Confirmation Proclamation...

Confirmation... that liturgical, historical, and theological quandary. My request is that we simply recognize it for what it is, the Multipass of the sacraments. With all the inherent usefulness, and annoyance, that such a comparison inhabits. There is no need to tie it down to a singular purpose nor to think it is requisite for much of anything, with ordination being the one exception. That it be known for simply what it is, this sometimes annoying anachronism that many of us need to make our way about a life of faith. 

There are points in the life of some where they need to gather before the authority of the church and confirm their life of faith. There are a lot of reasons that a person might come to that point. When that point is discerned in the life of a person of faith, then we take up the work of the sacrament of confirmation as a community to recognize it. It is supposed to be a significant enough work by the church that it has a life long impact in the life of the individual. This is why proper discernment and instruction for those seeking such a moment, and the full effort of the community, is so important. Creating a singular event in the life of a person is no easy task.

So far all those points in a persons life, and all the routes they may take afterwards by plane, train, automobile, or intergalactic vortex... we need a multipass. A moment for individuals to come before the church and proclaim Christ Crucified from whatever context they are in and have that proclamation recognized by the full community and authority of the church. It is a point of mutual confirmation of life together, a life that is transforming the church and the individual.

What happens in the midst of confirmation is that the Episcopal Church, in the midst of our own norms and tribalism, recognize that what is the core of following the way of Christ is the proclamation of Christ Crucified from a variety of norms and tribes. Yes it is a point where an individual confirms that being part of the norms of the Episcopal church, joining the Episcoposse Tribe, is part of their life... but of equal, if not greater, importance, it is a point where the Church affirms the Proclamation of Christ Crucified from an individual as a force to change the nature of those norms and tribe. In that way it is the church's multipass into the byways and highways of cultures and norms outside ourselves. The way by which we move beyond our well beaten paths.

So confirmation is our multipass, the multipass of the church to norms and realities outside of ourselves, the multipass of individuals to go about those norms and realities affirmed by the church, the means by which we engage in a full and robust proclamation of christ crucified by the church.    

Kinky Jesus

Jesus went to some kinky parties. Let us just be real about this. Jesus went to parties where paid sex workers were provided to those in attendance... erotic dancers... strippers... there was indeed sex going on in the champagne room. He also seemed to like the people he met there and they liked him. He raised Matthew up from their number to be a disciple. When a woman washed his feet with precious perfume, probably acquired from a kinky john, he rejoiced. Both acts of praising the kinky and admonishing the vanilla, commonly translated righteous, individuals with whom he interacted.

Now the common interpretation of all this is that Jesus did not have to work as much with the vanillas of the world. They already had a good thing going, he had to hang out with the kinky ones because they were the ones that needed him more... the vanillas were already safe. But considering how much of the Gospels Jesus spends admonishing the vanilla people around him... well my thought is that there is something more to it than that. I think Jesus actually found more places of resonance with the kinky segments of society. I believe in a Kinky Jesus.

This does not mean I think Jesus had a lot of kinky sex. I think this means that Jesus found that the honesty, transparency, and bluntness about who they were, what made them tick, and what they were after in the midst of working with kinky people to be a place where actual relationships could be built from the ground up. It was the basic concept of Jesus shows up at a kinky party, acts all chill, explains he is straight edge when offered sex and drugs, and everyone around him respects that. Jesus respects them, as they engage in sex, drugs, and rock and roll, and in the midst of that begins to build worthwhile relationships with them.

The key term there is "worthwhile relationships" and this is a very different reality than befriending someone to change their behavior. Jesus was there because these were people who longed for worthwhile relationships and he wanted to build worthwhile relationships with them. This is why we do not have people coming up to Jesus and giving thanks for his teaching them to wash their hands in the right ritual fashion at a dinner party, but breaking expensive oil on his feet and washing it with tears in an inherently kinky way that overwhelmingly upsets the vanilla, righteous, individuals in the room.

The deal is that righteous dinner parties, those done by the vanilla people, were not really righteous. They depended on such things as ritualized hand washing to even occur. Jesus and his disciples get dissed by the righteous for their lack of keeping up ritual hand washing. If being able to engage in a righteous party, build relationships with the vanilla people, required being able to first prove oneself clean and good enough to be in an honest relationship with them, by properly washing one's hands... no wonder Jesus wandered down the street to a kinky party. To a place where people were actually longing to enter into honest, awkward, but worthwhile relationships not keeping up appearances.

When I say I believe in Kinky Jesus that is what I am getting at. I believe in the Jesus that was much more interested in meeting people in the midst of our awkward, weird, bumbling ways... kinked and fetished as they may or may not be... and having real relationships with us in the midst of whatever than anything else. That being in the midst of those relationships is more important than society at large considering you vanilla, righteous, or kinky, sinful. That if one is caught up with maintaining one's credentials as a righteous vanilla person that such actions will consistently cut one off from worthwhile meaningful relationships with others around you. That, in the end, it is better to be construed as a kinky sinner, in the midst of worthwhile relationships, than maintain oneself as a righteous vanilla and have mutual righteousness be a condition for any relationship to happen.

The Malignant Myth of Parochial Ministry

I want to suggest that Parochial Ministry does not exist. This is not to say that we do not have a cult of worshiping the stand alone parish with a "robust ministry" and many parishes "thriving" by the standards of said cult. This is the realm of the Grande Poobah Missional that replaced the man behind the curtain once traditional methods of doing church began to falter in the 1970's. A GoGo Boy with many a name, be it missional or mission shaped or radical welcome or emergent or some else... what we have to realize is that no matter how much glittered deodorant this lad applies the disco balls can only distract us for so long.

Read Radical Welcome

Which is not to say that all these overlapping words and books written on the many variations of these themes have not been vital. When the night is young we need the paid dancers in the club to get the fervent gyrations going to welcome the club kids onto the floor. We would not be where we are, which is a lot better place than we would be, if they had not been written and read. Many leaders and parishes are still in great need of learning the rhythms thus presented. Maybe few are ready for the next step but it is a necessary one that needs to be taken sooner rather than later if the church is going to have the mettle to be reborn from its current death.

What these books have done is provide us the base to build vital relationships with our communities that create sustainable models of church. These relationships take different forms in different contexts but are all founded on basic concepts of hospitality, community organizing, and breaking down barriers between church and community. They have given us a model of how parish ministry can continue to be in the midst of communities. There is, however, a catch.

What all of these models expect is for a parish to be surrounded by a community that is capable of providing those relationships. That any community can be a space in which this new model of parochial ministry can thrive. The reality is that there are communities unable to create such a space, where the perfect implementation of the best practices are not going to manifest a sustainable parochial ministry. Communities where parishes are going to decline to missions and missions are going to decline into nothing no matter how much they excel at best practices unless something more happens.

One wears a zebra print vest for the purpose of dancing...
[Edge of Seventeen]

This myth, that we can maintain robust independent parishes if only we can get them to take up best practices, is the malignant myth that must die. This is being a well dressed wall flower that refuses to dance. We have to abandon this sense of independent parochial ministries and move to a model where everyone recognizes that their work is non-parochial. We have to take the lessons we have learned about relationship building and resource sharing with our communities and begin applying them to our relationships with each other.

I live non-parochial ministry. I do not have the freedom to maintain any delusion that my ministry cannot exist without strong stable relationships with the parishes and diocesan structures that surround it. On a campus there simply is not the stability of individuals, groups, or structures for us to thrive independent of the Episcopal Church as a whole. What it also means is that I consistently encounter the competition for resources, the redundancy, and the waste inherent to parish and diocesan structures as they live out lives at various levels of isolation. This is where we need to begin building relationships for mutual sustainability and life.

EpiscoDisco

This is about activating regional youth ministry programs, regional sexton services, regional assistant clergy, regional programing of church groups and organizations, regional printing, production, and web services, and mutual awareness of where collaboration can happen. The Episcopal Identity might no longer have much traction for the general populace but we who are Episcopalian need to become aware of the fullness of our identity and what is happening within it, and ensure that it is robust and thriving throughout a region not just in a single ministry point. It means a whole lot of work, a lot of repairing relationships, and a lot of overturning the status quo... but if we can do it then everyone will be in a better space to thrive and find support because we will be ministries in relationship with each other not just in proximity of each other... we will stop being wall flowers and join the gogo dancers.

Meet Jesus in the mire not the rapture...

White Respectable Hip Kids Get Raptured to Heaven

We hear talk about being lifted up on the last day. This hope that we will get to heaven with never having to feel the pain of death because we were following the right rules, thinking the right thoughts, and all that at the random magical moment in history when Jesus returns.

Without much trouble one can read books, and even watch movies that make one wonder what happened to the career of Nicolas Cage, that make heroes out of these select few. Those whose faith is so sure and unbending that they can take up actions that, in any other context, would be considers insensitive, problematic, if not right out mean. Luckily outside of one dimensional media most Christians who go about belief in a soon to be realized rapture maintain a sense of basic respect and care for those around them. Most of us, however, have experienced the exception.

The problem is that when Jesus speaks of being lifted up he is not speaking of some experience not requiring entering fully into death. This is not being lifted up on a painless journey to heaven for those who have kept themselves up to a standard of purity. This is being lifted up on a cross to be kept with those who have wandered away from every aspect of purity. To be lifted up is not to be the hero of the story but the one defeated. To be lifted up is not to be free from the stain of impropriety but to enter into the realm of the impious. To be lifted up is not to maintain the line between those who are in and those who are out but to stand solidly with those who are out.

You should read The Sixth Gun

The past weeks the news has been filled with those who have found themselves at the wrong end of the law as they fought to remain pure. We are in a time when bakers, wedding venues, and county officials are striving to remain pure so that they can be lifted up and never feel the pain of death. They are willing to loose their business, loose their job, go to jail for the sake of remaining pure in hopes of being lifted up and never encountering death. They live their lives in expectation that they will be in the right just in case that random moment of Jesus' return happens in the hear and now. That is their plan on how to meet Jesus.

When Jesus speaks of being lifted up, however, he is not speaking of the rapture. He is speaking of how he will be lifted up on the cross. His ultimate meeting with humanity is not in a pain free rapture to heaven but in a crippling death upon the cross. This is where, again and again, we are called to meet him in our lives. To note that when we encounter personal pain and suffering, Jesus meets us there, when we live with others in the midst of their personal pain and suffering, Jesus meets us there, when we place ourselves in solidarity with the pain and suffering of the world then we place ourselves in solidarity with Christ. That it is not by remaining pure that we will encounter Christ in the rapture but by descending into the mire and flotsam of the world around us that we will come to know and be with Jesus.

This is where the light of Christ is to be found, this is where we must search for it amidst the other searchers, this is how we become Children of the Light... not by seeking to remain a pure beacon above the world, some landing light for Jesus to spot as he descends back to earth but by gathering the lights of others in our midst, others we might construe at first cannot be light bearers themselves, and gathering with each other to create spaces of light... the light of Christ shining through the suffering of the world which he encountered on the cross.

Christian Mission: Cultural Genocide or Mutual Transformation

What does it mean to take up the faith of those who have raged war against your people, imprisoned you without trial, and slowly granted you limited freedom as you began to take up their ways and culture? This is the question posed to us by the life of Okuh Hatuh, Sun Dancer. A Cheyenne warrior captured by US forces during the Red River War, imprisoned without trial in a detention camp in Florida, and slowly granted freedoms as he conformed to expectations of western culture and faith practice eventually becoming a Deacon in the Episcopal Church.

To honor the deeds of Okuh Hatuh and maintain our faith in God’s grace we can only assume that his is a life more in harmony with God’s grace than the christians that so horrendously butchered it. That God’s grace is something that can triumph over every horrendous act done in God’s name. Elsewise we are looking at little more than a case of Stockholm Syndrome.

Looking at Christian missions to indigenous peoples throughout the world we see two themes in action. One theme holds to right action and thinking being crucial for our relationship with God. Those who hold to this theme believe that western cultural norms and morality are an intrinsic aspect of Christian life. For them to become civilized, to become Christian, is to conform to western cultural norms. In the wake of these Christians we have, again and again, the genocide of the cultures if not the peoples themselves.

The other theme is that of the enculturation of Christianity within the indigenous group.  This group wonders what happens when the Gospel and the message of Jesus is introduced to a culture and the culture is allowed to accept or reject it within their own context. This group wants to know what happens when a culture learns to Proclaim Christ Crucified from within itself. This group is willing to be transformed by new revelations of the spirit and to place aside their cultural norms found to not be of Christ. From this theme we have some of the most beautiful moments of Grace in recent history.

When we as Christians engage others for the sake of joining our faith we always are presented with a choice of theme. Is our goal to enforce our expectations and understanding of what it means to be Christian and transform them while remaining the same? Or is our goal to enter into a relationship with another individual where they are allowed to find how to Proclaim Christ Crucified from within their context, and in so doing transform both themselves and us?