En el nombre de Dios: creador, inspirador, y guía... In the name of God, Creator, Inspirer, and Guide. Amen.
Discerning between faithful Christian teachings that come from God in Christ and unfaithful teachings that come from humans with an agenda is our responsibility as Christians, especially now because we live in a world where Christian Nationalism dominates our current cultural landscape.
Christian Nationalism is a political ideology that is NOT faithful to Jesus’ teachings or what Jesus demonstrated in his earthly ministry; and they definitely have an agenda that is unjust, unfaithful, oppressive, and harmful.
So how do we distinguish faithful from unfaithful teachings? A good start is to remember what our former Presiding Bishop Michael Curry often said, “If it isn’t about love, it isn’t about God.” Paul also says it well today: love one another, love does no wrong to a neighbor, love is the fulfilling of the law.
It also helps to remember that Jesus was tried and executed for sedition: calling out the sins of unjust systems of governmental and religious powers that were oppressing and harming people, and encouraging all people, the greatest and the least, to reject them. Now it’s our turn as bearers of the spirit and love of Christ in the world today.
I once had a bishop who used to tell us that we are all called to be prophets. I agree.
As theologian and Old Testament scholar, Walter Bruggeman, reminds us, "the prophet does not ask if the vision [of God for the world] can be implemented, for questions of implementation are of no consequence until the vision can be imagined. For those who realize the need for change in society if justice, peace, and the will of God for the world are ever to be achieved, the new vision that must be molded requires immersion in the mind of Jesus and time, time, time.”
The current glorification of bullying, retaliatory violence, and segregation by race or status, and the vilification of mercy, humility, and inclusion, have left many of us feeling off-balance and vulnerable, but for a person of faith, it’s an opportunity for transformation. When we realize that we cannot rely on our own strength, we are reawakened to the reality that we can rely on God.
Then our vulnerability becomes our stronghold. Everything we do - from how we understand what we see happening around us to how we respond - comes from this foundational reality that we rely on God, not ourselves, to see, understand, and respond.
It’s the only answer to the problems of the world. When we invite God to use our sense of imbalance and vulnerability to awaken us to this new reality, we can also own that the church, and we as members of it, have sinned.
This isn’t news to us. There isn’t much disagreement that the Crusades and Inquisition are blights on our church’s history. We all know that our beloved Episcopal Church was complicit with the institution of slavery.
But did you know this about our history? According to the UBE, the Union of Black Episcopalians, “In 1882, a Mississippi [Episcopal] priest launched a virulent attack on blacks, arguing that sparse black Episcopal growth was due to their intellectual, moral and leadership inferiority.” The southern bishops then proposed the Sewanee plan to segregate blacks into a racial diocese.
In response, the Conference of Church Workers Among Colored People was formed. It “met annually, and every third year at the site of General Convention, appointing lobbyists to press for black goals… through protest and agitation... the Conference served as the conscience of the Church. As a result, segregation was never written into the policy or canon laws in the Episcopal Church.”
Today the Union of Black Episcopalians continues its tradition as the conscience of the church by its prophetic teaching, proclamation, and visioning the way of love. They are faithful prophets among us and I encourage you to check out their website. (Pic: from The Episcopal Church archives)
In every generation, we as a church and individually as members of it, fail to love one another as Jesus loved us. That’s why we have to be able to talk to one another about our sins. It isn’t about passing judgment; that isn’t ours to do. It’s about committing to walk together on the path of love toward wholeness.
Jesus knew this and showed us a process for this in today’s gospel. Jesus said, “If a member of the church sins…”
I need to point out here that the words “against you” were added later and weren’t in the earliest manuscripts. The sins Jesus was talking about were corporate sins; things like complicity in oppression, racism, the segregation and maltreatment of queers or immigrants, or covering up child abuse.
If a member of the church sins, Jesus says, go and speak to them alone first. Respect their dignity. Humiliation is not part of the way of love. If they refuse to listen, take one or two others with you and try again. If they still won’t listen, tell the church (Gk: ecclesia), the gathered community.
Coming from the deep south, it is a common practice among some Christians who take this passage literally to force a “sinful” member to confess their sin in front of the whole congregation. That is not only coercive and unloving, but it accomplishes little besides shaming. More importantly, it misses the point of this teaching, which is: reconciliation.
Telling it to the church is why we have required training programs like Safeguarding God’s Church - because child and vulnerable adult abuse in the church was, and sadly, still is real. People resist believing that such things would happen in church, but they do happen, and the church is called upon to wake up from its collective sleep and be transformed by God in how we understand and respond.
The next part of Jesus’ teaching is critical. If the offender still refuses to listen, Jesus says, “let that one be to you as a Gentile and a tax collector.” To understand this, we must look at how Jesus treated Gentiles and tax collectors. He healed and forgave them, reconciling them back into love and into their communities, even welcoming one of them - the writer of this gospel - to be his disciple.
There is a place for the enforced separation of an unrepentant offender from the church community they are harming. It’s in our Disciplinary rubrics (BCP, 409). We call it pastoral refusal of receiving Communion.
The bottom line is, we, the church, have only one way to go - the way of love. Right now, the revelation of how far we as a church and a culture have strayed from that path of love is bright with the clarity of Christ’s light. Now is the moment for us to wake up from our collective sleep on the issues of racism, sexism, the torture and oppression of immigrants, and the queer community, Christian Nationalism, and the other -isms that plague our church and society.
Our response, our responsibility as Christians, is to refocus on God’s vision for us and for the world. That will mean shaking ourselves loose from our habitual and comfortable ways of understanding, and binding ourselves to God’s inspiration, God’s breathing into us the divine way of love as it is being revealed in this moment.
It will mean listening to the prophetic voices among us and joining with them as faithful prophets who teach about God, who is love, proclaim the will of God as the reconciliation of the whole world to God, and envision a path that leads to love on earth as it is in heaven.
“Grant us, O Lord, to trust in you with all our hearts” and guide us onto your way of love. Amen.
