Limits to Reconciliation

 

Q.	What is the mission of the Church?
A.	The mission of the Church is to restore all people to unity with God and each other in Christ.
Q.	How does the Church pursue its mission?
A.	The Church pursues its mission as it prays and worships, proclaims the Gospel, and promotes justice, peace, and love.

Book of Common Prayer, page 855.

These questions from our catechism point to how the Church's mission is restoration of unity with God and each other in Christ - a mission of reconciliation. We are living in a terribly polarized time - and not just in the United States. Ultra-right fascist elements are on the rise worldwide as climate change is putting pressure on food supplies and migration and the COVID pandemic still continues to infect and ravage our health. When anxiety rises, the temptation to follow some strongman who claims to "have all the answers," is a serious threat. We often fall prey to idolatry - whether embodied in a person or an ideology.

I am deeply weary of the relentless assaults on our democracy and the Christian Nationalism which has distorted the Gospel into a fascistic purity cult willing to attack anyone who isn't white, isn't straight, and isn't cisgender. Sadly, these Christian Nationalists have gained power in a number of states and are attacking the LGBTQ+ siblings and destroying safe access to abortion for women (even when it is medically necessary to save a woman's life). This, of course, is an extension of patriarchal white supremacy which has oppressed BIPOC people since the colonization of this nation. It's just widened it's attacks to hurt even more people.

Christian Nationalists are attempting to force a narrow interpretation of the Bible on everyone in clear violation of the 1st Amendment's Establishment Clause and the new ultra-conservative Supreme Court is going along with this agenda. I grieve when friends and family must make plans to escape the rising fascism in the United States to save their lives. This is NOT Christian and it is NOT democracy.

There are voices in the Church who are calling for reconciliation in this time of polarization. While I find this an admirable and fundamentally Christian position, I also question where the limits to reconciliation are. In his book Forgive and Get Your Life Back, Episcopal priest Dennis Maynard explains that forgiveness, reconciliation, and restoration are three distinct steps in a process. Too often, I think we jump to talking about reconciliation before we have acknowledged that harm has been done to God's children. We seem to shy away from talking about the limits of reconciliation under the guise of "bringing all parties to the table" in some empty feely, feel-good talk as if doing that will magically erase the pain and suffering inflicted.

How exactly will bringing "all parties to the table" work when some of those parties want to "eradicate" members of my family? How does it work when life saving gender care is denied to trans people? How does it work with anti-Semitic rhetoric calling for the "annihilation of the Jews"? How does it work when some of those parties would rather see women die than get a medically necessary abortion? How does it work when legislators call for bringing back "hanging from trees" (lynching) as a form of capital punishment? Let me suggest something - it won't work until we get clarity on the difference between loving our neighbor and loving their ideology, rhetoric, or behaviors.

I served a parish where we had some hard discussions about the limits of welcome when a member acted out in a way that threatened my safety and that of the leadership. After prayer and conversations, our leadership agreed that our position was "We welcome all people as Christ, but we do not welcome all behaviors." I believe a similar discernment is necessary as we try to be peacemakers in a polarized world. Bringing "all parties to the table" when some of those parties are actively calling for harm to be done to others is welcoming Sin and making the table unsafe for marginalized people. Philosopher Karl Popper called this the Paradox of Tolerance: when you tolerate intolerance, all you'll be left with is intolerance.

When people can "come to the table" with a spirit of humility, an open heart, willingness to listen more than speak, and a willingness to confess where they have sinned and harmed others, then dialog can happen regardless of partisan politics. Dialog is not possible with those who have hardened their ideological stance and are unwilling to change - they have chosen a different god to follow.

I have great respect for Christians who can engage extremists and work with them to soften their positions. I truly do believe that change is possible and this is the courageous work of the cross. It can be done effectively and it is work which needs to be done long before we talk to those in marginalized communities about "bringing all parties to the table" for reconciliation. God loves all people, but God does not love violent rhetoric or acts of hate.

What's really on the ballot

We are coming to the end of a long election season. Honestly, in the United States, it feels like we are in a never ending election cycle these days. As a priest, I've often been criticized for being "too political" and my critics tell me "Jesus was not political." To be clear, I have never been "partisan from the pulpit." I do not endorse candidates from within the walls of the church. To do so is a violation of the Johnson Act and as a Jeffersonian constitutionalist, I believe in the separation of Church and State. However, I do not believe the Church is to be silent on matters of Christian ethics which, inevitably, means being political.

The word politics derives from the Greek words polis (city) and politikos (citizen). It refers to how we organize our public life together and Jesus, following the tradition of the Torah and the Hebrew prophets, had a lot to say about how we organize our public life. His primary concern was the same as God's concern spoken to Moses and the prophets: "Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength" (Deuteronomy 6:5) and "Love your neighbor as yourself" (Leviticus 19:18b).

Love of God is not complete without love of neighbor. Many of us feel we can separate these two commandments - as if there's an "or" implied. There are many who say they love God, but their actions have no regard for the well-being of their neighbors unless the neighbors literally live next door and look, think, and act like them. Love your neighbor demands far more than that!

The prophet Isaiah speaks the word of the Lord which says that even eunuchs and foreigners who keeps the commandments and observances of God are to be included in the covenant community (56:4-7). The sign of God's covenant people is how they embrace and care for those who are not like them. This ethic is foundational for the teachings of Jesus.

Throughout his ministry, Jesus reached out to Samaritans (hated foreigners) and showed compassion for the hurting and marginalized. Jesus was neighbor focused in obedience to God. He gave us a vision for how to organize our public life together. It was an ethic of loving God by loving neighbor because they are inseparable.

What is really on the ballot in this election is not partisan - it is Christian political ethics. We live in a country that is far too privatized where individualism has become a false, idolatrous god we worship. "What's in it for me?" is the overriding American ethic and it is deeply offensive to God. To paraphrase Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., we must learn to live together as family or we will perish together as fools. Individualism is not a Christian ethic - care for community is.

As Christians, we cannot shirk what Jesus taught: Love God and love neighbor. Rather than asking "What's in it for me?" each of us needs to ask "What's in it for you?" and by you, I mean people with whom God is concerned:

• Widows and orphans - including the orphans our government has created with the separation of migrant children from their families
• Sick and Disabled - including millions who are suffering from COVID-19 who have fallen ill because of bad policy, those who suffer from lack of economic opportunity and live in fear of losing their health care
• People of Color - who suffer from systemic racism, poverty, and violence
• Women - who suffer sexual and domestic violence at far higher rates than men and whose dignity to make medical decisions is under threat
• Poor - who are often working but not paid a living wage and are blamed by society for being poor
• LGBTQ+ persons - who live in fear of violence and losing hard won rights for dignity

These are our neighbors whose life and their dignity matter to God. Their life and dignity need to matter to us too. This is what is really on the ballot.

White Supremacy vs. Liberation in Christ

I grew up in California. For the first seven years of my life (1964-1971), I lived in San Diego. The neighborhood I grew up in was in Tecalote Canyon, nestled between the University of San Diego (Jesuit) and St. Mary Magdalene Church Roman Catholic Church. The neighborhood was nicknamed "Vatican Heights" and most of the folks there were Roman Catholic (we and one other family were Lutheran). Our neighborhood had one family of color: the Glorias. They were Latinx. They had a son named David and I would play with him from time to time along with the White kids in the neighborhood ... that is until girls became "icky" to boys and vice versa. It was a time of racial turmoil in our country but as a young child, I was only vaguely aware of what was going on. Life was pretty good from a kid's perspective. I started school in San Diego and we had kids of color there, mostly Latinx, Chinese, and Filipinx.

In 1971, we moved to Concord, California, to a neighborhood called "Pepper Tree." Back then, the BART trains didn't go through and the area was mostly walnut orchards and horse country. It was a suburb of San Francisco with some fairly new housing developments. My dad worked in Walnut Creek, the neighboring town. When we moved there, our neighborhood was all White. We had a couple of families with teenage boys who were troublemakers: especially the Duffy and Schmidt boys. I remember my dad having to deal with their petty vandalism, filing complaints with the police, and nothing much got done. My school was majority White with some minority students. Our minority students were largely the same demographic as San Diego but with some kids from India too. I really hadn't had a close encounter with a Black family until the mid-1970's when the Longs moved in next door.

Bob and Evelyn Long were the first Black couple I ever really got to know. Bob was the Postmaster at the Martinez Post Office. Now, for those of you not familiar with California, Martinez was a huge operation in the USPS, a major distribution center for the mail. This was not some backwater job, it was a significant position. Evelyn was a school principal - I can't remember at what level. They had two college aged kids, so I didn't get to know them very well.

My parents went over to welcome them to the neighborhood and, over the next few years, we got to know each other as well as a Black and White family could given the baggage of our country's history. It seemed normal to me to welcome new neighbors, but I didn't know anything different. I remember my father coming home one day fuming. Apparently, Mr. Schmidt (the father of one of our neighborhood troublemakers) said to my dad, "I heard your new neighbors are N***ers! I'm selling my house and getting out of this place." My dad told him, "Good! What can I do to help you get you and your delinquent kid out?!" That was the first time I saw overt racism directed at a Black person. I saw my father's anger at it too.

I was still a kid and unaware of a lot of things. I remember we would go over to the Long's house for dinner and they would come to ours too. I don't remember details, I just remember these were just like all the other dinners when we had guests over. Mom always knew how to throw a great dinner party and make people feel welcome. One day my mom shared with me a conversation she had with Evelyn. It was a brief encounter and I think it happened in the grocery store. Mom was dressed in very casual clothes and Evelyn, as always, was dressed impeccably and professionally. My mom said something about how amazing she looked (she always did) and how my mom felt under dressed. In a moment of incredible trust and candor, Evelyn told my mom, "I can't go out in anything less to shop, otherwise I'll be followed by store security." That was my first encounter with what I would later be able to name as White privilege.

It's not that I didn't grow up steeped in White supremacy and racism. Of course I did. I'm a White American. But in my context, I encountered it towards Mexicans, Asians, and even my great-grandmother's disparaging of Native Americans (her family were White settlers in Nebraska and South Dakota). I just hadn't been directly exposed to how this impacts Black Americans until then. The fact these memories are still with me almost 50 years later says something.

The events of these past two weeks have once again ripped open the unhealed wound caused by our nation's original sin: White supremacy. This sin was exported from England and every other colonizing power that walked lock step with the Catholic Church's Doctrine of Discovery. In an unholy alliance of Church and State, Northern European traits (Whiteness) became normative and preferred and the subjugation of those who were different was politically, legally, and religiously sanctioned. It is so baked into the character and social order of colonizing countries (the United States included) that we don't even see it if we are White - that is until riots start in the Black community and other communities of color. This is why Black Lives Matter marches have broken out in former colonizing countries: England, Spain, France, Germany. Young people have learned more about this history, but I did not. Anti-racism educator, Jane Elliott, rightly said our social studies classes were actually "anti-social studies" classes because they only highlighted the stories of White men - as if that's they are the only ones who did anything in this country. Check out her video:

I have an obligation to work to dismantle White supremacy if I am to faithfully follow Jesus Christ. Not the White Jesus America portrays in images, but the brown-skinned Jesus who was also lynched by an Empire for disrupting the peace of Rome and shaking the status quo. Liberation in Christ is the message of the Gospel and means equality for all of God's beloved. Don't believe me? Try on some Scripture:

• "Jesus said, 'The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly.'" (John 10:10)
• "There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus." (St. Paul's Letter to the Galatians 3:28)
• "Jesus said, Everything that the Father gives me will come to me, and anyone who comes to me I will never drive away;" (John 6:37)

If we are to take a hint from the world around us, diversity is the plan of God. If Jesus came to bring all people to the Father and bring us life abundantly, how can we be silent or complacent when our BIPOC siblings are suffering? As Paul reminded the Corinthians, "If one member suffers, all suffer together with it; if one member is honored, all rejoice together with it." (1 Corinthians 12:26). God's plan is not the zero sum game of this World. God's plan means we flourish together when every member is honored.

Anti-racism work is hard. It will take the rest of my life. It will take having the courage to engage, to try, to screw up, and to keep trying. It takes willingness to be vulnerable and not get defensive when a Black or Brown person speaks their truth and it clashes with my experience or beliefs or when they call me out for getting it wrong. It takes a lot of listening and understanding that White supremacy isn't my personal fault, not a personal attack, and not a condemnation that I am a bad person because of White supremacy. It's not about us, fellow White people. It's about being the Beloved Community and that can't happen unless Black Lives Matter as much as White ones do.

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Here are some curated resources I've found helpful:

• The Absalom Jones Episcopal Center for Racial Healing
• CompassPoint.org
• Showing Up for Racial Justice
• PBS - How to Talk to Your Kids about Race

Pastor Nadia Bolz-Weber (ELCA) wrote a very extensive pastoral letter with an awesome list of resources which you can read here.