The Rev. Dr. Jay

All the Saints or Just the 1%?

I love All Saints’ Day. I wonder if all the saints do, too.

I imagine many “official” saints of the Church as a bit cranky about their saintly ecclesial status. Many of them were critics, and sometimes severely so, of religious authority (what we might call today the “loyal opposition”). Others railed against poverty or injustice or put both their reputations and their lives on the line for the unwanted and throw-aways of their day – often to the chagrin of their own religious leaders.

Achieving “sainthood” was certainly not why any of them did what they did. And that makes me wonder whether the process of canonization more often resembles domestication. By calling someone a saint, whether religiously (the apostle Paul or Francis of Assisi) or culturally (9/11 heroes, war veterans), a community can regulate how that saintly story is told. The story can be tidied up, scrubbed clean of the troubling bits, or “spun” to advance all sorts of institutional goals, and all for the sake of, well, sanctity.

But “sanctity” according to whom?

Sanctity is related to words like “sacred,” “holy,” and “hallowed” (Halloween!) and more generally to the idea of being “set apart” from the ordinary, the routine, and the expected. Or more simply, holy things are peculiar. Holy things and peculiar people are set aside for sacred purposes. But what counts as “sacred”?

Saint Paul argued vigorously for the inclusion of Gentiles in the early Christian Church, people who were certainly not “holy” by the religious standards of his day (see Acts 15). Saint Francis of Assisi loved animals, but he also loved the poor and all those considered “lepers” – those who were certainly not “holy” by the religious standards of his day.

Saints seem to push on the boundaries between the sacred and the secular, challenging their communities to see God’s amazing grace stretching well beyond where anyone thought it could go.

I love All Saints’ Day for all the peculiar stories of heroic courage and selfless love and even miraculous powers that fill Christian history. And I love All Saints’ Day for the stories of those who realized that doubt is an important part of faith, and those who didn’t always know precisely the right thing to do but but who acted boldly with hope nonetheless, and those who weren’t afraid to love extravagantly, even at the risk of scandal.

Faith, hope, and love – these aren’t the marks of just a few special people. These belong to the whole people of God, to all of us, to all the saints. And the greatest of these, Paul wrote, is love (1 Corinthians 13:13).

And I love All Saints’ Day for one of the biblical texts assigned for worship on this day, which comes from the Revelation to John. Yes, that biblical book can be troubling in some respects, but for me, this wonderfully peculiar passage makes up for all the rest:

After this I looked, and there was a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, robed in white, with palm branches in their hands. They cried out in a loud voice, saying, ‘Salvation belongs to our God who is seated on the throne, and to the Lamb!’ (Rev. 7:9-10).

Saints are not just the religious 1%, nor are they the vast 99%. In the end, saints are all the familiar ones we know, the ones we’ve never heard of, and you and me – a vast multitude no one can count, who boast not in their own faith, or hope, or even love but declare only the amazing grace of God.

Claim that sainthood for yourself on this wonderfully peculiar day.

Occupy Christianity…with the Gospel

Did Jesus and his disciples occupy Palestine? It doesn’t take much to read the gospel accounts of overturning the money-changers’ tables in the Temple and the “triumphal” entry into Jerusalem with crowds hailing Jesus as the Messiah as versions of today’s “Occupy Wall Street” movement.

There are significant differences. I mean, of course there are. It’s not even entirely clear how any of us should understand the “occupy” movement today, with its multiple demands, sometimes confusing messages, and apparently conflicting allegiances. But this much is probably safe to say: the “occupiers” (whether in New York, San Francisco, Chicago, D.C. or wherever) have had enough of “business as usual.” It might also be safe to say that they love their country; these are insiders doing all this occupying – they are us.

We could say the same thing about Jesus and his disciples: They loved their country, they loved their religious tradition, they were insiders and they had had enough of “business as usual.”

This becomes very complicated very quickly. We mustn’t forget that first century Palestine was itself already occupied, by the Roman Empire. Some of the religious leaders actually colluded with those occupiers by making various economically beneficial deals on the side to keep the peace. Disrupting that peace, some have argued, is what got Jesus in so much trouble and eventually executed by the Romans (and without any real objection from his own religious authorities).

“Occupy” has a very troubling history, not just in the first century but also today as we live with the legacy of Euro-Americans occupying far too many lands and cultures at the expense of those who were already there. But I wonder if we might find a way to rehabilitate that troubling word with some more “homey” resonances.

I occupy my home, not out of protest but because, well, it’s home. I’m happy to occupy it and I’m happy to share that occupation with my mother and a canine, by the name of Tyler. I’m also happy to share that occupation with friends, colleagues, visitors, guests.

I also occupy various vocational roles – as a priest in the Episcopal Church, a theologian in the academy, a writer, a teacher, a pastor. I consider these to be privileged “occupations” and they are more frequently grace-filled than I can recount.

Those examples (and many others) make me think of “occupation” as a form of “taking up residence.” I wasn’t the first to take up residence in the house I currently occupy, and I probably won’t be the last; I’m making it a home in ways the previous occupiers didn’t, but which build on what they did before me. Countless others have taken up residence in the vocational work I now occupy and they have inspired me to extend their work with some redecorating and renovations.

What about the Church? Modern western cultural values have taken up residence in Christianity and have occupied it for quite a long time now, for a few centuries at least. The results have been rather mixed. Is late modern global capitalism a gospel value? What about racial bias? Do Christians really believe that the current gap between rich and poor is a gospel value? What about environmental degradation as the price to pay for corporate profits?

What about people just seeking to be loved and cherished for who they are? Can we imagine Christian churches welcoming absolutely everyone, no exceptions? What would that kind of welcome do to our stratified communities?

I honestly don’t know how to answer all these questions, but I do believe they need to be asked and pondered in fresh ways. I do believe this: If the Gospel were to occupy Christianity and take up residence in our churches in new and compelling ways, the world would change.

I saw an “occupy” protest sign recently online that read, “Jesus is with the 99%.” Well, yes, but Jesus is with the 1%, too. Jesus is with all of us. Only when “all” really means all will we realize that the wonderfully peculiar Gospel of Jesus has taken up residence among us once again.

We are all Sodomites

Anyone who has ever refused hospitality to a stranger – to someone who is different, odd, peculiar, “not us” – is guilty of sodomy (Genesis 19). Anyone who has ever refused to care for widows and orphans or practiced economic injustice is also guilty of sodomy (Ezekiel 16:49).

Everyone is guilty of sodomy just by virtue of belonging to a nation that oppresses immigrants or won’t provide food and health care to single mothers or is just by being human (treating “outsiders” with suspicion seems wired into our collective DNA).

We, all of us, are sodomites and stand in need of repentance and forgiveness.

The Bible seems pretty clear on all this, but you’d never know it from listening to most religious talk radio or watching televangelists. “Sodomy,” in both popular religious culture and in our courts of law, means something quite different from what Biblical writers understood it to mean (here’s a hint: today it usually means that nasty thing gay men supposedly do all the time).

I was prompted to write about this by some Facebook exchanges over the publication of the book Out of a Far Country, by Christopher Yuan. This autobiographical book recounts Yuan’s journey through drug addiction, lots of sex, an HIV/AIDS diagnosis, and his return to Christian faith – a return that helped him to heal and become an ambassador for leaving the “gay lifestyle.” That lifestyle, presumably, is marked by, well, drug addiction, lots of sex, and HIV/AIDS.

But this is not a review, nor a critique of Yuan’s book (which I have not read). I am much more concerned about those who seem eager to use – the better word is exploit – Yuan’s story and his book for a socio-religious agenda to “cure” or “heal” gay and lesbian people.

I applaud Yuan for taking steps to recover from drug addiction, finding reconciliation with his family, and living into a healthier way of life. I am, however, offended by those who are using that story to paint (yet again) a deeply distorted picture of what it means to be lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgender.

Yuan’s story is emblematic of LGBT people in just about the same way that Las Vegas brothels and wedding chapels are emblematic of heterosexual people. In both cases, the reductionism and stereotyping are not only disingenuous; they are dangerous, harmful, and deadly.

Consider Jamey Rodemeyer, yet another gay teenage suicide to add to the appallingly long list of how “strangers” are treated in our society. Jamey even made an “It Gets Better” video! (You can read about that tragedy here, but I don’t recommend it if your heart is easily broken.) The religious and cultural exploitation of Yuan’s story is just as responsible for Rodemeyer’s suicide as the citizens of Sodom were responsible for the kind of inhospitality worthy of divine retribution. We are all sodomites.

I was on a panel with Yuan back in 2006 during the SoulForce Equality Ride event held at my alma mater, Wheaton College (read my reflections about that event here). The college put Yuan on center stage as evidence of both the destructiveness of “homosexuality” and the possibility for “healing” it. That Wheaton would do so indicates a severe lapse in that school’s critical thinking faculties from which, at one time, I learned a great deal.

But Wheaton’s posture indicates much more as well – the school is guilty of sodomy.

Imagine declaring this: drug dealing and violent crime in urban neighborhoods clearly indicates the inherent evils of the African-American lifestyle. Wheaton (and I should hope many other religious institutions) would reject that claim as racist. Yet Yuan’s story is fair game for exploitation, to deploy it like a religious product for discrimination, exclusion, bigotry, and inhospitality.

With more than fifty years of biblical scholarship overwhelmingly rejecting the idea that Scripture condemns LGBT people, Christian communities are the ones who stand judged and in need of repentance and forgiveness for their sin of sodomy toward LGBT people.

(When I started this blog, I vowed not to deal at all with biblical apologetics concerning LGBT people. That is so twentieth century and the argument should be long since over. Of course, it’s not. To summarize some of the reasons why that argument should be over, I’ve written a short essay on contemporary biblical scholarship on this issue, “Biblical Sexuality and Gender,” which you can find here or on this site here.)

sodom_destruction — The Destruction of Sodom & Gomorrah

Christian communities should take the sin of sodomy quite seriously indeed, just as Jesus did. As far as we know, Jesus said absolutely nothing about LGBT people. But he did say something about sodomy. As he sent out his disciples to proclaim the gospel and do the work of ministry, Jesus issued a warning. Any town that does not extend a hospitable welcome to those disciples will suffer a worse fate than Sodom and Gomorrah (Matthew 10:15).

Christian followers of Jesus ought to renew our commitment to the spiritual practice of hospitality, especially since all of us are sodomites. Christ, have mercy.

Behold, the Lamb of God

Troy Davis may have been innocent, but that’s not what makes his execution this past Wednesday night morally outrageous. Capital punishment itself is a disgrace in any society that thinks of itself as “civilized,” and even more so for a society that claims Christianity as a dominant influence.

I won’t rehearse here the well-worn arguments as to why capital punishment qualifies as: a) morally suspect if not ethically abhorrent; and b) an ineffectual deterrent to crime. (If you’re unconvinced about either point, I recommend spending some time here.)

Rather than only moral and practical problems, capital punishment should raise profound theological questions for Christians. Those questions begin by remembering that Jesus was unjustly accused of capital crimes and executed by the Roman Empire.

Many Christians, however, tend to skip over that socio-political reality and reflect instead on the doctrine of atonement, or why Jesus “had” to die as the “Lamb of God” for the sins of the world.

Many self-identified liberal or progressive Christians reject entirely that kind of doctrinal overlay on the crucifixion of Jesus. But we might still find some peculiar bits in that doctrinal history worth considering today (and that history is quite diverse) and how it might still speak effectively to our situation today – including the appalling practice of capital punishment in the United States.

Here I’ll mention just two among the many points to ponder for a peculiar faith today:

The first point to ponder is this: why are human beings so blood thirsty?

One response to that question, and a profound one, has emerged from the work of Rene Girard, a 20^th century French historian and philosopher. And that work has prompted a great deal of insightful theological reflection on the role of violent scapegoating in the formation of any human community. James Alison’s theological work is the best example of this (and it’s rather complex, so go pour yourself some coffee, sit in a comfy chair, and read more about that here).

The shorthand (and thus inadequate) version of Girard/Alison is just this: human societies pour out their inherent violence on representative figures – the “scapegoat” – who bear the brunt of what would otherwise be uncontainable social chaos. Without scapegoats, there would be no “society” at all.

The Paschal Mystery of the death and resurrection of Jesus (the divine scapegoat) thus offers the possibility of finding a way out of this endless cycle of violence. How that is so requires much more space than a blog to describe. But even naming that possibility, it seems to me, can shed some much needed light on the mechanism of scapegoating in the practice of capital punishment.

And the second point to ponder is this: why are human beings so blood thirsty?

Yes, that’s the same point as the first one. But it admits more than one response. Another response comes from an intriguing theologian, Robert Neville, who teaches at Boston University; I am also privileged to count him among my friends.

Bob’s theological work is amazingly broad and deep at the same time, yet I keep rereading one of his many books, Symbols of Jesus: A Christology of Symbolic Engagement. In that book, Bob devotes a chapter to the symbol of Jesus as the “lamb of God,” and more particularly as the lamb who was slain.

I can’t possibly describe fairly Bob’s profound insights here (any more than I could Girard’s or Alison’s above), but I will offer this: We will never appreciate the symbol of Jesus as the “lamb of God” until we acknowledge our collective “blood guilt.”

As Bob acknowledges, modern western people recoil at the idea of “collective” anything let alone something that sounds as barbaric as “blood guilt.” Yet Bob persuaded me. Consider just two among a host of examples.

First, if you have ever taken a train across the U.S., you did so thanks to the indentured servitude and some deaths of Chinese immigrant laborers, who built the railroad.

Second, if you are in any way benefiting from contemporary American industry, technology, and agriculture, you are indebted to the institution of African slavery on the American continent.

No further examples are necessary – if you’re reading this blog, you are drenched in blood-guilt. How can you bear it? What will erase it, if anything? Can you even stand to think about it? Most of us can’t, so we don’t. But the guilt persists.

Bob then suggests ways that the symbol of Jesus as the slain Lamb of God might address our collective blood-guilt, which I can’t summarize adequately here (I’m working on a way to do that!).

All of this matters as for the peculiar faith Christians claim to adopt and especially when we consider and (I hope) mourn the execution of Troy Davis. He is just one among far too many scapegoats in contemporary US society. Troy Davis is just one among far too many instances of our collective blood-guilt as human beings. Questions of innocence, guilt, evidence, and due process are actually irrelevant. What matters is why any society would collectively kill someone.

Christian people should not do so. Period.

So, why are human beings so blood thirsty? The sad answer is this: We are human. The good news in response is this: the symbol of Jesus as the Lamb of God who was slain might yet transform violent human culture into a culture of life. If so, then Christians might actually find a compelling if not a peculiar way to talk about salvation and redemption.

For the sake of all those still on death row in this country, may it be so.

The Truly Arduous Task

The early twentieth century French writer Andre Gide once observed, “To free oneself is nothing; the truly arduous task is to know what to do with one’s freedom.”

That truly arduous task took a significant turn 224 years ago today when some intrepid pioneers in Philadelphia adopted these words and the articles that followed them:

“We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.”

On this anniversary (an official holiday!), I’m tempted to parse each of those highly-charged clauses and phrases in the Preamble to the U.S. Constitution, but I’m particularly struck by the second one: “to form a more perfect Union.”

That laudable goal has been repeatedly tested in American history, especially when it seems at odds with the seventh phrase, “the Blessings of Liberty.”

The Tea Party end of today’s political spectrum has exacerbated that tension between union and liberty in rather stark terms. Some of them apparently believe that we ought to let people die if they don’t have health insurance, which is quite a price to pay for liberty’s “blessings.” (I’m not making this up. Read about it here.)

There’s much more at stake here than the same old partisan bickering over the role of the federal government, not least is how we will define and practice “liberty.” If it means the freedom not to care about the less fortunate, even when they’re dying, why bother with perfecting our “union”?

I suppose we could imagine a “union” formed by those who look alike, are like-minded, and have all the resources they need to take care of themselves. If so, then the U.S. Constitution would form a more perfect country club, but certainly not a country.

What we do with our freedom is as much an arduous theological task as it is a political one.

In the history of Christian theology, freedom has never meant living without constraint, or the freedom to do whatever we want. The grace of God in Christ frees us from bondage to sin and also thereby frees us for living into that grace with others.

The freedom to live for and with others appears in clauses eight and nine of the Constitution’s Preamble: “to provide for the common defence” and to “promote the general Welfare.” As U.S. citizens have always realized, that’s far easier said than done.

Christians have likewise realized how difficult freedom can be. I’ve been thinking about that just recently in my work on the Blessings Project of the Episcopal Church, which has been collecting and developing resources for the blessing of same-gender relationships. As part of that work, we’ve tried to address the ongoing (and centuries-old) challenge of living with disagreements in the Church – the religious version of forming a “more perfect union.”

Reflecting on that daunting task, my colleagues and I kept coming back to this: Christian unity is not a product of our own efforts but is instead a gift from God. The Church enacts that gift in baptism, which initiates us into the Body of Christ. Salvation, in other words, is thoroughly social and communal.

More pointedly put, baptism joins us to God by joining us to others who are different from us.

Now that’s a rather peculiar claim, and remarkably similar to trying to form a nation from people who don’t have anything else in common but a “constitution.”

St. Paul (no less) insisted on this view of baptism by urging the Galatians to set aside the social and cultural distinctions with which they were most familiar and which threatened to keep them divided. If you are baptized, Paul claimed, “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” (Galatians 3:28).

Christians are united, not because we agree with each other about everything or because we happen to like each other’s company, but because God has joined us together in Christ (whether we like it or not).

In that sense, both the Gospel and the U.S. Constitution are wonderfully and terrifyingly peculiar (to say the least). My salvation is inextricably bound to the salvation of others; my life in the United States is tied to the lives of everyone else in this country (whether I like it or not).

Those are not aspirational statements. They are facts, and the challenge in both cases is to learn how to live into the fact of our deeply interconnected and intertwined lives, not only in the Church and not only in the United States, but also on this planet.

As I’ve tried to do that In The Episcopal Church, I have been pleasantly surprised by occasional moments of feeling remarkably connected, even fondly so, to those with whom I profoundly disagree. Those were clearly moments of divine grace (trust me on that), which I would have missed had I not stuck with the struggle.

On the night before Jesus died, according to John’s gospel, he prayed for unity. In the midst of that prayer, Jesus commanded his disciples to love each other, a reminder they likely needed to hear. But this commandment was not a grit-your-teeth-and-bear-it onerous obligation. Jesus commanded it so that they might have joy (John 15:9-11).

As we mark the anniversary of the adoption of the U.S. Constitution, let’s take some of that peculiar Gospel energy into our civic lives. That will demand a lot from us, and it won’t be easy to live fully into that “more perfect Union” in an amazingly diverse society. But if we stick with it, and with God’s help, we may yet discover in new ways that the “truly arduous task” can lead us into joy.

Queer Home Economics

What do civil marriage equality and the debt default crisis have in common? They are linked by a deceptively simple word: economics.

Marriage clearly means much more than joint checking accounts. But let’s not assume that love, companionship, and sexual intimacy have no economic implications. If economics didn’t matter, we wouldn’t care how employers or health care providers or the Church Pension Fund treat same-gender relationships.

And while the debt default crisis makes great partisan drama, that’s just the tip of a vast ideological iceberg, which now threatens to sink the Ship of State on which all of us depend in countless ways, whether we’re single or newly married or somewhere in between.

Christians don’t have to be professional economists to notice that both the Bible and Church history are packed with economic images at nearly every turn. Those images do not a fiscal policy make, to be sure. But they can help to shape a Christian voice in the public square, as some religious leaders recently discovered as they get arrested in the U.S. Capitol rotunda for doing precisely that.

Biblical theologian Walter Brueggemann once remarked that he wished Episcopalians would take the Bible just as seriously when talking about economics as they do when talking about sexuality. But those are not separate concerns; they are deeply intertwined in what I like to call the Gospel vocation of “queer home economics.” I know that “queer” word is troubling, but I don’t mean it as just shorthand for LGBT people. I mean it more broadly as strange, odd, and just peculiar.

I think it’s worth remembering that the word “economy” derives from the combination of two Greek words: oikos, or house, and nomos, or law. In that sense, organizing the daily operations of one’s household, from grocery shopping to meal preparation and bill paying to laundry, describes an economic effort to create a home that functions for the benefit of all who live there – which is precisely what “homemakers” were taught to do in high school courses called “home economics.”

Professional economists do something similar but on a larger scale, with towns, cities, counties, states, and nations, and increasingly, how all of those interrelate in a global household – clearly much more an art than a science.

In Christian traditions “economy” has also been used to talk about God. This doesn’t make God a cosmic banker setting heavenly monetary policy. Consider instead “divine economy” in the more “homey” sense. If the world is not only God’s creation but also God’s household, then God-the-home-economist seeks to create a vast, lively household in which all thrive and flourish.

Insert Jesus into this mix and something rather peculiar if not rather queer happens. Consider the shepherd Jesus described who leaves ninety-nine sheep behind to find the one that is lost (Luke 15:4-7), or the man burying treasure in a field and then selling everything he has to buy that field (Mt 13:44), or the woman turning her house upside down to find one missing coin (Luke 15:8), or getting rid of all possessions to purchase the one pearl of great value (Mt 13:45).

Those are all economic images Jesus used to describe what he called “the kingdom of God” and by most economic standards today, Jesus was a lousy economist. It makes no economic sense to put ninety-nine sheep at risk for the sake of just one or to liquidate one’s resources for the sake of buried treasure or a single pearl, no matter how valuable, or to devote so much time and effort to recovering one coin.

Early Christians took the economic implications of those parables to heart as they blurred the distinction between private household economies and larger societal ones. In the Acts of the Apostles, those Christians understood such revolutionary economics as an indispensable component of their faith and, indeed, as a matter of life and death (Acts 4:32-37, 5:1-7).

Jesus tried to prepare his disciples for this economically peculiar work by reminding them that a wise householder brings out of the household treasure not only what is old but also what is new, surprising, and fresh (Mt 13:52). Even more pointedly, he reminded them what happens to old wineskins when they’re filled with new wine – eventually they burst (Mk 2:22).

I wonder whether it’s time for the U.S. economy to “burst” and make way for a different vision. Our political system is clearly broken. Both parties are deeply beholden to Wall Street and corporate balance sheets. Among the nations, the U.S. ranks 30 in life expectancy, 31 in infant survival rates, and 37 in quality of health care. That’s a short list in an economic situation that will take more than just a little tweaking around the edges or raising a debt ceiling.

Christians engaged in queer home economics will do so not only for the treasure, the pearl, and the coin, but especially for that one out of a hundred who is lost. Or perhaps those thousands who are “lost” without any health care because they don’t have a job or aren’t married to someone who does; or those millions starving in Somalia (currently the worst humanitarian crisis on the planet while the US debt ceiling grabs all the headlines); or the appalling conditions of the factory workers outside the U.S. who make our tech gadgets, like the computer on which I’ve written this blog.

Whether or not the U.S. defaults on its debt next Tuesday, the Christian household of faith has a lot of work to do. We could start by imagining not just eleven but hundreds of religious leaders being arrested in the Capitol rotunda, and not just in D.C. but in every state capitol around the country.

If we did that, Jesus, the peculiar home economist, would surely be right there with us. And he would likely have some suggestions about what to do with all those money-changers’ tables (Mk 11:15-18).

Voicing a Vision: Compulsory Marriage, Part 3

Marriage is not necessarily sinful, just a distraction from the more important work of ministry. That was what the Apostle Paul seemed to think (1 Corinthians 7:25-32); and the Church has never figured out what to make of it.

While there has never been a coherent tradition of “marriage theology” in Christian history, we can say this much: the Church usually reacts to whatever else is going on in the wider culture or in its own ranks, whether in response to Greco-Roman marriage practices, the privileging of monastic vocations, or the emergence of an official state contract that decided how to divvy up property for legitimate heirs (which happened relatively late in European history).

Today’s complex socio-religious landscape threatens to lure the Church into that familiar, reactive pattern – either the Church embraces or rejects the State’s decisions about civil marriage.

Civil marriage equality ought to be a no-brainer for the Church – it’s a civil contract to which any couple should have access. But is that all the Church wants to say about marriage? Will the Church simply baptize Las Vegas wedding chapels and be done with it? Couldn’t Christians offer something a bit more compelling, something people want to hear but don’t expect the Church to say?

The Church has an unprecedented opportunity today to voice a vision of human relationships that speaks to how people really live their lives, and in the process, advance what Jesus called the “kingdom of God.” I don’t know everything about what that vision ought to entail, but here are just a few thoughts toward it, clustered around families, finances, and fidelity (yes, I like alliteration).

1. Families

A recent congressional hearing on the “Defense of Marriage Act” highlighted the paucity of coherent arguments among those who oppose marriage equality. Among the several absurd things now on the congressional record is this: “Marriage makes a family.”

No, actually, it doesn’t. Civil marriage makes a contract between two people. That contract comes with a lot of benefits, but “family” is not among them. My mother and I are a family, not because we have a contract but because of the love, care, compassion, and commitment of our relationship. That’s what “makes a family.”

The Church could voice a vision about families by, well, turning to Jesus. When told that his mother and brothers were waiting to see him, Jesus said, “whoever does the will of my Father in heaven is my brother and sister and mother” (Matthew 12:50). And when he was dying on the cross, Jesus looked at his mother and his beloved disciple and said, “Woman, here is your son.” And to the disciple, “Here is your mother” (John 19:26-27).

Let’s be clear here: The State does not (and probably never will) recognize either of those two Gospel forms of family as a family. But the Church can and should do that. If the Church did, thousands of people would be profoundly grateful.

2. Finances

If I lost my job tomorrow, my health insurance would become exorbitantly expensive. Linking health care to employment is among the more absurd features of American culture. And marriage matters here because of another absurd feature of American culture: If you’re unemployed but married to an employed person, you can get access to your spouse’s health insurance.

Why in the world should affordable health insurance be linked to whether or not you’re married? As I noted in Part One of this mini-series, health insurance is just one reason why the so-called “freedom to marry” quickly becomes the “necessity to marry” just to get access to a physician.

There are many other financial benefits that attach to marriage, and the Church might turn to Jesus (again) for developing its own voice. Jesus looked rather askance, to say the least, at the privileging of some types of social relation over others.

The Church could voice a different vision by insisting that we no longer live with economically or socially privileged relationships. Everyone should have equal access to what everyone needs to thrive and flourish, regardless of the relationships to which they are called – both human and other animals. I know that sounds like socialism. Don’t blame me; blame Jesus.

3. Fidelity

Everyone knows what “infidelity” means without having to spell it out – a spouse broke a sexual rule. But that kind of marital fidelity emerged in human history mostly to protect property inheritance rights for legitimate heirs.

Biblical writers had a dramatically different view: faithfulness is not about what one cannot do, it is instead what enables one to do something better. The Hebrew prophets denounced the “adulterous” practices of Israel because they weren’t caring for orphans and widows, or showing hospitality to strangers, or tending the land responsibly, or practicing economic justice for the poor. Faithfulness to their covenant with God would have enabled them to do all of that and more.

The Church could offer a compelling vision of fidelity by paying attention to Jesus (again). We know a good tree, Jesus said, not just be looking at it but by the kind of fruit it yields (Matthew 7:16).What does your relationship (of whatever type) enable you to do to make the world a better place?

Civil marriage contracts don’t make families, and they don’t create financial justice for all, and they don’t empower people with the gifts of the Spirit (Galatians 5:22-23). That doesn’t make civil marriage “bad,” just short of the Gospel mark toward which the Church could and should aim.

But covenantal relationships (of various types), entered into deliberately and with spiritual intention, can create families, and promote economic justice for all, and bear fruit in households and communities of remarkable generosity, hospitality, and compassion.

That’s the vision the Church could be voicing today by saying unequivocally two things at the same time: 1) civil marriage equality is good and necessary for social justice; and 2) civil marriage equality is not nearly enough for a Gospel vision of human thriving.

If the Church voiced that vision, we’d see many more people saying “I do” to queerly Christian discipleship.

Keeping it Civil: Compulsory Marriage, Part 2

The marriage equality train has clearly left the station. After New York, it’s only a matter of time until it rolls through the remaining 44 states. This is good news and the Church has good reasons to board that train. But as I suggested last week, the Church shouldn’t leave its theological luggage sitting on the platform.

The freedom of religious expression in the U.S. means at least this much: The Church is not beholden to the State’s definition of marriage. And as Andre Gide once noted, “To free one’s self is nothing; the truly arduous task is to know what to do with one’s freedom.”

So what could the Church to do with its freedom when it comes to marriage? Here are just three broad suggestions:

1. Let’s Keep Changing Marriage

Opponents of civil marriage equality insist that this movement will “redefine marriage.” Let’s hope they are correct. It certainly wouldn’t be the first time. Recall just two important ways in which marriage has already changed.

The Bible reminds us that “wives” were once considered a lovely form of property – and the more you could acquire the better. This took an extraordinarily long time to fix, and we still see hangovers of that legacy in today’s wedding rites: fathers “giving away” their daughters and women taking on their husband’s names. And do note that marital rape was not considered a crime in every U.S. state until 1993.

Let’s also recall that prior to the abolition of slavery Africans were forbidden from marrying at all. After abolition, “miscegenation” (mixed-race marriage) was illegal in this country. And it was not until as late as 1967 that state statutes forbidding such marriages were declared unconstitutional by the U.S. Supreme Court (in a case rather deliciously called “Loving versus Virginia”).

virginia_loving — Mildred & Richard Loving

For a very long time, the institution of marriage was an excellent tool for subjugating women and maintaining white supremacy. Thank God marriage changed. But we’re not done.

I hope same-gender married couples will continue the centuries-long evolution of the institution of marriage toward an egalitarian partnership and that those who benefit from this privileged relationship will use their privilege to dismantle the economic and social benefits that attach to it.

That’s an uphill battle, to be sure. The Church should be leading that charge, and a good first step is to keep civil marriage civil.

2. Let’s (Really) Separate Church from State

In most jurisdictions, clergy are agents of the state for marriage licenses just by virtue of being clergy. Others can be temporarily deputized to sign that document as well, but why should ordination to Christian ministry have anything to do with a State contract? It’s time for that to stop.

The minister’s signature on that document implies that the Church endorses the State’s definition of marriage. Do we really? Civil marriage is a contract and the State cares mostly about how to adjudicate the fallout when the parties break that contract. Surely the Church wants to say something more than that about marriage.

Imagine instead that day when the State no longer allows clergy to sign civil marriage licenses because the Church’s standards are too high. Imagine the Church offering a vision of the covenant of marriage that is far more robust than any legal contract. Imagine the Church celebrating many different kinds of covenantal life for the sake of its Gospel mission in the world.

We can take a small but important step in that kind of imagining by detaching the State’s contract from religious ceremonies. To that end, personally, I will no longer sign the state’s marriage license for any couple; let’s keep civil marriage civil.

3. Let’s Value God’s Blessing

This should be obvious, but for some reason the Church doesn’t seem convinced. Consider just two among many recent examples.

Presbyterian minister Janie Spahr got into trouble last year for signing California marriage licenses (when they were legal for same-gender couples). Since 2000, the Presbyterian Church (USA) has actually allowed ministers to bless same-gender relationships, but they can’t sign the state’s contract for them. Janie would not have stumbled if she had just witnessed the state’s marriage and then later blessed the relationship. The logic is distressingly clear: the State’s contract trumps the Church’s blessing.

Consider as well the Episcopal Diocese of Long Island, where same-gender clergy couples are now required to get married, as the State of New York has made that option available. Many of those relationships were likely already blessed and affirmed in the Church. In the language of the new diocesan guidelines, the state’s marriage contract will “regularize” those same-gender relationships.

The logic here is equally distressing: merely blessed relationships are “irregular”; only the State can “regularize” them. Does the Church really have so little regard for its own pronouncement of divine blessing?

If we kept civil marriage civil, the Church might rediscover its theological voice and find something to say about marriage that the wider society might really like to hear. In the third and final part of this mini-series, I’ll suggest just a few things the Church could say.

I can’t do that alone, however. I do hope all of us who care about the queerly good news of Christian faith will plunge into this conversation and fine-tune that voice together. I believe more people than most Christian clergy realize are eager for us to listen carefully and then to speak….

I Do and So Must You: Compulsory Marriage, Part 1

Full civil marriage equality for lesbian and gay couples now stands within reach. If the Roman Catholic governor of New York can get this done, so can everyone else. This is nothing short of amazing and cause for great celebration. If we’re not careful, however, this heady moment could derail a queerly Christian witness to the good news of the Gospel.

I worry, for example, that at least one diocese in the Episcopal Church has so quickly boarded the state’s marriage train that it left its theological luggage in the station. The Diocese of Long Island, responding to the recent marriage equality legislation in New York, is now requiring its clergy in same-gender relationships to get married. Some of these couples may have had their relationship liturgically celebrated and blessed already, yet Long Island is now relying on the state’s civil contract to make those relationships religiously legitimate. (Read more about those diocesan policies and their national implications here.)

In microcosm, Long Island casts the ongoing confusions between Church and State in bold relief. Surely Christians want to say something more about marriage than whatever the state says about it. But what do we want to say?

I recently heard feminist Catholic theologian Mary Hunt preach a wonderful sermon in which she applauded the inevitable march toward full marriage equality and then urged us to imagine how we can do better.

Marriage, she said (rather provocatively), is not a right but a privilege. Health care, on the other hand, is not a privilege but a right. We can do better than marriage equality if we detach the basic human right to health care from the privileging of just one kind of relationship. If we continue to make human rights contingent on a privileged relationship, then the “freedom to marry” quickly becomes the “necessity to marry” just to get affordable access to a physician.

In a similar vein, Christian ethicist Marvin Ellison has noted that the divorce rate is so high in the United States because the marriage rate is so high. Ellison would have us notice, in other words, that marriage has become the default position for what it means to be a grown-up, a rite of passage into being a responsible, contributing member of society. Here the “freedom to marry” becomes the “pressure to marry” just to look like an adult.

In the midst of this ever-shifting cultural landscape, the Church has good reasons to applaud the freedom to marry as a matter of social justice. But is that all? The Church can and should do better. The Church can and should bear witness to something other than the economic necessity to marry or the social pressure to marry, and the Church could do this by turning to its own theological traditions.

To be sure, there is no single, coherent theology of marriage in Christian history, but there are rich theological themes in that history that we can still tap today. Christian traditions, for example, invite us to consider marriage as a vocation to which some but not all people are called. There are many other vocational paths through which we can bear witness to the good news of the Gospel and the Church can and should celebrate them as well.

Other themes in Christian history also come to mind to provoke our spiritual imagination – the creation of households (of many various types), the significance of covenants (rather than contracts), how relationships of all kinds empower us for ministry in the world, to name just a few.

Most of all, perhaps, many married couples know what the Church seems rather strangely to have forgotten: marriage is not the best thing we can hope for. Yet over the course of several centuries in the modern West, the Church has baptized marriage as the apex of human fulfillment – just ask the modern wedding industry how much it costs to celebrate that fulfillment.

Both Jesus and the Apostle Paul would find such exultation of marriage rather strange indeed, as both of them suggested something quite different: rather than marriage, union with God is the apex of human fulfillment. At its best, marriage can only reflect and point to that hopeful promise and, thankfully, other types of covenantal relationship can do the same.

Everyone who wants to enter into a civil marriage contract should be able to do so. The Church should say that, loudly and clearly. The Church could also say something else: no one should feel compelled to get married for economic or social reasons. And to those who don’t want to get married, the Church can offer some queerly Christian hope: you can live a full, meaningful, responsible, adult life – even if you’re not married.

Will the Church say those important things? Only if it ends its collusion with the State. And I’ll say more about that in Part Two. Stay tuned.

Green (Hornet) Grace

Welcome to the Green Season, when the polar icecaps are melting, the oceans are dying, and the air we breathe grows more toxic every day! The crafters of the Christian liturgical calendar didn’t have any of those climate catastrophes in mind, of course. They were literally unthinkable until recently. Yet the tragic if unintended liturgical irony persists.

Traditionally, liturgical vestments are green in this long season that follows the Feast of Pentecost and runs all the way to Advent (often the last Sunday in November). In the northern hemisphere, that color makes sense as crops are growing, fruit is ripening, and harvest is peaking up over the horizon. So also for the Church – Pentecost prompts growth, the blossoming of the Spirit’s work, and an anticipation of the divine harvest at the end of time, celebrated on the first Sunday of Advent.

Sounds great, but last month, just twelve days after Pentecost, a report was presented to the United Nations declaring that a massive, oceans-wide extinction of marine life is now underway and is all but inevitable. This should have been even more newsworthy than marriage equality in New York – we can protect the kids of gay and lesbian couples with the benefits of marriage but will we give them an inhabitable planet to live on?

There’s more at stake here than whether we should eat salmon. Think of the oceans as your own cardiovascular system – without it, you’re dead. And that report to the U.N. was just the latest of the “oops, it’s worse than we thought” reports about the devastating changes through which this planet’s climate is currently lurching. (Read about that report and others here.)

The planet is dying. Why aren’t we in the streets protesting vociferously the absurd policies of our world’s governments? Are we preaching about this from our pulpits?

So, green for this season? Really? What’s the color of sludge, or dead fish, or torpor?

No, none of those despairing colors will do, not even now, not if Pentecost is still worth celebrating. I’ll still go with green for this long season if it can stand for a vibrant hope. Yet even that needs a caveat. As some in President Obama’s own party have been reminding him lately, hope is not enough. And as Harvey Milk once said, “It’s not that we can live on hope alone, but that without it, life isn’t worth living.”

Maybe the Green Hornet can energize the hope of this season into action. I’ve always liked this about that fictional crime fighter: he doesn’t have any superhuman powers like Spiderman or Wonder Woman do. He was just an ordinary guy who grew sick of political corruption and rampant crime, someone who refused to believe that there were no solutions; he became a solution himself.

That sounds a least a bit like Pentecost. The Spirit doesn’t just snap her fingers and make things happen. She empowers people (and often the least likely by most standards) to transform, renew, heal, and generally “turn the world upside down” (Acts 17:6). (Read my take on the “Peculiar Pentecost Agenda” here.)

We need to tap that world-changing energy again, especially given modern western Christianity’s abdication of nearly all environmental responsibility and its acquiescence, especially in the United States, to the beguilements of corporate profit in the name of religious patriotism, which have nearly eviscerated any traction the Gospel might have had for our current crises.

And I’m pointing that finger at myself. I’m no less culpable than anyone else for the planetary mess we now face. I still drive my car whenever I please, buy way too much useless stuff, and rather naively trust that “good” politicians will sort this all out.

Here’s the thing: They won’t. It’s up to us, all the ordinary, unremarkable but fabulous creatures of God, empowered by the Spirit, to turn this dire tide. Because of the hope that Spirit inspires, I refuse to believe that there’s nothing to be done – but what do we do?

I honestly don’t know. I do know that I need lots of “Katos.” The Green Hornet needed a companion, just as the so-called “Lone” Ranger did.

I can’t change the world by myself. The earliest Christians couldn’t, either. They needed a community. And so do we, especially in this “green season” when the icecaps are melting, the oceans are dying, and we’re choking on the air we make by just driving to work (if we’re lucky enough to have a job).

So, how should we do it? How can we make the green of this long season more than a liturgical color? Where do we find the Green (Hornet) Grace we need and what do we do with it?