Verna Dozier's "Dream of God": Good Cop, Bad Cop

Reflection on Verna J. Dozier's The Dream of God: A Call to Return (New York: Church Publishing, 2006).

At 19, my Bible-study friends and I sometimes discussed our feelings of guilt for being upper-middle-class college kids with cars, vast collections of LPs and books, and passports. We'd review Jesus's response to the earnest young man, "Sell all your goods for money to give the poor, and follow me." Centuries before in Assisi, a wealthy merchant's son had stripped naked in the public square and gone on to minister to the poor, the sick, and the animals. But we concluded that St. Francis just wasn't a practical role model today, that our living in poverty wouldn't raise up anybody else, and that we'd do better to continue our educations and carry the Gospel forward into our professional workplaces.

Verna J. Dozier takes that same conversation deeper, but reaches essentially the same conclusion.

The "dream of God" in her book's title is a vulnerable God's dream of love, freely bestowed upon His creatures, freely returned by them. Without the vulnerability to rejection, there could be no true love -- and thus, she writes, the Cross was embedded in creation from the very start (24).

Jesus, she writes, modeled how to live out that dream. Instead of following Jesus, we've substituted worship. There's a "good cop, bad cop" angle to the book, and she calls in a team of three "bad cops" to poke holes in the Church: Thomas Sheehan, author of The First Coming: How the Kingdom of God Became Christianity; Albert Nolan, Jesus Before Christianity; and Lucas Grollenberg, The Unexpected Messiah: How the Bible Can Be Misleading. At least in her summaries of their works, I didn't find more than I'd long ago internalized from Tim Rice's words to the first song from Andrew Lloyd Webber's score of Jesus Christ Superstar:

[Jesus], all the good you've done
Will soon be swept away.
You've begun to matter more
Than the things you say.

Still in "bad cop" mode, she generalizes that one half of the Church's members struggle to maintain the institution while the other half "drops by on holy days to participate in an archaic ritual that has no effect on the lives they are leading the rest of the time" (108). My friend and EfM co-mentor Susan dismissed this: "How can anyone know what effect the ritual has on anyone's lives?"

What does Dozier the "good cop" offer? There's her vision of the laity as a "sleeping giant" and the signs she sees in recent history that the giant is awakening (108) -- though I think EfM's curriculum shows influence of laity and local churches throughout church history. And she offers the vision that followers of Jesus should be involved in all the "structures of society where people find meaning -- in the arts, in journalism, in universities, in city planning, in the sciences."

In her way of offering incidental insights throughout her book, Dozier tells us not to be afraid to be wrong as we try to carry the Kingdom of God into the office, because, through Jesus, God's "forgiveness goes ahead of me, and [His] love sustains me."

Now, how is that different from my favorite prayer at the end of the Rite Two Eucharist, from which the word "Mass" gets its name (from missa, sending out on a mission)? "You have fed us with spiritual food in the sacrament of His body and blood. Let us go in peace to love and serve You with gladness and singleness of heart."




I wrote about the first half of the book on my EfM class blog. Link to those reflections here.

Easter Vigil after Painful Holy Week

I'm ready for marathon singing at both the 9 and 11 a.m. Easter services this morning, but the Saturday night Vigil may be my new favorite service. 

This year, the Vigil came after a particularly tough Holy Week.  Monday, both the beloved dogs in my life received the diagnosis of inoperable cancerous tumors choking off the narrow tube at one end of the bladder.  For my Mia, prognosis is some months of health with palliative drugs to shrink the tumor; Mom's Sassy, nearly 13 years old, had complications.  I spent a few hours with her at an emergency hospital Monday night, and we had some hopes. 

But Good Friday, Sassy couldn't swallow her food or drink water, and, for once, she shied away from my affectionate stroking of her face; Mom said, "It's time."  Laura, Mom's Visiting Angel, was there with us, and everyone cooed and patted her as she fell asleep, then "fell asleep."

Saturday morning, Mom and I went out for breakfast as we have for six years, and walked slowly through the sunny town square.  When we opened the door to Mom's apartment, she called out with a smile, "Here, Sassy!"  That breaks my heart.  She had to relive the whole story, and it must happen now several times a day.

I had all that in mind when I suited up for the Easter Vigil.  The choir and clergy gathered with acolytes on our church's portico, incense scenting the clear, warm evening air.  The church was darkened. With a prayer, Father Daron blessed, prepared, and lit the Paschal candle that will be lit to start worship all year.  We entered, singing the chant, "The light of Christ / Thanks be to God," spreading light with hand-held candles. In the semi-dark, we reviewed our salvation history in chant and spoken word and collects.  All built to the Easter acclamation, full light, and music with brass.

Fr. Roger's sermon pointed out how this one service used to be the peak of the church year until around six hundred years ago.  It used to last all night.  The Vigil contains everything in our faith:  the movement from darkness to light, the salvation history, baptism (of a tiny infant, last night), renewal of our own baptismal vows to serve in the world, acclamation of resurrection, and eucharist with the final prayer to go out into the world to love and serve the Lord -- in peace.

That's how I feel now.  

Here are some favorite photos of Sassy in her last year:

And here's the photo I took of Mia, tears in my eyes, when the Dr. Egan said, "I'm sorry" and left to call a surgeon who might be able to give her a couple more years.