After the fireworks

A book I'm reading. Truth, two books, which I do now and then.

Reading one in bed by the lamp on the bedside chest, reading the other here in my living room bayside chair, a threadbare and sunken-bottom admiral blue velvet barrel-chair Mama gave me, that I first sat in soon after it was reupholstered some sixty years ago. It's MY chair now, if its fading shabbiness distresses you, there will be a Time when you may get shed of it. Not in MY Time.

But the books, the two books, each with an intriguing eccentricity. By Günter Grass, "The Tin Drum" opens with Oskar's attention grabbing assertion, "Granted: I'm an inmate in a mental institution" - straightway coloring everything that follows as off, bizarre. The narrating protagonist, Oskar is in the mental institution for murder - which he did not commit, but confessed to so a friend who needs encouragement in life could enjoy the credit and fame for turning him in.

The other, Thomas Wolfe's book "You Can't Go Home Again" is a 2010 reprint of over seven-hundred pages. As the story opens it is April 1929 and George has just returned home to New York from a prodigal year in Europe trying unsuccessfully to get over his love affair with an older married woman. A young writer, George's novel hasn't been released yet, but has been accepted for publication. I've only read half an inch into the book and the timing is still only Summer 1929, yet the book's cover pictures a 1938 Ford Deluxe sedan on the road - -

making me as uneasy about its mindfulness as I felt when, in the film "Empire of the Sun" I spotted a 1946 Dodge sedan on a crowded Shanghai street during the panic of the 1937 Japanese invasion. But I'll hang with the story to see where George goes, and when. I already know why.

To observe and keep alert, as I've said before, enjoying watching for this sort of anachronism also enhances my fascination with Bible study. e.g., the story at Mark 13:1, Jesus in about 30 AD prophesies the 70 AD destruction of the Temple, helps date Mark's writing, and also helps us understand Mark and his agenda: Who is this Man whose prophecies come true?

Other things as well. This past Sunday morning the adult Sunday school class was reading and discussing the parables of Jesus, Luke 16:19-31, "Rich Dives and Poor Lazarus" which condemns our indifference to the plight of those less fortunate than ourselves. An aside question is whether Luke's story tells anything about Jesus' (or Luke's) own belief in the afterlife, heaven and hell, as suggested in the parable's just desserts payoff that reverse-situates Lazarus, who in real life starved outside while Moreover the dog licked his sores, now feasting in heaven with Abraham; and Dives, who feasted lavishly in his earthly life, is now parched with thirst as he roasts in the endless fires of hades.

Just so, then: do the parables of Jesus of Nazareth sometimes reveal more about him and his theology than just what we ordinarily expect to "get" as the point of the parable?

Maybe so - - literary-critical reading sometimes suggests interesting things about Jesus and/or Luke and other evangelists.

In my extreme old age, I enjoy picking things apart, including religious things that are dear to me. For my next turn in the pulpit, our Collect for the Day reads,

Proper 12 The Sunday closest to July 27

O God, the protector of all that trust in thee, without whom nothing is strong, nothing is holy: Increase and multiply upon us thy mercy; that, thou being our ruler and guide, we may so pass through things temporal, that we finally lose not the things eternal; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

I always like to check out the collect's theology. And now and then I've wrung a homily out of the Collect for the Day. According to Marion Hatchett this prayer for Proper 12 was used in Gregorian, Gelasian, Gallican, and Sarum liturgies, perhaps dating to the fifth century. The theological assertion in its Address to God is that God protects believers, which ties to Paul's salvation by grace through faith. What about non-believers? and to profess to believe now so as to receive a reward later lacks integrity. The collect's Petition suggests that what happens to us in Eternity, afterlife, depends on how we live in Time, temporal, this life. Again, is hope for eternal reward supposed to inspire us to godly living? Can't we be good for goodness sake? What have Paul and the Church done with Jesus's good news of the kingdom of God?

In my lifetime as an Episcopalian, I have loved the ancient prayers, liturgies, hymns, chants that the Episcopal Church can't bring itself to let go of. But how much of early church theology, belief, religion, piety, is still held in our day and age? It isn't that "oh my we are so much more sophisticated than those flat-earthers of the dark ages", but science and knowledge and world views have changed so over the centuries. Also religion: I'm thinking of Ken Follett, "The Pillars of the Earth" people deathly terrified of being excommunicated and damned to hell by power-wielding church and bullying church officials.

Even the Catholic Church that originally composed and prescribed these ancient collects has put them on the shelf in liturgical reform, yet here we are, praying lovely old prayers that people in the pew could not explain if asked; that largely fly by as part of worship rote; and that with all the other things that happen liturgically before the Collect is finally said, the Collect has lost its antecedence as the Opening Rite setting the tone for the worship to follow.

Covid restrictions and precautions, a missed opportunity for pruning and fertilizing fig trees as the church returns to its notion of Normal.

Like it or Leave it? No way, Jose, I've been here a helluva lot longer than you have, I'm here for the duration, I'll have my say, and besides, I do like it!

Here's a going away view of the 1938 Ford Deluxe fordor sedan

RSF&PTL