I probably wouldn't mention this, but the very nice folks at University Baptist Church of Austin asked if I would. I'll be preaching at UBC this Sunday, the final preacher in their Centennial Festival of Preaching. This is a church I am humbled to join for worship. This is why. If you are in town and want to stop by and say hello after church, that would be cool too.

rlp

The following is one of the last public prayers of Carlyle Marney, a roaring and robust, liberal (his word) Baptist who was the pastor of First Baptist of Austin and then went to Myers Park Baptist Church in Charlotte, North Carolina. He died in 1978.

It is out of respect for Baptists like Marney that our church has remained Baptist, in spite of the fact that we take a beating for it. Many people show up at Covenant Baptist Church, expecting something that we are not. They generally don’t come back. One man almost ran to his car after I pulled out a rosary in my Sunday School class. And I suspect that many people see our name and pass us by, people who would have found what they needed here. For some reason I feel okay with that process. It feels like trusting. Be who you are and trust that the people who need you will find you. We were not called to be a powerful and influential church. And if we were any bigger we would have to have some sort of real administration, which would be a shame.

My love for the scriptures and for Baptists like Carlyle Marney have made me loathe to give up our name to mean-spirited fundamentalists who either don’t know our history or only live in 30 to 40 year chunks of it. So yes, we’re Baptists like Marney was. We’ll take whatever reputation that comes with that. With Christianity, really, you’re so busy trying to live that you don’t have time to worry much about what people think about your name. Your life speaks or it doesn’t. That’s all.

So this is a prayer Marney prayed from the pulpit just a few months before his death. I don’t know if this prayer exists in any book in print. I found it in a commemorative book called “Marney,” put out by Myers Park Baptist Church after he died.

If entering now the zenith of my brief arc around and within creation I should enter God’s grand hall tomorrow, called to my account for myself, I should offer this confession and defense if indeed I could do more than call down. But if able to give vocal response at all, I should say this, “Thou knowest, dear Lord of our lives, that for fifty of Thy/my years in ignorance, zest, zeal and sin I lived as if creation and I had no limit. I lived and wanted as if I had forever, without regard for time or wit or strength or need or limit or endurance and as if sleep were a heedless luxury and digestion an automatic process. But Thou, O Lord of real love did snatch my bit and ride me into Thy back pasture and didst rub my nose in my vulnerability and didst split my lungs into acquiescence and didst freeze my colon in grief loss and didst press me into that long depression at the anger I directed against myself. And Thou didst read over my shoulder my diary of that long journey when I did melt before Thee as a mere preacher. Thou didst hear.

Naked I came into the world, how I am dressed at the conclusion makes no difference. A pair of jeans or a Glasgow robe, it makes no difference. Meantime, well I mow, I cut wood for winter, I clean drainage ditches, I preach what is happening and look to see what God will do in the earth. I watch out always for babies and little rabbits in front of my mower and old folks nearby and black snakes worth preserving, and little puppies on the road, and the young-old who stutter and laugh and can’t hear too. The cry of us all, “Come Lord Jesus, come.

rlp

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I preached a sermon this morning — one in a long line of sermons stretching back to 1992. I've preached so many sermons by now that I find it almost impossible to remember any particular one. Right now, on a Sunday night, I don't want to remember any of them. The discipline of Sunday night is forgetting.

It's strange, but while I can't remember my sermons, I do remember preaching them. And if I close my eyes, I can see myself laboring away at the work of it...

Click here to read the rest of this essay at The Christian Century online.

Archive of Christian Century Articles by Gordon Atkinson

rlp

Note: I began this piece in the fall, hoping to finish it before Christmas. Alas, I could not. I just couldn't stay interested in it. For some reason I remembered it last week and pulled it out. What can I say? My muse knows no seasons.

This is a facsimile of a section of the Codex Bezae, an important New Testament manuscript that dates to the 5th or 6th century. It was created using a font that approximates the original style. Photographs of Codex Bezae are not permitted.

Bezae was written on pages of vellum. Being a codex, it was bound like the books of our day, between two covers with writing on both sides of the pages. The manuscript contains the Gospels, Acts, and a small piece of 3rd John. It is the only extant Greek version of the Western family of New Testament texts, so its value to scholars is immeasurable. It has resided in the University of Cambridge library since 1581.

No one knows who created this manuscript, though it is thought to have been done in France, for it was guarded for centuries in a monastic library there. But the man who actually lettered its pages is lost to history. Whoever he was, he would have seen his craft as a sacred calling. Writing was an exotic way to spend your time in those days; few people had the materials or the ability to do it, nor would they have understood why it was important. Many monks gave their lives to the painstaking task of copying the text of the Bible. Their method of writing would best be described as calligraphy. Speed was unimportant. The style of the lettering was as much a part of the art of writing as capturing the content. Hunched over an angled writing desk, using a quill dipped in ink, the man who created Codex Bezae slowly copied the words of the text, one stroke at a time, day after day, until it was finished.

Centuries later, it's easy to lump the scribes of the ancient world into a group - “Those guys who copied the Bible.” It’s easy to forget that this task was an important part of history for centuries, and many entire lives were given to it. The man who created the Codex Bezae got up every morning, stretched, prayed, ate breakfast, and went to work at the scriptorium. At the end of the day he would wring his tired hand and perhaps talk with his fellow monks as they walked to dinner or prayers. Over his lifetime he would have finished numerous manuscripts, though it is doubtful that any others still exist.

Parchment was valuable in those days. Very valuable. An animal had to be killed just to make a few pages of it. Imagine wanting to write something and having to make such careful and costly arrangements. The scribes were, therefore, very frugal. The development of the codex form with writing on both sides of the parchment was a major breakthrough in conservation. Sometimes they would scrape the words off a piece of vellum or parchment and use it again. To get as many words as they could in the space they had, they wrote with no punctuation or spaces between the letters, though in my observation they seemed to have been very extravagant with their margins. Because of this, ancient manuscripts are almost illegible for junior greek scholars like me. But if you knew the language well enough, YOUWOULDBEABLETOREADITWITHNOTROUBLE.

There was another method they had of conserving space. Very common words developed abbreviations that are now called nomina sacra, which is Latin for “sacred names.” Customarily, scribes would use a few letters of the word as an abbreviation. A theta and a sigma was an abbreviation for Theos, or God. An iota, an eta, and a sigma was a common abbreviation for Iesous, or Jesus. Christ, or Xristos, was often shortened to a chi or a chi and a sigma. Sometimes a line was drawn above abbreviated words.

The scribe who made the Codex Bezae used abbreviations at the top of this section. Kat Math is short for “kata Mathaion,” which means “according to Matthew.” I must say that dropping the final alpha from kata doesn’t seem like a very helpful abbreviation, but that’s the way they did it.

This selection is also from Bezae. It can be literally translated, “Questioned them, the Jesus, saying...” Notice the line above the letters that appear to be IHC. In reality that is iota, eta, and a final sigma. That abbreviation is for the name of Jesus. You still see the IHS abbreviation everywhere, particularly in high church settings. In a humorous, modern twist to the story, many people can’t figure out what IHS means. Some say, “I think it means “In His Service.” Others say, “I think it means Jesus, but I don’t know how the letters fit.” Upon hearing this, people nod gravely and allow that it must mean Jesus, leaving the details behind the symbol to be yet another great mystery of the Church.

For centuries nomina sacra were common and used by the scribes who were carefully preserving the scriptures. Most of these fell out of use over the years as paper became cheap, though I still use a theta for God and a chi for Christ in my sermon notes. Perhaps subconsciously I want to claim a spiritual connection to the scribes of old. While I do not have to copy out the scriptures, I am a member of a sacred order of persons dedicated to the preservation of these writings by means our own love, devotion, and faithful proclamation.

And that brings us nicely to Xmas. Yes, that same Xmas you have seen emblazoned upon dime store windows in brush script:

And now you know the whole story. It is not an X that is meant to cross the word Christ out of Christmas, indicating the death of a cherished holiday and the beginning of a pagan resurgence that will doubtless mark the end of capitalism, freedom, and the American way. It is a Chi (Greek = X), the ancient symbol for Christ. Somehow it has survived all these years, hearkening back to a time when even the spelling of Christ’s name was an extravagant gesture.

In truth, you’d have a hard time finding Christ in our modern Christmas if you were of a mind to remove him. We Christians have a quieter holiday vigil of candles and a careful waiting for the birth of Jesus. We celebrate our Advent alongside the cultural Christmas holiday with its Coca-Cola Santa, decorated evergreens, yule log, egg nog, and numerous other pagan symbols that have survived from an earlier solstice celebration, though we find more meaning in the former than the latter.

Whenever I see the word Xmas, my mind travels back in time, and I see a monk hunched over his desk. His breath is still visible in the cold morning air of the scriptorium. He blows on his hands, dips his quill in ink, and begins to work. His tongue appears at the corner of his lips as he concentrates on the downstroke of a chi and thinks of his beloved savior.

If you love calligraphy, you will understand why the survival of the ancient nomina sacra is a mysterious and beautiful thing. If you have seen a quill dipped into a well of quality ink, black as the center of a galaxy, and heard that inimitable scratching of pen on paper, you will understand. If you have ever blown gently across fine paper, waiting for the ink of your words to dry and reflecting further upon them, you will understand.

You will understand why I long to put the X back in Xmas.

rlp

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An angel came to me while I was laboring at prayer. Yes, laboring. That is likely a problem itself, but we’ll leave that for another day. I was in the woods near the church, fingering my way through my rosary. Ten beads for the Shema, ten for people in our church, ten for this, ten for that. My mind was filled with the numerous categories of language. People placed into one group or another. Actions lumped together and called by a single name. Everything classified not only by type, but also called sacred or secular, good or bad. Joy, pleasure, pain, heaven, hell, things done and things left undone. All of these were in my mind.

While I worked my way from bead to bead I noticed, with a start, that an angel was sitting across from me. It looked at me with a pleasant smile. I stood up, respectfully.

“Greetings,” the angel said.

What exactly do you say to angel? Is there a protocol for this? Not knowing what to say, I said nothing at all.

“Mortal, scoop up a handful of what covers that path.”

I reached to the earth, eyes still on the angel, and grabbed at whatever lay at my feet.

“Now open your palm and blow on it.”

I did, and an assortment of leaves and bits of plant floated away.

“What would you call what is left in your hand?”

“Grit maybe? Gravel?”

“Grit and gravel?” the angel said indignantly. “Each particle in your hand has a unique history, and all of their histories are older than the oldest memories of humankind. Each one has a name. Did you know that?”

I brought my palm close to my eyes to look at what lay there. Wanting to say something in keeping with the angel’s attitude toward my handful of gravel, I said, “The pinkish one is nice.”

“Sit down mortal, and I will tell you a truth.”

I sat on the ground and looked up at the angel.

“What need has God for categories? Why sort and catalog a collection when you know and can describe every individual item? What meaning do your base labels have for a higher mind? You have created categories for your own use, fallen in love with sorting them, and made a god of the whole affair. This is an idolatry of the highest order. It is a blasphemy so bold as to cause angels to tremble. ‘The mind of The Almighty,’ you say, ‘is like unto my own mind.’”

“God is on intimate terms with the simple matter of earth, yet you dare label people instead of trying to know them. Your precious divisions of nationality, of Christian and non-Christian, saved and damned, good and evil, slave and free. These convenient memory aids might have served you well when you were biting spiritual ankles and wrestling with your primers. Will you not set them aside even now?”

“For the Lord God, the Mysterious, the Creator of all things, is one who knows the hearts of people. And when time draws to a close, there will be no labels or records. There will be no flags, no Bibles, no creeds, no clothing, no wealth or distinction. There will be nothing but vision, straight and true. A mind that will peer into your heart and know you inside and out.”

“There will be no hiding on that day.”

“What should I do?” I asked.

The angel smiled. “In truth, you are a human being and can be no more than that. Labels and categories are all that you know. Go in peace and understand the world in the ways you can. But know this greater truth. And knowing it, let humility settle upon you like the gentle aging of a righteous man.”

rlp

I have a friend who is 73 years old. He told me that his grandmother ran away from home when she was 16. She walked down a country lane in Tennessee. There was a black car, she later said. A man got out and raped her in the bushes by the side of the road. She stumbled home and told no one for fear that she would get in trouble. But months later her belly began to swell. She told the truth when she had to. Some people believed her. Others didn’t. Nine months later his father was born.

“That was in the year 19 and 8,” he said.

I thought about this for a few moments and felt pretty overwhelmed by the revelation. His life, it seemed, was held together by a ragged thread of evil wound through a series of long shots. Like rolling snake eyes 6 times in a row. Why did she choose that day to leave? Why that hour? Why that lane and not another?

“If she hadn’t run away from home and had that happen, you wouldn’t have been born.”

He snapped his chin down to his chest and bounced it quickly up again. It’s a gesture I’ve seen old men make when something is said that is surely true.

“That’s right,” he said. “That’s exactly right. Not me, not my children, not my 12 grandchildren, nor the 5 great-grand-babies.”

“So...” I left a long pause to soften the question that was coming. “Would you say that you’re glad it happened? I mean, surely you’re glad to be alive.”

“I don’t rightly think it’s a fair question,” he said. “The past is dead and gone and all that pain with it. A pile of manure might be lucky enough to have a flower grow out of it, but that doesn’t change its basic nature.”

I ran the tops of two fingers underneath my chin against the grain of my whiskers. I felt the stubble grab at my skin and heard the rasping sound. It’s something I do when I’m thinking.

“I don’t know how things were for her. My father didn’t tell me much about that. I know it was hard for him. He was either the bastard son of a rapist or the bastard son of a ruined girl. Whatever people thought, none of it was good. And folks wasn’t nearly as kind about them things back then. Sometimes you hear people say how the world has gotten meaner and people are less kind today.”

He shook his head.

“Theys lots of ways that people are much kinder now. About children such as my father, for example. Nobody blames the children anymore, but they used to. Kindly looked at them funny all their life. Most of them would end up leaving those parts and their people and start somewhere fresh. That’s what my daddy did. Brought his mother with him and came to Texas. He got married over in Bastrop. We still got family there. He lived a respectable life. Was a good man. Course, by the time us kids were born, it wasn’t nothin but an old story no one remembered. I only know it cause my daddy told me when I was older. He thought I ought to know it for some reason.”

He pulled a handkerchief out of his back pocket, blew his nose loudly, glanced at what he had deposited into the cloth, then folded it up and put it back in his pocket.

“There ain’t much of it left now. She’s dead. He’s dead. The man with the black car is surely dead. The only thing left is a story in an old man’s mind. And I think I’ll let it die with me. The story is dried up. All the pain is gone. I see no call to tell the children about it. So I think I’ll just take it with me.”

“Only you told me,” I observed. “So now I know it.”

He smiled. “Yeah, but you aren’t family. With you it’s like pushing a caboose down a side track with a dead end in the woods. It’s just a story to you.”

He laughed.

“Just another one of all those stories you got in your head, all that writin you do.”

I smiled and nodded and got to working my fingers under my chin again.

“No sir." he said. "The blood of Jesus and good living covered those sins long ago.”

I nodded very deliberately, the way men do when they agree and there’s nothing left to be said.

It seems to me that every act of evil is a cosmic event, a kind of big bang unto itself. There is the moment of evil, a moment so filled with dark energy and pain that no one can stand to look at it. It explodes and sends its ugliness out in every direction. Sometimes evil begets evil, and sometimes good people snuff it out.

There was a moment in time back in 19 and 8. It was a thing no one wants to look at or remember. A man in a black car grabbed a girl and dragged her into the bushes. There was the reality of his lust and anger. There was the reality of her panicked fear and pathetic cries for help and mercy. No one heard her. Her clothing was torn and her flesh abraded on the rough earth. And God help us all, there was the raw biology of the act itself.

That is a moment that no one wants to see. Everyone turns their face away in horror. It is like an explosion of pain and suffering.

Then the camera of time pulls away from the scene, mercifully we think, and we can look back again. There she is, running down the lane, bloodied and weeping. There she is confessing the truth and falling into her mother’s arms. There are the gossiping neighbors. There is the sorrow and the beauty of his birth. There are the stares and the shunning he was too young to understand. There is his anger and determination when he figured it all out. There they are, packing their things and leaving for Texas.

The camera draws back faster now. We see his joy at meeting a girl who did not know his history. Their courtship, their wedding. His mother weeping with joy and saying to herself, “I endured it for him.” Her death, we hope a gentle one. His children and grandchildren. His aging face and hands. His last telling of the story to his oldest son, bequeathing it because he was not the one to decide when to bury it.

For years the story lived like a wraith in the mind of a happy and good man. His father loved him and taught him, and he made good. And now the story is severed from the family and lives in me. It lives only in these words between you and me with no power to hurt but only to bear witness as a testimony to how things sometimes happen.

For this is the power of evil and the power of goodness and the power of stories and the power of redemption and the power of time.

rlp

I saw my father preach the other day. His hair is now white, and the skin on his face has loosened with age, but this is the same man whose face I saw above the pulpit throughout my childhood. He stood like a captain in the bow of the ship that he loves, confident that the vessel would rise and fall with his voice and break the waves of human need as it sailed to the promised land.

Click here to read the rest of this essay at The Christian Century online.

Archive of Christian Century Articles by Gordon Atkinson

rlp