Let the Dead Bury Their Own Dead

Now when Jesus saw great crowds around him, he gave orders to go over to the other side. A scribe then approached and said, “Teacher, I will follow you wherever you go.” And Jesus said to him, “Foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests; but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head.” Another of his disciples said to him, “Lord, first let me go and bury my father.” But Jesus said to him, “Follow me, and let the dead bury their own dead.”  (Matthew 8:18-22).

A couple of weeks ago, I talked about ghosts.  In the event that you were skeptical of the power of the ghosts of the pasts, you should no longer be after watching what unfolded in Charlottesville, Virginia on Friday and Saturday.  Ghosts of the past, ghosts that many (wrongly, naively) thought were dead and buried came to life.  Ghosts took the life Heather Heyer, a martyr for justice.  Ghosts were everywhere, and their power was unmistakable.

In the face of this horror, there were rays of light.  The much derided and dismissed Mainline and progressive Christian congregations were out in force in Charlottesville, standing shoulder to shoulder with African-American congregations and other people of faith.  I was pleased, and proud, to see that the local Episcopal Church hosted the counter-protest on Friday night.  Rev. Morgan Guyton gets to the heart of the significance, or at least potential significance, of this in his recent post. Rev. Guyton is spot-on in every way, and all I would like to do here is to offer some thoughts to expand on what he says there.

First, it is tempting for folks who are horrified by what they saw in Charlottesville to say, "those people, those white supremacists, are not really Christians."  We must fight this temptation, because that sentiment is ultimately an evasion of responsibility.  It gets us--and by "us" here I mean white, progressive Christians--off the hook of doing the deeply uncomfortable work of challenging the tendrils of white supremacy and other forms of bigotry that exist in other white Christian contexts.  Saying that "they are not really Christians" is a way to wash our hands of the whole mess, leaving the burden of confronting these Christianized bigots resting on the targets of that bigotry.

No, we need to recognize that those that who are in the privileged space have an obligation to speak out against bigotry coming out of that privileged space.  I say this not, as the conservative critics would have you believe, because I think privileged people need to performatively express their "guilt" at being privileged, but out of the tragic recognition that the people we are trying to reach may only listen to this message if it comes out of the mouth of someone of privilege.  There are people who will not listen to Rev. Barber talk about the Christian obligation for racial recognition, but they might listen to me.  There are people who will not listen to Rachel Held Evans about gender equality in the church, but they might listen to me.  There are folks who will never take anything Bill Lindsey says about the gay experience in Christianity, but they might listen to me.  It shouldn't be that way, but it is, and thus folks who are white and male and straight (like me), well, we have a lot of work to do.  That work has to be directed toward our own, and our "own" includes those people marching for white supremacy in Charlottesville, as well as (perhaps more importantly) the larger number of folks who weren't there but secretly sympathize with those who were.

So, how do you do that?  Well, it seems to me that the starting point is to publicly express two foundational ideas (1) you oppose all forms of bigotry and discrimination, and (2) you do so as an expression of, and flowing directly from, your Christian faith.  Such an expression is not a magic incantation that makes everything better, but having people publicly declaring that dimension of their faith is a public witness of the kind Rev. Guyton highlighted in the pastor's march in Charlottesville.  Again, it's a start.  I spend some time trying to come up with a short, declarative formula, and I'm not 100% happy with this, but it's a good start:

"As someone who claims to follow Jesus Christ, I have an unqualified moral obligation to condemn and work to oppose all forms of bigotry, including but not limited to racism, sexism, and homophobia, especially when such bigotry is to found in people and institutions claiming to be Christian."

The second thing that struck me in reflecting on Charlottesville, and this is where the quote that begins this post comes from, is that we are called to be Christians now, in the current circumstances that we find ourselves.  This would seem to be self-evident and unimportant, but think about how much Christian discourse has to do with the past and not the present--especially in the high church traditions, but not only them.  There is this idea that maintaining fidelity to some particular fixed point in the past will be a guarantee of correctness and stability and survival.  If only we hold tight to Nicaea, or Augustine, or Aquinas, or Calvin, or whomever, then we will be saved, so goes the thinking.

On Saturday afternoon, I was in a bad state of mind and spirit, so I went to the 5 pm Saturday Eucharist at my parish.  Our Rector is in the midst of a sermon series on the Liturgy, and he was up to talking about the Eucharistic Prayers, their history, the symbolism of each part, etc.  On another weekend, it would have been a fine sermon.  But it was the wrong sermon for the weekend of August 12-13, 2017, in the United States of America.  It felt like precisely the sort of retreat into the past that has so paralyzed us for so long.  I know that was not his intention, but I needed to hear something about the Kingdom now, not how each part of the Eucharistic Prayer is a call-out to Jewish Temple worship and all of that.

We don't live in 325, or 400, or 1200, or 1600.  We are living now, and Jesus is calling us to the work of the Kingdom now.  The things that were said and done in the past can be a resource and a guide for us, but the work is in the here and now.  We cannot hide from that work by taking refuge in the past.  The past will not save us, and it will not save anyone else.

In addition to the temptation to retreat into the past for security, the past is also a problem because it can paralyze us out of a false sense of needing to be consistent.  White American Christianity has a horrible track-record on race.  Christianity generally has a horrible track-record with regard to gender and LGBT issues.  If we feel like we have to live with one foot in the past, we get into a position where we feel we have to "deal" with that reality.  But our attempts to "deal" with that reality almost inevitably lead to paralysis, because there is no way for us to "deal" with these facts.  The past consists of ghosts, and all of these attempts to "deal" with them just give them more power.  The only solution is to move forward and focus on the world that we live in, the one Jesus is calling us to work with.  I can't change the fact that the Kingdom as expressed in previous eras did not do right by all sorts of folks, but I can work to make sure the Kingdom is doing right by those people now.  

That, to me, is what Jesus means by "let the dead bury their own dead."  If you believe that Jesus is calling you to work for reconciliation and healing on race or gender or LGBT issues (and, guess what, He probably is), then be about the Father's work immediately.  Don't spend time trying to engage in elaborate contortions to reconcile what you are doing with what was done before.  Don't waste time with calls for "dialogue" that you know are never going to be answered.  Follow Him, right now.  Let the dead bury their own dead.

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