Governance

O Lord our governor, how exalted is your name in all the world. Psalm 8:1

People have a variety of daily spiritual practices. For me, the day begins with my own version of Morning Prayer. I start with reflection on opening sentences that fit the season. I then move to the Confession. After that, the psalms and readings for the day, followed by prayers for people on my heart, prayers for our broken world.

But back to the confession. Of late, I’ve found myself pausing on the first three words: Most merciful God. I take those words as, first of all, a bold statement of faith. They indicate that on some level, I believe there is someone out there to whom I am appealing.

Those words provide a much-needed reminder that my day is going to unfold in the presence of that someone. I ask God to help me remember that. Truth be told, I can live out my day, I can complete my tasks, I can tick things off the to-do list, I can even do a lot of church work without really thinking that what I do (in thought, word, and deed) unfolds in some way under the governance of God. At times, I describe this dynamic as being a functional atheist. That may sound severe, but apparently, this boy needs a daily reminder that my life unfolds in the presence of the Holy One, in relationship to the God of creation, known in Jesus, present in the Spirit. How easily I forget.

It can call for a leap of faith. I’m thinking of a good friend, a faithful woman, a spiritual teacher, who was not always a church person. She was a successful and driven lawyer, working on big cases, whose personal life seemed to be falling apart. A husband suddenly stricken with illness, a child in the grips of addiction. At that point in her life, she would not, nor could not believe in God. She thought: Even I could do a better job running the universe. Have you ever read the newspaper and thought the same thing? Like, really. Who’s in charge here?

Her life changed when in the grips of several crises, a church community surrounded her in the thick of the adversity she faced and showed her grace, lifting her up. It was through that experience that she actually came to believe in the reality of a God who governs heaven and earth.

Readers of this weekly post may note that I’ve been reading works by a theologian named Andrew Root. He writes about the current state of the church and especially its decline. I’m sure I miss a lot of what he’s presenting. (I find that’s my experience when reading theology.) But what I take away is that the church these days is too often in the grip of what he calls an immanent frame. We have lost confidence in the reality of God’s transcendence. We only think of what we can know or understand or explain or contain. We so want God in a box. We have little appreciation for the mystery of God’s transcendent rule. We have decided that the church is the star of the story, or perhaps that we are the star of the story, when the truth is, God is the star of the story.

The collect we heard in church yesterday (above) is based on the premise that God governs in heaven and earth. That can be hard to believe when we check out the news. But in our prayers, indeed in the very act of praying, in the great faith statement that comes with the address in those few words, most merciful God, we affirm that God is in control. We may not see that fully right now, but it is the foundation of our faith. How will your life unfold this week, mindful of the one who governs heaven and earth and extends mercy to each one of us?

-Jay Sidebotham

Interested in RenewalWorks for your parish? Learn more about how RenewalWorks works!

RenewalWorks: Helping churches focus on spiritual growth

What’s in a name?

Checked off the bucket list: New Year’s Eve in Times Square. It happened a number of years ago. I went with a group of friends to a Marx Brothers Film Festival then to Times Square to watch the ball drop. It was cold and crowded. I don’t need to do that again. Once was a gracious plenty.

But the turning of the year is always worth marking, with opportunity to reflect on the past year, with its joys and challenges, successes and failures, gratitudes and regrets. It’s also a chance to look forward and commit to hopes and intentions for days ahead.

Yesterday in church, we marked the new year by celebrating the Feast of the Holy Name, always on January 1. The collect for that day appears above. I’m told that the feast began as a way for Christians to mark the new year. The observance has Gallican origin. A church council in 567 set apart the day to counteract pagan festivities connected with the beginning of the new year, perhaps a sixth-century version of New Year’s Eve, sans Anderson Cooper and Andy Cohen.

The church’s feast has as its focus the rituals associated with a newborn child, and specifically the name given that child. The prophets in the Hebrew Scriptures, the gospels and other writings in the New Testament all speak of the importance of name of the messiah. So as we begin 2023, we might ask: What’s in a name? Why do we repeatedly read that the name of Jesus matters?

The name literally means “God saves.” More competent scholars can talk about the importance of naming in the culture into which Jesus was born. I have been struck with what that name, “God saves” indicates. These two words say a lot.

For starters, the name says something about God. It says that God is graciously active in our world. While many of us may be locked in what has been called an “immanent frame” which regards divine intervention as a quaint and antiquated idea, the name of Jesus suggests that the transcendent power of God comes to us still and that it has salvific significance. As theologian Andrew Root puts it: God is the star of the story (not us, not the church.) As mystic Evelyn Underhill put it: God is the interesting thing about religion and people are hungry for God. Might we begin 2023 with an expectation that God, by grace, will act in our lives and in our broken world in a saving way? What if we lived our lives in the coming year in awareness that our lives unfold in the presence of the Holy One? What if we lived with daily expectation of holy activity, when sometimes some of us (yours truly included) live as functional atheists?

Second, the name of Jesus says something about us. I’ll put it this way: We need help. We need to be saved. We need a savior. Again, a culture celebrating self-sufficiency and independence may resist that notion. But the fact is when we claim the name of Jesus, we are admitting a need for a power greater than we can muster. Seen in this light, salvation is much more than just a ticket to heaven. I’ve been told that one way to understand the word salvation is to see it as suggesting healing and wholeness. Each one of us knows something of that kind of need, as I believe we each are familiar with some kind of brokenness. We experience it in body, mind, spirit, memory, relationships, not to mention our political and social contexts. Our faith tells us that those experiences need not be the last word about us. They need not define us. Help is on the way.

Finally, the name of Jesus says something about what we are called to do. As Ted Lasso tells us (Sidebar: When do we get the third season?), we are called to believe. We are called to trust that God is active and interested. More to the point, we are called to believe that God is love and that the Holy One’s intention toward us is loving, to place our confidence in that love.

So happy new year. You’re only 24 hours into 2023, still time to make a resolution or two. Maybe one of those might be a commitment to think about what the name of Jesus actually means in your life and mine.

-Jay Sidebotham

Interested in RenewalWorks for your parish? Learn more about how RenewalWorks works!

RenewalWorks: Helping churches focus on spiritual growth