People are what matter
When I was 19 years old, I lived abroad in a small community of 40 students from a small college. One morning our home campus' paper arrived over breakfast. We sat side by side as we read the article. Four members of our group got very quiet. And I knew why.
...
Have you ever judged someone by what seemed like an acceptable and righteous standard - Gay, Lesbian or Transgender folk, Non-Christians, ethnic minorities or the poor - only to realize by the end of the encounter that you had better re-evaluate your position?
The readings this Sunday emphasize the reversal of what we might discern facing the inevitable question in any "gathering of God." Who is in? and Who is out?
Paul, in his letter to the Christians in Rome, addresses this question in terms of the tension between gentile Christians and Jewish Christians. "By no means," he writes, has the covenant between God and Israel been annulled. Although there is a new covenant outside the Law revealed in the life of Christ, God's love is irrevocable. He warns new Christians not to boast in their gift of God's love & mercy. You aren't the only ones receiving it!
How difficult it is to follow a God like this!? How do we know who is right?
If you answered 'yes' to the opening question, you are not alone. We all have judged wrong based on what we have learned. Sometimes we even learn these categories in Church. While they are a base to engage the world from, I trust Karl Barth's intuition that he/she who knows the Gospel knows the "world is bound by a Truth that contradicts it completely." (Ibid) Even Christ made mistakes and had to change his mind publicly!
In Matthew's Gospel this Sunday, Christ and his followers travel outside the boundaries of Israel for respite after a difficult ministry within Israel. For the sake of their tenuous ministry within Israel, Christ and company would have been very careful to not appear to also minister to the "strangers" of Tyre and Sidon. Canaanites were definitely outside the covenant. Meaning they were unsaved and unworthy in our terms. Although in the preceding passage, Christ challenges a group of Pharisees, Jewish Christians and the Law itself when he teaches that it is not breaking rituals or rules that defiles us, but what comes out of our mouth in words, it would have been shocking to break that boundary and minister with "Strangers." It was. and still is.
Christ teaches us something about perfection here and reveals Barth's notion of contradiction. Christ hesitates to respond to the Canannite woman based on all that was considered holy and lawful according to human understanding. Yet, her faith, desire, and love for her daughter - her humanness - breaks him from his automatic response. Christ the man & God changes his mind. He didn't get it right the first time. It was the clash between an of idea who-is-in with a living person who-is-out that revealed what, in fact, Christ does.
For myself and others in the group that morning after reading the article that equivocated Matthew Shepherd's murder, some of us reconciled the love for our friends with what we thought was doctrine by realizing that rules can be wrong. People are what matter.
Matthew Shepherd had been killed in Wyoming. The headline was: "Murder is Wrong, But So is Homosexuality."
During the discussion that ensued, the majority's voice was hurtful and insensitive. They thought they were talking about "strangers" - people distant and unconnected to our group - when in fact they hurt people close to us. The four students who became voiceless during the discussion were some of the most loved people in the group. After breakfast, I found some of my gay classmates in my room in tears or fuming with rage.
During the discussion that ensued, the majority's voice was hurtful and insensitive. They thought they were talking about "strangers" - people distant and unconnected to our group - when in fact they hurt people close to us. The four students who became voiceless during the discussion were some of the most loved people in the group. After breakfast, I found some of my gay classmates in my room in tears or fuming with rage.
...
Have you ever judged someone by what seemed like an acceptable and righteous standard - Gay, Lesbian or Transgender folk, Non-Christians, ethnic minorities or the poor - only to realize by the end of the encounter that you had better re-evaluate your position?
The readings this Sunday emphasize the reversal of what we might discern facing the inevitable question in any "gathering of God." Who is in? and Who is out?
Paul, in his letter to the Christians in Rome, addresses this question in terms of the tension between gentile Christians and Jewish Christians. "By no means," he writes, has the covenant between God and Israel been annulled. Although there is a new covenant outside the Law revealed in the life of Christ, God's love is irrevocable. He warns new Christians not to boast in their gift of God's love & mercy. You aren't the only ones receiving it!
How difficult it is to follow a God like this!? How do we know who is right?
This is the wrong question.
The theologian Karl Barth asserts that the Gospel sets a question-mark against the whole course of the world. No one is excluded from the divine contradiction that is in Christ. What most humans "this side of resurrection" proclaim as God is most characteristically Not-God. This 'God' is a complete affirmation not of the Kingdom but the course of the world as it is. This 'God' does not redeem creation (Epistle to the Romans). In Christ, God offers to be known as the Redeemer by doing something different.
If you answered 'yes' to the opening question, you are not alone. We all have judged wrong based on what we have learned. Sometimes we even learn these categories in Church. While they are a base to engage the world from, I trust Karl Barth's intuition that he/she who knows the Gospel knows the "world is bound by a Truth that contradicts it completely." (Ibid) Even Christ made mistakes and had to change his mind publicly!
In Matthew's Gospel this Sunday, Christ and his followers travel outside the boundaries of Israel for respite after a difficult ministry within Israel. For the sake of their tenuous ministry within Israel, Christ and company would have been very careful to not appear to also minister to the "strangers" of Tyre and Sidon. Canaanites were definitely outside the covenant. Meaning they were unsaved and unworthy in our terms. Although in the preceding passage, Christ challenges a group of Pharisees, Jewish Christians and the Law itself when he teaches that it is not breaking rituals or rules that defiles us, but what comes out of our mouth in words, it would have been shocking to break that boundary and minister with "Strangers." It was. and still is.
Christ teaches us something about perfection here and reveals Barth's notion of contradiction. Christ hesitates to respond to the Canannite woman based on all that was considered holy and lawful according to human understanding. Yet, her faith, desire, and love for her daughter - her humanness - breaks him from his automatic response. Christ the man & God changes his mind. He didn't get it right the first time. It was the clash between an of idea who-is-in with a living person who-is-out that revealed what, in fact, Christ does.
For myself and others in the group that morning after reading the article that equivocated Matthew Shepherd's murder, some of us reconciled the love for our friends with what we thought was doctrine by realizing that rules can be wrong. People are what matter.
posted by jimmy nagle at
1:37 PM
1 Comments:
Rules can be wrong. People are what matter. Wow! You are so right.
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