Diversity

Following on my post from the other day reflecting on something Carol said over at tribalchurch, why diversity?

I mean, yeah, leftys and lib'rals tend to go on about how important it is to be inclusive.  We could klatch endlessly about the liberation of transgendered Guatemalans living with dwarfism.  Sorry, "little people."  Or, oops, that's gente pequeña.  Or transexuales poco de Guatemala.  So hard to keep track of the lingo sometimes.

The reasons to care about difference, though, need to go well beyond simply wanting to include everyone because it's inclusive, even though that word makes us feel as warm and tingly as a hot brimming cup of fair trade Ethiopian Yergacheffe.

Here, I think Christian progressives tend to fall back on the language of secular liberal academe, and we do so to our failing.  To my eyes, the deepest justification for diversity comes from within Scripture.  The great narrative arc of the Tanakh, the Gospels, and the Epistles rings out with stories of how vitally important it is that we be open to the other.

Yeah, I know, you can spin it the other way.  You can get all Ezra and kick out all them apostate furrin' wimmen and their mudblood children.  If you're a social conservative in a strict constructionist sense, there are plenty of opportunities within the tradition to stand firm against the creep of "syncretism" and/or those voices that seem to chip away at the authority you know is your birthright.  You can use the Bible to keep those loud whiny women in their place.  You can scripturally shout down those uppity colored folk.  But just 'cause it's the truth that affirms you in all you've been taught doesn't mean it won't wither to writhing embers in the hellfire of God's inexorable love.

From within the core metrics of our faith, there are some key operating assumptions about hearing the voices of folks different than us.

First, there's the Exodus presumption in favor of the stranger.  At a bare minimum, those who are different and those who are outside of the boundaries of our culture and our should be met with welcome, grace, and kindness.  Why?  Because our mythopoetic memory is of having been strangers and slaves in the land of Egypt. When we cried out for deliverance, it was the cry of the oppressed other that was heard by the Lord.   This is our story.  If we approach the other...any other...without a heart of compassion, then we have failed to understand the essence of the Biblical narrative and our place within it. 

Second, there's God's tendency to consistently use those who ain't part of "us" to school us, save us, or whup our behinds when they needs a whuppin'.  The prophets through whom God spoke stood outside of the structures of human culture and power.  They lived in the wilderness because those in power tended to drive them there, preferring instead the saccharine comforts of those who told them what they wanted to hear.   God goes so far as to use even those who aren't part of the faith at all.  When Israel forgot about covenant and justice and mercy, and got to be all about power and privilege, Babylon was an instrument in God's hands.  When Israel wept, helpless and lost and broken by the rivers in Babylon, Cyrus of Persia was an instrument in God's hands to save them.  God is not part of our culture.  God is not part of any society.  God is not "us."  With us, yes.  Working in us and through us, maybe.  But if the Biblical narrative is to be ours, then we must live into the truth that God is present and active even in those who are radically other.  If we want to hear our Creator, then we have to listen and be present with the other. 

Finally, there's Christ's redemptive work.   Yeah, that.  Jesus reaffirms and radicalizes the Exodus favoring of the stranger.  The teachings of Jesus of Nazareth are oriented towards deep and God-centered engagement with the other, and in particular the other who is ostracized, hated, or powerless.  It is that baffling love for not just friends, not just family, but for the stranger and the enemy that makes Christianity a tradition that is 1) ever and always fundamentally countercultural and 2) worth following.

That isn't to say that Wuvvy Sparkleberry Jesus sprinkles lollipops and daisies on everyone.  Those who have worldly power, be it coercive or economic, well...Jesus has words for them.  Those words aren't easy ones.  Why?  Because defining ourselves in terms of society or the gun or the dollar turns us into adversaries of one another and of God.  Those forms of power make us approach others not in love, but with the intent of alienating them, or subjugating them, or profiting from them.

The more deeply we engage with those that worldly power declares other, the tax-collectors and the centurions and the lepers and the unclean, the more we manifest the Kingdom.

That, it would seem, is reason enough to make diversity a priority for Christians.

Fencing the Table

My Presbytery today moved over to a completely different approach to handling our meetings. For the past several years, the National Capitol Presbytery has run meetings like, well, business meetings. We had an agenda. We used parliamentary procedure. There was debate and dissent and political maneuvering...and the meetings could go on and on and on. It wasn't something I tended to look forward to.

Today, the Presbytery meeting was part of the new model, meaning mostly worship. We gathered in small groups at tables. There was a lecture on Scripture, and then small group discussion, followed by a sermon, and more discussion, after which we shared Communion. It was actually sorta fun, and the discussions were both intellectually and spiritually engaging. The focus of the day was Mark 14, and as part of our conversations about the dynamics of the Christian communion meal, I bumped into something I can't quite recall having encountered before.

Meaning, I probably have encountered it, but I just don't remember. One of the great things about getting older is that I get to experience so many things again for the first time.

As we discussed the meaning of the Lord's Supper in the context of Mark and the other synoptic Gospels, I popped over to 1 Corinthians 11 to make sure that the Apostle Paul's perspective was included in our small group conversation. What whapped me upside the head about Paul's description of the communion meal was the very particular way he "fenced the table."

What "table-fencing" means, for thems of you who don't follow the in-group talk of Jesus people, is keeping out the folks who don't belong. The bread and grape juice that comprise the Lord's Supper are part of something sacred, so we need to boot the unworthy. It is, quite literally, excommunication.

Many churches set and enforce particular standards based on Paul's assertion that eating and drinking the Lord's Supper with the wrong attitude is "sinning against the body and blood of the Lord." People who run afoul of those standards are not welcome at the Lord's table. Keep 'em out! No Christ for You!

But if you get past our human love of sticking out our tongues at people we don't like, and actually read Paul, that isn't what he tells us to do at all. He never says, not ever, that our task is to judge others worthy or unworthy of the communion meal. What he says is this:

A man ought to examine himself before he eats of the bread and drinks of the cup. For anyone who eats and drinks without recognizing the body of the Lord eats and drinks judgment on himself. That is why many among you are weak and sick, and a number of you have fallen asleep. But if we judged ourselves, we would not come under judgment. (1 Corinthians 11:28-31)

It is not "figure out who doesn't meet our standards." It's "take a hard look at ourselves, to see if we meet Christ's standards."

There's a huge, huge difference there.

Time To Move On

‘tso…what’s the point of all this? We Presbyterians have spent much of the last 25 years spinning our wheels over this issue. Folks on the left and folks on the right have been lobbing theological mortar shells at each other, in a deeply entrenched spiritual battle of the Somme. Back and forth we’ve gone, battling in blood and mire over the same 40 yards of theological turf.

At the recent General Assembly of the denomination, a panel of conservatives and progressives brought us a different way of approaching this issue—essentially declaring a truce, and making the issue one that is adiaphora for the church. In other words, it is an issue on which people of good conscience can disagree.

Progressives and liberals are challenged to accept that conservative Christians may not, in fact, be simply acting out of bigotry and repressed hatred, but out of an honest desire to stay true to God’s will. Conservatives have been asked to accept that progressives aren’t just culturally corrupted pseudo-Wiccans, but might be acting out of an honest desire to fulfill God’s scriptural commands of love and justice.

We’ve been asked to set our swords aside and listen to each other, and to pray with each other. I don’t know, honestly, if it’s going to work. It’s a whole bunch easier to fight than it is to forgive.

My personal position on this—which a critical and dispassionate assessment of scripture indicates—is that the issue is not of central importance within the Bible.

But weaseling out of expressing the voice of my conscience would be annoying, so I’ll spit it out. I’m convinced that those who want to set aside the dysfunctional isolation and deception that have defined homosexual lifestyle and live instead in open partnered, covenanted same-sex relationships are doing something new, and that that new thing that is pleasing in God’s sight. That position is drawn from my own observations of partnered gays and lesbians working in ministry.

It is grounded in my wholistic approach to scripture, which places greater emphasis on the central principles it teaches and the Spirit that fills it.

Back to Pastor Strangelove