The First Thursday in Advent -- William Stringfellow

A Reflection on William Stringfellow’s The Penitential Season (pp. 102-106)

William Stringfellow is likely the greatest Episcopal theologian you’ve never heard of. That is not just my humble opinion, but a perspective shared by both Karl Barth (who probably was the greatest theologian of the last century, period) and Rowan Williams (who is probably the most thoughtful living Anglican theologian).

Stringfellow is not widely known primarily because he was a bit of an eccentric and a curmudgeon who defied social norms. He was not seminary trained, and for most of his life, was a staunch critic of most American seminaries for “watering down” the message of the gospel. Although he detested Harvard Law School as an institution, he matriculated there because he believed the skills of a lawyer would best prepare him for the ministry of advocating for the poor and the persecuted, and challenging the powerful. While most of his peers went on to high-paying careers in big firms or on Wall Street (including, I’m sad to confess, this wayward recovering lawyer), Stringfellow went to Harlem to represent victimized tenants, accused persons who would otherwise have inadequate counsel in the courts, and impoverished African-Americans who were largely excluded from public services like hospitals and government offices.

Stringfellow was, to put it mildly, a serious and brilliant student of the Bible. His skill was less in traditional historical and literary exegesis than it was in the practical interpretation of Scripture. He believed Scripture should be lived, not merely understood.

As we see in his reflection on the season of Advent, Stringfellow is a trenchant critic of sentimentality – especially religious sentimentality – and of the privatization of faith. Advent, Stringfellow insists, is as much about the second Coming of Christ as the first, and that will be an apocalyptic moment when Christ shall confront “the powers and principalities” of this world and hold them accountable for their neglect of the poor and marginalized, for their insatiable greed, and their wanton abuse of power. The message of Advent for Stringfellow is John the Baptist’s cry to “repent” – that is, to turn around our lives such that we begin to actually live into Christ’s mission to feed the hungry and liberate the captive.

Stringfellow’s stern and caustic words are probably not what we want to hear during Advent, as he is determined to “afflict the comfortable,” just as he worked during his life to “comfort the afflicted.” But maybe his call to repentance and to activism based on the gospel is just what we need to hear?

A native of Massachusetts, William Stringfellow (1928-85) graduated from Bates College and then attended Harvard Law School. A largely self-taught Christian theologian, Stringfellow became a relentless activist for social justice and peace during the Civil Rights Era based on his reading of the New Testament.


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Second Sunday in Advent -- Jane Kenyon

A Reflection on Jane Kenyon’s Mosaic of the Nativity (pp. 118-19) As we read Jane Kenyon’s haunting poem, which she wrote in Serbia in 1993, it is helpful to remember our history: In the early 1990s, after the breakup of Communism, the former Republic of Yugoslavia divided into competing territories as religious histories and identities took center stage in a bloody civil war that, tragically, replayed religious conflicts that have taken place in the Balkans for centuries. Croats historically are predominantly Catholic, Serbs Eastern Orthodox, and Bosnians Muslim. During this period the world watched in horror as nearly a quarter of a million people died in Bosnia and Croatia and two million were left exiled or displaced, all in the name of religion. And with this bloodshed, the phrase “ethnic cleansing” made its awful entry into our vocabulary. In the first stanza of her poem, Kenyon takes us back to the idyllic beginning, to Creation, and imagines God looking down from the domed
Read more

The Second Monday in Advent -- John Howard Yoder

A Reflection on John Howard Yoder’s The Original Revolution (pp. 120-26) John Howard Yoder urges us to listen afresh to those two beautiful texts – songs, really – that are found in Luke’s birth narrative: Mary’s Song, which we know as the Magnificat , and the Song of Zechariah , which we know as the Benedictus Dominus Deus . Both of these may be found in your Book of Common Prayer (pp. 91-92) as Canticles 15 and 16, and for centuries have been a staple of the Daily Office. I invite you to read them again this Advent. Mary praises God in her song, and thanks God for choosing “this lowly servant” to be his servant for this world-shattering moment we call the Incarnation. But Mary goes on: in every generation, she sings, God has “shown the strength of his arm, scattered the proud in their conceit, cast down the mighty from their thrones, and lifted up the lowly.” God has also “filled the hungry with good things, and the rich he has left empty.” In other words, Mary exclaims, God is
Read more

The Third Wednesday in Advent -- Brennan Manning

A Reflection on Brennan Manning’s Shipwrecked at the Stable (pp. 184-200) Jesus said, “Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick; I have come to call not the righteous but sinners” (Mk 2:17). The righteous cannot recognize Christ, because they believe they are just fine on their own and are pretending they are not “shipwrecked,” to us Brennan Manning’s phrase; they are unaware of their predicament and thus blind to the News which addresses it.  But the sinners and outcasts, those who know they are shipwrecked, take to Christ immediately. They are drawn to the stable, and will not leave, because having been lost, they now can see in the eyes of the infant God that they have been found. This Child is whom they have been waiting for! The message of the Incarnation is good news for us, Manning insists, not only because it addresses our plight, but also because it comes wholly from outside of ourselves. It is not something we could have discovered, in
Read more