Engaging the Christian Perpetual Motion Machine…

We start the morning at the height of celebration, parades and cries of Hosanna In The Highest… About half way through we are in the midst of a stark play of dire monologues, death, despair, dispersion and cries of Crucify Him… and then we try to make sense of these opposing spaces in the midst of the Eucharist.  

To be honest I am not a huge fan of Palm/Passion Sunday liturgically. I honestly think that this is the one Sunday of the year that our liturgies are simply not ready to even try to maintain. I think that is why it so often is an over the top production in parishes, by making so much of it we can ride the wave of the day without ever plunging into the depths. We put on the biggest show on earth in order to avoid looking at what is going on behind the curtain.

There is a problem facing the church, the community as a whole faces it and the individuals in its must grapple with it personally. On one level there is the constant call for self-denial, purgation, and recognition of our sins. This is a historic reality, it is where many of our older liturgies call us, it has, for good reason, faced much criticism over the past half a century. On the other level is this constant call for rejoicing in the grace of God, being assured of our own blessedness, and recognition that we are children of God and God is well pleased. This is a historic reality, but one to which we have been perhaps overly fond of over the last half a century as we engaged in a necessary response but, in my mind, too often have overdone it.

The reality is that we are in this constant motion between these two callings as Christians. The call for deep, and even caustic, introspection to ask are we truly living out our lives in harmony with God and also the call to know that the Grace of God fills and fulfills us. The reality being that it is actually impossible to know one without the other. We, however, seem to fixate on one and reject the other which is inherently problematic regardless of where we fixate. Where there is supposed to be perpetual motion about these levels there is instead a tendency to stagnate at one end or the other.

My guess is that everyone is aware of the problem of overly fixating on self denial, purgation, and recognition of our sins. We have been deconstructing that one for half a century. The issue is that there is an equal problem with overly fixating the assurance of our own blessedness, of rejoicing in the grace of God, of knowing that we are beings in whom God is well pleased. The blunt reality is that we are not living in full harmony with the will of God and that we need to regularly stop and work out what is blocking us from being in such a state. If we don’t do that we are entering into a cheap ephemeral grace, a grace that only meets us at the points where we are willing to look, not the Grace of God which meets us in the midst of the points in our lives where we strive to never look.

Palm/Passion Sunday is the day that these two realities are presented to us at one time. It is the day that calls us to confront fully both at the same time, to be called from one to another and back again in the course of a single service. It is the day that is supposed to restart a perpetual motion in the church and in each worshipper to forever be moving from one place to another, to never be too caught up in our sinfulness as to not encounter grace, but also never so caught up in the idea of grace, that we do not allow us to encounter it meeting our sin.

So the question, in the end, is can we get the Christian Perpetual Motion machine going? We have gotten unstuck from quagmire of self-denial and focus on sin and deprivation that we were caught in so long... but have we in the midst of that become too ungrounded and refuse to recognize that our feet are quite dirty and in need of a wash. If we cannot constantly be looking for the movement of our selves and our communities in and about both realities, our sinfulness and our gracefulness, then we will never be able to fully engage the reality of either.  

What is it to drive out the ruler of this world?

now the ruler of this world will be driven out and I will draw all people to myself. -John 12:31

So some foreigners approach some rural hicks in the big city wanting to get an audience with the vagabond rabbi currently making a stir around the big city of Jerusalem during the big festival when everyone should be paying attention to the named religious authority…  Now the hicks do not really know what to make of this, is this a good idea or a bad idea, so they confer amongst themselves, then with a bit of caution approach the rabbi they have been tagging along with for a few years now… and it’s a really simple question… “do you want to speak with some foreigners who are in town to see the big show”… like a simple yes or no will do just fine… and suddenly the heavens are opening up, God is speaking through angelic voices, and Jesus is prophesying about how he is going to die…

it is a topsy turvy wibbly wobbly world out there people.

How does a basic request about non-Jews approaching Jesus become a moment for direct Godly revelation and death prophesies? It is a complete non sequitur, a+b does not equal c, unless the context itself is what forces the revelation. That the entire prophesy is an admonition to the disciples about their hesitancy. How quickly they, truly nothing more than rural hicks from Bethsaida near Galilee, a non-descript hovel of fishermen huts outside the little known town of Capernaum, have made themselves special by trying to make themselves Jesus’ gate keepers. Two individuals, truly country hicks following a vagabond rabbi with no official authority, outsiders in so many ways to the big city of Jerusalem and its festivals orchestrated by the official respected leaders, and what do they do? They seek to create as much of a hierarchy as they can to lift themselves up above pretty much the only people they can find lower than themselves.

This is kyriarchy, any system that depends on dominance and submission in order to work. It is the complex web of sexism, racism, heterosexism, cissism, ageism, classicism, etc. etc. etc. in which we all live and have our times of privilege and oppression. It is the ruler that continues to influence the vast majority of decisions and actions made by almost every one of us humans wandering around the world. It is so intrinsic that it is only through centuries of struggle that we have begun at all to truly understand its grip upon us. So natural that quite often instead of eroding it we unintentionally or actively build it up.

 

Jesus was lifted up, not to the top of the kyriarchy, but to the point of complete ostracization on the cross. He created a well, a descent into the utter lowest depravity of hell, so that he was lower than the lowest point to which any one can be sent, and from this deep point in the utter depths of the darkest register of the human condition, Jesus can draw all to him, like drops of water all gathering towards the lowest point in the well.

Our purpose as a Christian Community is to help create that well in the world. To create the space that throws the kyriarchy on its head. To respond, when someone asks if a person is worthy to enter into our presence, with a prophetic admonition resounding with force of angels, yes and how dare you think for a moment that is not exactly what we are here to do.

Would Jesus by any other name still save as sweet?

Because they have not believed in the name of the only Son of God. John 3:18

The question I am wrestling here is not can the works and lives of Buddha, Muhammad, or the pivotal figure of any other major religion actually bring about sanctification, of an individual or the world. My question here is very much on the issue of our use of language and when does the name of a thing actually represent that thing, or fail to represent it.

Maybe one has encountered a baptismal font with the phrase “suffer little children to come unto me”. For the modern reader the term “suffer” has an inherent negative meaning, we relate it to the concept of affliction. The translators of the King James Bible used the term “suffer” much more benignly, it simply means “allow” and can even have positive connotations, as we encounter in this case where Jesus is seeking little children to surround him against prevailing custom. “Suffer” here is meant to denote a full inclusion and acceptance, not a space of perdition that must be endured. The term “suffer” once pointed to a neutral or even positive reality while now the term refers to negative realities. The word and that to which it points has changed.

So if we are to take “the name of the only Son of God” seriously as a statement it is not as simple believing in the name “Jesus”, or “logos/word”, or ‘bread of God/life”, or “king of Israel”, or “good shepherd” to state the other names that John uses to name that which is "Jesus". We also need to be ensuring that the name continues to point towards that which is “Jesus”, and not to some lesser idol of our own creation. What we are asked to question is if when we say “I believe in the name of Jesus” are our beliefs pointing us towards that which is “Jesus”? It could even be asked can a person believe all this is inherent to that which is “Jesus”, as much as any one can, but not associate such with the name “Jesus”? The reality being that what many associate with the name “Jesus” might fall very short indeed to the reality that believers profess while those who do not use the name "Jesus" might indeed be using other words that point directly to "Jesus" in many ways.

This is why it is important to search deeper than simply a name, and ask ourselves what does that name actually point towards. This takes us beyond nominal face values and forces us to regard the truths to which we are trying to point, and to find when and where individuals are seeking to point towards those truths. It is my thought that our goal should always be to find those places where people are oriented towards the truth of Jesus Christ, and let the names by which those truths are known become manifest, incarnate even, as they will.

In order to suffer all coming to "Jesus" it means that we must suffer being sure that we fully know the names that point to "Jesus" to fully address if our use of the term points us to the reality.

Cults on our College Campuses, a reality not a myth.

Walking back to my office I see a group of young women, or maybe a man standing alone, all with a bundle of quarter pages in their hands. Students walk by and one of them asks “do you have time for a survey?”. The first few questions are innocuous enough but soon the conversation turns to immortal souls, paradise and hell. I encounter this happening almost every week. At first I walked on by, then I stopped to listen, then I began to interrupt and disrupt the conversations.

The group is Faith Christian Church and their practices are insidious. The United Religious Council of the University of Arizona has compiled a set of safe practices for evangelizing on campus. These are tenets so basic that groups from overwhelmingly divergent faiths and theologies, Jewish, Buddhist, Later Day Saints, Unitarians Universalist, Roman Catholics, Para Church groups, and Main Line denominations, like my own, can all agree on them as basically a no brainer. This list can be found here. The issue I continually confront Faith Christian Church on was one of deception, specifically a refusal to state from the start that they were representing Faith Christian Church.

The difference is simple “Do you have time for a survey?” is a very different statement than “I am from Faith Christian Church, would you answer some questions?”. The first is a deceptive means to get a students contact information, the second is an authentic way to share one’s faith with students on campus. As far as we can tell Faith Christian Church does not stop in their problematic practices when it comes to recruitment.  They do their utmost to stay just under the bounds, not bending the rules so far to actually bring about accusations of abuse and entrapment while individuals are still students, but the use of the student body as a ready source of new members is becoming more an more obvious. The newest report of Faith Christian Church as a highly abusive and problematic cult are just now coming under public scrutiny.

Many University Students are in a vulnerable personal space. Away from home for the first time, readily isolated, in search of a place where they can belong. This is the reason why healthy campus ministries, and other programs, are so essential on our campuses. They offer the possibility of healthy support that can guide students to become healthy full-fledged individuals. The problem is that the same environment that make healthy organizations a crucial reality also makes it a ready place for abusing individuals, stinting their growth, and forcing them into places where they no longer have the capacity for knowing who they are and exercising basic freedoms.

Faith Christian Church is the reality that we have to deal with on the Campus of the University of Arizona, sadly it is not the only group with cult like characteristics that we are monitoring at this time.  These predatory entities are alive and well on campuses across our country, specifically targeting those individuals who are least likely to be noticed if they simply disappear from the healthy social networks. There is a lot of my work which is Episcopal focused, a lot of days when I just focus on getting my worship numbers up a bit, have more dynamic conversations at our Wednesday evening theology/atheology discussion group, etc. but then there is the reality that part of my work is simply striving to ensure that the campus in which I work is a safe place for the students to practice self discovery. A striving to ensure that individuals seeking a faith group find one in which they can build a healthy sense of self and develop fully into who they are in the most basic senses of the word.

University Campuses, even ones as large as the University of Arizona, are microclimates of culture. Small but active counter voices to prevailing thought can have a major impact on that culture. Small groups seeking to do harm can trap and capture the vulnerable. Small groups seeking to create spaces of transformation and growth for the vulnerable in our midst can bring about amazing effects, not only to those we impact directly and can name but also those whom simply hear us stating clearly that all can have a place in our midst. This voice, said loudly and clearly with no reservations, is essential for eradicating the work of predatory religious groups on our campuses and in the world.   

Rebuilding temples and undoing systematic violence against women…

“Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.”

                                                            -Jesus

International woman’s day is a yearly call for us to first recognize how our prevalent so

ciety inherently destroys the spiritual, emotional, physical, and mental temples of the women in its midst, and calls us to create an environment where they can be rebuilt in full. This caustic realm of sexism that has deprived women of the necessary components needed to build up the temples of their personhoods has perpetuated for thousands of years and the bitter and hard won battles of the feminist movement over the past centuries show that there is no three day miracle to be had. This does nothing but make the Spirit’s call to enter into this work even stronger and more requisite for the church.

The role of the church in the midst of this is clear. For good reason on this day when Jesus speaks of his own body the temple our lectionary points us to one of the earliest of Christian writings, the first letter of Paul to the Corinthians, where he speaks for many chapters on the role of leaders and preachers in aiding individuals in building up the temples of their being. Paul notes that

According to the grace of God given to me, like a skilled master builder I laid a foundation, and someone else is building on it. For no one can lay any foundation other than the one that has been laid; that foundation is Jesus Christ. Now if anyone builds on the foundation with gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, straw – the work of each builder will become visible, for the Day will disclose it, because it will be revealed with fire, and the fire will test what work each has done. If what has been built on the foundation survives, the builder will receive a reward. If the work is burned up, the builder will suffer loss; the builder will be saved, but only as through fire.                                                                                       1 Cor. 3:10-15

Paul here is specifically talking about himself as a builder, in comparison to Apollos or Cephas, and how at the end of days the leaders of the church will be held responsible for the materials they gave to their followers. That, in fact, if the builders have systematically given individuals low grade materials with which to build upon the sure foundation of Christ that they will face a fire in inverse relationship to the shoddy materials they have provided. I take this reading to be very clear, that those given shoddy materials by the church will be refined to the glory they should always have been, while those who provided the shoddy materials will face a burning purgation for the atrocity they allowed to perpetuate.

I work on a campus where there are no full-time ordained female chaplains, where only a handful of ministries recognize the capacity of women to be priest and pastors to the world and openly discern towards such vocations. The full feminist voice simply is not allowed to be heard in most of the ministries with which I work alongside. As a gay man who is a fumbling profeminist I strive to create a space where all women have the freedom to discern that which the church and the world have provided them with which to build their temples, but the work to be undone and done is staggering, in both the micro pastoral care level and the macro societal injustice issues. The concept of a ministry that strives to create a safe space for all women, regardless of race, regardless of being cis or trans, regardless of sexuality, regardless of class, regardless of any other characteristic, remains a staggering one for myself and for the church in which I work. Attempting to create that space isolates my ministry in some ways and places a barrier of expectations for those who might come and visit us.

This is the same barrier, however, that creates a safer space for those vulnerable and hurt in the world. It is the same barrier that forces myself and the other men who participate in the ministry here on campus to face and process our privilege in this world. It is true that this barrier may indeed keep some out, but to remove it is to no longer require us to truly discern what materials we are giving our followers to use in the building of their temples. To remove this barrier is to begin building up our members on the false lies and expectations of patriarchy, a material of the weakest and basest sort imaginable.  

Fear of the church too colourful...

There is a fear growing in the church, a fear of a church too colourful. It is not a new fear, it is one that those privileged by the church have faced again and again in the history of the church, but it is becoming pressing. The issue is that our calls for diversity and inclusion are bringing us to a tipping point. There comes a point when a ministry, a church, even a whole denomination crosses that line from repeatedly stating that it wants to be a diverse place inherently inclusive and welcoming and then actually becomes a revolutionary space where the very structures of the world around us are inherently set into chaos and disorder. That point when we move from a space of peaceful homogeneity to a near seizure inducing discotheque worthy light show. The point when a community becomes too colourful.

In the midst of all our good intentions, our hopes and dreams, at our heart most of the privileged in our midst still fear that space. We fear the space that is as much in the control of the colourful as it is of the normative. We realize that if our church becomes too colourful it will no longer be appealing to those who do not want to confront the light show. We want a diversity that seeks to rally around our expectations of conformity, not a diversity that will question and undermine the long held tenants upon which our worldview, and our privilege, depend. A church that is too colourful will by default distance itself from the expected norms of our culture, it will be a foreign space for those  who expect affirmation of their best intentions and the status quo because it requires of them a call to humility and a recognizing of their limited world view. This is why the church cannot be too feminine, too queer, to black, to latino, or too so many other things. Ministries may be feminine, queer, black, or latino but a church can never be too any of these things, otherwise it is no longer “welcoming”.

The issue is that the church is not called to be welcoming, the vows of ordained ministry are not ones that call our clergy to welcome all we meet but ones that call us to love all we meet. This means that we must seek to create a space that welcomes those who are disenfranchised, rejected, and unwelcome in the world around us and bring those who are enfranchised, lauded, and welcome in the world around them to see the lack of justice and mercy in the system. This means a church that will leave a good number of those sitting in the pews on Sunday, even in the most progressive of congregations, feeling a touch more than uncomfortable. It means getting the pew sitting wall flowers to jump and jive and wail.

Now this must be done pastorally, this must be done so it causes as little trauma as possible, at no point can shame be used as a motivator, but it has to be done. Dance lessons, a chance to get a feel for the rhythm, the freeing of the inner contained self must be done with care... but at some point one simply has to be faced with the reality that stage fright or no it is time for the floor show. At some point the church must let go of its fear of becoming too colourful and face the reality that it is time to empty itself of its homogeneity. We must enter into a kenosis of our conformity so that there is space for a colourful cacophony of Proclaiming Christ Crucified, such that we can all be transformed, those currently high up laid low and those currently laid low brought up to a road as equitable and justice filled as possible. This means that the ready welcome of some must wane so that the welcome of others may wax.

This is not the easy ask, it is not the ask that we want to hear, but continued queries about how the church may become too feminine, too queer, too black, to latino, or too whatever it currently is not must end. For this to occur the church must place aside all the things that make it too not these things, most of which we inside of it do not even recognize as existing, or even know to be a too much of something. If, however, we are going to maintain ourselves as a space where all may enter and proclaim the work of the crucified God in their lives then it is time to face our fears and become way too coloourful indeed.