church as a parable of holy/human possibilties...

It appears that I have not posted here in two months! To say that life has been full
would be an understatement. There's been a great deal to do as the interim pastor, our bands have been playing more and more locally, we finally got on top of this year's garden, and checking in with our family has happened, too. It has been a ripe and rewarding summer. What I want to share today is yet another attempt at clarifying how I comprehend the charism of the church as the living, albeit broken body of Christ.

For years, I have been alienated from both the mean-spirited exclusivity of the so-called Christian Nationalists as well as the self-righteous carping of so-called progressive believers. The first seems to serve a God created in their own rigid imaginations - a deity of strict judgment without nuance, creativity, or compassion - while the latter seems obsessed with complaining about political problems they cannot change. One cadre strives to pound all of us who are not a part of their realm into a social/sexual/emotional homogeneity that looks like white, cisgendered, patriarchal supremacy. The other with an incomplete Christology that celebrates only the Jesus who turned over the tables of the money changers in the temple. One is brutal in the drive for conformity; the other is fixated on a political Messiah who sanctifies just the progressive cognoscenti. 

Neither appears to trust God's grace that trumps karma and is freely offered for the healing of the cosmos. How did the mystical St. John put it? For God so loved the world that God incarnated the Son not to condemn but to heal creation. Jesus said: Come unto me ALL ye who are tired and heavy laden and I will give you rest. This invitation was extended to Pharisees and Sadducees, Jews and Gentiles, women and men and children, wealthy tax collectors, Syro-Phoenician mothers pleading for their children, artisans and soldiers in the Roman Empire, as well as Republicans, Democrats, liberals, conservatives, spiritual but not religious folk as well as  Democratic Socialists, free market investors, those who are well, those who are sick or broken, and everyone in-between. My tradition proclaims that we are a big-tent community serving a still-speaking God. But all too often, that vision is too narrow. Too homogenous. Too self-satisfied to be genuinely inclusive.  

All of which has incrementally reshaped my understanding of church. We have not been summoned by the sacred to be either the Democratic or the Republican Party at prayer. Nor have we been called to bless our friends and punish our enemies in some post-modern theocracy. Rather, to borrow from the Taize Community of France, we are to be a parable of counter-cultural possibilities for the world. Not a one-size-fits-all solution with all the answers, but a living community of trust, incarnating real but always incomplete ways of making faith, hope, and love flesh in our generation. 

The prayer we are bold to pray each week in worship, what tradition calls the Lord's Prayer, is clear:

+ We hallow a Creator God - not an Emperor, King, Queen, President, political party, or ideology - and strive to live in such a way that shalom and charis become flesh on earth as they are already normative in heaven.

+ We pray for our daily bread. This is an incomplete translation that literally reads: give us today our bread for tomorrow. Amy Jill-Levine, as well as many other Bible scholars, tells us that this is a way of praying for the blessings of God's realm to be reality for us now. Give us all that is promised in a once and future spiritual kingdom right now. Empower and help us make flesh today some of the blessings we hope for in the future. Ours, then, is a prefigurative parable that seeks to humbly realize right relations between people, Mother Earth, and all creatures "that on earth do dwell" and show the despairing and broken-hearted what is possible right now.

+ And we know that because we become what we love, we dedicate ourselves to forgiveness and reconciliation. We seek the assurance of pardon by doing our best to make amends with all we have wounded or shamed. Like Anne Lamott wrote: "Jesus is clear that loving your enemies is nonnegotiable. This means trying to respect our enemies, it means identifying with their humanity and weakness without surrendering to the unconditional acceptance of their crazy behavior."

Fr. Richard Rohr continues to tell us - activists as well as contemplatives of all persuasions - that the social transformation program that Jesus lived was fundamentally non-cooperation with the status quo. 

Jesus does not directly attack the religious and institutional sin systems of his time until his final action against the money changers in the temple (see Matthew 21:12–13; Mark 11:15–17; Luke 19:45–46). Because of this, Jesus’ primary social justice critique and action are often a disappointment to most radicals and social activists. Jesus’ social program, as far as I can see, is a quiet refusal to participate in almost all external power structures or domination systems. His primary action is a very simple lifestyle, which kept him from being constantly co-opted by those very structures, which I (and Paul) would call the “sin system.” Jesus seems to have avoided the monetary system as much as possible by using “a common purse” (John 12:6; 13:29). His three-year ministry, in effect, offers free healing and healthcare for any who want them. He consistently treats women with a dignity and equality that is almost unknown in an entirely patriarchal culture. At the end of his life, he surrenders to the punitive systems of both empire and religion by letting them judge, torture, and murder him. He is finally a full victim of the systems that he refused to worship.

This suggests to me that as we strive to follow Jesus, we must simultaneously disengage from our self-centered political obsessions and quietly discern new ways to build trust, compassion, and community. Again, Anne Lamott presciently wrote that  "you can safely assume you've created God in your own image if that God hates all the same people you do!" Worship is, therefore, not primarily a place to carp - especially about those issues we cannot change. It is a time to celebrate and share something of God's beauty. And healing. And call to be changed from the inside out through generous and radical acts of compassion. Liturgy literally means the work of the people. The prefigurative work of being nourished by the promised bread of tomorrow right now in the present today. It is also the embodied way we pray the Serenity Prayer. 

God, give me grace to accept with serenity

the things that cannot be changed,

Courage to change the things

which should be changed,

and the Wisdom to distinguish

the one from the other

Living one day at a time,

Enjoying one moment at a time,

Accepting hardship as a pathway to peace,

Taking, as He did,

This sinful world as it is,

Not as I would have it,

Trusting that He will make all things right,

If I surrender to His will,

That I may be reasonably happy in this life,

And supremely happy with Him forever in the next.

Amen.