Sarx

AINT Gregory’s community invites us to “come sing and dance to Jesus’ lead“. How? There’s ample evidence – from all corners of the Church – that someone usually wants (or even craves) to function as a gatekeeper. You, my dear reader, are either too conservative or too liberal for my taste. I refuse to host you in Jesus’ name.

Earlier this week you read that it takes work to start at traditional, orthodox Christianity and arrive at a progressive and inclusive space. We don’t need to “pick and choose” we need to hold on to the entirety of the Rabbinic Debate that has been going on in Christianity for quite some time. It takes no religious or mental dishonesty, however, to do so: from the Beatitudes back through the entire Tanach, and forward through Paul and Clement, past Nicea and Cappadocia rushing forward as far as St Maria of Paris, Blessed Seraphim Rose and Blessed Alexander Schmemann, and reaching as broad as the Wesley Brothers, St Francis and Pope John XXIII, there’s a voice, a river, a common theological thread (pardon my metaphor cocktail) that affirms a “Big Tent” orthodoxy.

There is there a radically inclusive voice that wrestles with Paul when he is judgmental and struggles with the councils and saints when they are exclusive or triumphalistic. Sometimes competing voices come from the same saint: as when John Chrysostom at once elevates and condemns Judaism or when Seraphim Rose reminds us we can not judge – and the proceeds to judge “heretics”. The same St Cyril of Alexandria that countenanced the murder of Hypatia gave us one of the most inclusive visions of the incarnation and atonement.

If we assume that being faithful to the Christian traditions requires us to repeat the errors and mistakes of the rabbis who preceded us on this path, then we are lost. Equally, if we assume we can follow them in nothing because they were so evil, likewise we are lost.

Many folks are engaged in simply rejecting: they automatically reject all of historic Christianity (or relegate it to historic decoration) simply because they assume you can not get from point A (Pauline and Nicene Faith) to point B (the radical inclusion and hospitality desired by so many folks today). Others automatically reject modern progressive goals because they assume those goals are in conflict with the historic faith “once delivered to the saints,” as if that faith is a mirror image of the red side today’s culture wars. Both edges of this argument form one, common faith. It is a reactionary faith that – regardless of its stated goals – is never progressive, never inclusive. For while the one sets out to exclude most of the people of the world because of their worldliness the other ends up excluding other Christians because they are exclusive. The line is, “We love and forgive those who love and forgive us…” just like the Pagans do.

While it is impossible to keep everyone “happy”, that’s not the point. If being “happy” were the point, God would have sent his son to give us all popcorn and Raisenettes and free tickets to Disney World™. Trust me – that’s not the point. Likewise if it were simply the point to like and/or be nice to everyone, God could have found a way to unwind racial and ethnic differences into some kind of cosmic wonderbread world where we all just shop.

Instead Christ God calls us to do the hard work of reconciliation – which involves forgiveness and love and which, therefore, assumes failure and a need for the same. We’re going to mess up. It’s not going to be nice or clean or easy. But we will end up not only at God’s table with all the enemies and “others” you can imagine, but – if we’ve done our work letting God do his – we will want to be there.

The final thing, of course, is politics. Since Constantine we’ve struggled to build not only a “pure” church but also a “perfect” political system that would, essentially, to the work the Church was supposed to do. This use of the secular gov’t as a surrogate has left the church with two hands tied behind her back because at once she ceded power over her members to the secular authority while also continually expending to much energy cajoling that same authority into doing her will.

How do we live an authentically Christian life that

1) Affirms the historic faith
2) Includes all those whom God sends our way
3) Likewise calls them into participation with the divine reconciliation.

Where do we go from here?