Forty Days of Tenderness

The short essay below was published online yesterday (Sunday, March 1) as part of the Intent series of daily Lenten meditations. (Copyright © 2015 LEM).

Intent is a joint project of the Lutheran Episcopal Ministry (LEM) at MIT, Episcopal BU (the Episcopal Chaplaincy at Boston University), the Lutheran Episcopal Campus Ministry at Northeastern University and the Episcopal Chaplaincy at Boston College, The Crossing, St. Bartholomew's Episcopal Church in Cambridge, and Emmanuel Episcopal Church in Boston.

Note: these congregations exploring together the possibility of becoming a mission hub or mission cluster with a focus on creating affordable housing opportunities in the form of intentional communities --hence the reference in the essay below.

You can sign up for Intent (it's free) here. Note that the daily meditations, which you can receive via e-mail, include not only written ones but visual and musical ones as well.

Dawn, Second Sunday in Lent
(c) Jane Redmont 2015

Forty Days of Tenderness

Two or three decades ago, my beloved mentor, Krister Stendahl, preached an Ash Wednesday sermon I will never forget. The cry of Ash Wednesday and Lent, he reminded us, is “Return to the Lord your God!” Return, he added, to God who is tender and merciful. Lent, he continued, is a time to remember the tenderness of God and therefore (here’s where he got me) to learn anew to be tender with ourselves.

Lent is the church’s annual retreat. It is a time of truth-seeking and truth-telling, of re-attuning our lives to live in justice and mercy, of renewal in prayer and practice. For many of us, this may involve additional time in solitude. But the self-examination of Lent is not for reflection on our self alone. It is not simply about “Jesus and me.” We are on this 40-day retreat together.

So we return to the unending tenderness of the Holy One of Blessing. We let this tenderness touch us and cradle us. We let it live with and within us. And we learn—again or for the first time—to live together, with our households and congregations, with the stranger on the street, with this new mission cluster, with our sisters and brothers who need housing, with those we love and those who are hard to love.

This takes time and care. It may feel slow and require some inner untangling and delicate steps in our community life. Lent is difficult. But it need not be harsh. How will we live these forty days of tenderness?

Jane Redmont is a theologian, spiritual director, and pastoral worker and is the author of two books including When in Doubt, Sing: Prayer in Daily Life.

The Disabled God - and some appropriately disjointed thoughts on resurrection

"In presenting his impaired body to his startled friends, the resurrected Jesus is revealed as the disabled God,” she wrote. God remains a God the disabled can identify with, she argued — he is not cured and made whole; his injury is part of him, neither a divine punishment nor an opportunity for healing.

I think I neglected to post this obituary for theologian Nancy Eieslund last month. I have finally ordered her book The Disabled God, which may be pertinent to next Sunday's sermon. (No preaching this Easter weekend, but I'm on for Low Sunday.) As may this, of course.

And then there's the rich reading in the book of Acts, the one about what we contemporary Christians mostly don't do. Except in some very poor communities, like the one I just read about in this book. Hmmm.

Kevin preached a kick-a** sermon at St. Mary's House this a.m. about the importance of how Jesus died (crucifixion) in relation to how we are to live post-Resurrection (in a way that subverts the powers that be - intentionally). There was more, but that is the part related to what I've been starting to think about for next Sunday. Of course, things could change between now and then.

This morning's sermon (one of them - I was also at the early Vigil at All Saints') also reminded me of Krister Stendahl's excellent essay "Immortality Is Too Much and Too Little." (Originally this essay was his 1972 Nobel Conference lecture at Gustavus Adolphus College. It is available in Stendahl's book of essays Meanings: the Bible as Document and as Guide.) Stendahl's point is that we confuse resurrection with immortality of the soul. We don't proclaim the latter. We proclaim the resurrection of the body - and the victory of God's justice. Not, as Stendahl in his inimitable way put it, "what this has to do with little me."

Alleluia. Go forth.

He Qi: After Resurrection

Back and busy - and button of the week

Back safely. Nice airplane pilots. Cat in good shape. Dogwood in bloom in Boston. Harvard still there. Parents of Acts of Hope looking well. Memorial service moving. Sat in row of old friends. Laughed and cried. Legal Sea Foods had overly long wait, couldn't get in; will have to wait till next visit to eat bluefish.

Button of the week, spotted on someone at memorial service: Barack Obama spelled out in Hebrew letters, like this:




Blogging will be scarce for the next ten days or so except for a post or two. Prayers and greetings are most welcome! Explanations later. Yes, I'm fine.

Beantown bound

I'm gettin' out of Dodge early tomorrow.

I'll be in Boston attending Krister Stendahl's memorial service on Friday and visiting Parents of Acts of Hope for a few days .

Maya Pavlova will have a nice cat-sitter and house-sitter.

Talk amongst yourselves...

Peace out.


There is a new Stendahl memorial page with texts and pictures on the Harvard Divinity School website. Lots of good reading and visuals.


Krister Stendahl (retired Bishop of Stockholm) with Caroline Krook, Bishop of Stockholm, at his 80th birthday celebration, April 2001. Photo: Harvard Divinity School.

Episcopal Cafe tribute to Krister Stendahl by D. Good and J. Redmont

The Episcopal Cafe has published a tribute to Krister Stendahl by Deirdre Good and yours truly.

You can read it here.

By happy coincidence, the beautiful Nativity on this week's Daily Episcopalian at the Episcopal Cafe is by our friend Luiz Coelho, Brazilian artist and seminarian. We are honored to be in the company of his work.

Krister Stendahl: the Commendation, and a note on gifts

An old and dear friend scanned the program from Krister's funeral, which was this morning, and sent it to me. The memorial service will be in a month and this was the more intimate (though packed) Lutheran service with family.

Here is the Commendation from today's liturgy:

My sisters and brothers, we have been gathered here around
*****this dead body,
what is left to us of this man, to pay our last respects to him
and to seek to do some justice to his life and death.
Keeping our eyes fixed on the cross of Jesus Christ
we say in groping faith that this is not the end,
that our God is a God of the living.

Rather than his body
we will finally be left with the name of this man, Krister,
which we speak with reverence and affection.
Lord God, remember this name which he was given by
***** other people
and by which he is known even though he is dead,
the name that you have written on the palm of your hand. Amen.

As a sign of our hope and to bear witness to our faith in
*****the resurrection,
I bless this body
in the name of the Father and of the Son + and of the Holy Spirit.

Let us now go in peace.
We let him go out of our keeping
and return him to the elements of air and earth, in the care of
*****the living God.
May our prayers accompany him,
and may we remember that, as the apostle wrote,
no one lives for herself, no one dies for herself.
We live and we die for God our Lord, and we are the Lord's.

I have kept updating the post from Tuesday with various obituaries and tributes. The latest comes from the World Council of Churches. There are also links at the bottom of that post for the two organizations to which friends may make memorial gifts, the Harvard Square Homeless Shelter and the International Rescue Committee. The family has requested this in lieu of flowers and in honor of Krister's memory.

Memorial service for Krister Stendahl (1921-2008) and some obituaries and tributes -- and recent words by Bishop Stendahl

A celebration of Krister Stendahl's life and legacy will take place Friday, May 16, 3:00 p.m. (note time change from original listing) in Memorial Church, Harvard Yard.

David Hartman writes, toward the end of his tribute (link below): We live now in a profound void. My prayer is that Krister's memory and life's work should serve as an inspiration for new Krister Stendahls to emerge in the modern world.

The New York Times obituary (4/16/08) is here.

A tribute from the Shalom Hartman Institute, written by Alan Abbey with a moving tribute by Institute co-director David Hartman, is here.

The fine, detailed obituary from Harvard Divinity School (HDS) is here. A short message from the current HDS dean William Graham is here.

Short 2007 interview with KS on the topic of leadership. Read it if you are interested in any of the following: church, power, Jesus, lgbt issues, humility, discernment, pastoring, priesthood, intellectual life, accountability.

Krister Stendahl's delicious 2007 essay "Why I Love the Bible."

Nice obit with many quotes from colleagues in the 4/17/08 Boston Globe.

Video: Krister Stendahl and Tikva Frymer-Kensky at the National Catholic speaking on Jewish-Christian relations, 2002. (Thanks to Deirdre Good for the referral to the link.)

Short tribute by a blogging member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (a.k.a. Mormons).

World Council of Churches obituary and tribute.

From the Extraordinary Lutheran Ministries.

I will keep updating with links to obituaries and tributes in this space.


Memorial gifts:

Bishop Stendahl's family and church have suggested that those who wish to make a memorial gift do so to one of the following two organizations:

The Harvard Square Homeless Shelter

The International Rescue Committee

Krister Stendahl, R.I.P.

Bishop Krister Stendahl died this morning in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Funeral this Friday at University Lutheran Church, Harvard Square.

Memorial Service in Memorial Church, Harvard Yard, sometime in May, date to be announced.

I am the resurrection and the life, saith the Lord;
he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live;
and whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall never die.

I know that my Redeemer liveth,
and that he shall stand at the latter day upon the earth;
and though this body be destroyed, yet shall I see God;
whom I shall see for myself and mine eyes shall behold,
and not as a stranger.

For none of us liveth to himself,
and no man dieth to himself.
For if we live, we live unto the Lord.
and if we die, we die unto the Lord.
Whether we live, therefore, or die, we are the Lord's.

Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord;
even so saith the Spirit, for they rest from their labors.

Grief

Krister is still alive -- I got a note from one of his children this morning -- but near death still, in that in-between passage, and I am grieving mightily. I cried on my walk in the woods yesterday, I cried today in church, I cried at the coffee hour (and left in a hurry), I cried in the car, I cried on the phone when I called my best friend from divinity school to tell her the news and ask her prayers. It's a good thing I wasn't doing much more than being a chalice bearer today. The readings were perfectly timed, too: shepherding, breaking bread and praying in community, the Twenty-Third Psalm. Everything reminded me of what a holy and pastoral person Krister Stendahl has been for so many of us, and how much his work has built up the Body of Christ and so many of us individually, in our various ministries. May Godde have mercy on us who will survive him, and help us do for others a fraction of what he has done for us and for the kin-dom.

Oremus: Krister Stendahl is dying

As I was posting the icon of the Mother of God below, I received word that my beloved mentor, Krister Stendahl, is near death.

Just a year ago (a year ago tomorrow, to be exact) I posted about him following an excellent post by Deirdre Good.

I have been grieving him for several weeks already, sensing that I would not see him alive again. This is a death I have been dreading for years. Bishop Stendahl is dying in the fullness of years, but this is someone who has been a true spiritual father to me and there will never be anyone like him again.

I pray for him, ask for your prayers for him, for his wife and partner Brita, and for their children and family.

I can't find a photo of him on the web, except for a not very good one. The link to a photo on the link above is broken (the link to my post does work fine, though) and all the photos seem to have disappeared.

When the obits are out (they will be everywhere, he is world famous) there will be photographs, I am sure. Meanwhile we wait and pray and give thanks

P.S. I found one of the photos I was looking for. This one is of Brita and Krister Stendahl in the audience at a lecture at Harvard Divinity School (HDS). Both are in their eighties.


(To Brita and Krister's left --to their right in the photo-- is noted scholar of religion and ecology Mary Evelyn Tucker. To her left is HDS professor Kimberly Patton, my Guilford colleague Eric Mortensen's mentor and friend. In the row above them you can see emeritus professor Gordon Kaufman and next to him, Mary Evelyn Tucker's husband John Grim, also a noted scholar of religion and ecology.)

"Mosquitoes coughing" and why Krister Stendahl loves the Bible

What is this about mosquitoes coughing? Krister Stendahl says that's what apologetics is.

I love that.

I'm going to make some enemies by saying this, or at least some will disagree with me (my old classmate Fred, for one) or think I am a theological lightweight, but let me tell you, I have never liked apologetics as a theological discipline or as a task and I'm not going to start now, and I am tickled that the least lightweight of them all, my beloved mentor, has given me something to quote, and with help from a Swedish saying, no less.

Apologetics, defending the Bible—defending God, for that matter—is a rather arrogant activity. Who is defending whom? I love to use the old Swedish expression, "It is pathetic to hear mosquitoes cough." I don't know why that is funny, but in Swedish it is funny. And apologetics is mosquitoes coughing. It kills so much of the joy in reading and practicing the love of the scriptures.

The quote is from an essay by Krister Stendahl I found on Deirdre Good's blog, which I recently discovered. (D. Good, for those of you who don't know, is a New Testament scholar who teaches at the General Theological Seminary in NYC. Old acquaintance from years ago.)

You have to remember, when you are reading this, that Stendahl is in his eighties, looking at the end of his life, an eminent scholar of the New Testament, an early supporter of the ordination of women (including through his 1958 The Bible and the Role of Women), former dean of Harvard Divinity School, Emeritus Bishop of Stockholm (Church of Sweden), leader in Jewish-Christian relations,* ecumenical and interreligious pioneer, theorist, and practitioner, and husband of scholar and writer Brita Stendahl.

* which makes his use of the expression "Pharisaism" in the essay a bit odd, but if you know him you know there is probably some irony in his use of it. The published text of the essay is very close to the spoken delivery -- this was a talk he gave several years before the publication.

Krister Stendahl is also one of the best preachers I have ever heard.

His essay on his relationship to the Bible is well worth reading -- slowly and carefully.

You Anglicans out there may also be interested in the fact that he was a co-consecrator of Episcopal Bishop of New Hampshire Gene Robinson. (The Church of Sweden is in full communion with the Episcopal Church.)