Second Terrace on scarecrows

I found this provocative post over at Second Terrace. If you have not been following the material covered below, in short: A speech was given at Holy Cross that raised quite an uproar that was then responded to by Metropolitan Jonah (OCA).

On the brink of Holy Week, many Orthodox Christians in America have polity and jurisdiction on their minds.

The Holy and Great Fast (i.e., Lent) ends tonight, and we should be thinking about the one good Passion that saves us from all the dark passions.

But instead, we have heard from an ecclesiastical chief of staff in Boston on March 16th, and recently a hierarch in Dallas on April 5th. They both said correct things. They both said things with which I disagree.

And chief among my disagreements is a point on which they both unwittingly agreed: that the issue of jurisdictionalism is pre-eminent for Americans who are Orthodox, and for Orthodox Christians who are American (the two categories may not be the same).

Each speech is not worthy of the office the speaker represents. There were insults, generalizations and non sequiturs aplenty. There was poor English in both addresses, for heaven’s sake. There were historical analyses that were biased at best (and historicist at worst).

And there were so many straw men stuffed and erected by both speeches that the Orthodox mental horizon is now littered with scarecrows.

Now is not the time for rhetoric on American jurisdiction: this is all a red herring, from both men, diverting attention from more pressing concerns.

Both men have enormous tasks at looking to the repair of their own houses. For one, there are the matters of dogmatic drift and a cultural accommodation that teeters on the edge of syncretism. For the other, there are the issues of financial despair and barely submerged scandal.

Both men represent financial emergency. Both represent rifts of fellowship. Both represent a confusion about what America is. I hope that they do not present a confusion about what Orthodoxy is, but I fear that they produce a response in the listening America that is expressed by a jaded shrug on the TV couch, animated by a bored cynicism -- as if what two men wearing weird clothes ever said anything of import to an American body stuffed with Big Macs or to a soul stuffed with Reality TV (and Dancing with the Stars).

It is almost Holy Week for God’s sake.

It is not a week for scarecrows.

I do not press any jurisdictional rhetoric or historic claim. I just hope to repent and try to follow the Shepherd through the Valley of the Shadow this coming week, and maybe beyond. My spirit is willing but my flesh is week. I really hope I can tarry for at least an hour.

Good old-fashioned Friday repentance, and the Holy Saturday ascetical mortification of the passions, will lead to the apatheia and discernment that are requisite to any thinking about polity.

None of this has been done nearly enough. There is neither apatheia nor discernment nearly enough to even suggest autocephaly on one side, or enhancement of Old World rule on the other. I believe that martyrdom and full-fledged monasticism are prerequisite to any metropolia, much less autocephaly. But that's just me. I believe that apostolic theoria is necessary for leadership. But again, I hope -- I really hope -- that that is not just me (this political position is getting as lonely as hell).

In all of this chatter on polity, I have heard a few wise voices. I liked, best of all, this comment (from a certain "Arthur") on the earnest BeliefNet page known as “Crunchy Con”:

Please don't fight. Please regard each other more highly than yourself. Please remember that we have a common enemy; the devil, our flesh, and this fallen world we find ourselves in. There will be no true peace until the Prince of Peace returns. Until then, let us unite in love as best we can, and let us put down our tendency toward unfriendly language. The Patriarch is right. He needs our help. +Jonah is right, too. We are here. We are all in this together. There has to be a way we can work together; a way that God could reveal to us, if we'll pay attention. May our Risen Lord Jesus Christ, by the power and might of His Holy Spirit, lead us into all truth, and may we be an example to the world well pleasing to God. Lord Jesus Christ, Son of the Most High God, have mercy on us sinners. Amen.

“If we’ll pay attention,” indeed.

Let us give up, today, the lyrics to the Scarecrow's song “If I only had a brain” for better ones.

Like “O my Son, where is the beauty of Thy form? I cannot bear to look upon Thee crucified unjustly. Make haste, then, to arise, that I too may see Thy Resurrection on the third day from the dead.”

Amen, and "Let all mortal flesh keep silence, and stand with fear and trembling; and let it take no thought for any earthly thing."