I was really ready to focus on something other than social justice for a while, but last week I received a call from a woman from another church who had read that I was developing a curriculum on social justice for the North Alabama Conference.
After asking me to define social justice, she asked, “but doesn’t that mean getting involved in politics?”
Yes, I replied.
“But won’t that jeopardize the church’s tax-exempt status?”
Well, I said, my first answer is no, because precedent indicates that churches can be politically active as long as they don’t endorse candidates. My second answer is, so what? Even if we lose our tax-exempt status we still have an obligation to preach the gospel.
“Well, I have a copy of the IRS tax code right here,” she said.
Ding.
In other words, she called in order to have an argument. So, I obliged. For the next hour and a half.
“...and it says that a church can be classified as a 501(c)(3) organization as long as ‘no substantial part of the activities of which is carrying on propaganda, or otherwise attempting to influence legislation.’”
First of all, I replied, there’s a lot of leeway in that statement. “Substantial part” would be what - 5%? And do you honestly think any judge in America is going to tell an African-American church that they can’t preach about civil rights, or affirmative action, or the historical importance of having a black president? Is any judge in America going to tell a conservative church they can’t campaign against abortion?
But I’m grateful to her, because I guess if she hadn’t called, I wouldn’t be sitting here on a Saturday working on a curriculum to educate Alabamians about social justice. A large number of United Methodists get more of their political theology from Glenn Beck and Mark Tooley than they do from John Wesley. So here is a draft of the Social Justice FAQ (which will go at the end of the document).
These questions are abstracted from that conversation. I’ll post a rhetorical analysis of the questions themselves at the end of this document.
I appreciate any feedback that helps me refine the document:
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Social Justice FAQ: Doesn’t social justice mean getting involved in politics? What about the separation of church and state?
Women’s suffrage, Civil Rights, the abolition of slavery, and child labor laws were all the result of churches “getting involved” in politics. It is hard to imagine how many of these movements would have ever grown without the involvement of religious leaders like Martin Luther King, Jr., Sojourner Truth, William Wilberforce, and John Wesley. The first Methodist social creed was written in 1908 as a direct response to the crisis of child labor in the United States. Churches have always been involved in politics, because preaching the gospel inevitably means creating political conflict. When Paul visited Ephesus (Acts 19:20-41) and preached against idolatry, the city’s idol-makers tried to stir up the city against him for economic reasons.
Many churches, especially mainline Protestant churches, try to be “neutral” on political issues for fear of alienating some members or creating conflict. Even during these historical crises and shifts in culture, some Christians insisted that churches should, “stay out” of the Civil Rights movement, or of child labor legislation. What would have happened if they had?
The separation of church and state does not mean the separation of religion and politics. Separation of church and state avoids excessive government entanglement in religion, and allows religious groups to operate freely without persecution. The separation of church and state has allowed religion to thrive in the United States (while state-sponsored churches have declined in Europe), and has allowed a rich tradition of churches who promote civic engagement among their members.
Because we live in a [representative democracy], churches not only can but should be involved in politics. Since we the people make the decisions, we the people are accountable to God for how our cities, states, and nation run.
Won’t being involved in politics jeopardize churches’ tax-exempt status?
As a 501c(3) organization, a church can weigh in on matters of social policy and particular political issues, but it cannot campaign for or against any candidates themselves (Rossoti v. Branch Ministries, D.D.C. 1999). A list of the kinds of activities a church can engage in is available from the IRS at http://www.irs.gov/charities/article/0,,id=170946,00.html.
The IRS even allows the publication of “voter guides,” which often include lists of issues and a summary of a candidates’ position on those issues. The IRS code states that “...certain “voter education” activities, including preparation and distribution of certain voter guides, conducted in a non-partisan manner may not constitute prohibited political activities under section 501(c)(3) of the Code.” (page 2, http://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-drop/rr-07-41.pdf).
The same rule even says that candidates may participate in a public forum or debate as part of a voter education event. Churches may allow candidates to speak at their functions and may participate in voter registration drives. Focus on the Family has provided a summary of church political activities permitted under the 501(c)(3) rules here: http://www.citizenlink.org/pdfs/PastorsGuidelines_summary.pdf. Obviously, the same rules apply to churches of any political persuasion.
Won’t being involved in political activity cause divisions in the church?
Maybe.
In 1844, disputes over slavery led to a schism in the Methodist church. The Methodist Episcopal Church, South, split into their own denomination. They removed from their General Rules the rule against owning slaves. So there are certainly precedents for denominations and even individual churches splitting over contentious issues.
But there are also churches and denominational bodies who are more united in how they engage the larger world. Conservative churches who protest abortion clinics and African-American churches who demonstrate against racism do not seem to worry about whether their activities divide the church.
Being politically neutral has not helped mainline Protestant churches grow in the last few decades. It has not helped them attract young people to church or lead people to Christ. Although we in the U.S. often describe ourselves in terms of “liberal” or “conservative,” there are often social justice issues that cross political boundaries. The environmentalism and creation care movement has seen churches across the political spectrum unite on important environmental issues.
Both “liberal” and “conservative” United Methodist churches have been struggling with declining membership in the last few decades. Ignoring social justice will not reverse that trend, and instead will simply make the church more irrelevant to a new generation.
Shouldn’t we just preach Christ, and Christ alone? Isn’t the real message of Christianity about saving souls?
Jesus kicked off his ministry with a political statement: ‘The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.’ You can read the whole story in Luke 4:16-30.
The “year of the Lord’s favor” is a reference to the Jubilee year, when all debts were canceled and all slaves were freed (Leviticus 25:8-13). This commandment was supposed to be carried out every 50 years, but had long been neglected. Jesus was saying that his ministry was the fulfillment of the prophecy in Isaiah, that God would reset the clock and bring justice to the world. (Some people say that Jesus never preached against slavery, but I believe his first sermon made explicit where he stood on the subject.)
Even before Jesus was born, people knew the messiah would bring social justice. Listen to his mother, Mary’s song from Luke 1:52-53: “He has brought down the powerful from their thrones, and lifted up the lowly; he has filled the hungry with good things, and sent the rich away empty.”
Jesus talked more about the “Kingdom of God” than anything else. The Kingdom was not just a place we go when we die - it was the reign of God on earth. The language he uses is firmly in line with all the language of the prophets. When Jesus preaches his famous prophecy about the sheep and the goats in Matthew 25, he describes very clearly the kind of behavior he expects from his followers.
The people who heard his message would have known, when he talked about judging sheep and goats, that he was also referring to Ezekiel 34:17-19. This is one of the clearest examples in the Bible about God’s interest in environmental justice: “When you drink of clear water, must you foul the rest with your feet? And must my sheep eat what you have trodden with your feet, and drink what you have fouled with your feet?” So when Jesus talked about feeding the hungry, he wasn’t just telling his audience to be charitable; by using the language of Ezekiel he was also reminding them that they should be stewards of the earth.
So, preaching Christ means preaching social justice. There is no way to split one from the other. Evangelism, missions of mercy, and social justice go hand-in-hand
I understand that Jesus says we should individually help the poor, but he doesn’t say anywhere the government should. Isn’t it enough for Christians to help the poor individually?
Jesus also never said that there should be a separation of church and state, or that democracies are better than dictatorships. Making this kind of distinction between individuals and government puts modern ideas and words back into Jesus’ mouth. Roman Emperors and Judean Kings had no concept of things like “democracy” or “the consent of the governed.”
Amos told the nation of Israel that they were experts at acting individually religious, but that all their worship was worthless as long as they continued to oppress the poor. He called on the nation to let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream (5:24). Is this a command directed at individuals? At governments? At whole societies?
God repeatedly holds entire cities and nations accountable for their treatment of the poor. Ezekiel 16:49 says “This was the guilt of your sister Sodom: she and her daughters had pride, excess of food, and prosperous ease, but did not aid the poor and needy.” God punishes the firstborn of every family in Egypt for Pharoah’s reluctance to let the Hebrews free from slavery. The prophets accuse whole societies of idolatry and injustice to the poor. If God holds nations accountable for the actions of their rulers or even of a majority, would God not hold every [voting member of a republic] accountable for their nation’s actions?
In addition, as shown above in his reference to the sheep and goats, Jesus frequently cites the prophets in addressing how whole communities should behave. He assumed that his listeners would be Biblically literate enough to make the connection between the prophets’ words and his own. Jesus did not just come to save souls - he came to save the world.
Historical examples show us that it is impossible to address some injustices as individuals. As a slave owner in the 1800’s, you might be kind to your slaves and still believe you were doing what the gospel required of you. But even a slave owner who freed their slaves could not end slavery without government action. As a factory-owner in the 1900’s, you might refuse to hire children. But you could not end child labor through your hiring practices.
Some obstacles that keep people poor - lack of health care, poor education, bad neighborhoods, lack of access to healthy food, human traficking - can only be overcome by community or government action. Of course, others can only be overcome by individual action. The answer is for the church not to put all its emphasis either on individual or collective action.
I understand social justice for life and death issues like slavery and child labor, but what about others? How do you decide which issues are important?
One incredulous woman told me that she understood that slavery, women’s suffrage, and child labor were important. These historical issues were “life and death” issues. But she did not consider Alabama Constitutional reform, grocery taxes, and other such issues “life and death,” and thought the church should stay out of them.
For privileged and comfortable people, slavery, child labor, Civil Rights, and women’s suffrage were not “life and death” issues, either. Slave owners had a vested interest in saying that the church should stay out of politics. After all, they would argue, they treated their slaves well. 100 years later, white opponents of civil rights could claim - rightly - that white churches would drive some members away if they preached against segregation. Here in Birmingham, some of those churches never recovered from their principled stand. Earlier in this century, wealthy factory owners actually claimed that keeping children out of the workplace would deprive poor families of important income and drive up the cost of labor. All of these examples point to the fact that everywhere that churches preach social justice, they will encounter resistance from people who want to keep things as they are. People who benefit from injustice have all they need - money, political power, health care, a supply of cheap labor - and they don’t want the power of the gospel disrupting their lives.
For those who live in privilege, grocery tax legislation, Alabama Constitutional reform, public transportation, gambling, environmental justice, health care reform, and American foreign policy are not “life and death” issues. But for those who are struggling in poverty, those whose lives are affected by climate change or industrial pollution, those who do not have access to health care, these are “life and death” issues. Oppressed people long to hear the words of Jesus, that today is the day they will be set free.
Every injustice that keeps people poor, or voiceless, or that treats people as something less than human beings created in the image of God is an issue worth addressing in church. God is still at work in our world, freeing prisoners, giving people second chances, and transforming lives. God will continue to work, with or without your church. The question for your church is simply, “Will you get on board with what God is doing in the world?”
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I think it’s worth pointing out that each of these questions is really intended to undercut the idea of preaching social justice. Let’s unmask the rhetoric operating in each question:
a) there is no need for it because the issues are not important enough (to me),
b) there is no Biblical mandate for using government or collective action to address justice; individuals should handle it on their own,
c) the issues may be important but avoiding conflict and retaining members is more important,
d) preaching social justice will divert attention from the more important task of saving souls,
e) preaching social justice is somehow against the law or will result in negative legal consequences
Folks, that’s really all they got. Learn to recognize when someone deploys these rhetorical strategies. They are pretty easy to refute if you know your Bible.
I can no longer remember who said this to me, but it went something like this: “Julia Childs said never apologize for the food you’ve prepared. In the same way, preachers should never apologize for the sermons they’ve prepared, nor for sharing their jokes or repeating their stories.”
I realized some time ago that if I spent my energy smacking down every instance of bad theology I encountered, I’d be playing Whack-a-Mole the rest of my life. The assertions are too frequent, too outrageous to deal with them seriously on a regular basis. For example, I think it’s pretty clear that Fred Phelps is pretty wrong about who God is. His church’s music video “God Hates the World” is a flat contradiction of one of the most basic tenets of Christian faith, found in John 3:16.
I feel a little awkward even linking to the above video - as though by the very act of posting it I’m raising it in the global consciousness, when that’s actually the last thing I want to do.
It’s much the same with Pat Robertson’s and Rush Limbaugh’s comments. Should I even acknowledge that they exist? Or, like the braying and barking of barnyard animals, should I just consider their words background noise? Their breath vibrates vocal tissue, and the fleshy movements of their tongues give shape to their exhalations. Commenting on the supposed meaning of those noises, I feel a bit like I’ve called attention to the fact that someone farted.
The difference, of course, is that flatulence cannot always be helped.
Still, giving them attention almost lends them credibility in the eyes of their followers. I would prefer to let them talk themselves into irrelevance if it were not for the fact that in recent years they seem to have gained an even larger audience.
The Bible acknowledges this dilemma. The book of Proverbs is ostensibly written to teach “wisdom.” The idea is that by examining its aphorisms, readers can come to a greater sense of who God is and what God’s wisdom looks like. But some of those aphorisms are contradictory because wisdom involves the recognition of paradox. Here is the relevant passage:
Do not answer fools according to their folly,
or you will be a fool yourself.
Answer fools according to their folly,
or they will be wise in their own eyes. Proverbs 26:4-5
So what’s the answer? Do you answer a fool according to their folly? Or do you let them blather on? Do you descend to the level of folly? Or do you upbraid the fool in the hopes that he or his hearers will see wisdom? Does Socrates spend time arguing with idiots? Or does he seek out conversation with peers? The wisdom here may be that dealing with fools is a no-win situation. If you answer them, you become a fool. If you don’t answer them, they think they are wise. Damned if you do, damned if you don’t. It’s just damned foolishness.
There are a couple of other aphorisms that follow these that may be appropriate:
The legs of a disabled person hang limp;
so does a proverb in the mouth of a fool. (v. 7)
Like a thornbush brandished by the hand of a drunkard
is a proverb in the mouth of a fool. (v. 9)
In other words, even these proverbs, aphorisms of the wise, can be misapplied by fools. It is not the sayings themselves that indicate wisdom, but the context in which they are applied.
It is like binding a stone in a sling
to give honour [or a television or radio program?] to a fool. (v. 8)
My addition may sound cheeky, but the fact is that giving honor to someone in the ancient world often meant giving them time and space for a speech. To give a fool honor, or money, or a forum to spew their vomit, creates a situation in which someone is going to get hurt.
Like a dog that returns to its vomit
is a fool who reverts to his folly. (v. 11)
Just in case you thought my use of the word “vomit” or “fart” was harsh or un-Biblical.
Do you see persons wise in their own eyes?
There is more hope for fools than for them. (v. 12)
And that’s really the problem, isn’t it? Because I can recognize fools, does that make me wise? Or does it take one to know one? I also have a forum in which to use my words. I have a pulpit and an audience. I pray that God will help me to use it wisely, that I will not be like a drunkard with a thornbush, or a fool shooting his sling into a crowd, or a dog that returns to its vomit. The desert fathers and mothers used to pray, “Oh Lord, him today, me tomorrow.” I hope that when (not if) I mishandle my words, I only look like an idiot, and that it won’t cause others to get hurt.
Curmudgeonly Lectionary Reflections - Feeding the 5000
Speaking as a fairly mainstream liberal white Protestant, I am so sick of this story and its typical liberal white Protestant allegorical interpretation. In the usual reading, we (the church) are the disciples, and Jesus tells us to feed the hungry, and we think we can’t, so Jesus says try anyway, so we try and lo and behold, a miracle! Blah, blah, blah. Because, you know, it’s all about us.
Another problem I have with the usual reading is that we have to pretend to be surprised, and it becomes a story about how much we believe. Really, you know about Jesus, don’t you? He heals people, walks on water, and raises the dead. Are we supposed to be wowed that he can produce pita bread out of thin air?
So I want to put on my curmudgeonly preacher persona and wave my cane and yell at the kids singing Kum-Ba-Yah to get off my lawn. I really like Mark’s version more than John’s so I’ll start there.
1. In Mark’s version, Jesus invites the disciples to come away to a deserted place all by themselves. Mark says this twice, in 6:31 and in 6:32. Mark has a fairly conservative economy of words, so when he says something twice, he means it. Dripping with sarcasm, his disciples say, “hey, teacher. Since we’re here at this deserted place of yours, how about sending them away to get something to eat?” Nice relaxing spot you picked, Jesus! I love that Mark lets us see the disciples get sarcastic with Jesus.
2. Now, most preachers will say that this crowd is made up of the poor and downtrodden, and they don’t have any money, and the miracle is about feeding the hungry. Hogwash! These people have money. The disciples say plainly, “send them away so that they can buy themselves something to eat.” The text does not tell us they were poor, sad, chronically hungry, or anything of the sort. It says they were like sheep without a shepherd. I suppose because we think of sheep as fleecy white innocent creatures, we automatically go into churchy mode and think that the sheep need someone to take care of them and feed them.
But the “sheep without a shepherd” comment is a reference to 1 Kings 22:17, in which Israel’s army without its king is compared to “sheep without a shepherd.” This crowd is not a bunch of hungry people looking for food. This is the army of Israel looking for a king! They want leadership, not bread. Also, the feeding of the masses recalls Elisha’s feeding of his own disciples in 2 Kings 4:42. These aren’t a bunch of poor downtrodden people. They are a prophetic army.
3. I’m glad I wasn’t there. Had I been there, I would not be thinking charitable thoughts. Here come all these people, interrupting my intimate spiritual time with Jesus. I mean, they just ran around a lake in order to go hear this guy talk. Is there not a sensible person among these 5000 who thought, “hey, maybe I should pack a lunch?” This is Galilee, circa 30 AD. There are no drive-thru windows, people! Plan ahead! It’s part of being a grown-up!
4. In John’s version (6:5-7), the disciples’ testy exchange with Jesus’ is replaced with this laid-back Socratic dialogue. “Where are we going to buy bread for all these people?” Because in John, the disciples aren’t idiots and jerks (which is why I could never have cut it with John’s crew).
5. John gives us a little kid who has 5 barley loaves and 2 fish. In pulpits all over the country on Sunday, this little boy will be the hero of the story. I’m sorry, but does nobody else think that 5 barley loaves and 2 fish is a LOT of food for a kid to eat? Maybe if the kid is 6’2” and weighs 240 pounds, this would be a reasonable dinner. Right, right, someone is going to pull out some obscure historical reference that they were small loaves. Whatever. Just consider this: what if it isn’t his food? Is he the only one out of 5000 adults who packed a lunch? Or is he supposed to be delivering this food to someone else? I like to imagine that there’s one guy in the crowd saying, “hey! that’s the kid who I hired to go get my takeout!” Or maybe the kid drives up in a beat-up Honda hatchback. He gets out and approaches the crowd of 5000. He looks at the order slip in his hand and asks, “hey… somebody order a pizza?”
6. Preachers are going to be falling all over themselves to allegorize this story and explain what the miracle means and will miss possibly the most obvious part of the story: Jesus eats with 5000 people. He shares food with an army. Eating together is a sign of friendship, and sharing the same piece of food is way of declaring eternal loyalty, as when Judas dips his bread into Jesus’ dish in John 13:26. If you break your Twinkie in half and give me part of it, you have just declared that you and I are like family, and we have a bond that cannot be broken. The one who eats with hookers and seditionists and thugs just made himself friends with 5000 people at once, because they all shared the same food.
Don’t get me wrong. I don’t think this is THE point of the story. I don’t think there is only one right reading, and I don’t think it is simply a eucharistic allegory. But the militaristic language is there, the reference to Elisha’s disciples is there, and John ends the story with the people saying, “this is indeed the prophet who is to come into the world.” The very next line is, “When Jesus realized that they were about to come and take him by force to make him king, he withdrew again to the mountain by himself.” The prophet shows up, recruits an army, and leaves.
Edit: Ooh! Ooh! I’ve got another one. In Mark they sit on the grass in groups of fifties and hundreds. Go ahead, look up “fifties and hundreds” in your concordance. You’ll find it’s a reference to leadership and military organization in Exodus, Deuteronomy, and Kings.
The art of fitting lyrics to a melody is tough
You have to have a certain sense of timing
If you must stre, eh, etch your word for half a measure more
please find a better phrase to fit your rhyming.
If you want a congregation’s tongues to follow with your tune
And sing and sway and give your song their best
Consider where emPHAsis on sylLABles will fit best
And avoid using… ... rests.
Don’t string clichés together and then call that a song;
Let metaphors connote a kind of grace.
So if you’re writing lyrics and you must rhyme “eyes” with “skies,”
I hope you stab your pencil in your face.
At one point Jesus turns to the crowds and asks them why they went to see John the Baptist. “What did you go to see?” he asks. “A reed shaken by the wind?”
I’d never paid much attention to this phrase until I ran across a similar metaphor in 1 Kings 14:15, where it describes God’s judgment against Israel for the sins of King Jeroboam: “The Lord will strike Israel. As a reed is shaken in the water, he will root up Israel out of this good land and scatter them beyond the Euphrates.” (I think the sentence makes more sense punctuated this way, though I’m no Hebrew scholar). Another place a shaking reed shows up is in 3 Maccabees, when God punishes Ptolemy for daring to enter the Temple by smiting him with seizures: “He shook him on this side and that, as a reed is shaken by the wind.”
So when Jesus asks if they went out to see a “reed shaking in the wind,” perhaps he’s not merely asking the rhetorical question “did you go out to see something ordinary?” A reed shaking in the wind may imply either convulsing with seizures or preaching hellfire and brimstone; in other words, someone is pitching a fit. Maybe he’s insinuating that they may have been rubberneckers, going out to hear or see the wrath of God fall upon Israel or upon this madman in the wilderness. Maybe one way to phrase the question would be: “why did you go out to see John? To watch someone convulse with seizures? To see a celebrity? No, you went out to see a real, honest-to-God prophet.”
Jesus’ words allude to the credibility problem that preachers have always had. Preachers often become fit-throwers or fancy dressers. A credible prophet is something quite different.
I wear a pedometer these days. It’s part of our clergy health insurance. They pay us back something like .00005% of our premiums if we walk a certain number of steps per day. It is one microscopic step toward addressing the skewed incentives of our bass-ackwards health insurance system, and is important for preachers, who often attend a lot of potluck dinners and drift toward the heavier side of the morphological spectrum.
The pedometer is surprisingly effective at reminding me of how much energy I expend each day. The lower target is 7000 steps, and the next target level is 12,000. I hit 7000 most days without trying too hard.
Anyway, I’ve always felt kinda silly that after preaching on Sundays, I typically come home and crash. I’ve got to have that Sunday afternoon nap, and I’ve found that it’s a pretty common need for most preachers. I’d always heard that it was because of the adrenaline from speaking in public, and, for those of us who are introverts, from pretending to be otherwise.
Well a few weeks ago I looked down at my pedometer after the last worship service. Its little digital face didn’t lie: over 8000 steps. I had done a full day of walking in 4 hours. I thought back over my morning: walking across the building (the length of one city block) to set up my Sunday school lesson, back to my office to get the stuff I forgot, to the classroom again, to the clergy morning meeting, back to my office, to the large sanctuary (on the opposite side of the building), back to the office, to the Sunday school room where I paced during my lesson, back to the office, to the small sanctuary for worship (where I paced some more), back to the office, then home. And here all I thought I was doing was talking.
No wonder I need a Sunday nap! And now I don’t feel so lazy.
That the people suffer, none can deny;—that they are afflicted in a more than ordinary manner. Thousands and tens of thousands are at this day deeply afflicted through want of business. It is true that this want is in some measure removed in some large and opulent towns. But it is also true, that this is far, very far, from being the general case of the kingdom. Nothing is more sure than that thousands of people in the west of England, throughout Cornwall in particular, in the north, and even in the midland counties, are totally unemployed. Hence those who formerly wanted nothing, are now in want of all things.
I imagined this movie scene, because sometimes I need to hear it:
SCENE: Interior church, day. A student ascends the pulpit.
INSTRUCTOR: Name?
STUDENT: John Smith.
INSTRUCTOR: Excuse me?
STUDENT: John Smith.
INSTRUCTOR: Wrong. Try again.
STUDENT (louder): John Smith!
INSTRUCTOR: Wrong. Listen to me. You are the Reverend John Smith. Say it.
STUDENT: Reverend John Smith.
INSTRUCTOR: Have you been shot?
STUDENT: What?
INSTRUCTOR: I said have you been shot. Has… anyone… shot… you.
STUDENT: With a gun?
INSTRUCTOR: No, with a corn dog. Yes, a gun!
STUDENT: No.
INSTRUCTOR: Well that’s good, because I was about to call 911 so we could get someone to inflate your collapsed lungs. Now, what is your name?
STUDENT (loud): Reverend John Smith!
INSTRUCTOR: That’s right, Reverend. Do you know why you are in that pulpit? Do you know why you are a preacher?
STUDENT: God called me to be a preacher.
INSTRUCTOR: No, you are in that pulpit because I put you in that pulpit. God calls people all the time, they don’t wind up in a church. I can throw a rock and hit 5 people been called by God. They’re not in a pulpit. You are in that pulpit because I, or a bunch of church people like me, decided that we thought your call was genuine. So we voted and gave money and sent your butt to school so you could get educated and go read the Bible and then tell us about it. And I don’t care what kind of postmodern authority issues you’ve got tucked away in your wrinkled brain, but after a hard week of paying bills, dealing with sick kids, dealing with sexual dysfunction, hearing my alcoholic daughter tell me how much she hates me, watching the news about people getting shot and tortured, watching movies of people getting shot or tortured, cleaning up cat pee, watching my parents die and tearing up letters from debt collectors, I didn’t haul my weary self out of bed on a Sunday morning to come hear you offer your opinions or tell me what you think. I came to hear The Word of God. I don’t want you to be my buddy. I want you to be my preacher. So you put on that black robe and you read from that Bible and you tell me the Good News, you give me the truth. Can you handle that?
STUDENT: Yes ma’am.
INSTRUCTOR: So, what’s your name again?
STUDENT: The Reverend John Smith.
INSTRUCTOR: Thank you, Reverend Smith. Today, you will be preaching the text of “Mary Had a Little Lamb.” Begin from the top.
STUDENT (looking confused): ...Mary had a little lamb…
INSTRUCTOR: Would someone call 911? We’re having lung problems again.
STUDENT (dramatically): Mary had a little lamb! It’s fleece… was white. White as snow…
Some of us hate preaching. If a movie crosses the boundary between storytelling and moralizing, we call it “preachy.” Occasionally when I talk to someone else about a movie or book, I’ll say something like “it was good, until the narrator started preaching.” Documentaries get preachy when they catalogue all the ways our culture or our government fails. We tell someone “don’t preach to me” if they start telling us how to behave. There’s Madonna’s song, “Papa Don’t Preach.” “Preachy” is the word we use when a monologue gets heavy with “shoulds” and “oughts.” Sure, occasionally we use it in positive ways. I’ve heard someone completely non-religious shout “preach it!” to a television celebrity when they supported what he was saying.
I believe there are two reasons that the word “preach” has taken on such negative connotations in our culture. First, most preaching relies heavily on “shoulds” and “oughts.” Second, most preachers fail to inhabit more than one point of view.
We call the verbs “is” and “have” state-of-being verbs. They describe the way something is: its state of being. Good writers and storytellers avoid state-of-being verbs and passive voice. It sounds better to say “someone stole the candy” than “the candy was stolen.”
I call the verbs “should,” “ought,” and “must” state-of-non-being verbs. They describe the way something is not, but should be. Unfortunately, most preachers use state-of-non-being verbs freely. “We ought to love our neighbors.” “We mustn’t judge.” Yuck.
Rather than tell us what we must or should do, why not simply show us doing it? Paint a picture of what the world would be like if people did love their neighbors. Imagine a situation—a specific situation—in which someone doesn’t judge. Tell us about how a small congregation responds when one of its teenage girls with HIV gets pregnant.
The other thing that makes a sermon preachy is when the preacher inhabits only one point of view. Speaking from an omniscient, authoritative, deeply religious position, the preacher never puts her toe into the turbulent surf of human experience. She takes the Word and makes it unincarnate, abstract, lifting it above the messiness of human life and placing it up in glory, where we can stare at it in its crystal perfection. When she preaches about hope in the face of despair, you can hear it in her rhetorical questions: “Why not just give up? When we see the mess the world is in, sometimes we just want to throw our hands in the air and call it quits, don’t we?” She’s uncomfortable with staying with this train of thought, because her very next word will be, “but.” She can’t just leave “calling it quits” at the end of a sentence, so she adds “don’t we?”
And this is if she preaches better than most. Because across the street, her colleague at the other church won’t even go there. “Some people just give up,” he says. “They look at the mess the world is in, and they just throw their hands in the air and call it quits.” Because they are not as enlightened as we are, even though they should see the world differently. We know we mustn’t give up, mustn’t lose faith. Gack!
Preacher, please. Give us at least an inkling. Try, just try for a bit, to be a one of the ones Jesus didn’t heal. Be the pagan woman who Jesus insulted by comparing her to a dog. Get on the other side of grace, and spend some time with those of us faithless ones. Dwell with us for awhile in this darkness before you brush it aside with a wave and a “but Jesus said.” The Word put on flesh, which means it saw the world from a particular perspective—the world in 3-D, thanks to those orbs of gristle and fluid on either side of his nose that we call “eyes.”
Parallax. That’s what it is. Every human being with functioning eyes walks around with two simultaneous perspectives, which our brains interpret as depth. Can you give us that? More than one perspective, just so we know that what we see has depth and reality, instead of the two-dimensional flannel-graph preaching we usually get at church?
And if you don’t, well, then you can forgive us if we nod off to sleep. Because, really, I’ve got enough people preaching at me all day long.
I’m enjoying teaching the short-term Bible study “The Bible, Uncensored.” If you’ve visited this blog before, you probably know this is a theme of mine. I think we get more of a sense of the radical nature of the Gospel when we translate passages that are meant to be shocking into their shocking English equivalents. By noting the vulgar aspects of Biblical language, we also get a better understanding that these stories are often about real life, and not just some idealized heartwarming Christian version made for the Family Channel.
For example, when Saul, angry with his son Jonathan for helping David, calls him a “son of a perverse and rebellious woman,” who is “a shame to [his] mother’s nakedness” (NRSV, 1 Sam 20:30) some translations choose to make this into a propositional statement. The Good News Bible says, “How rebellious your mother was! Now I know you are taking sides with David and are disgracing yourself and that mother of yours!”
Taken literally, Saul’s statement makes no sense. How could Jonathan’s shameful acts shame a shameful woman? But Saul’s statement is not meant to be taken literally. It is an insult. Eugene Peterson gets it better in The Message when he writes, “You son of a slut! Don’t you think I know that you’re in cahoots with the son of Jesse, disgracing both you and your mother?” I don’t think I’ve ever heard anyone call someone else a “son of a slut,” but that doesn’t mean it wouldn’t happen. Also, like the Good News, he leaves out the crude reference to his mother’s reproductive system.
I’ve said before that my understanding of Hebrew is only slightly worse than my understanding of html. In other words, if I sit down with a dictionary, a grammar, and several translations, I can more or less figure things out. So I confess that my grasp of this particular passage may lack some nuance. But I think it’s pretty clear what Saul means. He is using an almost universal kind of vituperative rhetoric which every child learns on the playground: when you really want to insult someone, you do not insult them. You insult their mama.
The NRSV and JPS have almost identical language. My Oxford Study Bible has this helpful scholarly-sounding footnote:
By calling Jonathan the son of a perverse, rebellious woman Saul means to brand Jonathan as genetically disloyal, but the choice of words points the insult at Jonathan’s mother; his mother’s nakedness refers euphemistically to her pudenda, which are shamed by his having entered the world thereby.
I love it! In the future, when someone cuts me off in traffic, this is what I will do: I will honk, shake my fist and yell “you son of a perverse and rebellious woman! Your mother’s genitals are shamed by your having entered the world thereby!”
The Access Bible has a similarly helpful footnote: “Nakedness is a euphemism for the genitals. Saul’s remark is coarse and insulting. He accuses Jonathan of treason and says that he is a shame to his mother’s genitals.”
Okay. Granted, there is a theme here of genetic disloyalty. Saul cannot believe his own son would act to divest his family of power. So genetic disloyalty, treason, or whatever you want to call it is wrapped up in this statement. But that’s where the actual relevance of Jonathan’s mother ends. Saul is not primarily concerned with Jonathan’s mother. He is not giving his son a stern talking-to, saying, “your mother would be very disappointed in you.” This is coarse, vulgar, your-mama kind of language. We have a similar phrase in English that English-speakers use when they want to level an insult at someone which involves their mother’s reproductive system. Samuel L. Jackson has perfected the delivery of this versatile noun/adjective/verb to such a point that thousands of high school and college boys across the nation practice it at least four or five times daily in front of a mirror. Again, this compound word may be colorful, but it is in no way descriptive of any actual state of affairs. When Jules in Pulp Fiction refers to himself as “a mushroom-cloud-layin’ m*****f*****,” this is not a propositional claim about nuclear weapons reproducing in incestuous ways. It is colorful and vulgar. But it has nothing to do with his mother.
So, although “M.F.S.O.B.” may not be the most accurate translation of this lengthy phrase, I think it captures the intent a lot better than the alternatives. I’m also not suggesting that Bibles actually use this vulgar phrase, but I think Bible students ought to realize that ancient kings used language that was no more regal or dignified than street punks. And if Saul sets the precedent, other kings follow suit. David and Rehoboam also use stereotypically macho vulgar language.
Why is this important? It’s important to me because the Bible has been censored so long, and in so many ways, that one of the big arguments in church is about “relevance.” We’ve got some sincere preachers desperately trying to make the Bible relevant to their culture, and other Barthian preachers stiffly arguing that the culture should be made relevant to the Bible. It’s a bunch of crap. Relevance should be a non-issue. These things are already relevant to each other, and it’s our M.F.ing preaching that’s created the supposed “homiletical gap” between the world of the Bible and the culture we think we know so well. What we have is not a relevance issue. What we have is a credibility issue.
I want to blow up the whole equation. The Bible doesn’t say what we think it does. The culture doesn’t mean what we think it does. Rather than trying to make one relevant to the other, we should immerse ourselves in both.
A friend of mine wrote an awesome article about the recent brouhaha over The Golden Compass and his own reflections on what it means to be a United Methodist. Even if you aren’t Methnocentric, what he says about the Church is wonderful. Go read it!
Sunday comes with relentless regularity.
Sunday comes once a week. It does not delay. And it will not linger.
Punctual.
Sunday does not care that you stayed up too late last night.
It does not care that you have a stuffy nose or a sore throat.
Sunday is not interested in your mood. It does not wait for you to find your voice.
(Your voice will be in the last place you left it.)
It does not allow any of the following excuses:
writer’s block
lack of inspiration
problematic texts
(It does not excuse much, in fact).
Sunday has only one request: preach the Gospel.
Preach the Gospel to the parents whose baby lies in a incubator, lungs like paper, tubes threaded into tiny veins. Preach the Gospel to the shaking addict. Preach the Gospel to the woman thinking about leaving her man. Preach the Gospel to the ones who doubt God exists, but they want to give you one more chance to convince them otherwise. Preach the Gospel to the self-centered and the self-hating, to the doormats and the bullies, to the bigots and the smallots. Preach the Gospel.
And if you do what it asks, in spite of Monday, Tuesday, and all the other days, occasionally Sunday will give you
grace.
I realized some time ago that if I spent my energy smacking down every instance of bad theology I encountered, I’d be playing Whack-a-Mole the rest of my life. The assertions are too frequent, too outrageous to deal with them seriously on a regular basis. For example, I think it’s pretty clear that Fred Phelps is pretty wrong about who God is. His church’s 
