Sarx

WHEN I WORKED AT Borders Book and Music in San Francisco (Store #57 at Post and Powell) I was the host/convener of the “Western Traditions” book reading group. We did everything from Neopagansim to Christianity to Postmodern philosophy (hanging out with Erik Davis was one of the coolest discussions I’ve ever had). One night – or rather a couple of nights – we did Jack Spong’s Why Christianity must Change or Die. Coincidentally, my book group coincided with one of Jack’s visits to SF. So I accessed my personal ECUSA network and got in touch with the right people and invited the Bishop.

I got such a FLAME back, turning down my invitation…

And then tonight (nearly ten years later) I finally understood.

Jack went to liberal schools (compared to conservative Protestantism), was in a liberal church and surrounded by liberal clergy: gay clergy, gay bishops even. But Spong had the audacity to say out loud what everyone else was thinking. In his earlier books (This Hebrew Lord, Born of a Woman, etc) you can hear all the normal stuff that liberals have always said. But about the time we get to Living in Sin!?! and Rescuing the Bible from Fundamentalism, we hear a new Jack – more extreme, almost ranting. He becomes for liberal Christians what Richard Dawkins is for Atheists: a near-embarrassing uncle that we like, and sometimes agree with, but damn, can he at least stop yelling?

What happened?

Well, when Jack was saying everything that everyone else was, he was constantly getting punched down – by those very liberals. The problem was he was outing everyone. He was daring to tell the world what the “Powers that Be” were thinking. And the Powers that Be didn’t like it. So, while the PB might Ordain a Lesbian to the Priesthood on his own time… he didn’t do it honestly, out loud, publicly like Jack did. Jack got punished by the PB. While Jack wasn’t saying anything that Bible professors at ECUSA Seminaries were not saying daily, he was daring to say it out loud to the masses so he got shot down. The problem was not Jack’s honesty, but everyone else’s dishonesty.

I can see where this would make one bitter and, eventually, VERY bitter. I can see where one must Change or Die in this area. When one ends up forgiving Jack for his anger, his novelty goes away; but not his power: which power I said in the 80s was based on the fact that here is a Bishop saying these things. I don’t want to make light of what he said, most of which I’d just as soon not have to read again, thanks. But the point was not that it’s different or new, but that here is a Bishop saying it. That’s why his books sold – his purple shirt gave power to his odd ideas. Of course that was before he got really angry. The more he ranted the worse it got.

So liberalism in ECUSA, here, and widening the lens a bit, in American Christianity gets tied into this odd ranting anger. One can almost feel the droplets of spittle coming off the speakers’ mouths or feel the heat generated by the writers’ pens. Perhaps rightfully, it generates the same sort of response: not calm, reasoned debate – and certainly not prayer or communion – but spittle-flecking heat-raising rants. It is, as I said back then, as if the liberals and the conservatives are only mirrors of each other: each being equally fundamentalist (text based), each being equally exclusionary (get out of my church) and each failing in Christian charity. This is NOT just true in ECUSA. We can see it when we cross the wrong streams in Orthodoxy as well: we become like the Monks in that one monastery on Athos. Pass me my crowbars, I’ve got a Gospel to proclaim!

These are broad-brushed images, forgive me. But both sides say, basically, “you must believe X, Y and Z to be Christian. Get out if you don’t agree – and don’t let the door hit you in the cassock on yer way out.” Having discovered that the “Inclusivity” model only worked for those who accepted that credo, I went for the “Exclusivity” model in Orthodoxy. Although it will come as no surprise to anyone who has been reading along, I confess that’s beginning to sound just as troublesome. Perhaps most troublesome is my own lack of faith: I begin to wonder if I’ve believed much of anything at all.

One of my problems back at SGN was that I could never handle people questioning my beliefs. I was pretty ok if you didn’t believe in the Resurrection or the Bible. I just didn’t want you preaching it to me. And if I preached what might be called “a mostly-orthodox sermon” I felt really uncomfortable when you questioned it. The problem was not the people or the liturgy (both of which I loved) but rather, perhaps the problem was not SGN – or ECUSA – but my lack of maturity and security in Christ. My own faith was not firm, so what could I do when confronted with people honestly living in that infirm place? Get angry, self-righteouse and offensive. In a sense, I’ve been acting like everyone else in the Jack Spong story I wrote above. My lashing out – my running away to Orthodoxy, my judgement of everyone in ECUSA, etc – was a judgement of myself. I was reacting to them saying out loud what I had inside, but couldn’t admit.

Daily, I’m becoming more clear that my own faith – insecure and lacking – fails at every turn to meet the test posited by Bp Frank Weston in 1923:

You cannot claim to worship Jesus in the Tabernacle, if you do not pity Jesus in the slums… It is folly — it is madness — to suppose that you can worship Jesus in the Sacraments and Jesus on the throne of glory, when you are sweating him in the souls and bodies of his children.

Perhaps this is why my own faith is weak, immature and insecure. Because I can’t meet Jesus face to face, meeting him sacramentally is just a light snack before Sunday lunch. Perhaps finding a socially generous way to express and live my faith…

I am reactionary – meaning I don’t so much have something of my own as I evolve, unwillingly, to have the opposite views of what’s around me. When I’m surrounded by strident X, I morph into Y. Surround me with Y, and I’ll morph back to X. Assuming that X – Y spectrum we can imagine a current me (me²) and a former me (me¹). A scan back through the pages of this blog over the last year will give you glimpses of a me² I don’t like at all. But reading back over the last 5+ years will show you a bigger picture of that me¹. There was a me¹ that I liked someplace back there – in whose skin I liked living, in whose God I loved to glory. He was generous, and caring and loving. He made HUGE glaring mistakes. But he sometimes allowed God to manifest near-miraculous healings of himself and others and his relationships with all of them. The longer I sit here, writing, praying… the more I think that me¹ is the me¹ I want to be, that God wants me¹ to be. Increasingly I’m sorry for the me² I’ve become: it’s not that I don’t “feel holy” but rather I don’t like me². There are still glimpses of the other me¹: brought out by my housemate, by my friends, by Brodie and RJ and my Cousin, Casey, or by my clients in the Rehab program… but the me² that I don’t like seems to be the one filling the pages of this blog, at least until recently. Those realistic glimpses of the current me² I owe to Ben, Bob, Ernesto and Screwy. I also – deeply – owe thanks to Donald, who has been emailing me some wonderful things and listening to me rant. And all y’all been praying. Some has been: not me². It’s been eye opening to dialogue with these guys and find my own “inner theologian” slowly creeping back out. When I converted to Orthodoxy, Donald said he had seen it coming for months. I hadn’t – or if I had, I thought I kept it hidden very well. But looking back over my journal and my Bible studies for that period: he’s right. I can see it. I’m not really very good at self-hiding, except from myself. So now, look back over the last year and someone else has been coming out. I’m morphing again.

I wrote to Donald this weekend,

4 years along, and I’m clear on the points that used to drive me bonkers at SGN… Jesus, Resurrection, Second Coming… but if anything I have become more than just a little tolerant of people who have problems with those points: several times I’ve ended up defending SGN as a Christian Community and worthy of the name from attacks in the “orthodox” of the world.
And yet… I’ve been reading the websites of various “Progressive Christian” groups including the Center for Progressive Christianity and Cross Walk America. Half the time I feel as if I would be excluded because of my Orthodox side. But I can extend it the other direction as well: what would the Orthodox do with my progressive side? Where is there room for a “Progressive Orthodoxy” or even “Reconstructionist Christianity” (after the model of Reconstructionist Judaism)? One without the strident Anti-traditionalism of Spong or the Triumphalist [traditionalism] that I like to use (and then repent of using, in cycles)?

There has to be a way to express my faith in a way that doesn’t sound like either angry side in the current Christian debates: but rather sounds more like the Christ I profess to follow. Is there a way to be secure in that relationship so that I don’t lash out at others who are different? To paraphrase a recent interview with Brian McLaren (we did a book study on him last Summer), I’m looking for “Something Beyond Absolutism… and Beyond Relativism.” There has to be a way to be faithful to Christ without becoming a faithless, judgmental conservative or a faithless judgemental liberal. What’s in the middle? Via Media Vita Veroque Est?

Friday night… as I was running around the net, I found a website (mentioned to Donald in my email) founded by a group of Progressive clergy – mostly Protestants, but I think there are RCs in there as well. The group is called Crosswalk America, “where Christian Compassion meets Progressive Action.” They have published a list of “12 Affirmations” which I’d rather like to meditate upon. The preamble is something I agree with, without doubt or even “editing” in my head.

The public face of Christianity in America today bears little connection to the historic faith of our ancestors. It represents even less our own faith as Christians who continue to celebrate the gifts of our Creator, revealed and embodied in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Heartened by our experience of the transforming presence of Christ’s Holy Spirit in our world, we find ourselves in a time and place where we will be no longer silent.
Source

It continues with what some might call “vague” language. You know what? It captures me where I am just now on my journey. What was cool was not that they were left or right, but they *seem* to say there is room for both. If I purge my judgement and self-righteousness, is there a place where the Jack Spong of my heart can communion with the Father Seraphim of my heart, a place where my inner William Kristol can commune with my inner Jimmy Carter? I don’t know, yet: but I sense that my current goal is to integrate them, to FORCE them to sit at table and be (internally and externally) Christ acting in my part of the multiverse.

As people who are joyfully and unapologetically Christian, we pledge ourselves completely to the way of Love. We work to express our love, as Jesus teaches us, in three ways: by loving God, neighbor, and self.

I think, at least for now, I’ve found a place to dialogue with my inner theologian: the one who knows I’ve failed really badly recently – not in a way to confess, but in a way that causes total revaluation.

For a while – maybe up til Easter, knowing my schedule – I’m going to be posting a series on the 12 Affirmations. I’ve opened a new category for this – “The 12″. Those of you who watched Alias may enjoy the analogy. Colour me Sydney, dressed up in every costume I can find, but wondering who I really am. My goal is to look into the 12 Affirmations from within my patristic fastness and tall Ivory Tower of Orthodox Reading. I feel I’ve spent more money on books in the last 5 years than I would have if I had gone to Seminary twice. What’s it got me? A rather judgemental attitude (internally) and a lot of burned bridges.

Let’s see if I can get back to the Love, ok?