Sarx

HE Following Quote from Metropolitan Jonah sets the stage for my thoughts today. It’s from his Pastoral Letter for the Sanctity of Life Sunday and I think it ties all the issues together nicely in a handful of sentences:

Most of all, we must restore the family: not just the nuclear family, but the multi-generational family which lives together, supports one another, and teaches each one what it means to be loved and to be a person. It teaches what forgiveness and reconciliation are. And it embraces and consoles the prodigals who have fallen. In this, the real sanctity of life is revealed, from pregnancy to old age. And in the multi-generational family each person finds value. This is the most important thing that we can possibly do.

As I said to a priest friend of mine last night: the issue is not Pro-Abortion Laws, it is the culture that creates the need for abortion. I think many of my Pro-Life friends think I am misguided in my desire not to protest today, not to be marching and certainly never to stand in front of a clinic to “rescue” anyone. The two times we went to the Abortion Provider in Asheville it was to sing the Akathist to St Nicholas, to pray for all children, and leave. The Baptists didn’t like that at all.

This is not the laws: that should be the very last issue we face. Our first step is not to make something illegal for which the wealthy will travel across boarders (look at Ireland’s experience) and the poor will make do with what they can.

Our first step is the hearts of the American people.

Much of this culture has created a credit and consumer crisis that is such that a woman must work: a baby creates a huge strain on a budget. Much of our culture his hung up on kids moving out of their parents home, setting up shop together – but away. The older model would have several generations present, caring for each other, raising up each other. There would not have been one bread winner, nor one care provider, but many of each.

Get rich. Get your own house. Go in to debt. It’s no wonder at all that babies have babies and kill them.

Even the so-called pro-life movement is filled with this mindset. And it is no wonder at all that a woman, stranded in the midst of this depersonalised culture, should depersonalise her baby in utero or even later. And our culture continues that problem too: for personhood is denied our babies at nearly every turn. They are isolated, raised alone with their parents afraid to let them out of the house. They are taught to consume, to believe I am the Most Important Person, to demand rights instead of to yield in grace, to keep the stranger at arm’s length instead of embracing her in love.

And later, that stranger returns the favour and depersonalises us as well.

We live in isolated apartments, like beehives where no one knows anyone. Or we live in isolated houses, surrounded by a moat of grass and a picket fence. Even if it is only 2 meters to the next house, we pretend never to see them.

Our personhood dies.

And so do our babies.

Laws, alone, will fix nothing. It takes, as a wise woman once said, a village to raise a child. As a wise Bishop once said, “to be and to be in communion are the same thing.” We deny communion – connectedness, community, a village – at every turn. Our extended families are spread over continents and across oceans. Is it any wonder we kill our babies?

Before we lament the national sin of Abortion, let’s lament the national sin of denial of communion. I’m not talking about the liturgical issue. I mean the thing that should hold us together as a people, as fellow humans. And Christians should be the first one in the mix, rushing out not to show judgement, or political action, but to be drawing strangers into their houses, feasting their extended families, celebrating the domestic manifestation of the Body of Christ, present and active in the world.

I’m not talking about setting up homes for unwed mothers.

If someone asks for you coat, give him your shirt as well.
If someone needs food – offer them shelter and water.
If someone wants money – share all you have.

I’m talking about setting up a home for the world in our hearts. Roe v Wade will fade into the background like so many other outdated laws. We won’t have to “force our ideas of morality” on strangers: If we embrace the stranger, which is God coming among us, she will return the embrace.

Most of all, we must restore the family: not just the nuclear family, but the multi-generational family which lives together, supports one another, and teaches each one what it means to be loved and to be a person. It teaches what forgiveness and reconciliation are. And it embraces and consoles the prodigals who have fallen. In this, the real sanctity of life is revealed, from pregnancy to old age. And in the multi-generational family each person finds value. This is the most important thing that we can possibly do.