The Question I Haven't Been Able To Answer

When I was in seminary, I took this class, “The Minor Prophets,” for an upper level Old Testament credit. It was a great class as we studied and contextualized all twelve of the minor prophets. One day, we talked about the concept of justice as it is put forth by the different prophets, and tried to draw a picture of such justice being preached from the Church. Then, we watched the full video of MLK’s, “I Have A Dream” speech from the “March on Washington for Jobs.” It was the first time in my life I had watched the entire speech and heard all of the context around the events of that day.

I remember when it was over, I was deeply moved. In the conversation that followed among the class, I said, “I wish more ministers had the courage to preach like that.” The professor, ever the gracious soul, looked at me and said something I’ve struggled with ever since.

“Imagine it’s 1964, and you are a white pastor, in a white Baptist church, in Alabama. What do you do? Do you write the sermon about how the church needs to stop failing God and start welcoming and advocating for the African American community around you? Or do you start the long process of bend the arc of that congregation? Because if take the first course of action, you might as well write your resignation letter as well.”

This is a dilemma that I have been thinking about off and on ever since. There have been times in ministry where I tried for the prophetic voice, and it cost me a lot. Also, I have tried to take the pastoral approach and it eventually reached a positive outcome, but there were a lot of people hurt in the interim. How do we respond to this struggle? Is it truly a binary between being “prophetic” and being “pastoral?”

This week, I’m the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship General Assembly. In the wake of recent events, LGBTQ inclusion has been at the center of a feeling of tension that is almost palpable at times. I know that amongst my generation of ministers, this topic carries a lot of weight as to how we see our future as part of the Fellowship. There is a distance between where we are and where some of us want to be, but how we get there and remain faithful to core of who we are as Cooperative Baptists is a struggle I don’t know if we have all taken into account.

I’m stuck in this place where I’m trying to answer that question. Is it better to be prophetic, or pastoral? I don’t want anymore hurt in the LGBTQ community because of things said or done by the CBF global organization, but there are also thousands of members with such different views that make this conversation very complex. I know that the Spirit will guide us to a bright future, but man, is it going to take faith to step out on that journey.

How We Have To Embrace Our Pain...

Photo courtesy of Trek Earth. Taken by gravatar.

In the aftermath of the horrible events in Orlando on Sunday, I’ve become aware of a potential problem for our future. The pain of the event is very real for what seems to be a large swath of our country. As we hear the stories of the survivors, learn about lives of the dead, and try to unearth the motivations of the shooter, opportunities to externalize our pain and anger are beginning to emerge. So much of the discussion of what has happened and how we might respond to it has shifted to focusing on the faith of Omar Mateen. Social media is awash with discussions about how “we have to name the evil of radical Islam,” or “we must respond to his act of international terrorism by ISIS.” 

I’m not an expert in international relations and so I’m sure our government must examine its choices concerning how to interact with the dangers from abroad. However, what about us? 

Is this external focus really helpful to our communal psyche?

As Christians, is focusing on a group within another of the world’s religions truly going to help us?

I remember coming home from church that day and speaking with a friend who is a member of the LGBT community. As we talked, it was obvious how much these events were effecting her. The pain and fear were clearly visible in her eyes, and as I hear from my other friends, I am aware of those same feelings in them. It has caused me to ask another question. 

How responsible are we, the American society, for this massacre?

I saw a meme that listed a number of injustices that have been suffered by the LGBT community  in America, and it was really painful to read. From the silence during the AIDS crisis of the 80s to the passing of HB2 in North Carolina, this community has suffered a lot of neglect at the hands of American society. And as a Christian, I have listened to, and at one time said, some hateful things about them. I carry guilt about that personally, and one of the things I feel most guilty about a statement to the effect, “I love gay people, but I don’t accept their sin.”

If God is going to punish people for their sins, and hates sin, as I was told growing up in church, then how are you going to love people despite of their sin?

Are you implying you are more loving than God?

While the collective conversation is shifting to describe the shooting as an international act of terrorism, I’m afraid for our future. As the church learns to externalize its pain by focusing it on some group over there, we neglect to see that we may have had some responsibility in this. Omar Mateen was an American citizen. He was born in Queens and not the Middle East. He spent his entire life interacting with and trying to immerse himself in American society. If he did fully identify with a radical religious element, which hasn’t been fully proven yet, then it would seem that he couldn’t find a place in the country where he was born. 

What does it say about American society that instead of feeling like a part of the whole, he decided to attack a group that has experienced so much pain?

How does our language about the LGBT community say about our understanding of God?

Could those two things have worked together?

Orlando Proves America Doesn't Just Have A Gun Problem

On June 12th, forty-nine people were murdered. Forty-nine!! Forty-nine members of Orlando’s LGBT community were gunned down in a gay club. After a police officer spotted Omar Mateen and exchanged gunfire with him in the street, forty-nine LGBT people, PEOPLE were savagely snuffed out of existence. That morning I was at church, and was not glued to a TV. However, I was aware of the news, and through the morning, horror settled on me as I watched the number of confirmed dead climb. It may be the saddest I have ever felt in church. The service, which was lead beautifully by our youth, was difficult to follow, and there are parts I don’t remember because my mind kept being drawn back to what was going on one thousand miles away. 

My mind and heart wanted to find some grasp of just how deadly this event was, but it was hard. Eventually, I realized that forty-nine was just under half the number of people I worshiped with that morning. This morning, I sat down and hand wrote a list of forty-nine names of people I know. Just off the top of my head. People I have actually had real conversations with and relationships. They are not all deep or abiding friendships, but I can list forty-nine people, and I am sure you can, too. And then, I wept.

I wept because my wife and I had just started watching last night’s episode of the Late Show with Stephen Colbert. After his opening speech, which is a deep and powerful call for Americans to change the script of our cultural response, Colbert’s first guest went to work doing what we do after an event like this. He acknowledged its tragedy, and then he intellectualized it and made it into a product of international terrorism. Then, he called for war. And I mean a real war; the kind where there is an actual declaration from a joint session of congress, and then the nationalization of industries to support such an effort. (The video can be seen here and here.)

As Colbert tried to redirect and focus the questions around Omar Mateen’s birth in the US, it brought me back to something I have written about before. America loves violence. Just Sunday afternoon, and again on Monday, the dominant rhetoric surrounding our country's possible response was all about how we could attack an enemy. Donald Trump started using language that stripped any association to American society from Mateen, and lay the blame at the feet of “these people,” meaning ISIS and his warped understanding of Islam. Responses are not around how American society responds to violence by Americans against Americans because they are members of the LGBT community, and our continuing relationship/fetish with firearms. Instead, it is how does American society respond to some external threat. Focusing on his faith, wipes away a discussion of the shooters own connection to the LGBT people of Orlando, and Club Pulse in particular. And the majority of the proposed responses are violent. 

What if our problem isn’t external, but internal?

What if the cause is not just a different religious ideology from our own, but our own inability to grapple with our differences?

What if, in our rush to anger, we miss the root of the evil entirely?

I can’t answer all of these questions, or really give any answers. I am going to use this place to voice my opinions, however. In so doing, I must acknowledge how painful this is for all of us, and it should be. When I reflect on the events of Sunday, June 12th through my lenses as a straight, white, cisgendered male, I have to open up the scope of my vision beyond just that morning. When I do, I don’t find it as something that is just tragic, but the product of our own deep-seated violence. How could we expect something different after some of our political and religious (and here) leaders have advocated for the death of LGBT people? When we talk about this event in retrospect and refuse to recognize that the victims were either members or allies of the LGBT community, or publicly show our callousness by calling for more violence against the LGBT community, what do we think will happen next?

There is a tight feeling that settles in my chest today. It’s not hate but mourning that brings me such discomfort. I’m mourning the loss of life that has occurred, and I am mourning a loss of some of the hope that has buoyed me through past struggles. I do not hate my country, or my faith, or my representatives, or even Donald Trump because of the things that have been said, or not said, before and after this recent act of horrific violence. What we need is mutual liberation, and no amount of hate can bring that about. I, instead, mourn. I mourn our failings, and the loss, and the death of some of my hope.

But I am also reminded today, in the midst of angry words against a people and a faith not my own, that Jesus wasn’t American. Jesus wasn’t a Christian. But I am a follower of Jesus, and one thing he told us to do when things like this happen was to pray for our enemies. In the midst of the last few days, I haven’t done that. But I am going to now, and I am going to write that prayer, in case you want it for yourself.

O God, I lift up to you Omar Mateen. 

He has caused a great deal of pain, but for his soul I ask mercy. 

For his family, who loved their son, I ask peace. 

For the dead, receive them into your care and hold them close as your beloved children. 

For the wounded, be near them in their suffering and anoint their scares with your love. 

For those who hate, wrap them in the arms of love. 

And for us who feel powerless in our mourning, draw us to a new and beautiful day.

Amen

Right Sermon, Wrong Place

(Image is not from Last Night)

Last night I had the great opportunity to preach to a congregation that is a part of Church of the Saviour in Washington DC. Last week, as I was preparing my presentation, I struggled with what topic to focus on. The person who had invited me had felt his inspiration from a sermon I preached at another church that talked about the plight of Millennials in the Church. As I prepared, however, I read and reflected on somethings in my own life that seemed to fit the texts for the evening better. In the end, my words focused more on the actions of Jesus and Elijah in the texts from the Lectionary for June 5th, Year C. There, Jesus and the prophet both reach out and touch dead people in order to raise them from the dead. 

I talked about a book from Richard Beck called, “Unclean,” where he talks about the principle of contamination that was part of the common religious practice of both Jesus and Elijah. I wanted to highlight how the Church is given an image of reaching into places where others would fear contamination. I highlighted it by telling my story of struggling with depression. Many of the events and consequences of which I had never told my wife before as she sat there and listened. It was a good night, and one that felt honest and whole. The presence of the Triune God was deeply felt in that place.

When we got home, my wife commented that it was a great presentation, but that it should probably have been preached at her church on a Sunday morning and not in that place. She felt there was little risk in sharing that night, and though it was well-received, my story was not as much of a challenge to the group from Church of the Saviour. In hindsight, I agree that there was very little risk in sharing certain details of my life with depression in front of that group. But, I challenged her by asking if she really thought such a sermon would actually help her congregation, or responses of resentment and dismissal in reaction to their discomfort. In the end, we agreed that, most likely, controversy and not action or reflection would have been the end result.

Our conversation caused me to reflect on something I heard on one of my favorite podcasts. Tripp Fuller, during one of the episodes of Homebrewed Christianity, talked about how most ministers can only tell their congregation 50% of what they believe for fear of being fired. It brought to mind a joke from undergrad; a group of us thought that most ministers were probably more “liberal” or “progressive” than their congregations and that it would never change. When I think of last night, I feel a mixture of joy that such an open place of worship exists, and pain that such a place is so rare. 

The point of writing about it today, though, is to put that question out in the open. How true is it that in order to be in a church, ministers, or even fully engaged lay-people, have to hide part of themselves in order to be accepted? I have my own answers from my own experiences as a staff minister, active layperson, and friend of minsters, but I wonder how many have actually thought about it. 

Do we actually consider the fact that we are hiding part of who we are and how we engage with God? 

Is it good for our congregations to never hear the more “controversial” parts of our belief systems?

It goes without saying that our overall culture is very polarized. (It doesn’t take a hack from some backwater blog to tell you that.) Conflicts over ideas are heated and full of vitriol. I remember all the way back to undergrad hearing fellow students argue about theology, and heard some of the rather short-sighted proclamations made about those on the opposite side. I know that because of such arguments, I have kept my mouth shut at times because I didn’t want conflict in my life, but does avoiding conflict really serve the best interests of the Church?

What would it be like if we actually proclaimed what we felt to be true?

How different would the Church look if we stopped hiding part of ourselves?