Widening the circle of inclusion

8/20

Still working on details for a long term relationship with Noche. Nate and Teddy hard at work hanging mirrors in the session room...Donna drops in to see if there’s any mail for she and Dave. Things seem to be working out well in Harlem.

Tonight’s Bible Study has us back in the 6th and 7th chapters of Mark. We’ve got Jesus on the other side of Lake Geneserat overwhelmed by people seeking healing. Again. Then comes this long complicated back and forth with the scribes and pharisees over his disciples eating habits. He takes on the fact that they have added to the Law of God with their own laws, interpretations. And finally he goes after the food laws altogether. What’s at stake here is ritual purity, but also that these rules help create definition, separation, ethnic, national, cultural identity. And Jesus is after integration, removing barriers.(The pathway from traif, IE non-kosher, food to viewing one who consumes non-kosher food as traif is not a long one...) Fact is all our traditions need ways to say who we are as opposed to whose not we. The food laws have  the further benefit of inspiring a mindfulness to eating as opposed to just mindless consumption. As well as humanitarian concerns. But Jesus is more concerned about the heart of the matter. Expanding the definition  of we. An ever expanding circle of inclusion. 

He also takes on the practice of pledging your property and goods to the temple (corban) as potentially leaving impoverished elderly without support. (And thus breaking the commandment to honor your father and mother.) And what follows is a long list of what wrong heartedness can lead to: avarice, envy, licentiousness, slander,etc. And we notice that all these are relational...not about what one believes but about what one does in relationship with other people. 

He heads north, over the border to the region of Tyre and Sidon. By the text, he’s there to get away, not continue his mission. But even here he is pressed to perform. Do something for a woman, a syro-phoenician woman. A person who is not only a woman, but an other...Like the earlier woman with a hemorrhage, her approaching him is more than inappropriate culturally, it’s offensive. But approach she does. And he tries to send her off with a cutting comment about food not intended for dogs. A typical ethnic slur. 

And she is not deterred by this. She persists with her comment....but even the dogs can get crumbs from the table. And this stops him. Because of what you have said, your daughter is healed. Not because of her faith, but because of what she said, this skilled debater, used to taking on learned scribes and pharisees, has just been bested by a pagan Arab woman. 

We’re all aware of how embarrassing this story is. How linguists translate the word dogs as puppies. (Does that really help?) But we feel it fits. That Jesus has been preaching. About how actions speak louder than words. About inclusion. And now he has to face that reality himself. 

Perhaps he was tired. Annoyed at one more demand. Been there. It’s not the tenth needing person’s fault that they weren’t there first. My annoyance is not related to them. And her word back to him helps him to understand what he was really saying, really asking of his followers. Where it gets real, so to speak. If Jesus is both fully human and fully divine,then he doesn’t always understand everything. He has to have these moments  of growing awareness. And open the door for us. Week by week we marvel at the literary quality of Mark. How well thought out it is, how intentional the placement of events in sequence is. How rich the text is. Wonder at what we haven’t seen before. That’s what we mean by a living word. 

It’s been a good night again. Time  to wrap up. Head back up Amsterdam. Home. 

Fifth Sunday in Easter: The world didn't end and there was a street festival

5/23

OK. We’re still here. It’s not clear to me who’s not, but it looks like judgment day or the rapture or the end of the world didn’t come.  We’ve got work to do.

Amsterdam Avenue is closed to traffic for the annual street festival. Walking down to church, booths are being set up. Sunglasses, socks and underwear, silk rugs, t-shirts, hats, newspapers, banks, politicians, corn dogs, Thai food, kebabs, lemonade, mozareppas, falafels, pulled pork, pizza, local restaurants with their specialities, a micro brew festival, shooting baskets for stuffed animals, a crazy quilt of the unique and local and the banal that just shifts from street to street as the summer street festival season marches along. And West-Park. 

As I near the church, Luis is getting the tent set up. We’ll have clothing, women’s self development projects, jewelry from Africa made from coke cans, Andrea’s mother’s pottery, brownies, cupcakes and lemonade, like a miniature version of the whole festival. And fliers for our concerts. 

street festival

Schatzie the Butcher is setting up his famous dirty brisket   stand. I stop by Barney’s for my coffee. Happy street festival day, I say to Gary. I hate it, just hate it, he says. An anthropomorphic pizza slice is walking up and down in  front of the church: 3 dollar pizza, pepperoni, cheese... 

I invite those not actually working inside for worship. Start with the fact that we’re still here. The world didn’t end. Asked if anyone had noticed anyone gone?

Explained how it had been a tough week in our life. The AC.Presbytery. The lawyer crisis. A lot going on...the festival, a softball game, the Presbyterian Welcome celebration of the end of official discrimination against lgbtq people in our church. 

How resurrection living is a way...What are we talking about? A lot about stones today. One of my friends wanted to use the title everybody must get stoned....well...

The stoning of Steven.  Was this really what  he was supposed to have accomplished?  What do we actually believe? When a friend’s mother died, her neighbor Rabbi Jeremy, said he saw no honor in suffering. And that death sucks, no way around it, just sucks. I remember Pablo Richard. How he said that his problem with North American Christians is that we  go to the happy ending too quickly. Have to allow ourselves to experience the pain just as it is and let it be. 

Living stones. Back in the ‘80‘s when I went to Israel/Palestine, you could take one of three trips: the we made the desert bloom Israeli trip, the oppressed Palestinian trip or the sacred stones trip. One Jewish friend said of a church itinerary, but you won’t see any living Jews. Another friend  responded, you won’t see any living anybody.  When I first met Palestinian Christians, , they said, you come to see sacred stones and miss the living stones...living stones..People love our stones, but the stones are not the church. We are the living stones. 

John 14: 6 is usuallly funeral passage...I used it at a funeral just a few weeks ago..

How does it preach as a  living passage?

The first pastor I worked with, my mentor and friend, Bill Wiseman, said that when  he was a young evangelical, he saw the Jesus in this passage as a stopper...a traffic cop with a stop sign, you have to say the right password., believe the right thing, claim the right doctrine to get in. But as he got older, he saw a Jesus with open arms..opening the door, welcoming all....

Resurrection living , Christian  life is not about doctrine or right words.. It is about being...it is a path....

I remember Silence, the amazing novel by Shushaku Endo. The young Portuguese missionary who goes to Japan, anxious to suffer for the Lord, believing that then he will finally hear not silence, but the voice of God, the voice  of Jesus. He rejoices when he is captured, ready to embrace torture. Ready to offer himself. And then discovers that his torture  is that Japanese Christians will be tortured until he gives up the faith, tramples on the image if Jesus, publicly renounces. Finally, the disappeared priest he had come to find comes to visit him. You did not come here so that they should suffer for your faith, he says, you came to die for them. So then the young man knows what he must do. With heart breaking, he steps on the image of Christ, renounces the faith. Then at that very moment, Jesus speaks to him, Now you understand, he says, to give up even what is most dear to you...for the sake of others...When I read  that, I finally understood how John14:6 is the TRUTH. Jesus is the way. A path. Like they said when I first went to Nicaragua, nuestro hermano es el camino a Belen...our brother/sister  is the road to Bethlehem . 

Like Jesus says that you can see the father in him, we need to see the face of God in one another, and show the face of Christ to those we encounter..see all the images of God assembled here, we say...the living stones...

We finish the service. Go out to work the street fair.  Danielle and I running back and forth to the copy shop to get fliers for the concert series. Issues with layout. Printing. Delays.   Amanda and I go to talk to Councilmember Gale Brewer about the concerts, fundraising. It’s been a year since the landmarking decision. We pause to get Amelia a kebab, meat on a stick. 

amelia

The cold damp day keeps the crowd down. (When will it be warm?) We sell some things. Talk to some people. Pass out some fliers. 

I try one of Schatzie’s dirty brisket sandwiches. Working on anew neighbor relationship here. The softball players have left and returned. Another loss. But at least no mercy rule this time. Steven says we’re starting  to come around. My friends Beppe and Liljana stop by.  One of the marshals comes by to remind us we have to be off the street by six. It’s been a long day.

Leila and Marsha 

Lily