3 Credit Hours

by

Rob Barrett

June 19, 2000

If the title is not enough to convey that this is an unusual book, then the opening dialogue, where the author admits he is not sure what he is writing about, certainly is. By the time I reached the end, where the "Preface" forms the final chapter, this uniquely serious/playful book convinced me that I was created to be a priest and that I only need to carry around a 10-foot long marsh reed in order to prove it.

Capon’s central thesis is that humans do not simply live out chronicle, i.e. lists of happenings and events, but history. God asks us to turn catalogues of objects and people into the City of God. "We are the priests of the world, the beings whose lives are a search for shape, an obsession to draw what we love into our history and to cast what we loathe out of it." Our primary role in history is to be priests, offering oblations of ordinary things and people by discovering their meaning and shaping them. Capon gives illustrations of "the boy who carefully oils his collection of ball bearing so they will not rust, the man who opens his pocketknife just to hear the satisfying click with which it closes – all these are priestly builders" (p. 91). From the offering of things, he progresses to the more difficult priestly task of offering people. The simultaneous actions of two priests is so complex that he exclaims, "It’s a wonder we even dare ask anyone the time of day, let alone think of inviting someone’s friendship, devotion, or love" (p. 102). This leads him to his final point about our priesthood: we do it quite badly. Even if we succeed 98% of the time, the other 2% mis-shapes creation, doing overwhelming damage. We seek to possess and ascribe our meaning to others, rather than lifting them up to God for whom He made them to be. Capon closes with a brief description of Jesus as the Great High Priest, who both lived as a man who rightly handled the offering of the world, and is God so that he can offer our evil oblations for redemption. Our fallen priesthood can therefore still live as priests and build the City of God.

Capon helpfully reveals some of himself in the introduction to The Romance of the Word. He is an Episcopal priest who is familiar with family and career failures as well as personal sin and the resulting tragedies. An Offering of Uncles does not gloss over life’s problems but celebrates the glory and mourns the tragedy. Through his analysis and transparency, Capon forces me to ask myself how I am acting as a priest in my daily interactions with people. Am I ignoring them? using them? seeking to be offered by them? discovering their meaning? helping to shape them? The difficulty is learning not just to think this way but to walk accordingly. However the true glory is in Christ’s perfect priesthood.

Beyond the actual subject matter of the book, Capon offers a powerful contribution to the world of theological writing style. Uncles is playful and light in style, but deep and reflective in content. Capon believes that theological writing has "shipwrecked" by forgetting "the analogical nature of all discourse about God" (p. 151). We often forget that God’s transcendent mystery defies all human categories. Capon seeks to maintain clarity of thought while avoiding reductionism and systematics, instead using story and illustration. I hope other scholars of theology will discover this powerful means for describing the indescribable.

I am at a loss to offer much criticism of An Offering of Uncles. It does screech to an abrupt halt at the end when describing Jesus as the Great High Priest. Since this is the climax of the book, it could stand a richer exposition. Instead, Capon almost apologises for being explicitly Christian and does not unpack his understanding of the necessity of Christ’s dual human and God natures. But maybe this is intentional since the mystery is so great here. Regardless, his closing prayer, a "Litany of Fallen Priests," both brought me to tears and equipped me for the day’s priestly activities. In it, Capon surveys the glory and tragedy of the City of God that we have built so far, seeks God’s mercy, and rests on Christ as the One who offers both our righteous and evil offerings up to God.