sermon from the pit

[lady gaga, jesus, and little monsters]

Richard Beck on his blog has an excellent post about Lady Gaga and how she embodies the gospel:

In short, in this song [Bad Kid] Gaga is trying to get on the inside of these "monsters," to speak to their brokenness, sadness, loneliness and alienation. To society these are "bad kids." But Gaga sings to them "You're still good to me."

And I ask you, doesn't that sound a whole lot like Jesus?

Gaga calls out to the little monsters. And Jesus eats with tax collectors, sinners, and prostitutes.

...

This is what I think. I think every Christ-following church should start talking to their youth groups, saying unambiguously: We want you to be a wall of protection for kids like Jamey. Seek out and protect--emotionally and socially--every weird, weak, nerdy, lonely, queer kid at your school. We don't care if they are a goth, or a druggy, or a queer. Doesn't matter. Protect these kids. Churches should train their youth groups to be angels of protection, teaching them to find these kids and say, "Hey, I love you. Jesus loves you. So no one's going to bully you. Not on my watch. Come sit with me at lunch." That's what I think. I think every Christ-following church should start Guardian Angel programs like this, teaching their kids to stick up for kids like Jamey. Not with violence. But with welcome and solidarity. Because it's hard to bully a group. So let's welcome these kids into a halo of protection and friendship.

From The Gospel according to Lady Gaga by Richard Beck. Reading the entire post is recommended!

What a difference it would make for today's youth, if churches encouraged and equipped their young people in this way! What a challenge to be outwardly-focused in a way that is concrete and desperately needed.

[hitler’s sweater]

From Richard Beck's book, unclean: Meditations on Purity, Hospitality, and Mortality. Regarding a study which (put briefly) investigated whether people would be willing to put on a sweater purportedly worn by Hitler:

What studies like this reveal is that people tend to think about evil as it if were a virus, a disease, or a contagion. Evil is an object that can seep out of Hitler, into a sweater, and, by implication, into you if you try the sweater on. Evil is sticky and contagious. So we stay away.

What we see in this example is how disgust psychology regulates how we reason about and experience aspects of the moral universe. Disgust psychology prompts us to think about evil as if it were a virus or polluting object. When we do this the logic of contamination is imported into moral discourse and judgment. For example, as noted earlier, we begin to worry about contact. In the domain of food aversion contact with a polluting object is a legitimate concern. But fears concerning contact might not be appropriate or logical in dealing with moral issues or social groups. Worse, a fear of contact might promote antisocial behavior (e.g., social exclusion) on our part.

The example of Hitler might sound extreme, but consider another study done by Paul Rozin, Maureen Markwith, and Clark McCauley. In this study the researchers observed that many people don’t want to wear sweaters previously owned by homosexual persons, or even lie down in the same hotel bed if a homosexual person was the previous night’s occupant. In short, just about any behavior judged to be sin could active disgust psychology, subsequently importing contamination logic (e.g., contact fears) into the life of the church.

Beck, pp. 25-26.

man's best friend

Once in a while, Pastor Stickman's resistance to wearing his reading glasses does him good.

And further to dog's love for us, the Archbishop of Canterbury has asked,

What difference would it make if I believed I am held in a wholly loving gaze which saw all my surface accidents and arrangements, all my inner habits and inheritances, all my anxieties and arrogances, all my history, and yet loved me wholly with an utterly free, utterly selfless love? And what difference would it make if I let myself believe that each person around me is loved and held in the same overwhelming, loving gaze, and that this love made no distinctions of race, religion, age, innocence, strength or beauty?

(as quoted in a sermon by Bishop Jane on March 4, 2012).

And that is what dog is like, loving us with an utterly free, utterly selfless love, no matter what, and wanting us to do the same for others.

trump

Why is it that the "gay = sin" card so often trumps the "love your neighbour as yourself" card?

I realize that some people believe "gay = sin" is Biblical, and others do not. The point here is that, for those who do believe it, why do they so often stop believing in love? Why do they find it so easy to treat people in ways which are opposite to the way of Jesus?

Why, when faced with ideas that seem contradictory, do we find it hard to choose love?

[in or out]

I couldn't resist posting this image from www.postsecret.com (week of January 21/12). It illustrates how we sometimes judge people based on the silliest things.

FYI
Postsecret.com is a website to which people send their secrets on postcards. Each week, a selection of postcards is shown online. The postcards cover a wide range of topics and emotions. Richard Beck has written about postsecret.com on his blog, particularly from his perspective as a research psychologist. On his first post on the topic, Beck says,

No doubt, many with find PostSecret odd, exhibitionistic, ill, and voyeuristic. I think these adjectives do apply. But at its core I think PostSecret has touched a nerve and is meeting a need. A need for authenticity and acceptance that the church has failed to address.

defining anti-gay

The pastor and church doesn't treat lgbt people the same as straight people, yet claims to not be anti-gay. Do you agree? Does it matter how lgbt members of the congregation feel about this?

Who defines anti-gay — the powerful or the powerless? The privileged or the marginalized?

Compare this cartoon with the 'defining hate' cartoon — there it is pretty obvious that we wouldn't and shouldn't let the slave owner decide whether he is being hateful toward his slaves. Is it as easy to decide with this cartoon? While the overall situations are not parallel, do the same principles apply in terms of the minority being given a voice and the right to say whether they feel those in power are against them?

defining hate

Would you believe the slave owner who says that he does not hate his slaves? Would you even need to ask the slaves their opinion on this question? Or would you say that owning someone is inherently hateful regardless of whether you "take good care of them" or not?

Who defines hate - the powerless or the powerful?

[psychological non-starters]

From Richard Beck's book, unclean: Meditations on Purity, Hospitality, and Mortality

In sum, the antagonism between mercy and sacrifice is psychological in nature. Our primitive understandings of both love and purity are regulated by psychological dynamics that are often incompatible. Take, for example, a popular recommendation from my childhood years. I was often told that I should “hate the sin, but love the sinner.” Theologically, to my young mind (and, apparently, to the adults who shared it with me), this formulation seemed clear and straight-forward. However, psychologically speaking, this recommendation was extraordinarily difficult, if not impossible, to put into practice. As any self-reflective person knows, empathy and moral outrage tend to function at cross-purposes. In fact, some religious communities resist empathy, as any softness toward or solidarity with “sinners” attenuates the moral fury a group can muster. Conversely, it is extraordinarily difficult to “love the sinner” –to respond to people tenderly, empathically, and mercifully—when you are full of moral outrage over their behavior. Consider how many churches react to the homosexual community or to young women considering an abortion. How well do churches manage the balance between outrage and empathy in those cases? In short, theological or spiritual recommendations aimed at reconciling the competing demands of mercy and sacrifice might be psychological non-starters.

Beck, p. 3

After drawing numerous cartoons which comment on the idea of "love the sinner, hate the sin," I found Beck's take on this from a psychological perspective very interesting. And it's pretty obvious that most churches who believe this infamous saying aren't doing a good job of following it.

opposites

And how can we encourage one another to be more like the Jesus we read about in the Gospels?

historical hiccup

History repeats. With the occasional hiccup, the extraordinary disruption that changes everything, but unfortunately not everyone....

[unclean: intro]

After reading Exclusion and Embrace by Volf, I heard about Richard Beck’s book unclean: Meditations on Purity, Hospitality, and Mortality. Not only does he refer to Volf frequently, but his book is a fascinating look at the very real psychology which influences exclusion and embrace. A key Bible passage he references is Matthew 9, where Jesus is eating with tax collectors and sinners. The Pharisees confront Jesus’ disciples about his behavior and he replied, “It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. But go and learn what this means: ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice’” (verse 12).

“I desire mercy, not sacrifice.” Echoing Hosea, Jesus defends his embrace of the “unclean” in the Gospel of Matthew, seeming to privilege the prophetic call to justice over the Levitical pursuit of purity. And yet, as missional faith communities are well aware, the tensions and conflicts between holiness and mercy are not so easily resolved. At every turn, it seems that the psychological pull of purity and holiness tempts the church into practices of social exclusion and a Gnostic flight from “the world” into a “too spiritual” spirituality. In an unprecedented fusion of psychological science and theological scholarship, Richard Beck describes the pernicious (and largely unnoticed) effects of the psychology of purity upon the life and mission of the church.
          (from the back cover). 

I will be posting some quotes from his book that relate the themes on this blog. They will be labeled quotes from beck.

If you are interested in reading the book yourself, here’s the reference:
unclean: Meditations on Purity, Hospitality, and Mortality
Richard Beck (Eugene, OR: Cascade Books, 2011)

Jamie Arpin-Ricci has interviewed Richard about the book. Read the interview at missional.ca

enlightning

I doubt that when making his point, Pastor Stickman expected to have it illustrated so immediately or so aptly. Not only is god taking care of the sin, but the pastor is not exempted from being included as one of the sinners who should be loved.

Granted, perhaps his view of how god takes care of sin has been heavily influenced by Ananias and Sapphira (see Acts 5) and needs some adjusting to reflect more of the example of Jesus.

even them

For those of you whose understanding or use of the Greek letter lambda is related to physics, biology, ecology, criminology or some other scientific field, here's an additional use which pertains to this cartoon:

According to Wikipedia, "The lambda was selected as a symbol by the Gay Activists Alliance of New York in 1970, and declared the international symbol for gay and lesbian rights by the International Gay Rights Congress in Edinburgh, Scotland, in 1974." And thus, it is not uncommon to find it in the names of gay conferences, businesses, etc. And, ironically, for those of you who are Anglican, it means that the name of the conference in the cartoon is quite close to the Lambeth Conference where bishops of the Anglican Communion are convened by the Archbishop of Canterbury.

p.s. this is not pastor stickman. Note the conference sign, the stand is at the side instead of at the center (though pastor stickman may occasionally have the stand at the side if he's using powerpoint), and there are no steps up to the stage

[the Eucharist]

From Miroslav Volf's book Exclusion and Embrace:

Inscribed on the very heart of God’s grace is the rule that we can be its recipients only if we do not resist being made into its agents; what happens to us must be done by us. Having been embraced by God, we must make space for others in ourselves and invite them in – even our enemies. This is what we enact as we celebrate the Eucharist. In receiving Christ’s broken body and spilled blood, we, in a sense, receive all those whom Christ received by suffering.

Volf, p. 129

Interesting. Though Volf frames it the other way around, this quote reminds me of the verses in Matthew 6 and Matthew 18 that speak about God forgiving us if we forgive those who sin against us:

"If you forgive those who sin against you, your heavenly Father will forgive you. But if you refuse to forgive others, your Father will not forgive your sins." Matthew 6:15-16, NLT