Jeremiah 20:7-9
Romans 12:1-2
Matthew 16:21-27
I walked out on Mass today. I suppose I should have known better than to go to St. Francis - didn't I even discuss in my talk at the retreat how I should know better? I wanted to be classy, so I talked about how formal and rigid they were - not about how they take "conservative" to a whole new level (way past just "intolerance") that's much closer to "abrasive, loud nastiness" than anything else.
I could tell things weren't going to go well when the pastor started in with that old parable about the frog in boiling water. I have decided that I hate that parable. In part, because the moral message seems to be that the frog shouldn't be in the pot in the first place - and since the "pot" here is "the world" what does that even mean? Jesus tells us we are in the world but not of the world. And actually, that's exactly what a frog in a pot of water is. The pot of water is the world and the frog is the weird other thing that's in it.
Also: the moral of the story is always made to be "a little warmth at a time leads to death," meaning that you should overreact to the slightest change in temperature - which parallels "change in the world around you," presumably by either trying to get out (of "the world") or I guess changing the temperature of the water magically. The moral SHOULD be: have a brain. Realize when the heating of the water is actually a threat and deal with that. After all, the frog was just fine until boiling. So why the nastiness at temperatures lower than 212 degrees? Because they "lead to" boiling temperatures? I suppose in this analogy yes, but I don't grant the same thing in "the world" as I do for "the pot."
So I sat there trying to wait to seethe until I saw what he did with it. And sure enough, he started right in on how amazing it is that all these things that used to get you shamed 50 years ago - his exact list was "contraception, sex outside of marriage, homosexuality" - are now socially acceptable. And this is horrible. Never mind that 50 years ago was horrible. Never mind that our culture has romanticized one of the most hateful and frightening and nasty decades of its history - which is saying a lot.
Looking back to any time is horrible.
But it made me stand up and leave the church, walk out in utter rage. Because this weekend was wonderful in many ways, visiting a friend I hadn't seen in some time, but not least because I finally embraced my hardwon self-identification and signed up for match.com as interested in women. I was in the loving hands of two wonderful friends who censored my tipsy answers to the questions, and I felt like I was really letting go of the shame that I felt saddled with for my own sexuality.
And then the next day my beloved Catholic Church tries to shame me right back into it. In the name of returning to the decade of the House Unamerican Activities Committee. In the name of dialing back the clock to before feminism and racial equality and homosexuals demanding recognition as something other than perverts. In the name of returning to a shame culture - the priest explicitly said he wanted social shame to keep people from deviating from what the 1950s of all decades decided was the norm.
And all three of his examples were about regulating my sex life. It must be within marriage, for the sake of procreation, and never never never anything but heterosexual. That is not God. That is your fear of sex and women and alternatives to the "traditional" family model that actually really only existed in that one time and place - a time and place that was terrible.
So I stood up and walked out in a rage. I said "Get behind me, Satan." Because that priest could not be a more blatant example, to me, of Jesus's next words to Peter, "You are an obstacle in my path, because you are thinking not as God things but as human beings do." It is not God that wants the 1950s back. He saw all the pain and shame and terror. It's human beings that fear the new and think that the (slightly) old is the best way. We are the ones who remember the "good old days."
Jesus came down and told us to stop thinking we would be saved because Abraham was our father. He came down and established a new order. And that is what Paul was talking about in Romans today, "Do not model your behavior on the contemporary world, but let the renewing of your minds transform you, so that you may discern for yourselves what is the will of God - what is good and acceptable and mature."
The contemporary world of 2,000 years ago was not the true way (and neither was the world of 2,050 years ago). Jesus had a new way. He came down, and He said radical - truly radical things - and He changed the way that the world was supposed to work. And we were told to listen to His words, His remarkable and revolutionary words, and start to love all of our fellow men and to be in dialogue with our God and to throw out the idea that we would be "safe" from hellfire because we followed a very long list of rules (reinforced by a shame culture) and starting thinking in terms of the active good we do for others.
Stop letting it be acceptable to throw out women like the Samaritan woman at the well or the woman caught in adultery because they had violated the rules and so that gave us license not to love our fellow man. Stop refusing to see anyone different from us as fully human and deserving of God's love. Stop thinking of Raptures that will finally show everyone that we are the most loved by God because of the beliefs and behaviors we have made our lives - finally showing all them that we were right. Stop thinking that any of it is something God is going to give us presents for in the afterlife.
And now in His name, we glorify a time when the shame culture would keep a woman married to an abusive husband rather than demand she be treated as a fellow human being or divorce him and get the hell out of that situation. In His name, we terrorize the new Samaritans - brothers and sisters we have chosen to separate from ourselves. In His name, we pile up more and more prescriptions and law as if we never heard Him say that the essence of the law is to love the Lord, your God, with all your heart, mind and soul, and to love your neighbor as yourself. In His name, we turn from that in order to stone the adulteress or the lesbian.
The current face of my religion makes me crazy. And I couldn't sit in that church anymore. But I sobbed to leave. I can only hope I'll have better luck at JMU tonight and at St. John's next week.
I would like to end what I pretty much have to admit is a rant with a story of my own. And then I will take up my cross - specifically, the cross of worshipping alongside those who believe I am not fit to do so - and follow as best I can. And hope that by doing so, I am choosing God over my life, which might be easier if I did not cling to the Church. Which might be simpler if I was not a believer in not only Jesus but in the Catholic Church itself.
It's a story about a story, specifically a story about Babylon 5, the television show. In it, there is an alien race that has a prophecy about "the One" who will save them - who saved them from the Shadows a thousand years ago and will return to do so now that the Shadows (actual name) have risen again. Eventually, it is revealed that "the One" is in fact three characters that we already knew (because three is sacred to the alien race). There are three of everything in the Minbari culture, particularly three Castes - Warrior Caste, Religious Caste, and Worker Caste. And the three characters clearly each represents one of these castes.
Sinclair and his well-established blue collar sympathies is the Worker Caste, Delenn is a member of and leader among the Minbari Religious Caste, and Sheridan is Warrior Caste through and through. When they are told that they, together, are "the One," Sinclair is called the "One that Was" (he is about to travel back in time to save the universe a thousand years ago), Delenn is "the One that Is" and Sheridan is "the One That Will Be."
The reason I mention this is that I have always found it perfect that the member of the Religious Caste is the One that Is. Because that is what religion should be, and what goes wrong with religion is when it is getting caught up in what Was - tradition and longing for a shame culture and the messed up values of 50 years ago or 500 years ago - or what Will Be - self-satisfied preparation for the Rapture or at least the End of Days and all the lovely reward you think you'll receive in heaven for having gone to church like a good little boy and then spit on your fellow man.
Going to church is for us, not God. Your reward is on earth. Your treasure in heaven is the enrichment of your soul and bringing you closer to the experience of God on earth - right now. Religion is about what Is.
