Saturday, October 31, 2020
Dear White Friends: It’s Election Week, Day 1
In group discussion on Michael Gonzalez’s sermon on Matt 23: 1-12, he noted that, in election season, he sees a lot of pastors saying things like, “God is sovereign and in control.” They are trying to be helpful, but that can often serve to avoid entering into the struggle of shared life together (Michael is African American, btw). What Jesus actually calls and invites - in other words, ELECTS - us into is his “sovereignty over” and faithfulness to a people joined to one another and who share life together in himself. We are called and “elected” into a shared struggle, shared grieving, and shared enduring, as we enact this shared life together, as we live for one another as the covenant people who are thus committed to each other in the life-blood of Christ’s Way.
What do we tend to imagine “The Elect” the way they are depicted in this photo? Do we notice that it depicts our predominant reign of controlled segregation rather than the shared life into which God “calls” and invites us, or into which we are “elected”?
Of course, this provoked me to imagine how to relate to my white friends, and to my white community, in relation to Matthew 23. I was pierced as Michael shared and clarified this, because I was confronted with the realization of a fear I had not previously known or noticed was present in my soul or in my heart. Or perhaps I had simply not named and embraced it? I fear that, if I expose and confront disharmonious and unjust relationships in our communities the way Jesus does here in Matthew 23, I would, with my own words, winnow out those who, if not for my words, might otherwise be willing to join in the shared life, shared struggle, and shared endurance. This is of course nonsense, because I’m not the one doing the “electing.” And, this is Good News from God.
I also fear my own desire to use Matthew 23 to condemn others as though I am myself at a distance from its message. There is a whole other story here about my confrontation with my belief “in my bones” that I don’t have a voice to speak on this, and that I thus must by necessity compulsively reach out and grasp for that voice. But that’s not what this series is about. Also, at some point, I still at root tend to fear the truth of Matthew 23 itself.
As I prayerfully named and owned, embraced and faced these fears, I suddenly saw that, my being born into a desire for entering into the shared life and struggle involved and required my own coming to terms with precisely the kinds of words from Jesus that he speaks or has spoken to me in Matt. 23. In this relational engagement with Jesus, I am the Pharisee (and not because I pit works against and over grace, which pretty obviously has little to nothing to do with this passage). So, my response to Jesus’ invitation to shared life involved confession and lament, along with repentance.
“And, the greater among you shall be your servant. And whoever will exalt himself will be humbled, and whoever will humble himself will be exalted. But alas for you, scribes and Pharisees…” – Matthew 23: 11-13
So, if I consider my place in relationship between Matthew 23 and my white friends more as my entering into the narrative voiced by Jesus, as our placing ourselves inside the story, and less as my speaking at and criticizing my white friends for not entering, then what? What changes? And how do we go about engaging the text, the story, particularly during this hotly contested and contentious “election” week? Does Matthew 23 become ours? Can we own it? What might that look like? Can distant criticizing become invitation and beckoning into divine joining? Can we enter in, with fear and trembling, with sacred awe?
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