Snake in the Grass

You sonofa....SNAKE!
Who told you to try to get your life together? You'd better act like you know! Who do you think you are? I don't want to hear about your daddy. Keep doing what you're doing and this little pain you feel today is nothing; you will know pain like you have never imagined.

Sound familiar? The photo may have misled you. This is not my take of Tiger Woods public/private conduct, but the gospel of the day, of this third week in Advent:

Luke 3:7 John said to the crowds that came out to be baptized by him, “You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come? 8 Bear fruits worthy of repentance. Do not begin to say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham as our ancestor’; for I tell you, God is able from these stones to raise up children to Abraham. 9 Even now the ax is lying at the root of the trees; every tree therefore that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire.”

This is an Advent Gospel? This IS an Advent Gospel. Mr. Woods is not the only one among us who has behaved as though he were hatched from an egg laid by a cold-blooded reptile.
It's not to late for him. It's never too late to repent. God hears, forgives, heals and restores. Even when people won't forget and can't forgive. Even when marriages fail. God forgives what we cannot. Even while we are living with the shameful and painful consequences of our actions, God is with us. Immanu El.

We wait. Watching and praying. For God who has come in Virgin-born human flesh, to come again.

Dear God, please take these knives out of my back...

Just the ones with Christian hand prints on them. Thanks for listening.
Amen.

Privilege and Peril

When I teach about privilege - white, male, heterosexual, able-bodied - I also teach about peril. I'm careful to point out that privilege and peril regularly coexist in individuals and communities to avoid setting up an "oppression olympics." For example, the peril I experience as a black person and as a woman coexists with the privilege I experience from my socioeconomic status and the privilege I experience from my hierarchical standing as a professor and as a priest.

Apparently, that's just me. I have been watching other folk who also enjoy privilege while living with peril who have no interest in articulating or acknowledging their own privilege. In this case it is white privilege. I have been watching and listening as some white gay men dominate the equality movement articulate gay identity over and apart from black identity, build on and steal from the Civil Rights Movement and proclaim that black liberation is "over."

I have also observed white women who are deeply concerned about the status of women in the academy and the church invest in, nurture and support white women and only white women. For these women, women of color are not women - unless we want to support the white women's agenda. Support for women of color is called divisive, shifting the focus from gender to race and ethnicity.

Neither group, white gay men nor white women in these contexts acknowledge the power they have from their white privilege. But they use it. It is a peculiar thing to see white privilege wrapped in a mantle imperiled victimhood.

It seems to me the movements for women's equality and LGBTQ equality when divorced from any concern about the status of women of color or queer colored folk is not really about civil or human rights. On one level these culture wars are about the fury white folk feel when their white privilege is not universally acclaimed and honored. As a result, some white gay men have no problem using sexism or racism in their campaigns for - not equal rights - but the restoration of their privilege. And, some white women cannot identify or partner with women of color in achieving equity for all women because their womanhood is intrinsically linked with their whiteness, rendering women of color unrecognizable as women.

Unarticulated privilege is still privilege. White privilege is nearly unescapable.