Community Christian Church of Springfield, MO
Roger Ray, pastor
I'm going to have lunch with a couple of pastors on Tuesday. That wouldn't be an unusual thing for most ministers, of course, but it is quite uncommon for me because, other than the retired pastors who are members of our church, I generally don't like pastors and they universally return the sentiment. They are not bad people, I just typically don't do well in large gatherings of them.
Charles Wesley once observed during a church conference that pastors as like manure, spread around on the fields, they can do a lot of good, but piled up in one place they are just a pile of..... I think what he said was that piled in one place they raise quite a stench.... But we know what he meant.
What is unusual about this lunch that we are going to have this week is that it was my idea; in fact, it is something I've been trying to get to happen for several months. I believe that the progressives of our community really should be in conversation with one another so I have prevailed upon our local Unitarian pastor and our local Unity pastor to break bread in the hopes that we can form a more mutually supportive relationship.
In my previous incarnation as a denominational pastor, I used to have to spend a lot of time in sort of contrived meetings with other pastors that can only be described as a waste of time.
Charles Dickens once found himself stuck in a long gathering of clergy back in the 19th century when séances were very popular. As the meeting drug on and on, Dickens interrupted with the suggestion that they all stand in a circle, join hands, and see if they could contact the living.
Religion, on the face of it, should be a uniting force that brings people together in loving community. However, what we more often see is the exact opposite. Religion seems to be much more likely to divide people so that we get this well known proverb that tells us not to discuss either religion or politics in polite society because either could turn a wonderful dinner party into a bar room brawl if not an intercontinental war.
This has been an especially volatile week as Congressman Todd Akin has been trying to explain to Missouri voters the differences between legitimate rape and illegitimate rape, or "she had it coming rape." The national weather bureau has named the hurricane threatening to disrupt the Republican National Convention this week, Hurricane Isaac, but I'm afraid that storm is only secondary to Hurricane Akin's destructive hot air. But that is such low hanging fruit that I refuse to talk about it today. Let's just register our disgust and move on.
One of the things that makes it difficult for progressives and traditional religious people to be in conversation is that our use of scripture is quite different. We cherish the Bible and we read it aloud in our services, discuss it in our classes and both David and I teach college level classes in Bible but we do not understand the bible to be a document written by God. It is a collection of the spiritual writing of ancient faith communities that were, in fact, not just in conversation with one another but often engaging in open debate with one another.
Traditionalists will try to act like they revere the Bible as the owners manual for a human soul but of course, if you want to believe that the Bible is God's word on how we are to live you either have to avoid reading it or allow yourself to be exposed to a God who has more conflicting personalities than Sybil.
Dr. Adams and I recently attended a meeting of all of the churches involved in the community's shared food pantry at Crosslines. We were informed that the Kitchen, which operates the other large food pantry in town, was no longer going to be giving out groceries so that they could focus on their homeless services. Which means that our volume of clients at Crosslines may double in the next month.
Now, there are about 300 member churches in the Council of Churches and they try to get a church to cover one day a month at Crosslines but they can't get enough churches to do it so we cover two days a month..... and we are not a member of the Council of Churches because, evidently, we don't believe in Jesus enough for them to consider us to be a Christian organization. However, even though we are not as big as some of the Sunday School classes in the churches that can't find enough volunteers to cover one day at Crosslines, we cover two. And so, at the prospect of doubling the number of hungry people we serve, I raised my hand and asked a number of detailed questions about schedules, food supplies and the need to increase the number of volunteers.
You would have had to have been there to believe the patronizing answer from a member of their board who told me that I just had to believe what the Bible says and have faith that the Lord will provide. But, since their three hundred member churches can't cover the 22 days a month that Crosslines is open and they need us to cover two days.... Just as at Bill's Place, we need only five of the more than 400 churches in town to take a day a week to feed the unsheltered homeless and we have to take two days a week because they can't find five churches that will do it...... I accept that they believe that the Lord will provide, it's just that based on our experience over the past few years, I'm starting to worry that they think that we are the Lord.
Which brings us down to the real dividing point between progressives and traditionalists. Traditional Christians are very concerned with orthodoxy, believing the right things. Progressives are very concerned with orthopraxy, or doing the right things. I am not disinterested in matters of belief. In fact, I spend a great deal of time in study for both writing and teaching every week but my beliefs are informed by a commitment to orthopraxy. And I would not suggest that traditionalists are not concerned with orthopraxy, it is just that they place so much emphasis on beliefs that they excuse themselves from the kind of commitment to social justice that our current circumstances demand.
It has taken me a while to get to it, but we actually do have a biblical text today, in fact, we have two. For the most part, the gospels of Matthew and Luke copy the older and shorter gospel of Mark and just add to it from their various sources...... except for where they feel the need to correct Mark.
The older gospel, Mark, reports that when the disciples were unhappy about people using the name of Jesus who were not a part of their narrowly defined group that Jesus told them to lighten up..... he said that if these other people were not specifically arrayed against them that they should consider them to be a part of their own community...... telling them to expand their tent to cover those who might not be exactly the same as they were.
A generation later, when the critics of the early church might have become rather more contentious, Matthew edits Mark to say the exact opposite. Where Mark portrayed Jesus as being very generously inclusive, Matthew insists that Jesus was very exclusive, saying that if others were not precisely with them, that they should be seen as being against them..... literally, that they are enemies.
Both passages are in the Bible. Both are gospel texts and both are attributed to Jesus..... but both of them cannot be true, or right, or, to put it in the language we used earlier, both cannot be orthodox.
Traditionalists will insist that the Bible is the reliable word of God and so, they have to read these two passages and pretend that they do not say the exact opposite things or, and this is more likely, they don't read either passage and remain blissfully unaware of the conflict.
We read them and we recognize that these are two different voices trying to claim that their perspective is the perspective of Jesus. Matthew insists that Jesus stands for something very specific, very concrete, and he will not put up with relativism... and I can resonate with that perspective. I find most of religious language to be dripping in superstition and magic and I want to separate myself from it as far as possible.
But this other voice wants to portray Jesus as being less concerned about orthodoxy, they want us to see Jesus as being more inclusive, less judging, less harsh. Mark's Jesus wants us to have lunch with Barney Frank and Todd Akin, at the same time.
I'm more comfortable with the exclusiveness of Matthew's Jesus because I am tired of putting up with religious people who seem to me to be simultaneously morally irrelevant and intellectually dim but I fear that way lies monsters. Though it is not my preference, in my heart, I believe that Mark's Jesus comes closer to what is right.
So often when people visit with us here, they tell me that they are looking for a church where they feel comfortable. And on the one hand I can appreciate that..... I don't think that women should have to tolerate misogynistic religion..... I don't think that gay people should have to tolerate homophobic religion.... And I don't think that people who take the Bible seriously should have to tolerate a lot of silly magic and superstition.... But.... If you think that you should be comfortable in church then I don't think that you understand what church is for.
When reading the Bible and given a choice between a Jesus who makes us uncomfortable and a Jesus who confirms our prejudices, in almost every case, we should pay more attention to the Jesus who makes us uncomfortable.
I remember hearing Scott Peck say once that the only reason to get married is for the tension..... which may say a lot about his marriage.... But what he meant, of course, is that we should not look for a life partner who coddles us but rather we should look for a life partner who challenges us.
I'm saying, you should look for a church that challenges you.... That not only makes you think but that makes you want to be a better person..... not to tell you what to believe but to goad you into action. We do not seek the Jesus who makes us feel comfortable but rather the one with whom we feel some tension.... Some moral challenge.... Who pushes us not simply to surround ourselves with those who agree with us but to open our minds and hearts to include those who, even though they may be wrong, force us to stretch our minds, clarify our beliefs and exercise our ability to love those who sometimes are not easy to love.
We may say that are followers of Jesus but I have to warn you that there is more than one Jesus in the gospels and you will have to choose which one you want to take seriously..... it would really rather not, but I believe that I need to try to choose to follow the one who asks me to include more people at the lunch table rather than the one who gives me permission to just sit down with those who are the most like me. I'm not trying to tell you who which one you need to choose but I am telling you that you need to make a conscious choice, because, if you don't make a choice, you will always defer to the path of least resistance and I don't think you are likely to find Jesus on that path. That's just my opinion, I could be wrong......but we all know that I'm not.
