Exploring the Connections

MORNING REFLECTION: Inclusion and Tolerance

Today's Reading for the Daily Office Book of Common Prayer (p. 946)
Psalms 69:1-23(24-30)31-38 (morning)       73 (evening)
Isaiah 56:1-8
Galatians 5:16-24
Mark 9:2-13

Isaiah 56:1-8 reads like a contemporary letter to the editor.  It is a clarion call for inclusion and tolerance. 

We've just shifted voices and decades.  Isaiah 40-55 comes from a prophet of the exile who anticipates the defeat of Babylon (which happened in 538 BCE) and the return of the people to Israel which followed.  We've been reading from that section which is often called Second Isaiah, a message of comfort, hope and encouragement.

Chapters 56-66 belong to the period after the first stages of the return and restoration of Judah, around 520-500 BCE, or maybe later.  Things haven't worked out as wonderfully as Second Isaiah had hoped. 

Although Second Isaiah issued an open invitation to everyone to "come to the waters" and to "seek the Lord while he may be found" and "return to the Lord," old traditions about who is part of God's family have reappeared and been used to exclude some. 

There are those who are excluding the eunuchs from the community and from its prayers, citing Deuteronomy 23.  There are those who are excluding foreigners.  (There always are, it seems.) 

Isaiah 56 is a clarion call for inclusion and tolerance.  "For thus says the Lord:  To the eunuchs who keep my sabbath, ...I will give in my house and within my walls, ...an everlasting name that shall not be cut off.  And the foreigners who join themselves to the Lord, ...these I will bring to my holy mountain, and make them joyful in my house of prayer..."  (Some call this section, chapters 56-66, Third Isaiah.)

These words sound very similar to the calls for inclusion and tolerance for gay people in today's church and community.  These words sound like contemporary appeals for hospitality and a road to citizenship for our undocumented aliens.

"For my house shall be called a house of prayer for all peoples," the prophet speaks in the name of God.  No exclusion, no prejudice, no intolerance.

"Thus says the Lord God, who gathers the outcasts of Israel, I will gather others to them besides those already gathered."  Open doors; open hearts.  I remember when Ed Browning was elected Presiding Bishop (two PB's ago), he opened his term with the stirring motto, "There shall be no outcasts" in the Episcopal Church.  He spoke in the spirit of Isaiah 56.

Paul's voice in his letter to the Galatians is also a voice of inclusion.  The entire letter is a passionate appeal for the inclusion of uncircumcised Gentiles into the family of God.  Paul insists that they be included, and that they not be expected to follow the Jewish Law and its many exclusive customs.  In this section of Galatians 5 we read today one of his most eloquent statements.  To those who would exclude those "others," Paul asserts that "the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.  There is no law against such things."  (my emphasis) 

If eunuchs or foreigners, gay people or aliens manifest the fruits of the spirit, we dare not exclude them by our customs and laws.  There is no law against such people. 

The Biblical witness for inclusion and tolerance is a strong tradition, and the parts of the church who articulate that call in our time follow in the spirit of Isaiah and Paul, ...and Jesus.

Lowell

Lowell Grisham, Rector
St. Paul's Episcopal Church
Fayetteville, Arkansas

More than a free lunch

by John M. Buchanan
The Christian Century, November 18, 2008

Lydie Raschka's article on her experience of helping serve dinner to homeless and hungry people at Thanksgiving raises issues that I think about a lot these days. Raschka reflects on her "thinly disguised slumming" and acknowledges that most of the white volunteers serving the black and Hispanic guests would go home and eat gourmet Thanksgiving meals.

It's an issue for many of us in this wealthy and comfortable nation, with its underclass of the poor, hungry, unemployed and homeless: What exactly is the faithful response, individually and institutionally?

On almost every corner of Chicago's Michigan Avenue is someone asking for money—sometimes quietly, sometimes aggressively. Two people claim spots outside the church I serve, one a double amputee in a wheelchair, the other a man who sits with his dog in his lap in all kinds of weather. Passersby know them by name. Tourists give them a lot of money. You can hardly afford to open your wallet to all who beg, so regular pedestrians develop an eyes-straight-ahead strategy or mumble, "Sorry, not today—maybe next time."

Should we provide food or work politically to address the causes of urban poverty? There's no simple answer. In her book Living Well While Doing Good, Donna Schaper, pastor of Judson Memorial Church in New York, takes a strong stand on the side of justice, not handouts. After giving some change to a limping boy in South Africa and then being surrounded by 50 other children with their hands out, Schaper vowed that her giving "would no longer be spur of the moment. Indeed, now I say no to all beggars on behalf of long-term sustainable change." About the little boy in South Africa she says: "He does not need my guilt—he needs my money, well spent to create a good world for him and all his friends. He needs my money—what I need is principles to guide me."

I agree with Schaper that we ought to be investing a lot more resources and energy into changing political and economic structures to address the massive needs for housing, education, health care, jobs and public transportation. But I'm not ready to shut down the lunch program or the Thanksgiving dinner.

It is a matter of both/and, not either/or. We need both social justice advocacy and efforts to meet human need when it presents itself. That's why my church supports Protestants for the Common Good, which both lobbies state government in Springfield and provides free lunches. It has an advocacy committee that helps church members make their voices heard and their influence felt; it also sponsors Sunday night suppers for the neighborhood. It partners with other churches and with synagogues to make sure that in our affluent neighborhood a meal is available somewhere every night for people who are hungry. One of those partnerships is with Catholic Charities, which organizes the Monday night suppers and, yes, a festive Thanksgiving dinner.

John M. Buchanan is editor and publisher of the Century.

[I cannot read this piece without thinking about TMO and the Cathedral… MT]

Anglicans challenged on power, sex and ‘traditionalism’

http://www.ekklesia.co.uk/node/7395

Ekklesia, London: According to the standard script, the current war in Anglicanism over sexuality, scripture and authority is one between ‘traditionalists’ and ‘revisionists’, ‘liberals’ versus ‘evangelicals’.

But new research from the religion and society think-tank Ekklesia suggests that those who want to keep the church defined by very narrow parameters are straying from well established Christian tradition.

It points out that ‘Anglican wars’ are about power as much as sex, and that evangelicals and others are to be found on all sides of the debate rather than just one.

In a research essay entitled ‘Tradition, Change and the new Anglicanism’, author Savitri Hensman, who was born in Sri Lanka but lives and works in Britain as an equalities adviser in the community sector, looks carefully at past Anglican formulations and biblical traditions.

She says that the arguments prefiguring the Lambeth Conference of Anglican bishops in July 2008 are not just a family squabble. They are about the nature of Christianity in a fast-changing contemporary world, the dangers of simplistic readings of the Bible, the historic threat of authoritarianism, the challenge of human rights, and the tension between the establishment instincts of many Christians institutions and the radical roots of the Gospel.

The message echoes a new book edited by Ekklesia co-director Simon Barrow, with a preface from Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu, called Fear or Freedom? Why a warring church must change, which is published this week.

“Christians caught up in endless internecine strife and politics are not furthering their message in the wider world,” says Barrow. “Organised Christianity is dying in some places not because it isn’t judgemental enough, but because it doesn’t seem to make a positive difference to people’s lives. Similarly, a lust for certainty will not touch the hearts of the great majority.”

Another contributor to ‘Fear or Freedom?’, Australian priest and author Dr David Wood, says in his chapter: “The table of Christ demands that we grow up, and growing up means learning to live with those we find awkward and uncongenial as well as those we warm to naturally.”

Ms Hensman agrees, suggesting that exploring the depth of disagreements with hope and honesty, rather than proceeding by dictat, would be a sign that Christianity has something positive to offer a divided world.

“It’s not more resolutions and structures that are needed, but a change of heart,” comments Ekklesia’s Simon Barrow. “The Christendom church models its procedures on the standard political culture of confrontation. That’s why it’s tearing itself apart.”