c. 2006 Religion News Service
(UNDATED) Picture a congregation gathered to decide its future.
Feelings were strong. Disharmony was rife. Carefully coordinated plans were being executed, an information war was ratcheting to a new level designed to convey unstoppable momentum.
In this church, people who once got along have drawn verbal swords. Two stood and said, “If you don’t vote our way, you put your mortal souls in peril.” Another was shocked that “dear friends” could speak to her that way.
How did Christianity come to this sad moment at an Episcopal parish in Virginia, as it voted _ in a world torn by war and terror, greed and corruption, at a season of joy for some and sorrow for others _ to secede from the Episcopal Church over issues of sexuality?
It could be that we have just stopped being polite. We have been here before. Remember early church leaders like Irenaus burning books with which they disagreed and banishing those who read them. Remember East splitting from West over doctrine.
Remember Catholics and Protestants waging holy war, raping and pillaging as they overran each other’s villages. Remember prelates using excommunication to force compliance. Remember the many who were raised to believe that we win or lose God’s favor by how often we worship, what we eat on Friday, whom we marry, and how much we give.
It could be that this scene in Virginia was merely proof that we have it in us to be bullies, to be arrogant, to threaten anything to get our way. It could be that today’s pastors are no more enlightened than Irenaus, and today’s Episcopalians no more tolerant than those Anglican forebears who burned and tormented nonconformists.
Now picture the road between Jerusalem and Bethlehem, a distance of five miles. Both thought of themselves as “cities of David,” both had prophetic claim to be Messiah’s home. Both fell within Israel’s sad history of tribal hatred, showy but shallow piety, weak leaders, craven alliances and helplessness in the face of worldly powers.
In telling of Messiah’s birth, the author of Luke made a point of locating it in Bethlehem, not in Jerusalem. That is, in the smaller, weaker and less significant locale.
Luke’s even larger point, however, was how the news was told. Angels didn’t go to the inn to tell cheerful revelers that they should be glad that something wonderful was happening out back. Angels didn’t go to Jerusalem to tell the custodians of religion that their moment of victory had come.
Angels didn’t go to the inhabitants of Britain or Gaul and tell them to prepare for faith-based mayhem. Or to the future suburbs of Virginia to cheer on the righteous and condemn everyone else to hell.
In Luke’s narrative, angels went to the road running between Jerusalem and Bethlehem, to dark hillsides, to shepherds who resided in neither “city of David.” They were the audience. Not rich suburbanites, not religious leaders, and not any of the arrogant and bullying who have turned Christianity into a mockery of what Jesus intended.
Those who first heard were outsiders, toiling in darkness at work that no one else would do.
Why would we think that God has suddenly changed direction and now wants the “good news of great joy” to be heard only by self-proclaimed champions of “orthodoxy” and “tradition”?
If Christianity is struggling in America, it isn’t because our doctrine is flawed, or our ordination practices are too liberal. It is because, after all this time, we haven’t developed a capacity for shame, humility or self-denial.
KRE/RR END EHRICH
(Tom Ehrich is a writer, consultant and leader of workshops. His book, “Just Wondering, Jesus: 100 Questions People Want to Ask,” was published by Morehouse Publishing. An Episcopal priest, he lives in Durham, N.C. His Web site is http://www.onajourney.org.)
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