small group

Words mean different things to different people. Sometimes we need to step into their heads to understand what is meant or, if all else fails, to ask them directly.

seek and destroy

This is usually not expressed so clearly, but it does happen. We identify the person with their sin instead of seeing their heart, and we seek to destroy them, in subtle or not so subtle ways. It could be the whispers behind their backs or the looks of disgust we cast in their direction. It could be less subtle, like standing outside an abortion clinic or at a gay parade, holding signs that label people.

Definitely some mixed messages here. The initial "so we love the sinner" gets completely neutralized / cancelled out by the idea that "hating the sin" is accomplished by identifying the source (namely, the sinner) and destroying it (him or her).

Would you read this differently?

[people of the second chance]

People of the Second Chance (overthrow judgment. liberate love) bills itself as "a global community of activists, imperfectionists and second chancers committed to unleashing radical grace everyday, in every moment, for everyone." They seem to be a "newer kid on the block", but have well-expressed mission and goals, and some interesting projects to show with more planned for the future.

They have just launched a new campaign called "Labels Lie: Don't Accept Them. Don't Use Them." Here's how they describe the campaign:

"The campaign’s focus is on being liberated from the prison of societies’ labels. We don’t have to live with the shame of what people have said about us. We don’t have to accept these statements as our true identity....

When we judge, label, diminish and criticize each other, this becomes the fuel for
shame and guilt to fester in our souls. A label says we are unworthy, flawed and unacceptable.

Sadly we live in a society driven by stereotyping, gossiping, labeling and blame…and it is destroying us. Words like ugly, stupid, adulterer, addict, illegal, failure, ex-con, slut, fag and other dehumanizing labels are thrown around with no regard for how they damage.

It is time to talk about shame and the toxic labels we believe about ourselves.

It is time to be liberated from the lies of labels and experience the powerful truth of who we really are…Loved…Worthy…Beautiful…Accepted. "

(from Mike Foster's introduction)

View entire set of Labels Lie posters

People of the Second Chance website

ten virgins

The words in the first panel of this cartoon come from a sermon I heard recently. It is the passage from Matthew 25 about the ten virgins and the bridegroom, and how some were ready and others were not.

The other two panels carry on to a possibly logical conclusion. Not one that I agree with, nor one that is in line with the ethic of Jesus, who seems to have spent much time with those who were excluded from the traditional religious circles.

getting along

"People are people so why should it be,
You and I should get along so awfully..."
(from "People are people" by Depeche Mode)

That is the question, isn't it.

[the self of the other matters more than my truth]

From Miroslav Volf's book Exclusion and Embrace:

But what about those who in the name of truth oppress the weak? This brings us to the second implication of the encounter between Jesus, Caiaphas, and Pilate, which must always complement the first: the self of the other matters more than my truth. Though I must be ready to deny myself for the sake of the truth, I may not sacrifice the other at the altar of my truth. Jesus, who claimed to be the Truth, refused to use violence to “persuade” those who did not recognize his truth. The kingdom of truth he came to proclaim was the kingdom of freedom and therefore cannot rest on pillars of violence. Commitment to nonviolence must accompany commitment to truth otherwise commitment to truth will generate violence. The truth is a shield against the violence of the strong against the weak, I argued earlier. If the shield is not to turn into a deadly weapon, it must be held in a hand that refuses to do violence, I want to add here.

Volf, p. 272

hellooo

It's easy to "love" people from a distance. But do they feel the love?

 It's also easy to label people from a distance, a distance that lets us think that we (whoever we are) are somehow different, normal, better, right, a distance that hides our common humanity.

[flexible order and changing identities]

From Miroslav Volf's book Exclusion and Embrace, discussing the prodigal son:

For the father, the priority of the relationship means not only a refusal to let the moral rules be the final authority regulating “exclusion” and “embrace” but also a refusal to construct his identity in isolation from his sons. He readjusts his identity along with the changing identities of his sons and thereby reconstructs their broken identities and relationships. He suffers being “un-fathered” by both, so that through this suffering he may regain both as his sons (if the older brother was persuaded) and help them rediscover each other as brothers. Refusing the alternatives of “self-constructed” vs. “imposed” identities, difference vs. domestication, he allows himself to be taken on the journey of their shifting identities so that he can continue to be their father and they, each other’s brothers. Why does he not lose himself on the journey? Because he is guided by indestructible love and supported by a flexible order.

Flexible order? Changing identities? The world of fixed rules and stable identities is the world of the older brother. The father destabilizes this world—and draws his older son’s anger upon himself. The father’s most basic commitment is not to rules and given identities but to his sons whose lives are too complex to be regulated by fixed rules and whose identities are too dynamic to be defined once for all. Yet he does not give up the rules and the order. Guided by the indestructible love which makes space in the self for others in their alterity, which invites the others who have transgressed to return, which creates hospitable conditions for their confession, and rejoices over their presence, the father keeps re-configuring the order without destroying it so as to maintain it as an order of embrace rather than exclusion.

Volf, p. 165

prodigal

Definitely not the story that Jesus told, and definitely not a picture of our heavenly Father who loves all his children.

opposite sunday

What we do and what we say are often not in sync, and it seems that "opposite Sunday" has made this apparent to this pastor. Not that the "unopposited" saying "Love the sinner, hate the sin" is a good saying to start with, but if a person says it and then is actively doing the opposite....

guess

A "Guess who's coming to dinner" program would be a lot more exciting if the invitations were handed out on street corners and in the inner-city, don't you think? Unfortunately, it's not any more likely to happen than "Back to church Sunday" attracting large masses of people. In this example, one can only assume that either the woman found the brochure lying around somewhere, or that a very adventurous parishioner handed some out in a red-light district.

Today's reading: Matthew 22: 1 - 14.

Background for those who are not part of this particular church sub-culture phenomenon: some churches hold a "Guess who's coming to dinner" event. Everyone interested signs up. The organizer makes groups comprised of four individuals or couples, and chooses one host from each group. The host only knows that three other sets of people will be coming over for dinner, but not who they are. The other three sets of people only know whose house they will be going to, but not who the other invitees are. After the first dinner where they all meet, each couple takes a turn hosting during the following three weeks.

[sin as exclusion]

From Miroslav Volf's book Exclusion and Embrace:

An advantage of conceiving sin as the practice of exclusion is that it names as sin what often passes as virtue, especially in religious circles. In the Palestine of Jesus’ day, “sinners” were not simply “the wicked” who were therefore religiously bankrupt (so Sanders 1985), but also social outcasts, people who practiced despised trades, Gentiles and Samaritans, those who failed to keep the Law as interpreted by a particular sect (Dunn 1988, 276-80). A “righteous” person had to separate herself from the latter; their presence defiled because they were defiled. Jesus’ table fellowship with “tax collectors and sinners” (Mark 2:15-17), a fellowship that indisputably belonged to the central features of his ministry, offset this conception of sin. Since he who was innocent, sinless, and fully within God’s camp transgressed social boundaries that excluded the outcasts, these boundaries themselves were evil, sinful, and outside God’s will (Neyrey 1988, 79). By embracing the “outcast,” Jesus underscored the “sinfulness” of the persons and systems that cast them out.

It would be a mistake, however, to conclude from Jesus’ compassion toward those who transgressed social boundaries that his mission was merely to demask the mechanisms that created “sinners” by falsely ascribing sinfulness to those who were considered socially unacceptable (pace Borg 1994, 46-61). He was no prophet of “inclusion” (with Johnson 1996, 43f.), for whom the chief virtue was acceptance and the cardinal vice intolerance. Instead, he was the bringer of “grace,” who not only scandalously included “anyone” in the fellowship of “open commensality” (Crossan 1991, 261-64; Crossan 1994, 66-70), but made the “intolerant” demand of repentance and the “condescending” offer of forgiveness (Mark 1:15; 2:15-17). The mission of Jesus consisted not simply in re-naming the behavior that was falsely labeled “sinful” but also in re-making the people who have actually sinned or suffered misfortune. The double strategy of re-naming and re-making, rooted in the commitment to both the outcast and the sinner, to the victim and the perpetrator, is the proper background against which an adequate notion of sin as exclusion can emerge.

Volf, pp. 72-73

defense of marriage

It's been said that what we value is seen less by our words and more by what we spend our time, energy and resources on. If that's the case, one might wonder how much we as Christians really value marriage.

Both divorce and common-law relationships are counter to the traditional Christian understanding of marriage, yet I do not see anyone engaging in protests or political action to have those revoked or cancelled. Yet when gay and lesbian people want to enter into committed marriage relationships with their partners, straight conservative Christians are expending enormous amounts of energy to stop them.

So do Christians value marriage? Really??

Perhaps some Christians just value heterosexuality and the privilege that comes with it, including the privilege of promoting marriage but having the option to get out of it. That's a convenience many do not want to give up, considering that divorce rates are generally as high among Christians as they are among those of other faiths.

Or perhaps, rather than being about valuing marriage or heterosexuality per se, this is about conformity and order and power, and thus some devalue and castigate those who are different from themselves – men and women who are equally loved by our heavenly Father and who have other beliefs, views, interests, attractions.

n.b. I am not a historian, and do not know how many objections Christians had to the legalization of divorce and the establishment of common law status and benefits, at the time that these were initially happening. I am commenting here on the current reality of what I see taking place in North America.

[why not choose love?]

From Carl Greg's post “Why Not Choose Love? Picking and Choosing Scripture as a Twenty-first Century Christian"

Progressive Christians are sometimes accused of “picking and choosing” Bible verses for their own convenience. But I would invite you to consider that, upon close inspection, all Christians pick and choose when it comes to the Bible. The same Bible has been used throughout history to affirm both slavery and emancipation, sexism and equality, violence and nonviolence. The question, then, becomes what criteria should we use to pick and choose between various parts of scripture. This week’s Gospel lesson invites us to consider Jesus’ own way of reading scripture as a potential model for picking and choosing."

Carl goes on to suggest that if we are choosing anyway, why not choose love instead of hate, and talks about Jesus' emphasis. Read the entire post here.

third row

I often hear Christians use the phrase "love the sinner and hate the sin" when responding to the topic of homosexuality. Little do they know that this statement is hated by many gay and lesbian people.

"Love the sinner and hate the sin." We don't typically use this to refer to our friend, our grandma, our neighbour or the pastor at church. No, it's used to refer to someone whom we see as being different than us, someone who is a sinner unlike me and you who are good Christians. It labels people. It puts distance between us. It others them.

And despite the first half of the saying, the other person in the relationship rarely feels the love.

n.b. This phrase is not in the Bible. It "apparently comes from a letter that St. Augustine wrote to some contentious nuns. Augustine's phrase, "cum dilectione hominum et odio vitiorum," "with love of persons and hatred of sins," is used parenthetically, and does not even mention "sinners." (source)