That’s the name of the exquisite Crowninshield stained-glass window that belongs in what is at present a blue blank in the wall of the church building. It is an image from Pilgrim’s Progress, a scene of the pilgrim at last arriving at journey’s end, where there is shalom, the fullness of peace and right relationship—the heart’s home. Originally, when this church was constructed in 1861 as the first structure on Newbury Street, the altar was located below the window that preceded Emmanuel’s Land window in that wall. In my mind, their placement becomes simultaneous: Holy Communion and the arrival home at the end of the pilgrim’s journey.
At present, the window is out to be cleaned and re-leaded, its original brightness restored. But the idea it stands for—Emmanuel’s Land—remains as a kind of guiding image for this community of faith. We are pilgrims on a journey, bound for glory.
The theme of Emmanuel’s Land helps me to organize my impressions of the past several days in Boston, days of extraordinary music juxtaposed with days of ‘doing church.’
On Thursday night, Bill and I heard Moses und Aron, the Schoenberg opera presented at Symphony Hall by James Levine and the BSO with the Tanglewood Festival Chorus. Emmanuel Music’s David Kravitz was among the singers, and I saw several of the extended Emmanuel community in the audience.
“The plot is adapted from the book of Exodus: The Lord commands Moses to awaken the Israelites to the existence of the one true God. Moses understands the purity of the monotheistic idea, but he is powerless to convey it to the masses. Aron, by contrast, cannot grasp the pure idea of God as deeply, but he is an effective leader who can move the people to action. Once liberated from slavery, the people grow restless waiting in the desert. Aron conjures for them a golden calf and a deliriously violent orgy ensues.” Innocence is murdered. “An infuriated Moses destroys the golden calf” and at the same time, he destroys the tablets of the law. “The second act ends with his concession of failure and his pained, desperate lament ‘O Word! You word that I lack!’” (Boston Globe review 10/27/06)
What an intellectually compelling opera! With its extraordinary 12-tone score, Moses und Aron contemplates the crisis of European civilization in the mid-twentieth century, as Nazism with its murderous anti-Semitism engulfed the composer’s native Germany.
It was composed in between 1930 and 1932, the years when Jews were being systemically purged from their participation in the common life, but before the full horror of the Nazi agenda reached its dénouement. Schoenberg, a Jewish German Protestant who returned to Judaism, transposed that crisis into the story of Moses and his brother Aaron. They struggle to convey the high pure ideal of the one holy transcendent God to a people who were chasing after false gods, hell bent on worshipping images of their own devices and desires. Rather than faith in the God that could not be seen or touched, they chose orgiastic devotion to a creature they could see, the golden calf.
Weimar Germany was just like what Paul wrote about in his classic letter to the Romans—because they worshipped a false god, they fell into all kinds of corruption. Schoenberg certainly threw light on the dilemma of German culture at that time; whether he was aware of the churches’ crisis I cannot say. But for those of us who think back through theology, his opera nailed with searing precision the crisis of the German churches. The German Catholic and Lutheran Churches, for the most part, compliantly or reluctantly accommodated themselves to the rising Nazi movement—until it was too late.
Only the Confessing churches, led by men like Dietrich Bonhoeffer and the Reformed theologian Karl Barth, publicly opposed the cultural enthrallment to nationalist ideology. Bonheoffer wrote The Cost of Discipleship in prison, where he was incarcerated and ultimately executed for plotting to assassinate Hitler. Karl Barth made his witness with his writings, drawing deep from Protestant reformation theology that perceived the Word of God as towering over/against—and judging—every human ideology and institution.
Schoenberg’s Aron, the priest, represented to me the church that went along with the rising flood of violence, while the prophet Moses, burnt from the encounter on the mountaintop with Holy Mystery, failed to communicate to the people the unutterable transcendent Word. Everywhere the ceremony of innocence was drowned, to borrow W.B. Yeats’ line from the poem The Second Coming, and the end was silence.
I couldn’t sleep Friday night, the many layers of meaning of that opera pressing on my consciousness. As I lay awake I thought—this is Emmanuel’s mission field—the cultural life of this city, where theology and spirituality, politics and culture intersect with such profound impact! Because of Emmanuel Music’s long residence here, Emmanuel Church is uniquely situated to connect with Boston’s music community to sound out and influence our world of political, aesthetic, and spiritual values. Because of Boston Jewish Spirit’s recent arrival, the Church is uniquely situated to present programs that explore inter-religious histories and their resolution. There couldn’t be a more critical time for the renewal and deepening of that work.
Sleep came at last, in the small hours of the morning. Nevertheless, I had to get up early because the Diocese of Massachusetts had its annual Convention on Friday and Saturday. It felt something like whiplash to go from Symphony Hall to Diocesan Convention! Happily, I didn’t go alone, but with our delegates Elliott Carlson and Pat and Paul Corcoran, and Mike Shea, the author of Emmanuel’s resolution to Convention on marriage equality in the church. All the same, let me say that my enthusiasm for the Convention built slowly.
But build it did: convention was energizing. I’m not making this up. Elliott and Pat and Paul and Mike will tell you the same thing. Rather than a theatre of contention—which is what too much bad press would lead one to expect—this gathering was a celebration of and encouragement for being men and women for others.
It was all about mission. Mission as: a sense of purpose. People in this diocese are organizing for mission to the poor in this country and abroad. They are going to Mississippi and New Orleans to help to rebuild. They are building programs for the children of this city who are in danger on their own streets, working for their safety and standing for their worth.
In the midst of all this, the resolution from Emmanuel Church on marriage equality in the Episcopal Church won a resounding affirmative vote! Now, in my unbiased view, its opponents didn’t have a chance! Its author, Mike Shea, with characteristic theological acumen and eloquence, first presented it. Later, Elliott Carlson stood at the mike—his face an image of resolve that brought to mind Luther’s ‘Here I stand’—formally moved it for the vote. No one would take lightly what Elliott was saying! And when someone objected that we would be violating the spirit of the Windsor Report discussions with the rest of the Anglican Communion, I was on my feet to explain that, while we honor the Communion-wide deliberations, this resolution aims to keep our own cultural and pastoral situation before the national church and the worldwide Anglican Communion.
We were doing church, as my Baptist friend likes to say, doing it in the Anglican/Episcopal way that combines love of ancient traditions and rituals with commitment to democratic processes and ideals. Convention approved the resolution by an overwhelming majority!
What it means is that Emmanuel’s resolution is now a resolution of the Episcopal Diocese of Massachusetts. It will be presented at the next General Convention, which takes place in another two and a half years. There it will enter the fray at the national level, where the democratic processes will continue. A lot can happen in two and a half years in a worldwide church as volatile as the Anglican Communion is at this time. But whatever happens, the ‘perspective from here’ will be part of the mix.
Again, it’s all about mission: engaged participation to make the world a better place, practices that make us women and men for others, who share from our abundance the gifts and the good that we have.
Psychological studies about happiness indicate that among the things that make people purely happy are singing and helping others. You know about the singing part! And you know, too, about the liberation from self-absorption and discouragement that reaching out to help others delivers. It is remarkable that serving others makes you simply happy. Reaching out to help others liberates a person from discouragement and makes room for happiness.
Blessing is another word for happiness: blessed are the peacemakers; blessed are those who hunger and thirst for justice; blessed are the pure in heart. Mike and Elliott made their appeals for equal access to sacramental marriage by speaking from the abundance of blessing of their own marriages. Their abundance was the starting point; that was what they wanted to share. I would say that was the overarching theme of this convention: sharing from the abundance of your blessing.
Then, a few short hours after the final Alleluias of Convention, Emmanuel Music filled this sanctuary for Orlando, Handel’s opera about love and glory, enchantment and clear-sighted resolution for confused passions. It was what Yeats called ‘a laughing, crying, sacred song, a leaching song!’
Altogether, what came into view over this weekend I would call “Emmanuel’s Land,” that is, the mission field of this church: the cultural, political, religious, musical, spiritual life of the city of Boston.
Dear Emmanuel, what great things you have in you to do to serve the cultural and spiritual life of this city! All that is needed is to throw off discouragement, to renew your commitment to hope over despair, generativity over decline. You are already and always men and women for others, made for joy, bound for glory. Together, in collaboration with your wider communities—the music community, your kindred Jewish neighbors, the political process, and the larger church—there is so much you have to give to the common life of Boston!
Amen: make it so!