Naming holy names

Today is a good day for a baptism.  It is the first day of a brand-new year…and what better way to start?  The weather is unseasonably warm. But the best reason that today is a great day for a baptism is that this is the Feast of the Holy Name—a feast that our Prayer Book assigns as being as at least as important as Christmas and Ascension. Our Prayer Book reminds us, in its usual understated way, that there are moments of Jesus’ life where we need to stop, look, and listen. Next week will be another one.

Jesus being taken to the synagogue by his parents to be circumcised and named is not so different than Benjamin’s being brought here this morning. So let’s take a minute to compare and contrast the nativity stories of Benjamin and Jesus.

Benjamin is a much anticipated child—not only his family but this whole parish community has been pulling for him. Jesus was also a child people were waiting for with bated breath.

Alex and Caswell had to trek a long way—several times –to Philadelphia help him be born safe and healthy. Their journey reminds me of Mary and Joseph’s journey from their hometown to that other Bethlehem.

The Cookes experienced birth and those first days and weeks of Benjamin’s life in a strange environment, not one filled with animals and straw, but one filled with high tech equipment and specialists, nurses and doctors.

Both sets of parents knew about worry and danger—the Cooke’s from the need for major surgery on such a tiny patient, and, according to Matthew, Jesus’ parents had to flee the wrath of a fear-filled, vengeful king.

And don’t forget: Jesus had angels but Benjamin had Grace.

So what you are doing today points us to what happened to Jesus and what God is doing for us.

After the angels sang their songs and the shepherds left, the parents of Jesus gathered up their baby and took him to a local synagogue to have him circumcised and formally named. After your long journey, you have gathered up your family and come here to have him baptized.

On this day, Jesus, with his circumcision, was formally incorporated into the community of God’s Covenant people and given a name.

Today, Benjamin will, through his baptism, be fully initiated into the life of the Church. This is not just the dedication of a baby, nor a thanksgiving for a safe delivery and successful surgeries—although we do thank God for those things—what we do today is the Christian version of what happened to Jesus a week or so after his birth: he is being made a full member of God’s covenant people and will be marked as Christ’s own forever.

Something else that happened to Jesus that day: he was formally given his name. Names in Hebrew culture were important. They described a person’s identity and more. Names described a person’s personality and destiny.   In a few moments I will ask you to name your child. It is not as if, up until now, Benjamin has been a nothing or a number, called something like Cooke Boy #1 or Baby #2. Instead, this naming tells us something about what we think God has in store for us.

Both Jesus and Benjamin were given biblical names. By which I means straight out of the Hebrew scriptures.

Benjamin means son of right or son of righteousness. The first Benjamin was given that name by Rachel because she wanted a son and spent a long time praying and fasting. Also, in this case the parents were very old and, but Jacob and Rachel had a very crooked, rocky relationship with God that had become very intimate. So for Jacob and Rachel a baby boy was an answer to prayer. Both the biblical Benjamin and ours share something: they are both the answer to many, many prayers.

His name, “son of righteousness,” reminds the Cookes, Benjamin and us that faithfulness is always rewarded even if the path is crooked and not very obvious.

Mary and Joseph could not send out e-vites but maybe they gathered their relatives and some friends when they went to the local synagogue for the circumcision and naming of their new baby. Notice that until this little sentence in Luke, the baby is only referred to in the Gospel as “the child.” Now he has a name: Jesus.

Actually, they probably called him “Joshua” or more likely “Yeshua.” Our memory of Jesus’ name comes to us through so many cultures over so much time that a little change is to be expected.  Take a Hebrew name, speak it in Aramaic, record it in Greek and remember it in Latin and you will get “Jesus.” That’s what we call the Son of God. But through all those iterations, his name still speaks to us, right down to our very core.

The name Mary and Joseph gave their baby, in obedience to God’s angelic instruction, was “Joshua,” after the great patriarch, the one who took up Moses’ mantle and brought the people of Israel across the Jordan River into the Promised Land.  Joshua finished the job that Moses’ started but could not complete. Joshua finished the journey of the Exodus and brought the people home after their long desert journey from slavery through exile, testing and into the Land of Promise.

 “Joshua,” or “Yeshua” means “Yahweh, God, is salvation.” Or simply “God saves.” Jesus’ name reminds us of the saving activity of God in ages past, helps us look to the saving acts which will in years to come (long after his circumcision and naming) occur on Golgotha and in an empty tomb. Jesus names helps us look to the present to see what God is doing today and forward to where God is taking us.

I have to say that you two have really great tastes in names. Not only do they sound nice, rolling off the tongue, they will never cause their teachers to stumble whilst calling out attendance. Best of all  your kids names communicate! Their names tell us something about what God is up to in your lives and what you hope will unfold for them as they grow up.

In their baptisms, in the little Christian community you call home, in the parish and in daily life, you will be teaching your children about the power, presence and faithfulness of God. In your parenting, you will show them that Christians are real people capable of profound wisdom, amazing thick-headedness, deep love and great silliness. In your example of faithfulness and ethical living and in lessons of prayer, scripture, worship and good works, you will teach them that having taken the plunge of baptism they are always immersed in God’s love, power and purpose.

And the names you gave your children tell us something about your hopes, their identity and their destiny. Having talked about the meaning of Benjamin, let’s think about the meaning of Grace.

“Grace” is not a biblical name in the sense that it is named after a person so much as it is a biblical name that points us to the fact that God’s love happens. Grace means “free gift.” But more than that, “grace” reminds us God prepares our hearts to love God, “grace” means that God gives us what we need for the journey, and “grace” is that God’s love comes to us whether we deserve it or not. It just is.

So yours is a household that will, for all the riot and unexpectedness that raising children brings, is also a house that by their very names teach us that God’s loves happens no matter what (Grace) and that faith is always rewarded (Benjamin).

In choosing this day to baptize Benjamin and welcome him into the family of God’s people, you have linked him in a special way to Jesus’ own naming and initiation. You remind us—and I hope you will remind Benjamin as soon as he is old enough to hear the story—that he is who he is, and he will do what he will do because God does what God does. Grace happens. Faith and righteousness prevail. God saves.


The Feast of the Holy Name and the baptism of Benjamin Caswell Cooke, January 1, 2012 at Trinity Episcopal Church, Easton, Pennsylvania Luke 2:15-21

It only takes a girl

Choosing the anchor of certainty over the sails of comprehension

Joseph Bottum in the Weekly Standard writes about the rumors that Rowan Williams will resign at Archbishop of Canterbury next year and the end of Anglicanism as we know it. In the process, he starts in a useful direction and then drives off an ideological deep-end.

Early in the essay there is a decent, if rather conventional, analysis of Anglicanism today. He writes:

Anglicanism remains widespread, with 80 million members around the world, from the Episcopal Church in the United States to the followers of Henry Luke Orombi, archbishop of Uganda. England is still the largest Anglican province, with 26 million members, at least nominally. But far more Anglicans are in church on a Sunday morning in Kenya and Nigeria than in Britain, and the center of Anglican belief is now firmly in Africa—a major part, as Philip Jenkins noted in his 2002 book The Next Christendom: The Coming of Global Christianity, of the nearly complete conversion of sub-Saharan Africa to Christianity over the last 100 years.

The rise of the African church could have made Canterbury an important player in international relations—not exactly a rival to Rome (Catholicism’s one billion adherents make that unlikely) but at least a second European center with which Africans would have felt a relation and to which they could have looked for intellectual and ecclesial authority.

Then he drives off an ideological deep-end, and in the process misses the point of the importance of Anglicanism to Christianity and our essential witness to the world. Along the way, he missed the disappointment if not the outright tragedy that has been Williams' tenure as Archbishop.

In all likelihood, the forcing of the issue of same-sex marriage will lead the African churches to withdraw from communion with the Western churches—while the churches of Europe and North America will denounce the African churches, choosing allegiance with standard-issue Western liberalism over the orthodox teaching of their own faith.

And thereby the world will lose one more of the old ties that might have bound it together. Freed from their African anchor, the Church of England and the Episcopal Church in America will move even further in a pro-Muslim, anti-Israel direction, providing yet more cover for fashionable liberal anti-Semitism. Let loose from their allegiance to Canterbury, the African churches will quickly move toward forming pan-African denominations that will feel entirely distanced from Europe and America—and will help build the belief the global South owes nothing to the West.

The problem with Rowan is not that Africa is an "anchor" and that the Church of England and the Episcopal Church is somehow at once pro-Muslim and pro-gay, and that the African church will march away in its theological purity. The problem is that Rowan did not use his innate voice.

Africa itself shows off the tensions and possibility within Anglicanism. The Continent that contains both Tutu and Orombi is also the Church that shares both approaches to Christianity. The Anglican Communion contains both Katharine Jefferts Schori and NT Wright. The Episcopal Church itself contains both Gene Robinson and Mark Lawrence.

Yes, it is a high wire act. Being Archbishop of Canterbury is no doubt an impossible job. I don't know if anyone can straddle that thin line successfully, and to do so will no doubt mean that someone, somewhere (probably lots of someones in lots of places) will be angry, disappointed, demanding more. That he cannot please everyone is not the problem. That he has not always agreed with any one group's particular vision for mission is also not the point.

The tragedy--and disappointment--that is Rowan Williams is that he chose not use his best possible tool in leading this impossibly diverse Anglican Communion. He chose not to use his own voice.

We all know that Williams wrote eloquently as both a priest and theologian, and even as Archbishop of Wales, for the full inclusion of gays into the life of the church including their ability to marry--or at least have some kind of civil and ecclessiasitcal analog to marriage--and that not only did he put these opinions aside, he has worked very hard to be certain that these views will never come to pass.

Bottum reveals a fact that I had forgotten, and I will bet many progressives did not know, that when he became Archbishop of Canterbury, he resigned his membership in the a group called The Society for the Protection of Unborn Children.

It turns out that Williams himself encapsulated both the comprehensiveness and the tension that is Anglicanism.

Here we have a person who was so pro-life that not only was he a member of a group working to end abortion but, in his youth, he protested the planting of nuclear missles aimed at the former Soviet Union on British soil. And saw so much the dignity of human nature restored in Jesus Christ that he could imagine a church that included openly gay men and women not only serving the church as ordained people but also a church that blessed the unions between same sex partners. He worked for the ordination of women and held to a deeply sacramental life.

Looking at it this way, it is easy to see why he might have been the right person at the right time for the Anglican Communion a decade ago. He apparently held in himself the tensions, the comprehensiveness and the possibility of Anglicanism.

But he traded all that in. In giving up his membership in the pro-life group and in convincing his friend Jeffrey-John to not become a bishop, in repudiating his earlier preaching and writing as if they were a luxury an Archbishop of Canterbury could ill-afford, he gave up the one tool he had to walk that high wire with integrity, his voice.

Oh, there were hints. His decision to make the 2007 Lambeth Conference dialogical and not legislative hinted at a vision of a comprehensive Anglicanism that could continue to be a third way between Catholic legalism and the Protestant swings between literalism and liberalism. His vision of a communion based on a common life of prayer, shared mission and intentional dialogue shows up even in his weak, TINA-based defense of the Anglican Covenant.

But giving up his voice to hold the church together only on what the most conservative voices in the room will agree to, his unwillingness to defend and include those who differ from others in faith--whether it was keeping Bishop Robinson out of Lambeth or telling our Presiding Bishop not to wear her hat whilst in England--showed that his fear of outright conflict only deepened the fissures he most dreaded. Especially after it became apparent that each concession, from Jeffery-John to the Windsor Report through successive Primates meetings and finally the Anglican Covenant, only emboldened those prone to bullying and alienated those who wanted to work with him the most.

And now he has staked his whole reputation--and our future-- on an Anglican Covenant which takes a fairly subtle and nuanced vision of Anglicanism and weighs it down with rules to regulate what happens when one church has an idea that someone else might not like--when the only rule should be "whatever happens, keep praying, keep conversation going, and keep inviting Jesus to the table."

The fourth section of the Anglican Covenant undoes the vision of Anglicanism--takes away our voice--just as surely as Archbishop Williams lost his voice and the ability to lead from the heart of Anglican Christianity when he resigned from the pro-life group and told his gay friend not to be a bishop.

Bottum sees the high-wire act of being the ABC breaking when he gave into a fuzzy western liberalism. But he names the wrong problem because Bottum misunderstands the nature of Anglicanism. The problem was that Rowans had within him the experience and possibility to help us live through complicated times by living into the comprehension that is Anglicanism, by insisting that whatever happens people in communion should live in communion.

Instead he chose a safe institutionalism. I gave up what I believed, he taught us, and you can too. I gave in to someone elses idea of the rules that go with being ABC, you can go with the rules in Section Four.

It was not just a failure of nerve. It was worse. In giving up his voice--his complex sometime contradictory voice--he taught us to quench the spirit, and so we risk losing the heart of what makes Anglicanism an essential witness to Christ to the world. He taught us that conflict trumps comprehension. Fortunately, God is bigger than that.

In the bleak midwinter--an Advent meditation

Communion does matter.The Covenant is not the same as Communion.

The Archbishop of Canterbury released his Advent Letter today and in it he extols the wonderful work he and others are doing in the Anglican Communion. (It is a public letter but it directed to the Primates and Moderators of the Anglican Communion.) He talks about the Anglican Communion as "a gift" and is dismayed that some see the Anglican Communion as "a problem." He insists that the Anglican Communion needs the Anglican Covenant now more than ever.

ACNS:

(Dr. Williams writes:) "This is why the Communion matters – why it matters for a bishop in Jerusalem facing the withdrawal of a residency permit...a congregation in Nigeria facing more interreligious violence, an island in the Pacific facing inundation because of climate change, an urban community in Britain wondering how to respond to rising social disorder as poverty and unemployment increase. The Communion is a gift not a problem to all such people and many more. Only in such a mutually supportive family, glorifying and praising God in Christ together, can we truly make known the one Christ."

The Archbishop's letter acknowledged the "numerous tensions" in the Communion, but cautioned Communion members never to say "I have no need of you" to anyone seeking to serve Jesus Christ. He also used the letter to appeal for "more careful and dispassionate discussion" on such issues as the powers of Primates' Meetings as well calling for "a sustained willingness on the part of all Provinces to understand the different ways in which each local part of the Anglican family organizes its life."

Dr Williams also commended the Anglican Communion Covenant "as strongly as I can" stressing that it would neither change the structure of the Communion nor give "some sort of absolute power of ‘excommunication’ to some undemocratic or unrepresentative body."

"It outlines a procedure, such as we urgently need, for attempting reconciliation and for indicating the sorts of consequences that might result from a failure to be fully reconciled," he said. "It alters no Province’s constitution, as it has no canonical force independent of the life of the Provinces. It does not create some unaccountable and remote new authority but seeks to identify a representative group that might exercise a crucial advisory function."

He said the fact that the moratoria were being "increasingly ignored" was deepening mistrust "which is bad for our mission together as Anglicans, and alongside other Christians as well. The question remains: if the moratoria are ignored and the Covenant suspected, what are the means by which we maintain some theological coherence as a Communion and some personal respect and understanding as a fellowship of people seeking to serve Christ?"

The Archbishop is right in telling us that Communion is important. It is essential that Anglicans around the world work together on these and other important questions. We need to do more to encourage common mission and the proclamation of the Gospel of Jesus Christ that we all share.

Communion is a gift. The problem is not the Communion. The problem is the Covenant.

To make the argument, Dr. Williams begs the question: since he did all the visits and all these events happened without the Covenant in place, then is it possible to be a Communion without the Covenant? Would these connections cease if the Covenant were to not pass? Would Anglicans stop working together or would our voice be diluted in any way without the Covenant in place?

Put another way, would the voice of Anglicanism be any stronger in Zimbabwe and would it influence Mugabe any more if they had the Covenant in their back pockets? Would having the Covenant stop Polynesian islands from being any more submerged and would the urban parish be any more relevant to it's neighborhood with a fully empowered Anglican Covenant?

Once more he talks about how we must not focus on the things that divide us, while extolling a document that defines itself in terms of division, rather than reconciliation. He says we need this to make room for everyone. Dr. Williams asks for an alternative to the mechanisms outlined in Part IV. He says that no one has offered an alternative. While this point is in itself debatable, allow me instead to make a my own humble suggestion:

Instead of spending time (as Section Four posits) on throwing each other out when we disagree, how about building a communion that encourages dialogue and reconciliation?

Instead of focusing on eliminating conflict by making sure that no innovation can happen without the approval of the most conservative member of the Anglican Communion, how about creating a structure and processes that encourage members of Churches who see the implications of the Gospel differently to come together, listen to one another, pray together, share experiences of mission together, and break Eucharistic bread together?

The Covenant diminishes the Communion because it assumes that Communion only happens when we agree. The truth is that Communion is happening because we share Christ. It is a gift of the Holy Spirit that is made possible by death and resurrection of Christ. Communion is because we share the same Lord, the same faith, the same baptism. A Covenant that does not help us do the hard work of living that out--that helps us pray together--despite our disagreements is not a Covenant worth having.

The Covenant certainly cannot exist without the Anglican Communion, but can the Anglican Communion exist without the Covenant? The answer is that it already does.

An Advent Primer

Confessions of a guilty Christian bystander

Ron Dreher is an American Tory...that is to say he is a conservative in a very different mold that the Tea Party or the "pro-business at all costs" approach of the self-styled Objectivists. He wrote an essay in the American Conservative in which he reflects on the Occupy Wall Street movement and the implications of the unbridled, unregulated wealth of the financial system we now inhabit.

Much of the response to OWS has been either abject horror or undying adoration. Two summers ago before the Tea Party was bought, packaged and re-purposed a corporate-owned re-branding of the GOP at a frat party, I was on the "abject horror" side of their movement. That's why this essay came to me a kind of tonic. In it Dreher offers a third way of approaching the discussion of Occupy Wall Street...and, as I said, perhaps as an overly late corrective to the original Tea Party movement.

After observing an "Occupy Easton" demonstration up close yesterday, I found myself struck by both the anger and the naivete of the participants.

Most of all I was taken by the cozy libertarianism of the group that cut across political lines. There were young second amendment fundamentalists holding signs right along side modern day punks, grown up hippies and guys who went to college on the original GI Bill. The place they picked was a park in downtown Easton that was close to a publicly financed playground for their children. Everyone was angry at Wall Street and Government, those amorphous entities, and well they should be. But very few were thinking about how their anger was shaped by the very values that drove the financial crisis we are now in.

Their anger at Wall Street was that they were not receiving their fair share of the pie. Their anger at Government was an oscillation between not checking the greed of the Street and fear that the Government will take more of "what's mine."

Now Dreher and I are not on the same page ideologically. Where he says that is not possible to be a Christian and a communist or a fascist, I would add that one cannot be a Christian and an (so-called) objectivist. And where he sees the "the most natural political orientation for a serious small-o orthodox Christian is on the Right", I would say that the most natural orientation for a serious small-o orthodox Christian is on the Left. I also think that Dreher pulls his punch when he says: "I do believe it’s vulgar and borderline blasphemous for a political party to claim Christ." There is nothing borderline about the vulgarity. When a political party claims Christ as their own, it is blasphemy. But I quibble over details.

Here are snippets. It is worth reading the whole essay. Especially the story of the epiphany that his financial industry friend experienced.

...I don’t believe that God has a political plan. One can be a good Christian as a socialist. One can be a good Christian as a monarchist. One can be a good Christian as a Republican or a Democrat. One almost certainly cannot be a good Christian as, say, a Nazi or a Communist, because what those political theories require one to believe is antithetical to Christian truth. My point is simply that it’s not easy to discern a particular political program from the Gospels, only general principles. In most cases, there will probably be tension between our political party and our faith convictions. There ought to be. Jesus said that His kingdom was not of this world. As soon as we think we can use politics to create heaven on earth, we lay the groundwork for the corruption of faith, and far worse. Personally, I believe that in this time and place, the most natural political orientation for a serious small-o orthodox Christian is on the Right, but I do believe it’s vulgar and borderline blasphemous for a political party to claim Christ.

And yet we cannot be serious about our faith and act as if it had no political implications. No one can take the Bible seriously and believe that the truths it teaches have nothing at all to do with how we order our common life. There is the matter of human dignity, and justice. The Bible has much to say about the poor — and what it has to say about the rich is not very complimentary, to put it mildly. I believe the free market, for all its flaws, is the economic system that is not only the fairest, but is also the economic system that best conforms to our human dignity. But the market must be seen not as an end, but as a means to an end....

...By this standard, I cannot see how a system that allows so many people who work in finance to grow so spectacularly rich while so many others struggle to get by can be reconciled with Christian truth. But honestly, that is the least of my concerns about Wall Street now (by “Wall Street,” I mean the financial sector in general). What I find far more worrying is the power these men have to control by their actions the fate of the nation. No, I’m not talking about conspiratorial nonsense. I’m talking about the fact that because our political system has given them so much freedom to do what they want to do, our fates are tied to theirs in ways that are incredibly unjust and harmful to the common good. We all know about “too big to fail.” Ever thought about what that means? It means that TBTF institutions cannot be allowed to be responsible for their actions, because if they fail, they take all of us down with them. Wall Street, broadly speaking, has immense power, but no responsibility. Alessandro Rastani may or may not have been real, but he’s telling the truth about global finance: these men don’t care about their countrymen, they only care about making money for themselves and their clients. That is their prime directive....

...It is hard for many American Christians, especially we conservatives, to think of Christian morality as applicable to money. Personal sins — lust, immorality, the usual — we understand. But we shy away from thinking in a Christian way about money, and the way our society is structured economically. I wonder: Do we Christians not fear a reckoning in all this...?

...And so we come to the Occupy Wall Street movement. I have not been impressed by the things I’ve seen and read about them. I don’t know for sure, but I doubt very much that I would be at home with that crowd. Some of the quotes I’ve read from those people are obnoxious and offensive. Many more are just foolish. I don’t look to OWS for any relief, except comic.

But I have to say, I am impressed by this line from Almond’s piece: “They want the traders who work on Wall Street to face the human consequences of their machinations.” Maybe the way they’re calling Wall Street out is silly, pointless, and foolish in a thousand ways. But at least they are there. Where are the Christians? Where are we conservative Christians, who claim to really believe what Scripture says, and look down on liberal Christians for picking and choosing what they want to believe on sexual morality to suit their desires? Do we not have a blind spot when it comes to wealth? Why does the immense power Wall Street wields over the fate of the nation because of its wealth not trouble us enough to bear public witness? Why does it not trouble us much at all? It troubles me, but I don’t know what to do about it. This won’t do.

In that sense, I’ll give Occupy Wall Street its due, as a guilty Christian bystander. There’s a tale about Billy Graham, possibly apocryphal, in which he met a stuffy Anglican prelate on one of his first crusades in England. The story goes that the bishop sniffed to Graham, “Sir, I must say that I do not approve of the evangelism you do.” Graham supposedly replied, “Sir, I prefer the evangelism I do to the evangelism that you do not do.” Quite.

WYSIWYG

The first computer I ever owned was a Macintosh 128k. I saw the famous commercial at the Super Bowl and ran right out and bought one. Later on, I got another...the one pictured here. A 512k which I souped up. I got a couple of hard drives as big as small phone books and was doing serious writing and graphics work. These two machines got my wife through grad school at Columbia and me through CPE at Hartford Hospital and post grad work at Andover-Newton. Consider that I finished seminary in 1979 with my wife using an IBM correcting Selectric II and me using the mighty Royal from World War II...this was quite a change.

Both my kids used these machines. They played games, drew pictures, did their homework on them. We got a program that had a very rudimentary voice synthesizer...it could read simple stories. This, along with the first video game systems of the day, I think got them thinking about the world differently that I did at their age.

I got out of the Mac world somewhere around System 9, which was a dog, but kept those first two machines.

My first new Apple product...after more than ten years...was an iPod that I got for Father's Day one year. And a few months ago I was given an iPad2.

I have to say that the iPad has probably changed my computing habits almost as much that first Macintosh did 27 years ago.

I suppose that most us of learned of Steve Jobs' death the same way: by text, twitter, or FB post. The first thing I thought about was that old Macintosh and the new iPad. I am thankful for the imagination that took us into a new way of connecting our world. Our world is profoundly different because of all that imagination unleashed.

The real sign of Jobs' impact is apparent in what that picture does not show: I took the picture with an Android phone, wrote this post on a PC. The point of all this imagination is not the product but the vision of creativity and connectivity made accessible to the ordinary person. This changed the world as much as the printing press did in its day.

Read Nick Knisely's reflection here.

Church or jail?

Watch out if you go to Bay Minette, Alabama, and are caught doing some sort of minor crime because you will be given a choice. Church or jail.

According to WKRG-TV, starting this week authorities will give non-violent offenders in that community a new choice: Go to jail, or go to church every Sunday for a year. It’s called Operation Restore Our Community and fifty-six churches have signed on.

If offenders select church, they will be allowed to pick the place of worship but must check in weekly with the pastor and the police department.

If the one-year church attendance program is completed successfully, the offender's case will be dismissed.

Bay Minette Police Chief Mike Rowland says the program could change the lives of people heading down the wrong path.

We’ll see if this idea works. Church or jail? Which would you choose? Personally, I’d have to ask which church. Jail might be preferable.

Jesus tells a story about two sons who are asked by their father to go out into vineyards to work. The first son is the one who "I will not go," but later changes his mind and goes. The second son is the one who says he will go but does not go. He then turns to his critics and asks which one of the two does the will of the father? They of course say that the first son, in the end, does the will of the father. In their answer, the super-religious show that what is really important is what a faithful person does that’s important, not just what they say.

A bishop and teacher of the early church named Chrysostom wrote that the Christian is like the son who at any hour turns and chooses to do the will of the father; to go out into the vineyard and work. The Christian is the son who is the missionary.

But I think there is a deeper message that Jesus is offering. While it is certainly true that God wants us to go out into the world—the vineyard—and do God’s work…that is, to do mission… there is something else going on here.

The Good News is that it is never too late to follow Jesus and to do God’s work in the vineyard. God will embrace the son who turns and chooses in the end, no matter what they have been doing, to become a member of the community of faith.

Today’s Gospel story only appears in Matthew, and it reminds me of another one of Jesus’ stories, the one about the prodigal son that is only in the Gospel of Luke. That son squandered everything and came home expecting to grovel and scrape as a slave but instead is welcomed with open arms. Today, the son in Matthew’s Gospel who says “no” but then turns around choosing to do “yes.” He is a prodigal, too. He comes to his senses. He does the work he was asked to do. In both Gospels, a son turns around. In both cases, repentance—turning around—shows that the life of faith is as much an act of the will as is act of the heart. Living faithfully is depends on the deliberate choice to live in concert with God—especially when we don’t “feel like it.” Faith it turns out is both an act of the heart and an act of the will. And that means that we choose not only to believe but we choose how to act on those beliefs. Before long, we learn that our faith is not faith until we choose to act faithfully.

That’s something the Alabama police chief and judge may, in their good intention, may have missed. Or maybe it’s what they hope for. But try as we might, you can’t force people to believe—and the vineyard is not just for sitting and listening to the farmer talk about grapes. They’ve solved the “will” problem—church or jail—but the “heart” and the “action” part--what people do with their belief—they can’t control that. And that makes all the difference.

I wonder about the 56 churches that signed on this program. I wonder if they are ready for the local check-kiter, petty thief, or the chronic “drunk and disorderly” to actually be sitting in their pews. Because, I don’t know about you but I notice that sometimes we get nervous when someone who once said “no” and who now says “yes” to God and is trying to walk a new way comes and sits among us. We are not sure if we can believe it and we have a hard time forgetting that original “no.” And how we act towards people who are new to church…let alone faith…makes all the difference in that person’s success in living out a new-found, but hard-won, faith.

Have you ever noticed that there are two doors in many churches—ours included—a front door and a back door? Both are painted red…for welcome…which is good. And many of us come in the back door because it’s near the parking lot. But there are some people—actually quite a few—who come through those back entrances all the time who would never think of coming in the front doors…the nice carved ones that lead to this sanctuary. They are people who come to the four twelve-step groups that now meet here every week or who eat in the soup kitchen. They are people, especially in the AA groups, who are attempting one step at a time to turn their lives around. Who are attempting after a life of saying “no” to finally say “yes” to God. And yet… sometimes we “front door” Christians have a hard time accepting that those people who have come in another way really belong with “us.” Which makes sense, because they are not so sure either they are worthy to sit in here with us.

Jesus tells us in today’s Gospel that we are all of us sent into the same vineyard. Sooner or later, we all have to come to terms with the fact that all of us in word or deed have said “no” to God somewhere along the way, and all of us have had to come to our senses and choose to follow him anyway. When you get right down to it, our stories are not so different after all.

Don’t be shocked by this: everyone sins. That’s because we are human. We promise that we will strive to live faithfully and we know that we will fail. We will say “yes” and do “no” At the same time, in our baptismal covenant we say that "when" we sin we will return—we will say “no” and then do “yes.” Christians more than anyone know (or should) that we are not perfect. At the same time, we Christians rejoice when the sons and daughters of God who have led life unconscious of God, or who have led lives saying "no" turn and join the other workers in God’s vineyard. It should not take a local judge to tell us this, but we, the church, exist for those who do not yet belong. We exist so that the vineyard is there ready for the latecomer and for the newcomer to join in God’s gracious harvest.

I smell a gift subscription....

h/t "Friends of Jake"