The Church Would Be Great if it Weren't for the People

I love the Church - the body of Christ.
I love the Episcopal Church.
I love my congregation.
But sometimes the folk in the Church and her congregations are really, really hard to love.
I am having a week of reflection in an Anglican community as I prepare to leave Israel. And in the past 24 hours I have seen some of the worst of American Christianity. And then I have seen and experienced that which gives me hope.
First a relatively young woman told me that I could not sit at the dinner table with her even though there were four empty seats around her. They were for the group with whom she was traveling and there was no room for anyone else. (She did not say anything to the white man who sat at the other table from her group who was also a solo traveler, like me who registered for the meal.) The waitstaff set me a place at another table by myself. I sat facing her and began to eat. One of the women with her got up and moved her plate to sit with me. Two of her friends who came later also joined us. We had a lovely time.
At some point the young woman came over to me and apologized to me for being rude. She was so concerned with the number of plates she could see, she couldn't see that there was room for anyone else. But she went to the front desk to make sure that there would be room for all of us from now on. I recognize my own control issues in her, even though they do not manifest in the same way. I was also struck by the theology of scarcity out of which she was operating: this is all I can see, there may not be more than I can see, there isn't enough for you, neither will I share nor check to see if there are more resources and the people who are responsible for this can't be trusted to provide for us and you or to think that they might need extra. There seemed to be no operative theology of grace, abundance or hospitality, and that made me sad for her.
I told her how much I appreciated her coming back to me to apologize as I accepted her apology. I have not always been woman enough to apologize when I need to. All is well.
Then a woman came to our table to get the key to her room from her roommate. As she was introduced to me she asked to touch my hair. I smiled and said as warmly as possible, absolutely not. She asked if it was all mine; I said yes. She went on her way.
Later we were in the lounge together and she came over to apologize. She said she realized how inappropriate her questions were and how she would feel and she just felt terrible. I thanked her for giving the issue such though and accepted her apology. Then I saw that she was crying. And I felt bad. Two things happened here - one I felt the ancestral, social pressure of comforting the weeping white woman and some resentment for that feeling and the guilt it produces. And two, I felt very moved personally and pastorally. I acted out of the second, and modeling appropriate boundaries asked if I could take her hand. I did and said that everything was alright. I forgave her. She kept crying and I asked to hug her. She gave me permission and I did. She realized that she was touching my hair at the point and apologized all over again. I told her it was alright in that circumstance but later wished I had not hugged her. I wanted to keep my hair to myself.
I was glad that my pastoral impulse surfaced, given that I am here as a priest and a pilgrim, but am aware of how even my pastoral response is affected by our racialized histories.
And today, I had a wonderful tour of the College on this facility with a sister-priest who knows some of the same folk that I do. I knew that women did not celebrate in the Cathedral and that she did not wear clerics here. I asked her about that. And oy vey, oy li!
The focus on Palestinian Liberation is so all consuming that there isn't "room" for women's liberation, equality or vocations. It reminds me very much of the Black Liberation Movement. I can only hope that a united womanist/feminist movement will emerge for all Anglican women here, and all Arab Muslim and Christian women throughout the area. This place is regularly run by retiring US priests who are disaffected with the inclusive policies of the Episcopal Church - while they take our money. They do things like deny course participants the option of sharing in the liturgy so that the nearly all male staff can control it and forbid the woman priest from making the men uncomfortable by wearing clerical garb. Her position here is administrative and not ecclesiastical so her priesthood is disdained by some and despised by others. She will be allowed to say one mass in the college chapel at great price, but not in the cathedral. The college books its tours with Roman Catholic churches so that the pilgrims only experience males leading worship, even when there are female clergy in the group. There is one woman who runs her own groups and has women celebrate in the fields. And the reading material they assign the pilgrims is all male, noting about women and Jesus or women in the scriptures. Horrible!
Yet she takes all of this as the price of being here to give this place her gifts of administration for the next year. She is willing to be treated in this way to model a kind of servanthood and leadership. She does not lay down for anyone, but accepts their policies. (And looks forward to her next place.) I don't know that I could do what she does as she does it. She is such a welcoming presence in worship, and she reads the texts like a lay reader and I never knew she was a priest.
This is such a beautiful place and does so much good ministry in educating Palestinian Muslim and Christian children and providing medical care here in Jerusalem, in the West Bank and in Gaza. I want to come back. Part of me wants to wear my clerics to church next Sunday. Part of me wants to model a prophetic priesthood. And part of my wants to take my marbles (my financial offerings) and go home.
Oh my people, you are exhausting! (And I imagine you say the same thing about me.)

Words Heal

I know that words hurt. But sometimes I forget that words heal. A young man staying at the same guesthouse as I am came to me today to tell me how important it was for him as a gay man to hear me as a priest talk about my friends and colleagues some of whom are lesbian and gay and married and partnered. He has left the church and his partner is leaving the church because they have not found it welcoming or hospitable. That is so sad and so tragic. Simply acknowledging that I have all sorts of friends and that is not incapable with my faith in or service to Christ was empowering and affirming for him. I think I am embarrassed (and ashamed on behalf of the church) that it took so little.
God loves everyone dammit! What part of all do you not @#$%ing get?

Would Jesus Recognize This Church?

Would Jesus recognize this Church?
And if not, is that a bad thing?
How has the church changed since the first century of this era?
~ Rome has fallen and has reconstituted itself as a Christian empire.
~ Christianity is now an imperial religion.
~ The Church is now even more multi-national than it was at its inception.
~ Slavery has been outlawed virtually everywhere.
~ Monarchy has been delegitimized, overthrown, truncated.
~ Monarchs are no longer the symbols of unlimited power short of the power of God, even when they are anointed, they are less than the anointed of God.
~ There is a sovereign if nominal Jewish state in which the Church has a presence.
~ Gender bias hasn't changed much.
~ There are powerful women leaders in the Church and beyond now as there were then.
~ And there are gender bigots now as there were then.
~ Women have more reproductive options now, live longer and generally have fewer children.
~ With the practice of contraception sex outside of marriage has become commonplace.
~ All of us have a much longer life expectancy.
~ Literacy is the norm for most members of the Church in most contexts.
~ Same gender love is no longer claimed the sole (contested) privilege of wealthy Greek men who exercise it in a rigid hierarchy.
~ Same gender couples and families are welcome and affirmed in many churches.

Would Jesus recognize this Church? Does it matter? Would Jesus want the Church to stay trapped in the first century? Was Jesus's approach to his disciples anything like Osama bin Laden's approach to Islam? Did Jesus want us to imitate and replicate his first century life and only his first century life in perpetuity? Or does Jesus want the Church to become something that we cannot imagine, something that transcends our expectations? Perhaps Jesus is exclaiming with awe and wonder, I wonder what they will think of next?

Control Freaks

I've been watching some truly heinous church politics along with many other in the Episcopal Church - the rage at Bishop Charles Bennison in the Diocese of Pennsylvania. People are enraged. The rage has been building for years, since his election and the promises he (allegedly) failed to keep. There have been a perpetual stream of failed attempts to remove him from office. The last one worked, for a little while. In our time, invoking the specter of a child sexually abused by a priest is sufficient to turn the tide in most cases. And so it was, for awhile, in spite of the fact that this young woman and her horrific experience were used in a long-standing (and simmering) vendetta against her will - again! And when the torturous legal process had run its course, the verdict was unacceptable to many. Then things got really interesting.
It is incomprehensible that to many that the final ruling went in support of the Bishop. The Church has affirmed and reinstated his ministry. And for many this is untenable. He must go. He must be made to resign. And in the best of the worst tradition of proof-texting exegesis, biblical missiles and missives have been let loose: "Let such a one be to you as a tax-collector." "Jesus preferred the company of tax-collectors." Bishop Bennison has been told, cajoled, begged and bullied. And he has chosen to stay.
As I watch the failed attempts at public shaming I am struck that some will never be able to accept a verdict with which they do not agree or an outcome that they cannot control. Control is at the heart of this sorry affair: control of the diocese, control of diocesan property, control of diocesan funds. No one can control this bishop. And the extremes to which his opponents are going to try and make him do what they think is right tells me that they covet his control and that of the church and that of God.
I am also struck by the intersections of wealth, class, race and gender in this struggle. I see it in part as a conflict of privilege. The very nature of white male privilege reinforced by wealth and class makes it essential for the self-identity of each side to dominate, subdue and ultimately control the opposition.
That the justice (just?) processes of the church have made a determination is irrelevant. Someone (else) has got to take control of this situation/bishop/diocese and make him/them do what I/they think is right. Because I/they speak for God and I/they should speak for everyone else as well. Why won't they/you listen to me/us/them?

Sanctuary and Solitude

I crept into the sanctuary in the waning light. One small votive before the patron saint flickered in the side chapel. High above the holy place a sanctuary lamp glimmered through its scarlet jewel casing. There was just enough vesper light to gently illumine the windows. The holy dark of the church was warm and welcoming.
As I fell to my knees to say my prayers I was so grateful for the place and space to pray. Alone. In solitude but not in loneliness.
I know the life and work of the church is in community. And that very few are afforded the privilege of having an entire sanctuary to pray in empty of other souls and voices. Yet I could hear the sounds of the world grounding me in prayer.
I would taste this banquet again.

Queer Church

Recently, I had the great privilege to minister in a MCC church. The Metropolitan Community Church is a denomination that was founded in part in reaction to the exclusion, abandonment, excommunication and rejection of gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender Christians and their families. It has become a sanctuary for all those on the margins, their families, friends and allies regardless of gender, gender performance, sexual orientation, HIV status, race, ethnicity or any other category used for divisive purposes.

In that congregation I found elderly nurses who had served on the front lines of the AIDs war in the '80's who wanted a spiritual home in a place where those for whom they card so deeply were not only welcome but cherished. I found former addicts and sex workers who were welcomed into the congregation before they made life affirming, altering or sustaining changes in their lives. I found retired Roman Catholic priests living out their days in a space that afforded them integrity that they could not find in their home denomination. I found the parents and siblings and children of queer folk who had finally found a congregation where they could join their loved ones in receiving the sacraments. I found retired protestant pastors and their wives who sought and found a sacred space where "love" was not a cliché and hate was nowhere to be found. I found scholars of religion who were not ashamed to cast their lot with an upstart gay church. I found heterosexual and homosexual Christians who were passionately committed to their church, their God and each other. There were also folk who were profoundly grateful for the opportunity to serve in any capacity in the house of God. Their faith, joy and sense of wonder were achingly beautiful. And I found suffering souls who had never been in a holy space where people like them made up the overwhelming majority.

I found God in that place and loved her fiercely and was loved fiercely by her in return.

I Want a Church...

I want a church:

where liturgy is prayed

and not read off a page - whether recited perfectly or mumbled and mispronounced.

I want a church:

where scripture is taught and proclaimed

and not where sermons are performed in imitated cultural idiom.

I want a church:

where the music ministry is a culturally-relevant ministry
steeped in spirituals, soaring gospel and confident in shared hymn and anthem traditions

and not a competition or recital.

I want a church:

where the language speaks of God and to God, making space for God to speak

and not silencing rhetoric reifying hegemeny.

I want a church:

where people pray from their hearts whether or not the use the ancient rubrics

and not a room full of people disconnected from God, each other and themselves.

I want a church:

where people serve God by serving each other inside and outside of the walls

and not a country club where most refuse to pay dues

and refuse to let the pittance that is collected meet anyone's real need.

I want a church:

where children and teenagers are recognized as the Church of today

and not the church of tomorrow.

I want a church:

were people study, pray and work together all year long

and not one that closes for the season or the summer.

I want a church:

that engages the brokenness of this world with prophetic words and healing balm

and not one that watches out of its deteriorating stained glass windows

and the world destroys itself, including its own members.

I want a church:

where pettiness and meanness are the exception and not the rule.

I want a church:

where people speak and act as though they have been transformed by God

and not as though they have never even heard the words they mouth around their gossip.

I want a church:

that gives without scheming to take it back

and not one that uses people, uses them up and throws them away.

I want a church:

that loves so much it is embarrassing and humbling and irresistible and infectious

and not one that is filled with hate and utilizes fear for hateful purposes.

I want a church:

of whom God is not ashamed, nor I,

and not one shamelessly parading and promenading as an imperial token,

neither knowing nor caring that the emperor has no clothes.

I want a church:

that I don't have to die to join

and not one whose present reality is an imitation of life.

I want a church:

that is not perfect

and not one that is wholly unconcerned with seeking perfection.

I want a church:

where all are welcome

and not one where all check-writers are tolerated, to a point.

And I want it now. Soon. This Sunday. Tomorrow. Come Holy Spirit.

Of Patrimony and Matrimony

Patrimony is one's ancestral legacy, in a word: heritage.
Matrimony is one's spousal union, in a word: marriage.
Patrimony is passed down through the ages.
Matrimony is temporal and temporary, (F/LDS theology not withstanding.)
In spite of all of the matriarchs and their daughters, female judges, women prophets, female disciples, saints and martyrs, the heritage of the Church is still constructed as a patrimony.
And that there is no word for female ancestral legacy reveals the limits of the sanctified imagination ~ as my ancestors taught me. (The designation of the corresponding term for something other than a corresponding body of knowledge eliminates the possibility of deploying the "natural" term for this natural purpose.
If a thing cannot be named, it cannot exist ~ as my sages taught me.
Now, where's that Wikedary?...

Broad Church

What are the limits of the breadth (Breath) of the Church?
Something less than the embrace of God.
The edges of the Church's limits are sharp and ragged ~ wounding, killing.
The Church is limited by its own vocabulary:
Ekklesia - a hellenized assembly with all of their cultural baggage: hierarchy, patriarchy, kyriarchy, dualism.
Oikomene - the (divine) household: a thing of walls and territory and boundaries and limits as focused on keeping insiders inside and outsiders outside except when converting outsiders and forcefully divesting them of their essential identities.
Must we fall so short of God?
Might we extend our embrace in imitatio Dei?
Might we approach something like infinite love?