“What we’ve got here is a failure to communicate” Fallacies and Mis-Communication in the matter of Gay Marriage

(I’ve done my best to chart out something like a view from the middle. Which means instead of angering 50% of the people I will anger 100% of the people. Enjoy!)

The legal and ideological battle over gay marriage has been one of the most contentious and charged debates of the last decade. It has also probably spread more hate between various social, religious and political groups within the American social fabric than any previous debate. Now one would assume, perhaps definitionally, that a debate is a single issue or conflict over which people have varying opinions. And one would be wrong.

What makes the debate over gay marriage so very contentious and vitriolic is that it is, in fact, multiple conflicting debates happening at once. What the “defenders of marriage” are arguing for is not what their opponents understand them to be arguing for, just as they in turn have no idea what “defenders of basic rights” are arguing for. They’re like two teams at a Football game, but one is European and one is American. They’re just not playing the same game. So what are the major points of confusion? Let’s talk about three of them:

1 Marriage =/= Marriage.

This is the heart of the problem

To our pro-gay marriage friends: Outside of a handful of really crazy people, no one is really that worried if two people of whatever gender share things like finances, insurance benefits, a roof and hospital visitation. There will probably always be a certain amount of theological concern over “what two consenting adults get up to” but this is not the most profound concern for most people. The way the debate has been framed on the other side has nothing to do with legal rights or some kind of civil or governmental standing for a relationship.

To our anti-gay marriage friends: No one is trying to change your theology. Well, not no one. There are a handful of people who genuinely want to change the understanding of marriage in terms of Christian theology. But the reality is that the majority of people on the other side of this fence don’t really care. They don’t need to reconcile a Christian sacramental understanding of marriage with the legal benefits with which the government sanctions certain relationships between people. They’re not worried what Jesus thinks about marriage.

And this is OK. Revisit the subject if they ever want to join your local church (I wouldn’t hold my breath) but attempting to isolate a single group for recrimination is not helpful, healthy or biblical. We’re liars, materialists, adulterers, thieves and even killers. We’ve got issues and so does everyone else, let’s put away the legislation pistols folks.

2 Every heterosexual marriage =/= marriage

This is one of the worst debate fallacies. “Because Kim Kardashian’s marriage failed a Christian concept of marriage is stupid, defunct etc.” But I live and work in a massive community and network of ministerial folk and I can tell you that nobody here would’ve performed that marriage. No one would’ve signed that license or thought they were in any way doing something sacramental. The same thing with Vegas weddings. Christian trappings have been co-opted by people who don’t share the same theological framework. This is a problem in and of itself but it is an external problem not an internal one.

That being said, there are internal problems regarding marriage. The Church is completely failing to handle sex, relationships and marriage at every level. There is no denying this and there is no quick fix. The Church has created a rigid model of sexual and matrimonial ethics (a lot of which is only loosely biblical) but worse the church has intertwined that model with the roving target of social norms.

The Church has said no sex before marriage but also failed to question the societal assertion that you need to be out of school and “established” before you get married. My grandparents and parents got married around 18 years old. I’m getting married at 23 (we can’t even freaking rent a car) and many of my friends and future congregants won’t be married until 25, 28 or 30 (if ever). The statistics are holding out that over the long run church abstinence education isn’t holding up any better than the rest of the culture.

Similarly, the contemporary culture has completely privatized marriage. Your marriage is between you, your spouse and God. But the Church also insists that marriage is a building block of the community and something deeply important to God. And in and out of the Church, there is a solid 50% divorce rate (depending on how you’re counting).

The Church has locked away married couples into little boxes. There is no sharing of wisdom, experience, care and support between peers or the veteran married folk of a congregation. When infidelity, abuse or fissure occurs its not time for the Church to get involved, its the sign that the Church has already failed to be involved. Men and women should have mentors and peers in the Church who are involved and lifting them up.

(We also need to devise better language for complex family structures and singleness but that’s another discussion)

And Finally…

3. We don’t all have to agree. We can think and even say other people are wrong (or they, us) without hating or destroying each other.

This is the trickiest one. We don’t have good space in our culture for thinking someone is wrong without hating them or hurting them. We also don’t really have the tools to have someone else think we are wrong and not feel hurt. This has a harsh homogenizing effect. To avoid hurt we try to find a point of universal tolerance and agreement, not realizing that that is exactly how many of these problems came about in the first place.

I’ll level with y’all. I think a lot of people are wrong. The undergrad who wears leggings as pants. The crazed terrorist who uses child soldiers. The person in the third pew who drives an immaculately maintained luxury car and wears a gold watch and never stops to consider that the companies he invests in are exploiting domestic and international laborers. The picketing jerk who misuses scripture and calls him/herself a pastor. Protestant liberals, extreme charismatics, extreme liturgists, New Age practitioners, Democrats, Republicans, Chauvinists, abrasive Feminists, my friends, my family, myself.

We’re all screwing things up all the time. And we all make judgment calls every day, informed by our experience, and our worldview and our communities and our traditions. And when we’re not outright killing or inflicting harm on one another we need to be able disagree without coercing or inflicting harm.

This isn’t a problem we can solve in a few neat panel discussions between soft-spoken and well-read experts. It also won’t be solved with any amount of legislation. But we need to start earnestly working through the long process of learning to disagree and not hate, harm and wound one another. I don’t know what this is going to look like, for the Church or a culture, but our current course is charted towards self-destruction. The bitter and embattled only grow moreso and our positions become more and more entrenched and militant. God forgive us and give us the grace to disagree in love.

Sermon 3.25.12: “Learning How to Die”

Sermon: “Learning How to Die”

March 25, 2012

Binkley Baptist Church

Colby Whittaker

So this morning I want to tell you a story. Or rather a story of stories. A recurring pattern in the story of God and God’s kingdom in the world. Its a story of empire. And of sin and exile and wandering. Of covenant and restoration. Of life and death and God’s kingdom in the world. It is one of the stories of Lent and in some ways it is the story of Lent.

So I ask you to come with me and turn your eyes to the desert wilderness beyond the Red Sea. We go to the time of the Exodus. The Jews have been liberated from the domination and enslavement of Egypt. The prophet Moses has brought God’s miraculous liberation and freed them from the lash of Pharaoh. The Red Sea opened wide for them and now the Israelites are wanderers, nomads and sojourners seeking God’s promised land. They are worn and wearied and ragged. And as we’ve seen in our scripture readings the last few weeks, they are mournful and murmuring, even longing for the comfort and safety beneath pharaoh’s heel.

It is of course appropriate that we always seem to return to the desert and the Exodus in the Lenten season. It is the foundational story of wandering and bewilderment and the hope of God’s future. It is the prototype to which we return each year.

But we have little understanding of the tale. Why do they wander? Why doesn’t God simply chart a course from Egypt to Canaan? And why does God halt the expedition to deliver law and make covenant with the people? As Dale aptly pointed out a few weeks ago, there are rules for the journey. Rules which are necessary to help us move safely from point A to point B. But this alone seems insufficient to merit the weighty body of law and the profound covenant God enacts with Israel. The law God gives is about 80 chapters of the Old Testament, through Exodus, Deuteronomy, Leviticus, Numbers. That’s a lot of law.

And that law is somehow bound up in the kingdom promised to them. There is an inextricable bond between kingdom and covenant. But we tend to read this punitively. The kingdom is carrot and the law is the stick. God gives the people the land and settles them there. And if they don’t obey the law he takes the land back. And this pattern seems to hold out in the history of the nation of Israel.

It happens again in our passage from Jeremiah. The people languish in exile in Babylon. They are shamed before their captors and mocked by the idols of Bel and Nebo and Marduk which tower over them. When Jeremiah promises restoration of the kingdom he follows it immediately with God’s promise to renew the covenant. And God does this, in Nehemiah we find the Israelites before the broken walls of Jerusalem, returning and rebuilding their city but first renewing their covenant with the God who plants kingdoms. The pattern of law and land is unmistakable. But again it is easy to read law as threat.

But this misses something. We read the covenant penally because we’ve been read into a certain way of reading these texts (more about that later). But the covenant is not a promise of punishment against the kingdom but the causative principles of the kingdom. The Covenant and its way of life are the necessary condition for the kingdom.

The enslaved and broken people who left Egypt are not yet Israel, nor are those who return from Babylon. They are not yet capable to live the kingdom. They have been hollowed and malformed under Egypt’s banner. Empire is more than a collection of policies and institutions and flags. It is a domination so pervasive it insinuates itself even in the heart and mind and soul. It turns the strength of a people back on itself and causes the spirit to yearn even for the place of its own destruction. It is the colonization of the self as well as the nation-state. It is a virus and a poison that burns inside us.

The slaves of Egypt and of Babylon have been brought up in their ways and crushed by their weight. Now I’m gonna throw out the big S word here. This sojourning desert people is laden with sin. A lot of people have issues with this word but its one we can’t get away from. And let me make this clear. There is a self-destructive bent to the human nature, left to our own devices we have a tendency towards implosion. As Paul reminds us “We do not do what we want to do.” But Empire takes these cancerous elements of the human nature and feeds them. It stokes their flames and enables their addictions. Its markets feed our greed, its violence boils our blood, its idols sway and steal our idle hearts. Its industries beat our plowshares into swords and guns and smart bombs. The Empire teaches success over Sabbath, abundance over enough. And so the sin within and the sin without touch and render us incapable of a way of living that is life giving.

A sinful people cannot inherit the kingdom of God. There will be no peace amongst violent men and women. There will be no freedom amongst those who crave power and domination. There will be no brother and sisterhood amongst slanderers and liars, no righteousness while we neglect the orphan and the widow and the outsider.

The ancient kingdom of Israel waxed and waned through the centuries, slowly spiraling towards nonexistence. Its rulers ignore the people, the people take up with idols in their distress and the fragile balance of worship and justice and righteousness unravels. And so Israel collapses on itself, the people fractured and destroyed by their injustice and sin long before any army raised its flag over Jerusalem.

This is the world of Jesus’ day. There is a new Babylon, the grandest and most glorious to that date. Shining Rome with her golden eagle and god-king. The people enter into systems of fear and violence to maintain the great pax romana. Neighbors literally kill their neighbors in the streets over politics or destroy entire families and cities to advance in the great patronage society of Rome. Jesus declares a new covenant, a liberation for the people and the kingdom of heaven advancing in the Creation. And the princes and merchants and crowds, drunk on the wine of Rome’s injustices nail him to a cross, the King of Kings enthroned amongst the shamed and dying.

We are this people! We are this unruly and sin laden bunch standing at the doorstep between our Babylon and a new kingdom project. We all want that kingdom but none of us want to do that kingdom work! It hurts! Its hard! I’ve talked about Empire but its more than Empire that’s the problem. We make Empire and uphold it. We are the problem! I’m gonna get real Gospel on you for a minute here but we are all damned dirty sinners in the most biblical sense of the phrase.

But praise God that’s not the end of the story. Our brother Rae gave a great sermon this week and he reminded us that Lent is a season which is looking towards the Cross. And beyond the Cross. I’m gonna be a bad liturgist here but Hallelujah! at the end of this season of death there is new life and resurrection.

It is in this hope that we can learn to die, that we can walk this season of repentance and death. That we can put the old sinful self to death. As Paul says we are crucified with Christ and it is no longer we who live but Christ who lives in us. We can take the weight of empire and the sin which is no ones but ours and we can put it under a new covenant, sealed in the Cross and signed in the resurrection. Jesus says “Truly I tell you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies it remains a single grain but if it dies it bears much fruit. Those who love their life will lose it, and those who hate their life in this world will keep it for eternal life.”

Our old self is the hard dead shell of sin. But God’s planting a garden called the kingdom and there’s no place there for hardness and shells and dead things. Covenant can feel like a weight which presses us down and crushes us. But in the words of the bearded, bluegrass theologian David Crowder “I am a seed, I’ve been pushed down into the ground but I will rise up a tree.” We are crushed down in worldly soil but will spring up in heavenly life.

Heaven is not just a place we’re going, or if your eschatology is fancy, a place that’s coming here but the kingdom of heaven is also a people we are becoming. And God’s kingdom making is always preceded by covenant. At Sinai on the road to the promised land, before the broken walls of Jerusalem as the exiles return from exile, and in the teachings of Christ on the kingdom of God, confirmed in his blood. Each time God prepares to begin a kingdom work, he restates and renews the covenant and its laws and calls us out of our Empires.

Like John of Patmos called the early Church to remove itself from Babylon (he used a much more inappropriate phrasing), we are called to follow Christ and repent of our conspiracy in our Empires and our sins which destroy us and our brothers and sisters. Lord God, in your grace, teach us to put to death the old self and find new life in you. Help us to take up the cross and to find resurrection beyond it.

Its time for an altar call. We often leave our current brothers and sisters out of these affairs but I wanna alleviate that today. If you wanna accept Christ as your Lord or join the Church we will have a hymn of invitation later and Peter will explain that more fully. But I wanna place another call on this altar. As we sing and pray this morning and then go forth to continue this season of Lent I exhort you to examine yourself. In prayer and reflection and community seek out the sins in your life and in our life together which are tearing down the kingdom around us. In this season of death and waiting in the dust and the ground ask for the grace and hope to take up your cross and put away that old self. We’re only a few weeks away from the end of this dark season and there is light on the horizon. God’s kingdom unfolds and the invitation remains open. May God give us the grace to accept it. Amen.

Seussian Gnosticism: A splendiferous reading of the Apocryphon of John

A repost of a humorous little piece I wrote during the sleep deprivation of first semester finals. I was studying Church History and gnosticism and reading Dr. Seuss with children for tutoring. This is what happens.

Reposted in honor of Dr. Seuss’s Birthday.

 

One day the first principle was feeling a bit down,

his glumdiferous magnificence turned in a frown.

he pondered and thunk and he thunk and he thought

and oh what a surprise when he saw what he’d wrought

there in the light of his emanated glow,

sat the second principle, the barbelo!

The barbelo in its barbelo suit, with its barbelo spirit munching
spiritual barbelo fruit.

And that barbelo

in its barbelo suit,

with its barbelo thoughts and its barbelo fruit,

why it looked on ole dad with his emanated glow his splendiferous
magnifence and before you know

there came a loud pop, a gnarf and kabangs

And out of the ole Barbelo came 4 more things

And not any ole things

no not any would do

but the best and the brightest, the shiny and new.

First Logos and Life, for who doesn’t need a buddy

Then Man and then Church that fuddy old duddy

and they came and they spread

oh they spread and they spread

but they looked around and you know what they said?

Our world is too small oh far far too small

For our father is so so great, so grand and so tall

his world must be sad, such a tiny little world

and so they thought and they thought and thought unfurled

they expanded and grew and then they knurled.

What is knurl I hear you ask?

Why a wonderful thing in which we all should bask.

For out of their knurling

their thinking and thought

their swirling and whirling

they found what they sought

10 little aeons all in a lot.

Well not all at once you must understand

They came out in pairs!

Like a 10 man band.

10 aeons sprung forth, all shiny and new,

and fresh out in the world, they knew and they grew,

and they knew and they grew as good aeons ought

and then, as you’d guess, they too had a thought!

With their 12 aeon friends 22 strong,

they thought and they thought all the day long.

They thought of great things, such marvelous things

spirit-God kings and androgynous rings,

and they thought and they sang

their beautiful song

they sang and it rang

till something went wrong.

Poor little Sophie

said its much too crowded

with all your spirit singing I’ve been quite out-louded!

And then as you see poor Sophie was outed.

For Sophie had passions what a terrible lot

For silence and thinking is what a good aeon thought.

But Sophie wanted more, oh so much, more

she looked at her Aeon-friends and said “What a bore!”

So she sought out First-Principle,

grand ole Abyss,

and strung up in her passions

she gave him a kiss.

But oh what a kiss and such a kiss to miss

For Abyss would be having with none of this

he sent rough old Limit,

that crabbity sort

to sort all this out

all this huffing and snort.

So Limit did his Limit-y best

and Sophie was purified

and returned to the nest

she returned to the rest

of her Aeon-y friends

but as we know things

take turns and bends

Cause Sophie’s desire was not easily undone

It said “I’m still here! I’ll still have my fun!”

That desire, misshapen and lumpy and cross,

It looked at that world and gave it the toss.

It said “Forget you Spirits” I’ve had my fill

of your Aeon-y sounds,

of your Aeon-y rules

of limits and bounds

and with a great whabumph,

and a sickening slumph

why gross ole desire

made some crumph,

and that crumph

it had mass and growth

so Desire became Ii-al-da-both.

And Ialdaboth was a bit of a fool

a bit of a munchkin, a bit of a tool

He forgot all that spiritual, gnosticky junk

and out came some matter with a resounding plunk

And out of that plunk came the moon and the earth

the clouds and the sky and so matter gave birth!

It gave birth to it all

All you can see

The rocks and dolphins

the birds in the trees

But all was not right

Oh certainly not right

Because all that world

was sad without light

Not normal light that pale thin drink

but the light of the Spirits!

Their old thoughty-think!

But Ialdaboth when he messed it all up,

he accidentally brought some spiritual stuff!

He dragged some gnosticy thoughty-thinking souls

And those souls fell into meat-mattery holes.

Those souls became psychics and gnosticky sorts

forming all new secret spiritual cohorts.

Poor Abel who died right off the bat,

And Cain who might have had a hand in that.

But then came Seth, marvelous Seth,

cause inside his chest was the spiritual breath

And inside his heart was the spiritual stuff,

the wonderful mystical spiritual stuff,

the stuff of which theres never enough,

So the children of Seth learned to think a humdinger thought

and this secret they took and they went and they taught

they taught about Sophie and they taught about her weird child

And they told the stories of how he went wild.

They taught about how all this matter is bunk

and all about Ialdy the maker of junk.

But with their humdinger secrets safe in your head

you too could go back, or so they said.

Go back to the start, to the place they still miss,

back home with the Spirits and good ole Abyss.

Sin, Sins and Brokenness: Virtue Ethics as a Language of Sin

So previously I discussed the potential of Virtue Ethics as a model of naming, framing and pursuing Holiness for the modern Protestant Evangelical church. But it is not only Holiness for which we lack a sufficient language. If our language of action and decision is insufficient for framing Holiness, it is equally or perhaps even more profoundly flawed in its capacity to name sin.

In a decision making model of Christian Ethics we find ourselves naming “sins” in the plural. We have lists of actions which are sinful. The goal of Christian Ethics then is to quit committing sins. But this brings us back to the same quandary as before. We have laid all of our weight, all of our pressure on the fragile lynch-pin of the human decision making machine. While the dual lenses of Virtue Ethics and Holiness might reveal to us something like a sanctified will which, after God’s transforming and resurrecting power, might actually freely choose (therefore choosing holiness rather than sin) we must also be aware of the inverse.

Our will can be formed by the broken world. We can internalize brokenness into our very decision making capability. This is not a hypothetical but a reality. We will inevitably internalize brokenness until we lay claim to our own formation. We cannot lay at the foot of the Cross what we don’t take up. And what is not laid there cannot be saved. Cannot be redeemed. Cannot be resurrected. Left to our own devices we will internalize a kind of death even while alive.

We tend to underestimate the power of the world to shape our ability to think for ourselves. We forget that our habits and our predispositions can not be shelved away in our daily decisions. We trust too much in our intuition, as if it is somehow separate from the brokenness and madness that tangles up the rest of our thinking. This is where virtue helps us to see our brokenness. This is why alcoholics, gamblers and rage-aholics meet together. We have to acknowledge that there is something entrapping us which is bigger than our capability to undo. Like Marley in “A Christmas Carol” we carry the chains we forged in life. But unlike Marley we are aware that we are in relationship with a power greater even than the entrapments of powers and principalities or our own machinations.

As the Church we need to expand our language, we need to claim an understanding of brokenness, of patterns of life and the powers of the world. We need a new way of speaking of the various ways in which we become rooted in bitter springs and dead soil, bearing rotten fruit. We need new words not only for our sickness but also for the unhealthy conditions which ensure we will never be well alone.

“Some of these things are not like the other” Why Women in Ministry and Homosexuality and the Church are not the same thing

People espousing similar views in similar circles tend to use similar arguments to make their points. This just sort of makes sense. Unfortunately, the side effect of this phenomenon is that when one reads thoroughly in a particular issue the repetition can become a bit grating.

The connection of Women in Ministry to Homosexuality in the Church is one of those arguments. It gets made so often. Day after day. (In Divinity school anyway, its a weird world).  I’ve heard good versions of this argument which used overly complicated phrases like “trajectory of the text” and I’ve heard very bad arguments that use words like “progress” and “tolerance” and “like” (alot).

Unfortunately they all fall on a single nasty bit of biblical exegesis that has the cunningly hidden flaw of being completely wrong. This connection, sometimes expanding its panoply to embrace integration and civil rights, makes the deeply flawed assumption that the acceptance of women in ministry positions is out of a broadly inferred biblical concept of tolerance or progress. While this might be the position of some, in specific scriptural terms it fails to reveal the actual basis of the moves. While the place of women in ministry is called into question in a handful of passages (1 Cor 14:33-36, 1 Tim 2:11-15) it is also, this is important, pointed to and even embraced in other passages (Romans 16, the deacon Phoebe and the Apostle Junia; Phil 4:3 Paul’s coworkers Eodia and Syntyche; 1 Cor 11:5, 3 chapters before Paul commends women to be silent he discusses how they should behave while speaking…). This is not a question of prohibitions in Scripture being overturned by some type of rolling tide of historical progress but rather an awareness and repentance of a prior interpretation on the basis of other Scripture.

It is here that the two paths diverge. The abolition of slavery, civil rights and women in ministry all have clear and visible Scriptural antecedents (which not only preceded their causes but in some cases were one of the direct causes of said movement). Unfortunately, for the sake of those of us who must now address this issue, there is no variation on the question of homosexuality within the New Testament canon. There is no egalitarian or libertarian freedom set against a later more conservative tradition. This changes the nature of the debate for the Church.

The Church is now locked into a conflict between a broadly conceived theological notion of love and acceptance and its own scripture. Before we can make any ethical pronouncement we must first answer the hermeneutical dilemma this proposes. And it is a very dangerous moment in the history of interpretation. This is primarily a question of sacrament, a question of holy things within the Church. Marriage and Ordination are two of the most fundamental practices of the Church. This question raises the risk of cleanly separating these sacraments from the very Scripture which provide their basis.

This is not to close the debate. This is not the end. But it does mean that the debate must be phrased in new ways and answer new questions. How are our practices and our norms beholden to Scripture? Can they be separated and remain Christian practices? Is there a way to encompass both scriptural fidelity and a means of inviting all our brothers and sisters into service and unity?

Sunday: Mourning, Meaning, Jesus and Pain

This upcoming Sunday will be one of the most emotionally charged days in recent American history. Falling as it does at the conjunction of tragic history and the most common day of worship for most Christians it is almost sure that many if not most churches will be acknowledging that intersect in one form or another. But what form such an acknowledgment will take is both ambiguous and fraught with theological and personal dangers.

The Church must find its rest and function both in the pain and subjective personal reality of its community and yet simultaneously within the critique of that very subjective reality, calling that personal context into question. To be the Church means offering comfort and solace for the trials and ordeals (the peirasmon of the Lord’s Prayer) of the World and yet to do so without becoming bound by and subject to the perspective and character of that World.

We cannot bow out of these fiercely emotional and painful moments in the collective life of our communities. There is too much at stake. We cannot forsake either persons or conscience in their darkest hours. However, to participate in such a narration will inevitably lead a Christian community of conscience into conflict and friction with the broader American perspective.

The American Protestant Evangelical churches (aka most of us here) have been too quick to force the story of human pain out of our communal dialogue. We have given up on this dangerous topic. We have relegated it to biology, pharmacology and psychology. We no longer posit that Christ has meaning for those in profound suffering. That is not quite fair, rather we posit that Christ and the Christian faith has nothing peculiar or critical to offer to the current narrative of human suffering.

And this is our failing. And now is when it falls down around us. In the moment of most profound pain for the collective community, the Church shuddered and went silent. Surely each of us has experienced greater tragedy or pain personally. But the sheer exponential and expansive power of shared suffering swiftly and easily washed away the Church’s thin narrative of theodicy and meaning in suffering.

And forgiveness is rooted in theodicy. It is rooted in finding a divine presence, a holy comfort in the midst of pain. When we forsake a sense of meaning in suffering we render the Gospel imperative to forgiveness nonsensical. In the absence of divine presence, our logic falls on game theory, militarism or satisfaction. We must retaliate. For safety, for honor, for our children and our way of life.

But retaliation multiplies suffering. It externalizes pain without removing it. Our own suffering becomes the seed of a malignant growth which wraps its roots around our lives. Our pain becomes the fertile soil for further injustice, further violence and recrimination. For each lost life there are new orphans, new widows, mournful brothers and fathers and uncles. For each injustice there is the open wound and lasting scars which are the basis for a dozen more.

The beauty of the Cross, of holy forgiveness, of God’s love expressed in human relation, is that it is the only way in which suffering can truly leave the world. It is only when we can entrust judgment to God and God alone, vengeance to God alone, that the Cross finds its expression. The calling of the Church, demonstrated in the person of Christ, is to subvert evil. To overwhelm evil with good without forsaking goodness. In the turned cheek, violence gives way to humanity, shattering the former position of inhuman sufferer and inhuman abuser. In the extra mile, the paradigm of oppressor and oppressed, occupier and occupied, is dissolved, not in violence but in love and shared humanity. The very Cross of Roman suppression, domination, pain and humiliation is rocked by forgiveness “Father, forgive them for they know not what they do.” And it is destroyed utterly in the resurrection. God’s vindication shattering the terror of all the world’s mechanisms of violence and suffering.

It is in this light that Paul can say

“Who will separate us from the love of Christ? Will hardship, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? As it is written,
‘For your sake we are being killed all day long;
we are accounted as sheep to be slaughtered.’
No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.” Romans 8:35-39

And further still

Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse them. Rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep. Live in harmony with one another; do not be haughty, but associate with the lowly; do not claim to be wiser than you are. Do not repay anyone evil for evil, but take thought for what is noble in the sight of all. If it is possible, so far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all. Beloved, never avenge yourselves, but leave room for the wrath of God; for it is written, ‘Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord.’ No, ‘if your enemies are hungry, feed them; if they are thirsty, give them something to drink; for by doing this you will heap burning coals on their heads.’ Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good. (Romans 12:14-21)

This is what we must stand for, even in the midst of suffering. Even in the shadows of our deepest pain, we know that Christ has tread that way before us, divine presence and human suffering intermingled, transforming our trials and suffering into joy, even as it changed the waters of our baptism. In this way, the Cross becomes Resurrection, and death gives way to new life. When Death itself is undone, love and forgiveness are freed. Our communities of the Resurrection are freed from fear, freed from retaliation.

This it the message we can speak on Sunday. We do not suffer alone. Pain is not absolute. Even Death cannot separate us from Christ’s love and forgiveness. No hand can undo our new identity as a freed, forgiven and forgiving people.

This is a hard freedom. It is a freedom not simply in and for the World but also, in a sense, against it. Even as we are freed in our mourning we are now called to lay aside the Worldly sword of violence and human standards of vengeance and retaliation. We are called to see in our suffering the suffering of those who have hurt us. We are called to see brothers and sisters behind the visage of mockers, murderers and yea even terrorists. And on Sunday we can extend a hand to those brothers and sisters. On Sunday we can deny their violence. We can deny their terror. We cannot deny the pain they have caused but we can deny that pain the power to separate us from the God who offers unsolicited forgiveness. And in our forgiveness we will deny the power of their violence even to separate us from them. Let us have the courage and faith of Ananias (Acts 9:10-20). We will look at them and say “You have hurt us. You have caused us pain. But your violence is smaller than our God. And muted, bent, violated, even broken, we see the image of God in you. You have been stamped with the love of the Creator. You were declared good. He forgives you, we forgive you. He loves you, we love you. Come, brother, let us be good together.”

Virtue Ethics: Finding Holiness Between Being and Doing

There are few things more problematic to modern Evangelical Protestantism than the conception of Holiness. Quite frankly, we just don’t know what to do about it. Its not quite clear what exactly Holiness is or how we pursue and embody it as individuals and communities. We have great language about “believing” and great terminology for choice and action but we seem to have lost a language which can encapsulate holiness for us today. Our language is a language of doing. Its about actions we take. Its about the decisions we make. But Holiness is not quite a thing of doing or deciding. Instead it is a thing of “being.” Holiness is not something we do or something we decide on but rather it is something we are. Holiness is not truly holiness unless it permeates the entire life.

In light of this it is no surprise that the philosophical ethical model of Virtue Theory keeps rearing its head in modern Christian discussion. Catholicism has been embracing it since Thomas Aquinas but for the rest of us its been a bit of an oddity. This Aristotelian model of ethics at first seems peculiar to intertwine with the teachings of Christ. Yet it is somewhat comparable to any model of education or formation. Reading a book about Football or even being a good Football player does not necessarily make you a good coach. Being an expert in theology does not necessarily make you a great professor of theology. There is an important distinction between content and a model of delivery. The words, life and ongoing presence of Jesus are revealing a kind of life and character which is to be held as normative or definitive for Christians, but this does not automatically reveal to us how to go about the very complicated process of imitating and ultimately becoming like Christ.

There is an inertia and weight to who we are and who we were. The old self is a zombie, always lurking beneath the soil to devour our new life. It is not simple to be rid of. It requires a daily death. Over and over and over. When we seek holiness in decision making we rest the weight of our discipleship and our conscience on the fragile institute of the human will. The spirit is willing but the flesh is weak. We will make bad decisions. And as long as we consider life, and life with Christ especially, no more than a nigh-infinite series of decisions, we will constantly fail to move towards anything like a greater holiness.

The way we move forward in our Christian lives is by acknowledging the frailty of our own person. We learn to lean first of all on the Spirit but also the Spirit as it works through men and women of holiness who have walked the road before us, friends of character who can call us to account and show us new truths, the traditions of the Church where the Spirit has tread before and the Community of the Church where the Spirit still moves. Like an ore, worthless and dead by itself, we must repeatedly submit the conscience and the will to the fires of holy community and holy presence until we are left with something smaller and painfully diminished and yet beautifully free of the scoria of our old inclinations and frailties.

Virtue Ethics is a process of becoming aware of our natural and human tendency towards formation and cultivating it into an intentional path towards holiness. You will be formed. Your friends. Your family. School, Industry, Politics, Philosophy, Media, Entertainment. We will be formed for good or ill. Virtue ethics means attempting to name and appropriate this formation, placing it under the sway of the Spirit. If we begin with the presupposition of a broken world then the absolute worst state in which to function is the unregarded. To be unaware of your influences. To live in such a state is not truly life, foregoing the breadth and weight of reason and will. In Scriptural terms, until we name our powers, our idols and our Babylon we can not come away from them.