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Our new moderator, thank you, Christine, has just said a very dangerous idea. She has suggested
that Judson is not just for the people who aren’t here but also for the people who
are here. That may need a little unpacking. Permit me to open your suitcase and to show
how much otherizing hurts the very others who we like to think we are helping. Unpacking this kind of suitcase
is often very uncomfortable. You find that you have been carrying around a lot of stuff
that really doesn’t fit. It’s like arriving in Miami and finding you have no short sleeve
shirts. You have come to life unprepared for life. Or as theologian Diana Eck says, “You
want to live in a world that is diverse instead of a world that is plural. In a plural world
there is a tip. There are no longer better people and worse people, better religions
and worse religions. There are just people, plurally and contentedly alive.”
I am even concerned about how Christine helped Robert accept help. Paying it forward? That
implies we have to pay in the first place. And we do not. People deserve food and respect
and apartments at prices they can afford.
I don’t have as big a crush on Pope Frances as Michael does. But I do have a crush on
him. He has a sacramental theology of poverty which is different than a progressive theology.
In progressive theology, we assume that we are the givers and others are the getters.
Needless to say this idea advances the oppression of the poor and ourselves. Poverty feeds on
shame. Poverty loves shame. Some progressives actually love poverty because it allows us
to feel “useful.” And to thank
God we aren’t “them.” Watch that word “Them.” It is an otherizer.
Back to Judson. I can’t believe the number of people who come to visit me and say, “I
know you have better things to do with your time than to bother with me. But…..” and
then comes the emptied suitcase. There is a deep shaming in our culture about human
need. We are not supposed to have it, any kind of it, and if we do, it must be our fault.
Or we need to pay somebody to be fixed. Or at least pay it forward.
How many times have you said, “I know I am a lot better off than others.” That is
an anti-sacramental point of view. It is like the foot saying to the hand, I don’t need
you. Or if I do need you, or have any needs, I must be a part of the human race and who
wants that? What the poor need is to be relieved of being responsible for their poverty. What
the rich need is to be relieved of being responsible for their wealth. Neither deserves either.
Or as my brother just said to my nephew, in an exclamation point response to my nephew
spending $25,000 on a diamond engagement ring for his bride, because “she deserves it,
“ my brother said in a hoof, “Nobody deserves anything.”
Richard Rohr says that the great division in life is not between the sacred and the
profane. Instead the division is between the sacred and the desecrated. We desecrate need,
regularly, in progressive theology. We think our job is to “help” or “fix” or otherwise
otherize those in shameful need. The poor are not responsible for their poverty. What
the poor want – ask any gang member – is respect. The beatitudes tell us that there
is blessing in suffering and that you probably can’t be blessed if you can’t suffer.
People who try to “do something about poverty” are otherizing their own suffering and thereby
refusing a blessing.
The kind of suffering that is available to people who can afford to put gruyere in their
mac and cheese is here. It is not guilt about the gruyere. It is knowing the great incompleteness
of the one world, that is not fulfilled or complete until everybody gets food and where
no one is embarrassed by their wealth or their poverty, whether it be psychological or spiritual
or economic in nature. If you want to insist on being ashamed or having shame, go for it.
But have the shame for the broken body, the world that does not yet exist. Don’t say
you belong to a church that exists for others and not for ourselves. Better put, this church
does exist for the whole body, which includes us. Don’t set yourself up here as an insider
who loves the outside. Set yourself up as an outsider who loves the whole body, who
happens to be a part of a church that is completely made up of outsiders, by people who don’t
deserve each other but are blessed by each other anyway. What is the blessing? It is
mutual respect, for those who are “weak” and those who are “strong,” even those
who are conceited about how strong they are.
It is a great day to caress what Dr. King meant by the beloved community. He meant a
wholeness, a completeness, a fullness of being. He meant a place where my sorry behind can
coexist with your sorry behind. I know there is a nastier word to use here – although
in the very terms of the great text on different gifts – I want to stop the junior high giggling
about what Jesus rode into Jerusalem. He rode on a donkey, right? In the name of our sorry
behinds – that which we try unsuccessfully to put behind us – let us rename the beloved
community as something in which we dwell. It is not something our prophetic social action
behavior DOES to the world. We are not here to fix the world for others. We are here to
live in the world as selves, as full-bodied selves, in a broken world, which is longing
to be whole, not fixed.
Fred Craddock puts it this way, “When Grace really happens, you can’t tell the giver
from the receiver. Both are so joyful.” We are never going to force CEO’s to stop
making a hundred times what their janitors make. We are going to show them that such
behavior desacralizes them and desecrates their own organizations. We are going to show
them that they go outside the body when they make too much money. We are going to show
the joyful way where the giver and the receiver become one. That will take a little melt down,
a little unpacking of our own suitcases, a little shift in how we see ourselves. It will
involve a refusal of otherizing, a melting into the self and the plural world.
I know people who are very poor who don’t think they are poor. In that understanding
of self, they transcend poverty. I know people who are very rich who don’t define themselves
by their wealth or what they can do to help others.
Let me leave you with one thing I know about the beloved community which exists for itself,
as itself, for others, as others. The two most popular sites on the Internet are ***
sites, number one and genealogy, number two. In *** sites certain parts of the body are
overdone. In genealogy sites, people search for their own behinds.
I watched a man try to fit his car into a parking space that was just too small. He
managed to bump the car behind his, which car had a driver sitting in it. The driver
not only beeped one of those big New York beeps. He got out of his car and yelled at
the other guy. Behind the already parked car, there were about six feet. God forbid the
one driver would move, allowing the other person to park his car. In sacramental theology,
we enjoy moving our car to allow space for somebody else’s car. We are delighted to
be a part of the great parking lot, which is life. As a landlord, we are delighted to
rent apartments at fair rates, and as tenants, we are delighted to park in such places.