The Truth's Bell

Our church has a modest bell in its steeple.  Much smaller than the Morgan County Courthouse bell that is my constant companion in the rectory.  Still it rings with sufficient charm on those occasions like weddings and Easter and with some solemnity when we are laying a loved one to rest.  We're inconsistent in our practice but that is not the bell's fault.

On this past Sunday a small group of parishioners and friends gathered to commemorate the 400th anniversary of the arrival of slaves in Jamestown, Virginia.  I had cobbled together a liturgy of prayers and a pledge to action centered around a hymn whose words could be sung to a tune we had just used earlier in worship that morning.

We took turns and while the rest of us said our prayers and sang this hymn we pulled that stiff little rope to ring the bell at least 400 times:

Let press, let pulpit thunder
In all slave−holders’ ears
Till they disgorge the plunder
They’ve garnered up for years;
Till Mississippi’s valley,
Till Carolina’s coast,
Round Freedom’s standard rally,
A vast, a ransomed host!*

Important to several of us including some who were not attending is the accuracy of the claims about slavery's beginnings in "America."  My heart is settled that our claim of a 400 year history is damning enough such that other beginnings or practices in other settlements, that other competing histories or claims only reinforce the judgement.  Slavery should never have been, period.

That it gets the mention it does from the great missionary Paul as a standard of society and culture out-gained indeed undone by the saving act of Christ Jesus is indication enough that it has gone on too long.  Our 400 or whatever number of years it "really" is observance is more modest than our bell.

The truth is that humans can and have been horribly sinful and have from the beginning found ways to subject one class below another.

The number of years in our commemoration do not just speak of a shameful past.  They speak just as loudly -- the truth's bell is ringing -- to turn our attention to our current sins against each other.

Part of our liturgy was edited from prayers for those children enslaved in a sex trade actively practiced right here in Georgia, most likely even Morgan County.  Part of our liturgy named the horrible remainders of Jim Crow still infecting our right to vote.  Part of our liturgy begged for us to make a difference now.

So the truth is not so much undone by competing histories.  All of them are damning!  But our bell can also ring for more than commemorations.  It can and should ring to say to God "save us!"  It can and should ring to proclaim God's power over our histories, over our divisions, over our sins past and present.  The truth's bell is ringing and like Paul it is proclaiming:

. . . for in Christ Jesus you are all children of God through faith. As many of you as were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus. (Galatians 3:26-28 NRSV)

*John Pierpont (April 6, 1785 – August 27, 1866) was an American poet, who was also successively a teacher, lawyer, merchant, and Unitarian minister. His most famous poem is The Airs of Palestine.

The Conversation's Source

From last week, "We are called to join in civic/civil discourse just like we are called to love.  Indeed that is when the people of the church are at their best, when we speak the truth in love. (Ephesians 4:15)"

There are lots of ways a conversation from love shows itself.  Perhaps most obvious is what we used to call "good manners."  You'd have to be living in a cave to miss how much of those practices are missing in our current public discourse.  

As much as we may lament their absence there is more to our speaking the truth in love than good manners.  That is to say that love is more than a style element.  It is an anchor, a foundation, a strength, a source.  Many conversations that are missing their manners can still be sustained to finding a point of resolution and learning for both parties when start with love. 

Indeed, it is incumbent upon us to trust the source of love more than any style when the topic is hard.  Violations of "manners" or social custom have long been a way for the powerful to silence the powerless. Sometimes the asking itself is the violation no matter how the question is presented.  I think about that moment in the film "Oliver" when he approaches Mr. and Mrs. Bumble for "more."  No one asks for more! Conversation over!

When love is the source of what we say it shapes much of how we say it.  But love -- especially love in our public discourse -- has many pretenders.  For instance, fear can generate passions that we confuse with love.  

It takes trust to let love find its voice in us.  And we have to be honest about ourselves when we are love's intended delivery system.  None of us is worthy except and until love chooses us.  

St. Paul was often writing to communities at odds with each other and he came to understand the value of love as more than a delivery system or style or feeling.  We miss what he said in his letter to the Corinthians when we hear read at weddings.  "Without love/ἀγάπην I am a noisy gong."

Paul is talking to a community at odds with itself and he is talking about talking.  What he says is an excellent guide for us as fellow parishioners or for whenever we are joined to that broader civic/civil discourse that waits on us and begs for this love.

Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends. I Corinthians 13:4-8a 

The Freedoms' Protections

I heard it said more than once and have said it myself, "The church would be perfect it weren't for all these people."  Laughing at that remark is a sign of health, by the way.   Interestingly it hangs on an assumption that there can be such a thing as church without its "constituating" people.

Certainly the church lives with lots of objects or artifacts that would still remain if all the members were removed.  The Bible itself is chief among those "artifacts."  There has been a centuries' long debate about it.

It's sort of a "chicken or egg" question.  Is scripture -- and in our case that is the Bible -- a product of what we now call the Church?  Or does scripture have a priority -- we call it inspired for a reason -- that when read and "obeyed" produces a community of faith.  

No matter where you might stand on that question, tomorrow waits on both scripture and its readers to decide how to live through faith with one another.  If we fail to live with one another then scripture is subject to our individual idiosyncrasies.  To each his/her own.  If we leave it behind then our shared faithfulness -- no matter how earnest -- has no standard.  Think Amos' "plumbline."

The same can be said of our First Amendment freedoms.  The protections of free exercise, speech, press, assembly, and petition wait on our practice of those very freedoms.  Otherwise what good is the amendment itself?  

Yes we credit -- and rightfully so -- our brave men and women who have defended those freedoms but we could undo all with which we honor them by failing to practice the freedoms ourselves.  It is the practice itself that ratifies the amendment.  

Artifact or inspiration, scripture waits.  And does so because God is a God of love and love cannot coerce and still be love.   

God has taken and is taking a great risk in "the Church" and especially in the people upon whom God waits, to practice love.  Our Constitution also takes a risk in its people. 

Because freedom also cannot be coerced, the First Amendment waits. 

It follows for me that our church, made of its people, is well suited for participating in that practice that protects those freedoms in our Bill of Rights.   We are called to join in civic/civil discourse just like we are called to love.  Indeed that is when the people of the church are at their best, when we speak the truth in love. (Ephesians 4:15)

Let's not wait ourselves and risk the loss of love or our precious freedoms.  Let's breathe, listen, speak then breathe again.  Beseeching our God of love to guide us so that our practice remains free and helps in making a "more perfect union."

The Commonwealth's Calling

I want to continue to reflect on the interplay of church and state from that history to which I am made close through my teen-aged years in Tappahannock, VA.  But my reflection must respect the events of the past weeks which rose to a horrible crescendo in El Paso and Dayton.  We named them specifically in our prayers.  We held hands when we prayed.

As a gathered community Sunday morning we brought our anguish and holy hunger in a sublime gesture of hope and "Blessed the Backpacks" of our school children as they begin a new year of study.  There was a gift in the way our liturgy allowed for the confusion of a dozen or of so unrehearsed adolescent actors to turn into a tender moment full of humility and imagination.

We passed the Peace and settled into our places and transitioned through my notoriously rambling announcements to hear from two respected parishioners as they professed their heart-felt concern for our country, our children and our own lives.

Only during the burials of beloved parishioners like Berry, Ginger, and Charles have we been that vulnerable as a congregation.  When we closed with the prayer attributed to St. Francis I had the sense that we really wanted God to make us servants of peace.

Whenever we speak of peace in our lives we have to remember that it intends more than an absence of conflict and noise.  The Hebrew shalom/שָׁל֣וֹם means so much more and is closely kin to the historic-for-us concept of commonwealth.

Think back to how our role in a constitutionally structured discourse is to bring together and act on the new authority of citizens whose speech is protected, whose assembly is protected, whose press is protected and whose petitioning the government is protected.  The First Amendment imagines our church, actually that ALL churches empowered by protected citizens are to speak from a respect and affinity for the commonwealth.

And when we speak as the church we speak best as servants of the God of shalom.  We speak knowing the false assurances of bigger barns and abundance beyond our use.  God says "your life is required!"

God is calling us!  Calling us everyday! There is no security or privilege that frees us from this calling!  We honor the spirits of the past like Berry, Ginger and Charles and countless others as we move forward into a community, a nation, a world desperate for shalom.

It will not do for us to be silent or to add to the partisan noise or to assure ourselves falsely with bigger barns. "This very night your life is being demanded of you. And the things you have prepared, whose will they be?" Luke 12:20