Wednesday, February 28, 2001

The Controversy 2001

The 152nd Diocesan Council provided us our annual diocesan-wide reminder of the animus that currently festers within the Church around the related issues of sexuality, biblical interpretation, and the boundaries of fellowship. Back in October of last year the dynamic of these issues emerged for me as I reflected upon the readings for 17 Pentecost. Two of the lessons bring before us, at least on the surface, the relationship of husband and wife, but I suggest that they speak to us more broadly, in a way that challenges, instructs, and encourages us as we navigate the current controversies.


Genesis 2:18-24 contains the story of God bringing Eve to Adam, and Mark 10:2-9 has the Pharisees and Jesus debating about divorce. The application that some make of these readings fuel oppression by sexism and a dismissive misogyny. By their obvious lack of love, these errant applications have no genuine relationship with the truth of God to which I believe these scriptures refer. Such interpretations are rooted in norms that are more cultural than biblical, and as such deserve our suspicion.

This distinction between texts of scripture and their interpretive application allows us, even requires us, to orient our appropriation of any particular texts around the fundamental principle that ours is a good, just, and merciful God. We aren’t allowed then to abdicate our responsibility with a simplistic attitude that says the Bible plainly states God’s ‘plan,’ so we have to obey; or, golly, God might not let us into heaven! The human instinct to ask ‘Why?’ both of scripture and of God distinguishes faith from superstition. Our experience and appreciation of redemption is rooted in it. It’s what enables us to be grateful for our union with God and maybe even our communion with one another. And so it’s important to bring to any text of scripture the question, “Why?”
Why is it important for Jesus to tell us, “What God has joined together, let no one separate”? If we can suspend our cultural template a bit and dare to ask, I believe we find guidance here that has to do with something of which marriage may be exemplary, but which is in fact more fundamental.

The spiritual reality of Christian baptism is that God joins Christians to one another. The challenge inherent to this is that this fellowship includes people with whom we might not otherwise choose to be joined, spiritually or otherwise. Nevertheless, in our one baptism, God calls us and challenges us to make that spiritual reality a tangible one; and to help, and even require, those with whom we disagree on some issue(s) to honor that same reality.

I think some of us today are resigning ourselves to living with one another in a specious harmony that is maintained only through a determined lack of conversation. Others are choosing discontentedly to abdicate altogether their membership in the community of the Church. I suggest that either approach is a demonstration that we are placing our ultimate faith less in God than in our human capacity for discord. And I suggest that Christ joins us together exactly to subvert this anti-faith, this faith in hopelessness.

It becomes then increasingly incumbent upon us of the Anglican tradition who affirm the liberality of Christ to walk our talk. Thank God, Jesus didn’t say we have to like our neighbors; but he does say we ought to love them. Whatever our politics and theology, God’s reality of our kinship implies that we need somehow to embrace the kinship we have with even the more disagreeable among our wider diocesan and Christian family. While we’re not required to agree unanimously with one another just because we recite the same Creed, God’s hope seems to be that we might look for the good that lies within our neighbors, even if it’s only latent, and build upon it.

It’s a mighty struggle for any of us on any side of any issue. And this is why God is at work, quietly but mightily, pouring out into all of us the gift of God’s own faith in us, to accomplish the impossible. Why? Perhaps it’s because ‘whom God has joined together,’ God has necessarily also joined to God; and God will not be separate from them. When humanity has little faith in itself, in our ability to rise above our pettiness, it’s precisely then that God’s faith in humanity comes to the fore, and carries us over.

And so I make the choice to believe that we are on the threshold of God’s resolution to the controversies around sexuality, biblical interpretation, and the boundaries of fellowship. I believe God has faith in us, and so is working through us as well as despite us, and soon we will know ourselves a bit more as God knows us, as a communion and family of saints. In the meantime, I believe our vocation is to express in all that we say and do and pray, our trust in God’s Love to join us and keep us. Whether we like it or not, God has joined us together; let us allow nothing and no one to separate us. Peace.

Jim +

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