Cœli enarrant

1 The heavens declare the glory of God, *
and the firmament shows his handiwork.

2 One day tells its tale to another, *
and one night imparts knowledge to another.

3 Although they have no words or language, *
and their voices are not heard,

4 Their sound has gone out into all lands, *
and their message to the ends of the world.

5 In the deep has he set a pavilion for the sun; *
it comes forth like a bridegroom out of his chamber;
it rejoices like a champion to run its course.

6 It goes forth from the uttermost edge of the heavens
and runs about to the end of it again; *
nothing is hidden from its burning heat.

7 The law of the Lord is perfect
and revives the soul; *
the testimony of the Lord is sure
and gives wisdom to the innocent.

8 The statutes of the Lord are just
and rejoice the heart; *
the commandment of the Lord is clear
and gives light to the eyes.

9 The fear of the Lord is clean
and endures for ever; *
the judgments of the Lord are true
and righteous altogether.

10 More to be desired are they than gold,
more than much fine gold, *
sweeter far than honey,
than honey in the comb.

11 By them also is your servant enlightened, *
and in keeping them there is great reward.

12 Who can tell how often he offends? *
cleanse me from my secret faults.

13 Above all, keep your servant from presumptuous sins;
let them not get dominion over me; *
then shall I be whole and sound,
and innocent of a great offense.

14 Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable in your sight, *
O Lord, my strength and my redeemer.

I heard verse 14 quoted before the sermon as long as I can remember. I used it myself when I have been called upon to deliver the homily. It wasn't until I studied the Psalter that I made the connection.

The Psalm begins by explaining how the amazing celestial dance of the Sun and the Earth is evidence of the glory of God, of how it rises, sets, and races around to do it all over again. We were reminded of this last week as many of us watched a lunar eclipse, or "blood moon" run its course across the heavens. The Psalm then shifts focus to the Law, God's statutes, and how the psalmist desires the Lord's judgments and righteousness.

We think that we have conquered space and that we understand the heavens. This week I learned that we haven't even figured out the correct time of sunrise or sunset with precision. An article at "Sky and Telescope" (S+T for short) details one researcher's findings,

"... overall, predicted times varied in accuracy by location and season, with sunrise times over land generally being early in the summer months and late in the winter. Summer showed the largest discrepancies, probably due to the pronounced refractive effect that the large temperature difference in the atmosphere has during those months. Mirage effects due to cold air topped by warm over water horizons also exacerbated lags in sunset times throughout the year, sometimes by up to 5 minutes. Accounting for the observer’s altitude above the horizon did notably improve predictions for water horizons, however. 

Furthermore, the more complex refraction models that incorporated meteorological conditions didn’t do a better job: Their inherent, limited assumptions about the behavior of the weather layer in Earth’s atmosphere, called the troposphere, led to them congregating around the 34ʹ value. Regardless of model, she concluded, sunrise and sunset times can’t be reliably predicted to better than 2 minutes.

Two minutes might sound inconsequential, but Wilson noted that, if GPS fails, sailors will use celestial navigation. 'Most sailors will tell you that they can get their position with celestial navigation to within 1 nautical mile,' she said. But if part of that calculation involves sunset, '1 minute of time turns into 15 nautical miles of error.'” 

I thank God for the wonders of His creation and the am reminded of that every time I gaze at the stars.

And To Compost Ye Shall Return

A story from NBC News by Tafline Laylin enlightened me to a new way to enter the hereafter, converting your dead body to compost.

"When Americans die, most are buried or cremated. Washington could soon become the first state to allow another option: human composting."

They don't call it "the left coast" for nothing.

"The novel approach, known as 'recomposition,' involves placing bodies in a vessel and hastening their decomposition into a nutrient-dense soil that can then be returned to families. The aim is a less expensive way of dealing with human remains that is better for the environment than burial, which can leach chemicals into the ground, or cremation, which releases earth-warming carbon dioxide."

The process of turning a body into compost will also release carbon dioxide.

"Pedersen (Washington State Senator (Dem) Jamie Pedersen) sees recomposition as an environmental and a social justice issue. He said allowing it would particularly benefit people who can’t afford a funeral or aren’t comfortable with cremation. Recompose aims to charge $5,500 for its services, while a traditional burial generally cost more than $7,000 in 2017, according to the National Funeral Directors Association. (Cremation can cost less than $1,000, though that doesn’t include a service or an urn.)"

5,500 bucks is still expensive, but frame anything as an environmental and social justice issue and your bill is sure to pass.

"The push to allow composting of human remains originates with Katrina Spade, 41, a Seattle-based designer who started focusing on the idea in 2013 while working on her master’s in architecture at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.
Spade’s initial goal was to design a system that would restore people’s connection to death and its aftermath, which she said had been severed in part by the funeral industry. A friend introduced her to the farming practice of composting livestock after they die. Called mortality composting, the practice has been shown to safely keep pathogens from contaminating the land, while creating a richer soil."

The funeral industry has severed people's connection to death and its aftermath!? Are you kidding me? That would kill their business.

“'It was like a lightbulb went off and I started to envision a system that uses the same principles as mortality composting … that would be meaningful and appropriate for human beings,' she said.
She worked with researchers at Western Carolina University and the Washington State University to turn her vision, which she dubbed 'recomposition,' into reality.

"Recomposition" sounds much nicer than "composting".

The process involves placing unembalmed human remains wrapped in a shroud in a 5-foot-by-10-foot cylindrical vessel with a bed of organic material such as wood chips, alfalfa and straw. Air is then periodically pulled into the vessel, providing oxygen to accelerate microbial activity. Within approximately one month, the remains are reduced to a cubic yard of compost that can be used to grow new plants."

I wonder what they do with the stubborn bones? So does the Roman Catholic Church,

An earlier version of Pedersen’s bill, which included alkaline hydrolysis but not recomposition, failed in Washington in 2017, which Pedersen attributed to opposition from the Roman Catholic Church.
Thomas Parker, a former lobbyist for the Washington State Catholic Conference, said the church was concerned about dissolved human remains draining into sewers.
Alkaline hydrolysis may go against Catholic doctrine that requires the human body to be respected, said James LeGrys, theological adviser to the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops. LeGrys was unfamiliar with recomposition, but noted that it could be problematic if body parts are separated in any way.

In a post at Crisis Magazine, John Horvat II comes down hard against this proposed practice calling it, "Human Composting: The Ultimate Denial of the Soul". Here is a taste of his argument,

"Human composting is not just a practical alternative to burial. It is an eco-religious act. Its advocates openly promote it as an expression of social justice and ecological fervor. It fits into a pantheistic worldview where everything is reduced to matter in constant transformation..."

"Some practical-minded people will find little wrong with this process. They will claim that the useless corpse is put to good use by enriching the soil and preventing the release of Earth-warming carbon dioxide. What difference does it make if the person’s final resting place is at the base of a tree rather than laying in a grave?
Indeed, it would make no difference at all if there were no soul. The great accomplishment of the ecologists who created 'recomposition' is not engineering the mechanical contraption that turns humans into compost. It is overturning those “unwritten and unchanging laws” embedded in human nature by which people have sensed the need for reverencing the dead from time immemorial."

"The seemingly harmless process of 'recomposition' is like the proclamation of an anti-metaphysical manifesto that implicitly denies the existence of the soul, the resurrection of the body, and the need for Redemption. It leads to still more radical insinuations that life is meaningless, and history is pointless."

I am not sure that his arguments will carry the day, but he is correct that the proposal fits well with a pantheistic worldview in that some people will opt for "recomposition" with faith that they will live on as a tree.

As to his argument that human composting implicitly denies the existence of the soul, I cannot agree. It may deny the sanctity of human remains by spreading your compost on unconsecrated ground, but I don't see where it denies the soul.

I do think the idea denies the laws of economics. After all, you can buy a 50 pound bag of composted cow manure from Home Depot for just $4.87.

Spread that around your fig tree but don't spread me.

The Revised Common Lectionary Does Injustice to Psalm 36

This Sunday, in churches that use the Revised Common Lectionary, the Psalm appointed is Psalm 36: 5-10. Verses 1-4 and 11-12 get the ax, and followers of this blog will quickly identify the problems that the lectionary editors probably had with those verses. Here is the unedited version that most Episcopalians will not hear today.

36 Dixit injustus

1 There is a voice of rebellion deep in the heart of the wicked; *
there is no fear of God before his eyes.

2 He flatters himself in his own eyes *
that his hateful sin will not be found out.

3 The words of his mouth are wicked and deceitful; *
he has left off acting wisely and doing good.

4 He thinks up wickedness upon his bed
and has set himself in no good way; *
he does not abhor that which is evil.


5 Your love, O Lord, reaches to the heavens, *
and your faithfulness to the clouds.

6 Your righteousness is like the strong mountains,
your justice like the great deep; *
you save both man and beast, O Lord.

7 How priceless is your love, O God! *
your people take refuge under the
shadow of your wings.

8 They feast upon the abundance of your house; *
you give them drink from the river of your delights.

9 For with you is the well of life, *
and in your light we see light.

10 Continue your loving-kindness to those who know you, *
and your favor to those who are true of heart.

11 Let not the foot of the proud come near me, *
nor the hand of the wicked push me aside.

12 See how they are fallen, those who work wickedness! *
they are cast down and shall not be able to rise,

By leaving out verses 1-4 and 11-12, the lectionary editors have created a new Psalm, one that focuses on God's love. That love is lovely, but in so doing they have eliminated the reasons why we should love God's love. We are the ones with rebellion in our hearts, we are the self flatterers, we are the ones with wicked thoughts, we are the proud. The fact that God still loves us stands in sharper contrast to how we think and act when we are reminded of the sorry state of our affairs by reading the whole of Psalm 36.

Gender Ideology: The Final Triumph of the Sexual Revolution or Just Another Distraction?

A post by Rod Dreher at the American Conservative cites the fall of Christianity and its caving in to the sexual revolution as the beginning of the death of American culture, 

"To be modern, as we have seen, is to believe in one’s individual desires as the locus of authority and self- definition. As philosopher Charles Taylor writes, “The entire ethical stance of moderns supposes and follows on from the death of God (and of course, of the meaningful cosmos).”
"Gay marriage and gender ideology signify the final triumph of the Sexual Revolution and the dethroning of Christianity because they deny Christian anthropology at its core and shatter the authority of the Bible. Rightly ordered sexuality is not at the core of Christianity, but as Rieff saw, it’s so near to the center that to lose the Bible’s clear teaching on this matter is to risk losing the fundamental integrity of the faith. This is why Christians who begin by rejecting sexual orthodoxy end either by rejecting Christianity themselves or by laying the groundwork for their children to do so."
“The death of a culture begins when its normative institutions fail to communicate ideals in ways that remain inwardly compelling,” Rieff writes. By that standard, Christianity in America is in mortal danger. "The Benedict Option: A Strategy for Christians in a Post-Christian Nation Paperback – April 3, 2018by Rod Dreher.

Why is it that we are not communicating the ideals handed down to us in the Gospel in a way that is inwardly compelling? It is simply the most amazing event in human history. I guess shows like "American Idol" are more appealing to the masses. Or perhaps it is as I have described on these pages before that we have moved from being a culture in which a few well known stories are passed along from generation to generation to become a culture in which we must be presented with a new story every few seconds, or a new 30 minute television show, a new 120 minute film story, or a new trilogy of films every few years, with the end result being that we lose the ability to focus, to see, to retain what is really important, and to pass it along to the next generation. The present age has been rightly named "The Age of Distraction" or more aptly, "Distractions", and the spirit of this age has a firm grip on us all. The Gospel, when it falls prey to this spirit, becomes a spring board for novel interpretations all designed to keep us entertained with new and potentially heretical ideas. In the hopes of capturing the attention of an ever distracted audience, revisionist preachers come up with endless streams of false teaching that contribute to the confusion of stories with which the modern mind must sort and filter.

Jesus tells us,

“Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the first and greatest commandment." Matthew 22:37-38

The current fad of gender ideology is a sign that we are not loving God with our entire being. Instead we are distracted, our attention is drawn to the new, the bizarre, and the shocking by the attention grabbing pull of the zeitgeist, the spirit of the age.

Making Baptism Complete

This Sunday's reading from Acts 8:14-17 points out that merely being baptized might not be enough,

"Now when the apostles at Jerusalem heard that Samaria had accepted the word of God, they sent Peter and John to them. The two went down and prayed for them that they might receive the Holy Spirit (for as yet the Spirit had not come upon any of them; they had only been baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus). Then Peter and John laid their hands on them, and they received the Holy Spirit."

A friend once told me of the time he was stopped on the streets of Greenville, SC by a Bob Jones University student who posed the common Southern introductory question, "Have you been saved?" to which my friend responded, "Yes, and have you been baptized by a priest in Apostolic succession?"

The laying on of hands is therefore an ancient tradition which, in the hands of the Apostles, carried the power of the Holy Spirit. 

Not every baptism "takes", but those that are sealed by the Holy Spirit most certainly will.

The story of the man who had been partially baptized has been handed down to me by my father,

A small church in the mountains got a new pastor who decided to study the church rolls in order to better understand his new flock. The records showed that all but one person had been baptized with the exception being a man beside whose name the previous pastor had written, "Partially baptized".  The new pastor learned that this man lived way up on the mountain and had not been to church in years, so the pastor decided to pay him a visit and see if he could find out more about "partial baptism". 
After a long hike, the pastor arrived at the man's small cabin where the man greeted him with a suspicious eye. The pastor introduced himself, and after some small talk, the discussion got around to the man's partial baptism. The man stiffened and said, "Now don't you get any ideas about doing that again. The last fella who tried that took me down to the creek and said, 'In the name of the Father' and pushed me down into that ice cold water. Then he pulled me up and said, In the name of the Son" and pushed me down into that freezing cold water again. He plucked me out and said. 'In the name of the Holy Spirit", but before he could dunk me I stopped him and said, 'The Father and the Son nearly killed me, I don't want to know what that Holy Spirit might do.'"

;-)

Spotting The Diabolical

Scott Beauchamp, in his review of D.C. Schindler’s "Freedom from Reality: The Diabolical Character of Modern Liberty" writes,

"The diabolical works by leaching energy from reality but pointing to itself as the final authority. It is primarily negative—a verneinender Geist, as Goethe wrote in Faust, that defines itself through its opposition. It 'mimics, rather than mediates' reality, obsessing over appearance while simultaneously functionalizing reality. It presents itself as somehow better than the real, and it partitions people inside of their own subjectivity. And it acts as a 'translation of eternity into its possibilistic, horizontally contained, image: it is not a self-transcendence, but a constant repetition of the self into a future without meaningful limit, or in other words without the limit of meaning.'”

When I first read this, language like, "its possibilistic, horizontally contained, image", sailed over my head, and I suspect most of my readers will have a similar experience. In fact, there is something diabolical in that style of writing, The key point that I do understand is that the diabolical "presents itself as somehow better than the real", and that is how Satan works. Revisionist priests and bishops typically present their interpretations of the Gospel as somehow being better than what a plain reading of the Bible provides to the simple pewsitter, and revisionist teachings can easily mutate and reappear in new forms because they are not restrained by the limits contained in scripture.

The diabolical is real, and when asked to define it, most of us would struggle to find the right words to use. Recognizing the diabolical can be a struggle too, but when you can detect that an idea or teaching will eventually lead to a denial of God or his revelation in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus, then you know that you are in the presence of the diabolical.

Epiphany

This Sunday coincides with Epiphany, and the Gospel reading from Matthew 2:1-12 tells of the arrival of the wise men and their dealings with Herod, 

In the time of King Herod, after Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea, wise men from the East came to Jerusalem, asking, ‘Where is the child who has been born king of the Jews? For we observed his star at its rising, and have come to pay him homage.’ When King Herod heard this, he was frightened, and all Jerusalem with him; and calling together all the chief priests and scribes of the people, he inquired of them where the Messiah was to be born. They told him, ‘In Bethlehem of Judea; for so it has been written by the prophet:  “And you, Bethlehem, in the land of Judah,   are by no means least among the rulers of Judah;for from you shall come a ruler   who is to shepherd my people Israel.” ’
Then Herod secretly called for the wise men and learned from them the exact time when the star had appeared. Then he sent them to Bethlehem, saying, ‘Go and search diligently for the child; and when you have found him, bring me word so that I may also go and pay him homage.’ When they had heard the king, they set out; and there, ahead of them, went the star that they had seen at its rising,* until it stopped over the place where the child was. When they saw that the star had stopped, they were overwhelmed with joy. On entering the house, they saw the child with Mary his mother; and they knelt down and paid him homage. Then, opening their treasure-chests, they offered him gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh. And having been warned in a dream not to return to Herod, they left for their own country by another road.

They were wise, but not wise enough to see through Herod's ruse on their own. They needed help which came in the form of a dream. 

The lectionary pages add this information,

Christian writers have interpreted the gold as a sign that Jesus is King, the Frankincense as a sign that He is God, and the myrrh (used in embalming) as a sign that He is by His death and Resurrection the Savior of the world. This imagery is found in the song, "We Three Kings of Orient Are." The three gifts are also understood a a sign of three responses that we ought to make to Christ. See the following hymn:

THE BLESSED BIRTH 

That so thy Blessed Birth, O Christ,might through the world be spread about,the star appeared in the East,whereby the Gentiles found thee out;and offered thee Myrrh, Incense, Gold,thy three-fold office to unfold. 

Tears that from true repentance drop,instead of Myrrh present will we:for Incense we will offer upour prayers and praises unto thee;and bring for Gold each pious deed,which doth from saving faith proceed. 

And as those wise men never wentto visit Herod any more,so, finding thee, we will repentour courses followed heretofore;and that we homeward may retirethe way by thee we will enquire. 

George Wither (1588-1667) in his HYMNES AND SONGS OF THE CHURCH, 1623
There is a musical setting by H. Walford Davies (1869-1941)

From now on there is only the abstract human being, who chooses for himself what his nature is to be.

Benedict XVI tried to explain to the world the problems with today's "gender" confused and obsessed society, but no one listened. Let me republish some of his words here,

"The Chief Rabbi of France, Gilles Bernheim, has shown in a very detailed and profoundly moving study that the attack we are currently experiencing on the true structure of the family, made up of father, mother, and child, goes much deeper. While up to now we regarded a false understanding of the nature of human freedom as one cause of the crisis of the family, it is now becoming clear that the very notion of being—of what being human really means—is being called into question. He quotes the famous saying of Simone de Beauvoir: 'one is not born a woman, one becomes so' (on ne naît pas femme, on le devient). These words lay the foundation for what is put forward today under the term 'gender' as a new philosophy of sexuality. According to this philosophy, sex is no longer a given element of nature, that man has to accept and personally make sense of; it is a social role that we choose for ourselves, while in the past it was chosen for us by society. The profound falsehood of this theory and of the anthropological revolution contained within it is obvious. People dispute the idea that they have a nature, given by their bodily identity, that serves as a defining element of the human being. They deny their nature and decide that it is not something previously given to them, but that they make it for themselves. According to the biblical creation account, being created by God as male and female pertains to the essence of the human creature. This duality is an essential aspect of what being human is all about, as ordained by God. This very duality as something previously given is what is now disputed. The words of the creation account, 'male and female he created them' (Gen 1:27), no longer apply. No, what applies now is this: It was not God who created them male and female—hitherto society did this, now we decide for ourselves. Man and woman as created realities, as the nature of the human being, no longer exist. Man calls his nature into question. From now on he is merely spirit and will. The manipulation of nature, which we deplore today where our environment is concerned, now becomes man’s fundamental choice where he himself is concerned. From now on there is only the abstract human being, who chooses for himself what his nature is to be. Man and woman in their created state as complementary versions of what it means to be human are disputed. But if there is no pre-ordained duality of man and woman in creation, then neither is the family any longer a reality established by creation. Likewise, the child has lost the place he had occupied hitherto and the dignity pertaining to him. Bernheim shows that now, perforce, from being a subject of rights, the child has become an object to which people have a right and which they have a right to obtain. When the freedom to be creative becomes the freedom to create oneself, then necessarily the Maker himself is denied and ultimately man too is stripped of his dignity as a creature of God, as the image of God at the core of his being. The defense of the family is about man himself. And it becomes clear that when God is denied, human dignity also disappears.  

Whoever defends God is defending man." - Benedict XVI 

It is sad to think that despite the obvious fact that they are actively practicing denial of God's created reality, there are trans-gender priests on the job in the Episcopal organization and the Church Organization of England.

Can't we just honor God and accept the circumstances of our birth?