Who wore it better: circumcision of the heart

I grew up preparing for confession with the traditional St. Augustine's Prayer Book. I cannot think of a more conservative anglo-catholic method of going about the sacrament of reconciliation. What this taught me, very quickly, was that morality was relative. The entire process is one where a sin is presented, over sleeping, but then its opposite, not resting enough, is presented. It is an entire paradigm of damned if you do and damned if you don't. The point is to extract oneself from a list of right and wrong acts and bring one to a space of reflection on ones relationship with oneself, with others, and with God. Where there is dissonance, broken relationships, pain, and barriers to grace is where one recognizes sin... not where one can put a check mark next to a "good" act or an "evil" act.  

Jesus said “Listen to me, all of you, and understand: there is nothing outside a person that by going in can defile, but the things that come out are what defile.” For it is from within, from the human heart, that evil intentions come: fornication, theft, murder, adultery, avarice, wickedness, deceit, licentiousness, envy, slander, pride, folly. All these evil things come from within, and they defile a person.”                                      Mark 7: 15, 21-23

http://www.aafp.org/afp/1998/0915/p891.html

One of the questions that percolates throughout Judaism during the time of Jesus Christ was the question of how were "modern" Jews called to live into the ancient practices of Judaism. This question was pressing while Jesus was alive but became overwhelmingly pressing after the destruction of the Jerusalem Temple in 70 CE. Various Rabbis interpreted the laws and came up with different set of expectations. A properly observant Jew would choose a Rabbinical school to follow and their observance would be measured against their discipleship to that school. Rabbis might disagree on how to interpret a rule, and argue without end, but the importance for the disciple was the living out an observance of their Rabbi's interpretation for the entire law.

Sometimes Jesus is super radical, and sometimes he says something that other Rabbis were saying as well. There is only one self identified Pharisee from this time whose writings remain in existence and this is the former Pharisee, Paul. He did not have access to the Gospel of Mark, or the other later Gospels, yet we find in the writings of Paul, specifically the second chapter of Romans, a very similar maxim: "For a person is not a Jew who is one outwardly, nor is true circumcision something external and physical. Rather, a person is a Jew who is one inwardly, and real circumcision is a matter of the heart—it is spiritual and not literal. Such a person receives praise not from others but from God."

CM Almy... who wore it better?

The two major Rabbis of Christianity, as it were, both present their followers with this idea of circumcision of the heart. That our relationship with the ancient Judaic laws is not supposed to be external, physical, and literal but internal, spiritual, and figurative. The question that has plagued us from then to now, however, is "how does this work?". As humans we always want to know "who wore it better" and while nominally one could judge who wears physical circumcision better one cannot judge who wears a spiritual circumcision better. Thus we have forever been plagued with individuals and groups recasting or creating a fresh a new set of physical circumcisions, of outward acts, that mark a person clean or unclean. Much of Christianity has, indeed, been plagued by this very reality.

The historic maxim seems to be this... that we either create a list of known good acts and known evil acts, some redaction of the Judaic law, or we descend into moral anarchy, relativism, and utter hedonism. There has to be an external, physical, literal moral and ethical law set or all is chaos. My continued critique is that this is the easy way out. This is cheap morality and ethics. This is the path of Christians who want to feel good about themselves in their own righteousness by checking off the good boxes and avoiding checking off the bad boxes. This is, in reality, a kind of negative hedonism. It is just as sinful to rise to a height of debauchery as to define oneself by not rising to such heights. One is allowing debauchery to be what defines you and Christians, and people in general, are not called to define themselves by debauchery.

What we are called to define ourselves by is our love of ourselves, our love of our neighbor, and our love of our God, in reality one great harmony with God's love. This path is not a paint by numbers book published by any church, be it based at the Vatican, Canterbury, Wittenberg, or else wise. This is the very messy path that lives into actual relationships and is transformed by them. It is a reality that constantly calls into question our literal, physical, external rules of right and wrong and ask ourselves wether they are, in fact, stopping us from having actual relationships with ourselves, with those around us, and with God. It is a reality that calls us to listen to when others tell us that our literal, physical, external rules are are, in fact, stopping them from having actual relationships with themselves, with us, and with God.

To do this, however, we have to walk away from our certainty. Our certainty in our circumcision, our certainty from eating only the right food in the right way, our certainty in the rules by which we define our goodness... and risk our hearts being once again being transformed in a world where it is impossible to tell who wears it better.     

At the start of the conversation: Where Sacramental Marriage Equality will place the Episcopal church...

The Episcopal Church has gone about the inclusion of the LGBT community in its own curious way. As we are a prayer book people our process of inclusion has been about allowing the inclusion of LGBT individuals into our prayer book rites. While at some point a hurdle has been placed before every rite in the Book of Common Prayer the two major hurdles for the LGBT community have been that of entering into the rite of Ordination and the rite of Marriage. There might have been better paths we could have taken but I am not sure if, given our strengths and weaknesses as a church, we were actually capable of any other. This path does, however, have ramifications that, on account of our perspective, I am not sure we recognize.

What has been asked from the LGBT community is that the Grace manifested in their lives be recognized and named as such by the Church. That the inward invisible grace alive and well in the LGBT community be placed in the context of the Church’s outward and visible signs. The struggle we have been taking up is that of bringing the church to a point where it is capable of discerning, openly and honestly, the fruits of the spirit that manifest themselves when Christ’s Crucifixion is Proclaimed within the LGBT community. This is the basic struggle the church has encountered throughout history as outsider groups have begun to openly make such proclamations and in so doing call into question things taken for granted by the church.

A trap that we have fallen into repeatedly, in these discussions and others, is speaking about access to the sacraments as inalienable rights. This is simply bad theology. When we are dealing with matters of Sacrament we are dealing with matters of Grace and no individual has an inalienable right to Grace. Grace is the fundamental reality of God’s creating, redeeming, and sustaining us from which the natural order flows and it is upon that foundation that arguments of inalienable rights are then built. One simply cannot build a functioning theology of God’s Grace thats foundation is the inalienable rights of individuals.

The problem is that while the grace denoted within Ordination and Marriage might be the ones that we are most prepared to discern and able to facilitate they only engage the tiniest fraction of the fruits of the spirit manifesting themselves in the LGBT community and the greater LGBTQ+ community. The Q+ signifying individuals whose reality simply is not readily contained within the terms Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, or Transgender but is also contained neither within heteronormative nor cisnormative contexts. Discussions of Ordination and Marriage allow us to engage and work with members of the LGBT community whose lives generally conform to our preexisting concepts of ordained clergy and married couples. Individuals who are as close to white european heterosexuals as one can be and also be LGBT. It also means that we are primarily focused on LGBT adults.

Now these are good conversations to have, we have to start somewhere and on account of our context as a church these were the conversations that we were going to fall into before all others. The problem is that the church, even at points the LGBT individuals in the church, think this is THE conversation with the LGBTQ+ community. That a church with LGBT individuals being ordained and married is a church inculturated and aware of the Grace of God manifesting itself within the LGBTQ+ community. This is simply, and overwhelmingly, not the case.  

This summer we will be continuing the conversation around wether we will recognize the grace manifest in many same gender couples for what it is, Marriage. Some want space to keep the conversation percolating on local levels, some want local levels to be able to name the grace for what they know it to be, some want the time for this conversation to be over and the recognition of this grace to be Marriage throughout the church. There is a chance that, on the national level, the conversation will be closed. Regardless, however, the local conversation will be far from over.

In some places an end to the conversation on a national level will make the conversation easier on a local level and in some cases it will not. That is the case with any of the outcomes above, and I think what will make the final decision at the end of the day is which of the three possibilities before us will best facilitate further honest and open conversations with the LGBTQ+ community that lead, as we have found them to do, towards the inclusion of LGBTQ+ individuals. It is, in my mind, the perpetuation of those conversations that is of utmost importance, far beyond the actual pronouncement around marriage.

What the LGBTQ+ community has within it to transform the Church in regards to its witness about the Grace of marriage is huge. The LGBTQ+ community inherently moves us towards an understanding of Marriage outside of the oppressive gender norms inherent to its use in our history. As the church fumbles towards an understanding of the Grace of Marriage that is not determined by patriarchy it is the queer voice that will be key in the subversion of this gender oppression and the undermining of patriarchy. This is, however, only the smallest of ripples that the LGBTQ+ community has to offer a church willing to be transformed by the grace manifesting itself in our midst as we proclaim Christ Crucified. 

The conversation so far towards the inclusion of the LGBT community in regards to Ordination and Marriage is not THE conversation the church needs to have with the LGBTQ+ community. It is the conversation we needed to have so that we could have in our midst those able to facilitate the actual conversation between the church and the LGBTQ+ community. The LGBTQ+ community is truly diverse, way beyond the spectrum of those individuals whose lives and patterns, like my own, can readily fit into the expected norms of the church. For those of us from the LGBTQ+ community who fit in It is rather easy to forget that the rest of the LGBTQ+ community exists and has overwhelming value for the church. It is easy for those whose only experience of the LGBTQ+ community are the LGBT individuals who readily fit into the church to even know that we are not all that there really is to know. It is easy for us to fall into an echo chamber and think that because we all are hearing the same thing the full conversation is taking place. 

No matter what happens this year at General Convention the conversation will be extraordinarily far from over. The conversation to include the LGBTQ+ community that can readily conform to our general expectations within our norms is the easy one, it is the minor one. The actual conversation is the one ahead of us, the one were we begin to ask not how can the church readily include the LGBTQ+ community in its midst but how can the church be transformed to a deeper and greater understanding of God’s Grace through the unique proclamation of Christ Crucified by Queers. The conversations will be like unto those that tore through the church after the early Jewish followers of the Rabbi Jesus began to be transformed by early Greek followers of the Way of Jesus. It is for those that we must prepare ourselves, more than anything else. 

What is Your Fruitiness Factor? The basis of ethics and morals.

Those who abide in me and I in them bear much fruit, because apart from me you can do nothing. Whoever does not abide in me is thrown away like a branch and withers; such branches are gathered, thrown into the fire, and burned.
                                                John 15:5-6

A recurring theme, for many, in the realm of morals and ethics is a code of actions, some good but many bad, to which we need a disciplinarian. This is a reoccurring theme in many cultures, Christian ones as oft as any other if not more so. Which is odd because Paul specifically marks that Christians are not to be subject to a disciplinarian. (Gal. 3:25) Perchance this is a verse many have chosen to ignore in the text but for me it is always a rather prominent one.

There is a tendency to hold that a lack of a disciplinary rule leads only to the concept of outright hedonism, “do what you will shall be the whole of the law’. It is the absurd idea that the only reason Christians are good is that they have a stern disciplinarian who will burn them eternally if they do not do what is unnatural and inherently problematic, follow the disciplinarians rule book. It is the absurd idea that those who do not have the carrot of eternal paradise would, for some reason, become hedonistic, self-serving, perpetrators of evil if the carrot disappeared. The only reason for “goodness” is a God with a rod.

There might be a worse place to start a foundation for ethics and morals but an entire doctrine based on shame and threats of violence is decidedly not one of them. Shame never teaches any one anything, at best it halts problematic behavior for a short while but it never changes underlying behavioral norms. Violence, or threats of violence, is an equally bad teacher, as it does not prompt any internal change from within but forces complacency for the sake of survival.

Which is why in one of the earliest surviving Christian texts we have Paul clearly repeating a known truth of the Jewish scripture, now made fully known in Christ, that the point of the law is not that of a shaming and violent disciplinarian and that, indeed, in Christ there is no more need for any disciplinarian. Without a disciplinarian, in Christ, we should recognize that “the whole law is summed up in a single commandment, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself’”. (Gal 5:14) What we should recognize, as Christians, is that abandonment of disciplinary law is not a call to hedonism of self but a mutual call to fullness of self and other in love. Indeed, disciplinary law must be given up because of how readily it prevents us from entering into this mutual call.

If not upon a disciplinary law with shame and violence than on what should be base our morals and ethics. Does this mutual call motif have any form of litmus test? I believe that intrinsically it does and that the scale by which we gauge it is fruitiness, specifically seeking a high fruitiness factor. John notes that Jesus came so that we might have life, and have it abundantly… and that such life in Christ will bear fruit while life away from Christ will be barren. So the questions of morality and ethics are answered by looking at a situation’s fruitiness factor. 

To be clear, as one must, fruitiness factor is not hedonism. It is not about feeling good, being ephemerally happy, having what one wants, material possessions, etc.. Fruitiness factor, abundant life, is about a life that is centered and grounded, a life that leads a person to be aware of their own dignity and the dignity of others, a life with trials and pain but inherently growth and joy as well. It is a life built on mutuality with each other in the love of Christ. When we find that mutuality of living into the whole of the law we encounter Christ’s fruit in the world. When we do not find it we encounter the dried up reality that is life without the love Christ’s has brought to us all.

This is the nature of grace, this fruitiness, a grace that abounds across creation on account of Jesus’ actions. This grace is not contained to those who have been baptized, or had a moment of being saved, or can profess a certain creed, but is a great remaking of the underlying fabric of reality by the Word of God. It is by the work of this Grace, this love that triumphed beyond our warped conceptualizations of morality based on a violent and shameful disciplinary law, that is the foundation of Christian ethics.

So when we look at a situation we no longer ask, does it fit into the laws of the disciplinarians rulebook. We should indeed look at the rulebook, for the rules there are supposed to point us towards the summary of the law, but that is only a place to gauge what is often the case of a situation. The true ask is wether or not there is fruitiness in the situation or bareness. The true ask is does the situation bring a person to a grounded and centered place where they encounter love in Christ, or does the situation bring a person to a place where they feel shame, an absence of God, and the threat of violence unless they conform. We have to put aside what we think makes a grounded and centered place where a person can encounter God's love and actually survey wether or not such is being experienced by the person and those around them. It is only when we allow that mutuality of discernment and recognition of dignity in the others that we truly recognize the Grace of the Word of God in the world and those around us and abandon the rulebook to which we cling in our idolatry of the god of the rod.   

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.