Sunday, June 25, 2017

Living within earshot



The lectionary in Luke passes through apocalyptic pronouncements from Jesus. It’s a tone we don’t assign to Christ, preferring his gentleness.  Of course it is there, the toughness.  It’s all over the Bible, not just the strange world of the Old Testament. Today the passage from Acts was one of those tough ones, where Ananias and Sapphira, who hold back a little from the collectivism of the early Christian community and promptly drop dead.  Anything short of total commitment carries the ultimate price.  

Today was the Pride festival in Nashville.  We gave out water to the marchers from in front of the church, and then went down to the festival on Public Square.  These days, our church flies a rainbow flag, and we have a sign on the fence that says “Love Thy Neighbor” with “thy” in rainbow colors.  Marchers stopped to have their photo taken in front of it.  This act of giving out water was just right for us, it let us not just show support but care for the people in the march.  It gave us a good reason to interact with everyone and share greetings.

When we went to the festival, we came across a familiar sight, the counter-protesters, street preachers inveighing against gays. They’re there every year.  It’s part of the show.  Their preaching is literally fire and brimstone, inspired by the tough talk parts of the Bible, days of vengeance and all that.

Later that day, my wife and I saw the movie A Very Sordid Wedding.  It was fun—to boil it way down, about a gay wedding in a small Texas town.  Much of the movie concerned the religious, specifically Christian, views on being gay, in the immediate aftermath of the Supreme Court decision legalizing same sex marriage.  The local Baptist church is holding an “Anti-Equality Revival,” but one of the members is coming to terms with her recently married gay son. She and her kin are making the case that love is all in the Bible, and that it takes cherry-picking to turn Christianity into an anti-gay faith.

One thing that strikes me about this movie, set in Texas, and the events of Pride weekend in Nashville, is the debate about religion.  Wouldn’t it be easier just to walk away from the church, and all of Christianity.  Write it off as sexist, biased, superstitious and frankly just strange.  But in the movie, and here, people don’t.  It still matters to keep the church.  The gay son in the movie even has a job with Faith in America which gives him a reason to give some lines about affirming churches.   

We want to keep the church, keep the faith of our families, and don’t see why it’s not completely consistent with full acceptance of people in different relationships. The faith as we see it inspires us to come out and celebrate with the marchers at Nashville Pride. I see Christianity as pushing me into that embrace.
One of the street preachers is the brother of a former member of our church.  He’s a good guy.  We aren’t close, but I’m always glad to run into him. I don’t agree with his religious views, but that doesn’t mean that he doesn’t exist for me or that I would shun him. Living here, we live together.  Somehow.  On some level we can’t help talking to each other.  Even if sometimes it’s more talking at each other.  But we’re within earshot.  We are connected.

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