Exits

You refused the call.

Heroic words. A rare treasure in an epic focused on the greed and violence that is human nature at its worst.  That they were spoken by a child and heaped shame on older, seemingly stronger and braver men who should have known better made them all the more poignant.  That they so succinctly bear witness to the shame of our own time makes them all the more important.

You refused the call.

They are words that speak to duty, to obligation, to the undeniable and immutable responsibilities that bind us together.  They are a stark (forgive the pun!) reminder of the allegiance that we share, all of us, to one community, one humanity.  We are not islands unto ourselves.  We are not alone, no matter the distance between us.  In this world that worships at the altar of individuality and choice, they expose of idolatry and our false religion of self above all.

Not that we care.

Is it just our nature, or is it our sin – or both – to be always the ones who refuse the call?  The word of the day this week is exit, as is leaving, as in breakage, as in the pretense of independence, the denial that we are, in fact, always in relationship to others.  The choice ostensibly made to affirm that we are entitled to our own lives, to attend to own needs and to not be dragged down by the rest.  The right to separate ourselves from the harm of others in the world.  As if such a thing could be.   

The immediate consequences of this most recent exit reveals the lie of every attempt at divorce.  We are too interconnected, too intertwined, for any to go it alone.  Our selfish acts have far-reaching consequences.  We fear how others bear us harm.  What of the hurt we do them, intended or not?  We name globalism the enemy, which is like blaming the air for the pollution that we breathe.  Humanity has always been one global shared experience.  Even if we didn’t know it.

No, what is wrong with the world is us – we made it this way; we cannot, we may not, run and hide from it.  If there is so much wrong in humanity that we should not want to be connected to others, then we are responsible to fix it, not to deny it. 

To deny it is to refuse the call.

But still we do.  And as we have felt the early rumblings of this most recent exit, so we shall feel more and more down the road.  The celebration and the pride that brought this about clangs discordantly in the heavens.  The potential for more exits of every shape and size looms over us like a cross on a hill. 

But resurrection dawns in an amazing, grace-filled truth.  There are no real exits.  There is no actual escape from each other for us.  There are no walls high enough, no distances great enough, to overcome what is the very nature of God’s good creation.  Is it not good for us to be alone, he said, and so he made us, one from the other, a whole humanity, one family, from now until the end of time.  We may attempt to our utmost ability to exit from this reality.  We may refuse the call.  It changes nothing. 

We are one.  We will always be one. 

And now we are called to live as one.  Shall we answer the call?

Walls

There is nothing like being away to teach you to see.  Today I was reminded of something that I've actually known for a long time:  I live in a strange place. 

Not that Nebraska is strange in a weird or dangerous way.  It's just that it's not like the rest of the world.  I know what you're saying, the rest of the world is just not like Nebraska.  But statistics tell a different truth:  Nebraskans, such as we are, are in the minority.  Probably what many of us consider to be normal is, in fact, parochial, unusual.  Most of the rest of society is living a different life in a very different world.

Which really matters.

They're has been a lot of talk these days about building walls.  Here, in the midst of this new experience, I cannot help but wonder if I may already be living behind one.

I don't think I have appreciated, for instance, how many middle aged and elderly people I live around.  I have wondered often (it's a question that Pastors ask all the time) where all the young people are.  The answer is that they're here.  They live in the city, in the big city, far from the peace and quiet and boredom where I live my days.  Why?  My life and home and place is wonderful, ideal, I think.  Everyone should want to live where and as I do.

But they don't. 

Hmmm.

No, the seemingly scarce young people are here, and in abundance, omni-present, not as occasional tourists in the world (as I too often experience them in my church) but its denizens, owners of this society, home.  They are active and enthusiastic, bustling to and fro, moving purposefully and persistently toward some expected horizon. 

They are unusual creatures, these young young people.  Like Jane Goodall, I find myself in an observant posture, trying to discern what is happening in their minds and in their lives and even making up stories about them, as if I could invent insight where none was immediately available.  I notice that they are both similar and diverse, sharing common comport and style yet also of every shape, color and conviction.  They are not intimidated by their vastness nor their individuality.  They seem to know how and when to march in concert and behave according to seemingly practical, if unwritten, norms.  They are not fazed by what I find complicated and  opaque.  They get it.  I don’t.

They are often plugged in, physically, ear buds permanently affixed.  Their world, it turns out, is not bound by its physical limitations.  They are in many places and in multiple times, functionally and mentally and spiritually.  This super-power of theirs is marvelous to see. 
But mostly I notice how happy they seem.  That makes me less so.  It would be easy to see their radically different choices, their foreign lifestyle, as threat.  Is this the evolution to come?  I’m not sure I would have a place here.  I’m not sure I would want a place here. 

And that is the real problem.  That I should reach such a summation is exactly the problem.  It may be an interesting question, but it is ultimately an unnecessary one.  A wrong one.  Maybe even a shameful one.  It is an utter reminder not just of the wall that surrounds me but of my attachment to it, of my idolatry to it.  That I cannot relate to or even endure another world beyond the walls which I have defined for myself is as good a definition of sin as I have come to lately. 

And if there is any meaning to repentance, then this must be it.  That I should turn away from the constant butting up against my own walls and find, instead, a doorway, or a bridge, or whatever such thing which might open up the possibility of a connection between worlds, between me and the others, different as they are. 

Now that would be a sight to see. 

The Uncertain Gospel

This week, in the aftermath of yet one more mass killing in our country, a Pastor in Sacramento California shared his own particular experience of sorrow.  “The tragedy,” he said, “is that more of them didn’t die. The tragedy is I’m kind of upset he didn’t finish the job – because these people are predators. They are abusers."

Them being the homosexuals who frequented the Pulse club.  Them being an abomination before God according to Leviticus and therefore worthy of such a fate (if not worse.)

Evidently this Pastor was sad that he couldn’t shoot them himself. 

Which is more shocking – that a Pastor would speak such words at this time, or that he would speak them at all?  Or is it that these are not merely random words of hatred and anger, but that they are words bred at the heart of the struggle for faith in the church?

After all, Leviticus has been with us for a long time.  We all know what it says.  And we all know what it means, don’t we?

Or have we just been wrong all this time?

Pastor Jimenez’s comments, spoken especially at this time, confront us like a mirror held too closely to the face and call us to self-reflection.  We recoil at the callousness, the selfishness.  We rebuke this thinking – “this is not what we believe!”  We do not wish any part of such an agenda, yet we cannot so easily repudiate the role of these words in our history and in our tradition.  Shall we just deny the sacred writings of the faith?  The Bible is a whole, not a collection of interchangeable and conveniently dismissible parts.  Shall we just flee from the church and leave this struggle behind?  Many, too many, have already made that choice.

No.  We would be just as lost as them.

If only there was another option.

I believe there is, though I confess to not knowing it fully.  I am convinced, however, that it starts with humility, a kind of humility that has become much lacking and greatly absent in the church of this age.  It starts with the almost impossible question:  what if we’re wrong?

I was not trained to ask such a question in my seminary education.  I was not trained to ask such a question in years of Sunday School and Confirmation.  No, I was raised in the certainty of faith, in the surety of the presence of God and the certain work of his holy church.  Faith was definable, knowable, determinative.  The church was a mighty fortress, built on doctrine and dogma, sacred practice and holy Word.  Even the spiritual was concrete.  It was what it seemed to be, what it was said to be, forever and ever, world without end Amen. 

And so it has become our prison. 

The problem for me is that being horrified by this kind of hatred and small-mindedness is not enough.  I am still a product of and a responsible party to the Word of God, the whole of the Scripture, the long tradition of my church and the heart of its people.  I am tied to that, I am anchored to that.  I cannot simply walk away.  I must be set free from it.  Set free by a power much, much greater than I. 

If we are to break from this confinement, if we are to find the path between overly self-righteous loathing and hatred and aimless, meaningless futile wandering, then we must begin not with what we know but with what we do not.  Before we can come to the revelation that comes from God alone, we must put an end to the revelations that come from ourselves.  We must end so that faith – true faith! – can live.

And to fully make that move, we must become uncertain.

I know this to be a risky proposition.  It is much easier to stay where we have always stood (at least where we think we have always stood – that is a different matter entirely).  It is easier to take the short route, the shallow exegesis, the simple answer.  It is easier, but it is not right, for in taking the easy way, the simple way, the known way, we will surely come to the end we deserve.

Pastor Jimenez’s summation of the Orlando massacre was that “they deserve what they got.” 

Will we?