Living Anglicanism

Learning from Mother Teresa

Garwood Anderson — Tue, 06 Sep 2011 15:42:51 +0000

A homily given at Nashotah on September 6, 2011

My true confession: It is not unusual to hear a biographical sketch of an obscure saint in the morning at Nashotah House, which, however interesting, leaves us still trying to remember his or her name by the afternoon. Not so with Mother Teresa, who is probably the most famous Christian of our lifetimes – or if not the most famous, probably the most universally loved and revered.

There are obvious things to learn from Mother Teresa’s life – we think most naturally of her care for the poor, sick, orphaned, and dying – categories of people we remember in our prayers but whose lives are often beyond our touch. She was quite literally like Jesus in our gospel this morning, “all in the crowd were trying to touch him, for power came out from him and healed all of them” (Luke 6:19). No one, it seems, was beyond Mother Teresa’s touch. And so we learn from her that mission is not done from a clinical distance but in press of human life and suffering.

I think there is something else to learn from Teresa and the Missionaries of Charity, though I suspect this is rather more of an accident born of Christian virtue than a matter of calculated strategy. In Mother Teresa we see the fulfillment of our Lord’s injunction: “let your light shine before others, that they may see your good deeds and glorify your Father in heaven” (Matt 5:16). Quite similarly, 1 Peter – perhaps reflecting the Lord’s own words – enjoins us to “live such good lives among the pagans, that though they malign you as evildoers, they may see your good deeds and glorify God on the day of his visitation” (2:12).

That many will wish to malign Christian believers was promised to us by Jesus himself: “If the world hates you, realize that it hated me first” (John 15:18; cf. v. 19). But at this point, Christians less noble than Mother Teresa often misstep. We assume that if our views are unpopular, if we are made sport of, if all manner of evil is spoken against us (Matt 5:11), it must be a sign of our virtue. And, indeed, it may be so.

But, dare I say, more often it is not. More often our naysayers are carefully attuned to the distance between our words and actions, the distance between our convictions and our apathy for serving the world anything more than our opinions. But it is the task of Jesus’ followers not only to speak but to quiet. Yes, to speak the word with our tongues but also to quiet the world with our lives – at least long enough that the good news of Jesus Christ might be heard because it has first been seen.

We remember, for example, that Mother Teresa was a tireless advocate for life – at all stages. What for another Christian might have been the shrill imposition of a political ideology was for her an unimpeachable integrity of thought and deed, a vision for the dignity of all human life so coherent it had to be taken seriously. A vision so costly and compelling it shames the cheapness of the alternatives.

I don’t suggest that Mother Teresa was without her critics – but the criticism typically amounts to this: she had the nerve not only to be one of the world’s greatest humanitarians but also a Catholic Christian. A combination which both befuddles and galls religion’s cultured despisers.

May we too so adorn the gospel with good works that we too may befuddle and refute and silence a needy world which – though it doesn’t always know it – is still clamoring to touch Jesus.

The Son of Man Came Not to Be Served

Garwood Anderson — Fri, 29 Jul 2011 19:24:27 +0000

It was my privilege to preach at Nashotah House last night on the Feast of St. James. Somehow I managed only a bare mention James of Zebedee, but focused rather on the rightly famous (and controverted) “ransom saying” of Matthew 20:28 “The Son of Man came not to be served but to serve and to give his life as a ransom for many.”

Students of the NT will know that both the authenticity and the background to the saying are a matter of dispute, and it is little wonder that this is so. After all, the saying portrays Jesus not only making a prediction of his death but with a self-consciousness of its uniqueness and atoning character. If authentic, the saying devastates the standard claims which credit the early church for making meaningful the death of Jesus, a meaning of which he would have been innocent. This is well understood by many who have battled over the authenticity question. For a thoroughly critical and painstaking defense of the authenticity of the ransom logion, pride of place must now belong to my former teacher, Scot McKnight, Jesus and His Death: Historiography, the Historical Jesus, and Atonement Theory (Waco, Tex.: Baylor University Press, 2005). Scot manages to hold his readers in chapter after chapter of suspense, sustaining a large-scale and convincing argument. But it is well worth the read for those so inclined.

Nonetheless, my interest was rather more “ethical.” What does following the one who “came not to be served but to serve” really mean? The most serious question about this saying is not whether we can account for its history but whether we can account for our history in relationship to it. This is Jesus, after all, forming a new culture, a conscious counterpoint to the power structures and prerogatives of the Greco-Roman world (which is not all that unlike our own).

Might I suggest that if we have understood these words of Jesus at all we have probably misunderstood them ever so subtly. The point here is not that Jesus in his greatness as the Son of Man has nonetheless deigned to lower himself and play the role of a servant. This understanding—so close to being right—is actually all the more dangerous for that. The point here is not that Jesus in his greatness as the Son of Man has condescended to a temporarily out-of-character servanthood. It is rather that his greatness as the Son or Man is displayed in his servanthood. His servanthood is not a short-lived departure from his greatness, but, rather the very essence and expression of it.

For as long as we misunderstand the glory of Jesus as the antithesis of his humility, we will be strangers to humility ourselves. We will think that we are being like Jesus whenever we draw self congratulatory attention to the striking incompatibility between our rank and our menial acts of service. We will think it is admirable that someone with our status and accomplishments and importance temporarily sets those aside to take up basin and towel. We will think it notable that someone like us cares so little for his station that he will stoop low. We will feel slighted when our humility is not admired and noted. Indeed, we will make sure that our humility is as well known to others as it is to us, and our servility will be to us and to them a never-ending source of wonder and admiration. And, if we are skillful, it will not even look like this is what we are doing.

This is what happens when we think that humility is a path to greatness rather than greatness itself. This is what becomes of us when we think that our occasional quaint forays into servanthood are meant to adorn our majesty. This is what the church reduces itself to when it sprinkles the waters of baptism onto structures and assumptions and ways of being that are not the way of Jesus. If we baptize a hierarchical ecclesiology—and we have—then we must go the whole way and not sprinkle blessing upon power, prerogative, and abuse but rather mercilessly drown it all into the death of Jesus so that it may be raised to newness of life by the one who gave his life as a ransom for many sinners.

John R. W. Stott, Requiescat in Pace

Garwood Anderson — Thu, 28 Jul 2011 13:47:05 +0000

You may have already heard that the Rev. John R. W. Stott died today at the age of 90. Stott was the long-time Rector of All Souls Langham Place in London, the author of dozens of influential books, and the architect of a thoughtful and balanced evangelicalism resolutely committed to world mission. He was also a very recent alumnus of Nashotah House, having been granted a Doctor of Divinity, honoris causa, in absentia at our May 26 Commencement.

Stott was the most influential Anglican of his generation, if not within Anglicanism, without question outside of it. And, though from the vantage point of Nashotah’s heritage, he was a “low” churchman, he was a churchman, and he opposed the separatist impulses so characteristic of evangelicalism and sought to influence the Church of England from within, at some dear personal cost. Above all, he quietly guided and nurtured countless Christians into a robust faith in Christ. For a celebration of his life and work, you might enjoy reading this or this.

If I might be permitted a personal word: I was an 18-year-old undergraduate when I first heard John Stott preach at the Urbana Missions Conference in 1979 — Romans, as it turned out; I still remember it. His seriousness of thought and depth of conviction captivated me, and I went home and over the next six months devoured the first half-dozen of what would be several dozen of his books. He became a mentor in print, and I, with his help, was being made into a more thoughtful and serious Christian. It is fitting that I would learn the news today from my 19-year-old daughter, who had already read numerous books by “Uncle John.” He mentors yet another generation. The news of his passing today reminds me that I owe him more than I could ever repay.

A Sermon for Maundy Thursday

Garwood Anderson — Fri, 22 Apr 2011 20:07:53 +0000

Why did Jesus ask the Father for the cup to be taken from him? A sermon from the Nashotah House Maundy Thursday service: Maundy Thursday 2011