correct me if I'm mistaken

Yesterday I was wrong. It was Sarah Coakley who proffers 5 interpretations of the kenosis passage and its meaning for the incarnation. Her reference to NT Wright is his "exhaustive survey of the possible meanings of harpagenos [a thing to be grasped, booty] in this context" on p 81 of his "The Climax of the covenant." The title of her book is not "submission and the powers" but "powers and submissions." I can't understand why my memory reversed the terms. Her book is a good book with a wonderful Piero della Francesca image of the Madonna della Misericordia on the cover. Piero, as his friends called him, was an inspiration to 20th century American modernists, who saw in the geometric simplicity of his forms and the monumentality of his compositions something they wanted to do, without the attendant religious symbolism or necessity of church patronage. There's a relation between Piero and Cezanne. One of my art professors would go on and on about him and then do a painting of a big color field of gray with a collaged image from Hustler about the size of a postage stamp in one corner. He loved Ezra Pound. At the time he was very liberal, an ACLU officer, and I was very conservative. We got along wonderfully, and now I wonder at how gracious he was to me. He died in 1987 of cancer. The other day, as we were moving, I came across the bulletin for his funeral at 1st PCUSA in Athens. I wish that I could speak with him today. Often since then I've wanted to say, "look what I'm doing now, what do you think?" And now I have my own big volume of the Cantos sitting on the shelf next to my desk. "And the sun high over horizon hidden in cloud bank/ lit saffron the cloud ridge/ dove sta memoria." LXXVI. The other day, reading the periodical Poetry I read some fellow taking pot shots at ol Ez, and I thought, "oh sure. You say this now that he's long dead. But if you were locked up in St Elizabeth's, no cadre of poets would come to your rescue and plead that the government let you go and not hang you." And that says something that Ezra Pound was more than a poet as we meet them today; he was a full blown person, whose verse was the residue of his passion. That's perhaps one reason my very liberal professor could like the "fascist" Pound - as well as why TS Eliot, Robert Frost, and others, who didn't share his ideas, liked him as well. This person, this genius with crazy ideas but great feeling for life, is seemingly absent from our world. The art magazines are full of wonderfully bright artists, but they are either "bad boys/girls" without substance or overly substantive (do we suspect that there's less there than meets the eye?) without generating much passion. The same in poetry and music. I scan the horizon and don't see another Pound.

What argot shall I mortgage

Today we went to a bland church. On the outside the church building and grounds were beautiful and relaxing. Inside though, the sanctuary was devoid of any decoration, which is fine if the architectural lines are strong and the texture of the walls presents some visual interest of play of light. There were no banners, no flowers, just cold white sterile walls covering evident dry wall. Then the worship leaders proceeded to deliver the liturgy in a flawless monotone. "Worship the Lord today!" - now say that like you might doze off. And then the sermon didn't have a focus or a function: the "what do you want to say" and the "what do you want people to do" one-two punch we're taught these days - and the minister used qualified language, lots of "perhaps" - it was a wonderful exposition of what my class was taught "not to do." I was reading Placher's "Jesus the savior", and he quotes Barth as saying, "The sermon must not be boring." Barth goes on to say that the sermon must be biblical, that a biblical sermon cannot be boring. Yet I would say that this minister, who relied on commentaries a lot [and maybe that's a sign that cutting and pasting what commentaries say is not necessarily biblical, even though it's ostensibly biblical material], pulled it off.
Needless to say the Philippians passage dealing with kenosis was not used, the safe territory of recounting how the triumphal entry leads to the cross was. But I should say that such territory is "safe" with caution. You could be boring. You could pepper your sermon with vague personal anecdotes and talk about what commentaries say and then offer some bland hope that "perhaps" we'll meet Jesus, if we"perhaps" attend to this. What's the point if I'm facing a double-perhaps. The double-perhaps is the the "I have to wash my hair tonight" of sermon expositions. If there's only a vague happenstance that we'll meet Jesus in this practice, then screw it. The ACC tournament is on; I've got books I haven't read; I need to get a haircut.
We went to the bland little church in the wildwood in order to avoid the possibility of hearing a preacher who tends to meander a lot before getting to the point. But now I see my mistake: he at least has a point and his preaching is biblical and he is not boring. He has passion.
What is then biblical preaching? As I mentioned, the preacher above certainly spent time telling us what commentators had said, especially about the donkey and the colt and the foal (I thought, "not this shit again.") ; however, there was no evidence that she'd grappled with the commentators, taking issue with them, had an existential moment in her own soul about them. I couldn't tell what in this text she was passionate about. I thought, "why should I care?" And that sentence is a key. If the preacher doesn't care, why should the listeners care?
Barth mentions joy often in his dogmatics, recognizing that if a Christian's testimony is to a morose gospel, then two failures have occurred: the world believes wrongly that Christianity is joyless, and a Christian has misunderstood the gospel (and I believe Barth is talking about believers who generally display depression and disaffection about their faith, not people who are sad during a crisis or limit situation) or else become focused on the nothingness of the world.
Enough of my carping.
I take sermons seriously, just as I do paintings. I know in art that it is possible to get away with "pretty" paintings that seem well done, but are artless - no struggle, no discovery, no development, no process or progress. People who buy them might as well frame squares of wall paper. Do I think the same thing happens with sermons? I think it's endemic to America now a days: we are presented with the fake as the authentic- indeed the fake is authentic enough.
Now consider this, that we are coming to the end of Lentapalooza. Every Lent's end effects me. I suppose I miss the parties, the comradship, the all you can eat steak dinners and the two for one bloody Marys. The Lenten bloody Mary comes with an extra celery stick and no salt on the rim. When I watch those kids coming in the door to the sanctuary waving those palms, their bright eyes and their ill fitting clothes, I'm reminded of all that is good and clean and real. And I wonder what happened? What happens to the child when she wakes up and is 20 and needs to write a paper all night; what happens to the child when he wakes up and he's 69 and needs an operation. In their experience of the Church what will we have given them that stays with them and is true, that is a symbol of joy that shines in their dark moments? Do we build a wall between them and Jesus - the real Jesus in the Bible who gets himself killed because he cares more about pleasing God than pleasing people, not the fake American Jesus who waves a flag and helps people hate immigrants and shoot the enemy.
I had meant to discuss epistemological problems today, as well as ontology and phenomenology, in my attempt to get some understanding on how life is spaced out, and understanding what is happening when it is happening just in case something could be said to be happening.
About the Philippians text, Sarah Coakley writes about kenosis in her book "submission and the powers" where she mentions that NT Wright has posited at least 5 different ways this text has been understood through the centuries. I think that those who preached on this text this palm Sunday were brave. The incarnation is incredibly important to understand in order to think and to ethically behave as a Christian, and often it is schloffed off. Like with the Trinity our main doctrines don't seem to be exciting enough to preach on.
There, I've dug myself a nice hole. I've taken my typical elitist position, with my shoddy thinking and my unreal expectations. Here I sit; I can do no other.

Palm Sunday

I've spent some time on the Easter liturgy, mostly with the two texts that mention a feast, and it's not even Easter yet. In fact the interesting time of Palm Sunday is tomorrow and awaiting us in the lectionary is kenosis passage from Philippians, an early Christian hymn that Paul either wrote or quotes here that goes like this:
Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus, 6 who, though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, 7 but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness. And being found in human form, 8 he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death-- even death on a cross. 9 Therefore God also highly exalted him and gave him the name that is above every name, 10 so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bend, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, 11 and every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.
As in Corinthians, where Paul is responding to difficulties between believers, he offers an example of Christ's obedience. Where in Corinthians Paul speaks of Christ's crucifixion as the power that establishes God's wisdom and renders the wisdom and power of the world foolish and weak, in this passage Paul uses the whole of Christ's incarnate existence as an example of the Christian life.
Throughout the centuries there have been arguments as to what Christ's emptying of himself might mean, and though it was very certain to Paul's hearers, it is less obvious today. Certainly if you are in a church tomorrow that uses this passage for the text, you should expect evidence of some wrestling with what "emptying" means - accept no easy answers. Likewise with the statement that Christ was in the form (morphe) of God and took the form (morphe) of a slave - expect some grappling with docetic tendencies in the Church. This passage also invites a discussion of the resurrection that pays great attention to the incarnation: how does the incarnation lead toward the resurrection and how does the resurrection flow from the incarnation. But more so, Paul is arguing for servant behavior among the community of faith - and so this passage echoes Christ's discussion of who will be the greatest (he must be servant of all - you call me teacher and lord, and so I am, but I am among you as one who serves).