oops

Some members of the congregation absorbed the pastor's previous messages well – too well – and now that he has inadvertantly outed himself, they have outed themselves out of the church.

But some people have stayed. Perhaps they have not bought into his public views about homosexuality. Maybe some believe in full inclusion like the "church down the street." Perhaps they value relationships over facts and sexual orientation. Maybe some of them also understand where he's coming from. Or they've heard God's call to love one another.

How would you respond in such a situation?

unbaptized enemies

Can we agree to major on the majors? Can we focus on what really matters to the kingdom, and agree to disagree on the secondary things?

How easily we get distracted from what matters to the Kingdom of God. And surely quantity of water cannot be one of them. In this cartoon, pastor lumps the church down the street in with "enemies of God" because they baptize by sprinkling instead of immersion.

Growing up, I attended a Baptist church in Manitoba. It was part of a Baptist association which believed in baptism by immersion as an adult, and where one had to be baptized to be a member. They were completely against infant baptism. And they didn't just believe in immersion, they insisted on it.

Here's where the problem came up: when a person who had been baptized as an adult by sprinkling (in another denomination, obviously) came to the church (perhaps having gotten married to one of its members), they could not become a member unless they were baptized by immersion. Which meant that they had to be baptized again (from their perspective; from the church's perspective, it was for the first time). So really, it wasn't a matter of the person's ability to understand, or their conscious desire to be baptized, it was the quantity of water that was the problem.

One of the other churches in the denomination finally left due to such things.

If a person or a denomination feels so strongly about something, how many steps are they away from seeing the other person or church as misguided? heretical? the enemy?

How will people see the love of God for them when the churches they see are in conflict about things that are really not that important?


Note: this cartoon  was originally published on June 29, 2012, but that puts it out of sequence, in that chronologically it should have taken place before pastor inadvertantly outed himself on Sunday, June 17th . So I republished it to have it appear before.

chicken soup for everyone

the christian agenda

So much talk in conservative Christian circles about the gay agenda, about how gay people want to destroy churches and recruit children to homosexuality and so on. What about Christians? Do they have an agenda? It seems they do, and it's easy enough to suss out if one follows the news.

This cartoon captures a snapshot over time -- the first frame being an ongoing issue faced by teens when their good kind Christian parents kick them out of the house upon finding out their son or daughter is gay (sometimes on the advice of their pastor), the second frame something that was more commonly said in the early days of AIDS, and the last frame very recent. If you don't know the context, google "pastor worley fence" (especially if you are a follower of Jesus, you need to know what kinds of things other Christians are saying in public).

What will you answer if someone asks you about Pastor Worley?

How can you make the world a safer better place for everyone by showing Jesus' love and standing up against the mistreatment of those on the margins?

[revolutionary grace]

Jay Bakker writes about the time he and his wife, Amanda, “were invited to a drag show by RuPaul, the famous drag queen (recording artist, supermodel, VH1 talk-show host) who did the voice-over for the 2000 documentary about my mom, The Eyes of Tammy Faye.”

After considering whether or not to attend, he finally decided they would go. Here’s part of what he says about the event:

The first half of the show passed without incident. Then, during intermission, I stepped outside to have a cigarette. While I was standing there, one of the drag queens—a seven-foot-tall black man in heels who was wearing a massive replica of the Eiffel Tower on his head—approached me to say that he was a preacher’s kid too and that he had grown up in the church. He went on to explain how much he loved my mom and how worried he was about her cancer.

“Please tell your mom that I’m praying for her and that I love her,” he said, Eiffel Tower bobbing as he spoke.

“Well, let’s get a picture together so I can show my mom who you are,” I said, letting my guard down a little and taking a photo with him. Stubbing out my cigarette, I went back inside for the second half of the show.

Near the end of the show, a drag queen got up on stage and began spotlighting the famous people in the crowd…. And all of a sudden he said, “Did anyone here ever watch the ministry show Praise the Lord?”

I thought, Oh, no, here it comes. But half the crowd raised their hands and cheered (and chuckled). I think they were expecting someone to come out and impersonate my mom or something. “Well, Jim and Tammy’s son, Jamie, is here,” the emcee said. And suddenly, this huge spotlight hit me.

As I blinked into the blinding light, the emcee asked teasingly, “Are you straight?”

“Yeah,” I said, blushing and pointing a thumb at my wife, Amanda.

“Lucky girl,” the emcee said….

And then the emcee got real serious. Standing there in high heels and a sparkly dress, he said: “You know, this is where Jesus would be if He were alive today. Jesus hung out with the tax collectors and the prostitutes and the sinners…” He then launched into a three-minute speech about how Jesus loved everybody without judgment.

Then he looked back up at me and asked, “Jay, are you still doing your church?”

“Yeah,” I answered.

“Oh, that’s so wonderful, best of luck to you on that.” And everybody clapped.

So there I was, stunned, not knowing what to make of this. One minute a drag queen was making cracks about whether I’m gay, and the next minute he was saying these really amazing things about Jesus and grace. I looked over at Amanda, not knowing what to expect, and she had tears in her eyes.

“This is incredible, Jay,” she said. “A roomful of people, where you don’t know who believes what, they are talking about Jesus. They’re talking about His love and grace and how much they appreciate the fact that you, as a preacher, are here with them, that you’re willing to come out to the show and share this with them… This is where we’re supposed to be,” she said. “This is where God has sent us.”

I realized she was right.

That night, in a burlesque club in Los Angeles, I saw people hungry for the love and truth of Christ. Not the judgment and rejection they’d experienced their whole lives in the church, but the real deal: revolutionary grace.

That’s what they welcomed into their midst. That’s what grace is all about: loving one another and understanding one another and sharing in Christ together, no matter who we are or what others might think about it.

From: Fall to Grace, by Jay Bakker. Chapter “Saint Paul and RuPaul”, pp. 104 - 107

I highly recommend this book!

unearthly jesus

Bodily functions. Sometimes we hide their reality, sometimes we are open about them. Some of the crime dramas on television are pretty open – not only do they show characters heading through doors marked "Men" and "Women", but they might also feature entire conversations at the urinal.

Star Trek, in all its generations, is a marked contrast. Of all the episodes I've seen, there are no washrooms or toilets evident anywhere. The one exception to this is bathtubs -- I'm thinking particularly of an episode where Dianna Troy was taking a bath and turned into a bizarre water creature due to some DNA malfunction.

What about Jesus? Did his body function the way ours do? Did he have to take a rest now and then to regain his strength? Did he have to stop to go pee? Or do we prefer to think that he's above such things?

This cartoon was inspired by reading unclean by Richard Beck, which includes discussion of how we view our bodies and whether or not we think of Jesus as really human.

wheat and weeds

Then Jesus told them another story:

"The kingdom of heaven is like a man who planted good seed in his field. That night, when everyone was asleep, his enemy came and planted weeds among the wheat and then left. Later, the wheat sprouted and the heads of grain grew, but the weeds also grew. Then the man's servants came to him and said, 'You planted good seed in your field. Where did the weeds come from?'

The man answered, 'An enemy planted weeds.' The servants asked, 'Do you want us to pull up the weeds?' The man answered, 'No, because when you pull up the weeds, you might also pull up the wheat. Let the weeds and the wheat grow together until the harvest time. At harvest time I will tell the workers, "First gather the weeds and tie them together to be burned. Then gather the wheat and bring it to my barn." ' "

Matthew 13: 24 - 30 NCV

The pastor in this cartoon is being "inclusive" at one level, but also judgemental – he has decided who is the wheat and who are the weeds. And that is exclusionary and othering. That is tolerance of the religous sort but has nothing to do with Jesus.

In what ways do we judge who is in and who is out, whether on a social level or an eternal one? In what ways does the way we treat other people reflect the judgements we have made?

---

Richard Beck in a recent post says:

Should we pull out the weeds?

This question goes to the heart of one of the greatest temptations amongst religious people wanting to serve God: the impulse to sort the good people from the bad people, the saints from the sinners, the church from the world, the saved from the damned.

He then goes on to look at what the farmer says, and suggests that this parable offers two visions of what the kingdom could be like:

On the one side are the weeding Christians, those wanting to identify, sort out and burn the weeds.

And on the other side are those Christians who live alongside the weeds manifesting forgiveness and patience.

Cuz in real life, people are people.

[denying status boundaries]

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

Given all this, and combined with the central place of table fellowship in Jesus’ ministry, it is not surprising that hospitality was a defining feature and virtue of the early church (cf. Acts 2:42-47, 4:32-37; I Tim 3:2, 5:10; I Pet 4:9; Titus 1:8; Rom 12:13, 15:7). As Christine Pohl notes in her book Making Room, these practices continued to be a distinctive feature of Christian communities during the first centuries of the church:

Hospitality to needy strangers distinguished the early church from its surrounding environment. Noted as exceptional by Christians and non-Christians alike, offering care to strangers became one of the distinguishing marks of the authenticity of the Christian gospel and of the church. Writing from the first five centuries demonstrate the importance of hospitality in defining the church as a universal community, in denying the significance of the status boundaries and distinctions of the larger society, in recognizing the value of every person, and in providing practical care for the poor, stranger, and sick.

Given the impact of sociomoral disgust upon human affairs, it is not surprising that the act of hospitality is fundamentally an act of human recognition and embrace. If exclusion is fundamentally dehumanizing, hospitality acts to restore full human status to the marginalized and outcast. As Pohl writes:

For much of human history, Christians addressed concerns about recognition and human dignity within their discussion and practices of hospitality. Especially in relation to strangers, hospitality was the basic category for dealing with the importance of transcending social differences and breaking social boundaries that excluded certain categories or kinds of persons … Hospitality resists boundaries that endanger persons by denying their humanness.

Beck, pp. 122-123 (Pohl quotes from Making Room, pp. 33, 62, 64)

And a quote from Henri Nouwen to wrap it up:
“Hospitality means the creation of free space where the stranger can enter and become a friend instead of an enemy.”

two-faced jesus

Jesus entered Jericho and was passing through. A man was there by the name of Zacchaeus; he was a chief tax collector and was wealthy. He wanted to see who Jesus was, but because he was short he could not see over the crowd. So he ran ahead and climbed a sycamore-fig tree to see him, since Jesus was coming that way.

When Jesus reached the spot, he looked up and said to him, “Zacchaeus, come down immediately. I must stay at your house today.” So he came down at once and welcomed him gladly.

All the people saw this and began to mutter, “He has gone to be the guest of a sinner.”

But Zacchaeus stood up and said to the Lord, “Look, Lord! Here and now I give half of my possessions to the poor, and if I have cheated anybody out of anything, I will pay back four times the amount.”

Jesus said to him, “Today salvation has come to this house, because this man, too, is a son of Abraham. For the Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost.”

Luke 19:1-10 NIV

Can you imagine Jesus pretending to be nice to someone? Or having dinner with someone for show? Would Jesus decline to have dinner with someone because they are part of the "wrong crowd"?

How often do we do things for show? Or just to look good to our friends? Whom do we avoid?

What prevents us from truly and freely loving people just as they are?

That Jesus, a rabbi, would choose to go be the guest of a tax collector, is highly significant and breaks the social stigma of the day. The next post, with a quote from Richard Beck's book, explores the significance of hospitality in the early church.

ecclesia in the field

This is the second cartoon in the ecclesia series. Not as graphic as the first one, but still exploring the body of Christ and how ecclesia (the church) responds to unwholeness (a.k.a., being divided or broken).

What kinds of things cause destruction in the body of Christ?

What kinds of responses have you heard when faced with separation between different parts of the body of Christ?

[outside the moral circle]

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

But what about those people on the outside of the moral circle? Those we identify as strangers? People on the outside of the moral circle are treated instrumentally, as tools to accomplish our goals in the world. In Kantian language, people inside the moral circle are treated as ends in themselves while people on the outside of the moral circle are treated as means to our ends. We treat those inside the moral circle with love, affection, and mercy, and those outside the moral circle with indifference, hostility, or pragmatism. And all this flows naturally from a simple psychological mechanism: Are you identified as “family”? Once the identification is made (or not), life inside and outside the circle flows easily and reflexively.

….

Does humanity end at the edge of the moral circle? That is, is the way we treat people outside the moral circle symptomatic of something darker and more sinister? Do we see outsiders as less than human?

The phenomenon of seeing people as less than human is called infrahumanization. Historically, infrahumanization occurs when one group of people comes to believe that another group of people does not possess some vital and defining human quality such as intellect or certain moral sensibilities. These infrahumans might be human from a biological perspective, but they are believed to lack some moral or psychological attribute that makes them fully human, on par with the "superior” group.

Beck, pp. 101-102

In Jesus' day, lepers were seen as less than human. So were Samaritans and Gentiles. Whom do we think of as less than human today?

See the untouchable jesus cartoon in the previous post.

untouchable jesus

From the gospel of Matthew:

When Jesus came down from the mountainside, large crowds followed him. A man with leprosy came and knelt before him and said, “Lord, if you are willing, you can make me clean.” Jesus reached out his hand and touched the man. “I am willing,” he said. “Be clean!” Immediately he was cleansed of his leprosy. Matthew 8:1-3 NIV.

Cartoon aside, here's what Richard Beck in unclean: Meditations on Purity, Hospitality, and Mortality says about what the true Jesus did:

What is intriguing about this story is the sequence. Jesus touches the leper first. Then the command “Be clean!” is offered. That is, Jesus’ first move is into ritual defilement. By first touching the leper, Jesus intentionally and willfully seeks contamination, standing in solidarity with the unclean. This is striking because the expected sequence would be initial purification followed by contact. Jesus, surprisingly for the onlookers, does the opposite. Contact occurs first. Purification follows solidarity. And one can only wonder how various Christian communities approach this sequence in their own missional endeavors.

Beck, p. 76

Beck then goes on to discuss how the writer of Mark gives us several examples of how Jesus overturns the traditions of his day: when Jesus heals an “unclean” man in the synagogue, and then when he heals a leper after touching him first. Beck then comments,

… in this healing Jesus reverses the directionality and power of pollution (the attribution of negativity dominance). Rather than the unclean polluting the clean, we see, in Jesus’ touch, the clean making the polluted clean. Here, in Jesus, we see a reversal, a positive contamination. Contact cleanses rather than pollutes….
Soon after these events, in a parallel to Matthew 9, Jesus is found admitting “unclean” persons—tax collectors and sinners—to the sociomoral space of table-fellowship.

Beck, p. 81

Contrast Jesus' actions with what you see in church. Are "unclean" persons welcomed? How are those who are different treated? Are we willing to love and accept others where they are at?

go and sin no more

The story of the woman caught in adultery is amazing at many levels, from the trap the teachers of the law and Pharisees were trying to set to Jesus' way of exposing them:

At dawn Jesus appeared again in the temple courts, where all the people gathered around him, and he sat down to teach them. The teachers of the law and the Pharisees brought in a woman caught in adultery. They made her stand before the group and said to Jesus, “Teacher, this woman was caught in the act of adultery. In the Law Moses commanded us to stone such women. Now what do you say?” They were using this question as a trap, in order to have a basis for accusing him.

But Jesus bent down and started to write on the ground with his finger. When they kept on questioning him, he straightened up and said to them, “Let any one of you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her.” Again he stooped down and wrote on the ground.

At this, those who heard began to go away one at a time, the older ones first, until only Jesus was left, with the woman still standing there. Jesus straightened up and asked her, “Woman, where are they? Has no one condemned you?”

“No one, sir,” she said.

“Then neither do I condemn you,” Jesus declared. “Go now and leave your life of sin.”

John 8:1-11 , NIV

But today, instead of seeing how life-giving this encounter is (literally and spirit-ually for the woman), some Christians have taken the phrase "go and sin no more" as the new golden rule. This is how it works: they identify people as sinners, and they apply the rule.

But Jesus said this once to one person, in a passage which is not found in the earliest manuscripts.  As someone named candeux said in a blog comment, "For one thing, we rarely read of Jesus calling individuals to repentance. In the case of prostitutes, I wonder if he recognized that these women were not choosing to be prostitutes because they were sex-starved but because they were forced into it for economic reasons (probably because they were unsuitable for marriage for one reason or another) and thus were in need of love and care more than they were in need of repentance." (comment source)

He saw, and sees, each person for who they are and where they are at. But many churches seem to have trouble with that, and I wonder if Jesus today might use the phrase one more time, addressing the church and its actions and attitudes toward lgbt people:

May 25th postscript: I also recommend checking out Richard Beck's post with accompanying comments on the topic of "Go and sin no more."

[why would I ever go there?]

grace: visual edition is an amazing book which combines the writings of Philip Yancey in his book What's so Amazing about Grace with great visuals. Here's one story which will give you a taste of the book and which also ties in with the theme of this blog:

"A prostitute came to me in wretched strait, homeless, sick, unable to buy food for her two-year-old daughter. Through sobs and tears, she told me that she had been renting out her daughter—two years old!—to men interested in kinky sex. She made more renting out her daughter for an hour than she could earn on her own in a night. She had to do it, she said, to support her own drug habit.

I could hardly bear hearing her sordid story. For one thing, it made me legally liable—I'm required to report cases of child abuse. I had no idea what to say to this woman. At last I asked if she had ever thought of going to a church for help.
I will never forget the look of pure, naive shock that crossed her face.

'Church!' she cried. 'why would I ever go there? I was already feeling terrible about myself. They'd just make me feel worse.'"

What struck me about my friend's story is that women much like this prostitute fled toward Jesus, not away from him. The worse a person felt about herself, the more likely she saw Jesus as a refuge. Has the church lost that gift?

Evidently the down-and-out, who flocked to Jesus when he lived on earth, no longer feel welcome among his followers. What has happened?

Yancey, p. 21

defining love

Brian, in a comment at Bridging the Gap, says:

I'm reminded of one of my favorite lines from Ellen Degeneres. She was musing about the weird habit some people have of saying something insulting and then saying "just kidding" as if that somehow erases the insult. "You don't know how to kid properly," she quips, "we should both be laughing."

Sometimes I want to yell at the church, "You don't know how to love properly. We should both be feeling the love!"

Brian at conversations-on-generous-spaciousness March 24, 2012 12:03 PM

Who defines love? Just the person claiming to be loving? Or do those who are apparently being loved have a say?