Rogue Reverend

What Is To Come

What is to come we know not. But we know
That what has been was good—was good to show,
Better to hide, and best of all to bear.
We are the masters of the days that were;
We have lived, we have loved, we have suffered…even so.

Shall we not take the ebb who had the flow?
Life was our friend? Now, if it be our foe—
Dear, though it spoil and break us! —need we care
What is to come?

Let the great winds their worst and wildest blow,
Or the gold weather round us mellow slow;
We have fulfilled ourselves, and we can dare
And we can conquer, though we may not share
In the rich quiet of the afterglow
What is to come.
~William Ernest Henley (1892)

On October 5, 2009, a group of ministers, religious educators, theologians, church folk, and a Christian futurist will gather online to talk about What Is To Come. Predicated on the idea that the church is just now responding to issues that she should have responded to 35-40 years ago, I like to think about it as answering the question, “What will the Church have to apologize for in 40 years?”

Haven’t you noticed that the Church is struggling with issues that the “real world” settled years ago? Are you aware that while the church struggles with racism, academia is talking about class? While the church is hung up on issues around homosexuality, Time magazine says that polyamory is the new frontier of the sexual revolution? While the church is arguing about worship styles, people are actually approaching the world in a different way?

What Is To Come is a think tank where we’ll identify the real issues facing the church. We’re not going to teach you! This will be a conversation. You already know what’s happening in the Church and in the world, we’re just putting great minds together to discuss it.

Here are the details:

We’ll start October 5th and go for four weeks.
We’re limited to 20 people.
Most of the discussion will be done through Blackboard, graciously contributed by the Baptist Theological Seminary of Richmond and the School of Christian Ministry.
We’ll identify the trends. Small groups will discuss each issue and create a handout about each one. Our product will be 1-5 pages in a .pdf format, discussing the trend, with key information and a bibliography.
We’ll focus more on trends in culture, not in church, and focus on how those trends will affect church.
It will be work, and we ask that you be willing to commit to it. We don’t know how long it will require each week, but we do think this will be a time commitment!
It’s FREE!

The trends we’ll discuss may include sexualities, economics, families, church and US politics, fundamentalism, and evangelicalism (worldwide). The actual list will be determined by the participants. You’ll be able to pick the trends you want to study and discuss.

If you would like to join What Is to Come, contact me as soon as you can. It’s going to be GREAT!

Homosexuality: A Sermon

I’m doing a series at church on Romans. Last Sunday, I preached on Romans 1:18-32. Normally, I put the text up on this site. However, I am not writing a manuscript for this series. I’m preaching off the cuff. So, instead, I’m putting up the recording of the sermon.

The sermon opens with me say, “Homosexuality. I’m for it.” First I recap the bad news about our treatment of homosexuals. Then I remind everyone that 1) we can’t make Paul say what we want him to say (ever), and 2) Paul would have no concept of homosexuality as we know it now, as a way of being (as opposed to an act). The Romans passage, I maintain, is not really about homosexuality at all, but, according to Tyler Wigg Stevenson, about hyper-sexuality. And that hyper-sexuality is not cured by more sex. Then there’s good news!

Go listen! Lia Scholl, sermon on Romans 1

Learning from the Other Side

Some of you know that I’m on Twitter. I have to admit that I find it difficult to put my thoughts together in more than 140 characters now, so bear with me.

I have two great and interesting types of people I follow on Twitter. The first are sex workers and advocates (shout out, ya’ll!), and the second are emergent-type church folks.

What exactly is emergent church? Who the hell knows?

Here’s what Christianity Today (not one of my favorite magazines, by the way) says:

It is said that emerging Christians confess their faith like mainliners—meaning they say things publicly they don’t really believe. They drink like Southern Baptists—meaning, to adapt some words from Mark Twain, they are teetotalers when it is judicious. They talk like Catholics—meaning they cuss and use naughty words. They evangelize and theologize like the Reformed—meaning they rarely evangelize, yet theologize all the time. They worship like charismatics—meaning with their whole bodies, some parts tattooed. They vote like Episcopalians—meaning they eat, drink, and sleep on their left side. And, they deny the truth—meaning they’ve got a latte-soaked copy of Derrida in their smoke- and beer-stained backpacks.

As I understand it, though, the emergent church movement is about evangelicalism losing it’s certitude, becoming more open to ambiguity, and worrying less about who is “in” and who is “out.” Which, of course, can’t be a bad thing.

But back in the day (2005), there was also something called the emerging church, which seemed different than the emergent church. Where the emergent church was conservative evangelicals moving more towards the middle, the emerging church was liberal or progressives moving toward the middle. They may have merged into one movement, I don’t know. And just for the record, the emergent/emerging church seems to have become another program to build church, which, of course, seems antithetical.

But here’s how it is in my life: I walked away from evangelicalism years ago, tossed it all out, and the emerging church was my way of struggling to keep any bit of my tradition. So I’ve begun listening to the emergent movement.

Today I listened to a sermon by Jay Bakker, of Revolution NYC, also of One Punk Under God, and the son of Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker. I have to say, it was good. Bakker quoted one of my favorites, Will Campbell, I think from Soul Among Lions, and he really, really has an amazing hold on God’s love for us. As Bakker said, “Jesus love us and wants to make a mixed tape for us.”

I recommend a listen.

More about Draupadi (from That Sermon!)

In a modern novel about Draupadi, The Palace of Illusions, Draupadi describes her childhood like this:

Through the long, lonely years of my childhood, when my father’s palace seemed to tighten its grip around me until I couldn’t breathe, I would go to my nurse and ask for a story. And though she knew many wondrous and edifying tales, the one I made her tell me over and over was the story of my birth. I think I liked it so much because it made me feel special, and in those days there was little else in my life that did. Perhaps [my nurse] realized this. Perhaps that was why she agreed to my demands even though we both knew I should be using my time more gainfully, in ways more befitting the daughter of Kind Drupad, ruler of Panchaal, one of the richest kingdoms in the continent of Bharat.

The story inspired me to make up fancy names for myself: Offspring of Vengeance, or the Unexpected One. But [my nurse] puffed out her cheeks at my tendency to drama, calling me the Girl Who Wasn’t Invited. Who knows, perhaps she was more accurate than I.

Draupadi is eventually married to five brothers, the oldest of which has a gambling problem. He loses everything, including his brothers, and himself in a dice game. Then he loses Draupadi. Draupadi is dragged before the court, all of the evil men who have been cheating at dice all day, attempt to humiliate, shame and degrade her. It is there that we see her true power. Again, from the Palace of Illusions:

The worst shame a woman could imagine was about to befall me—I who had thought myself above all harm, the proud and cherished wife of the greatest kings of our time! Now they sat frozen as I struggled… The sorceress had said, When in great trouble, rest your mind on someone who loves you…

Then—maybe because there was no one else who could help—I thought of Krishna. He owed me nothing; we were not related. Perhaps that was why I could fix my mind on him without being swept away by the anger that arises from expectation. I thought of his smile, the way it would appear on his face for no reason. The sounds of the courtroom faded…Suddenly I was in a garden. There were swans in a lake, a tree that arched above, dropping blue flowers, the sound of water falling as though the world had no end. The wind smelled of sandalwood. Krishna sat beside me on a cool stone bench. His glance was bright and tender. No one can shame you, he said, if you don’t allow it.

No one can shame you if you don’t allow it.

Draupadi, the First Reading from Sunday’s Sermon that Bombed

This is one of the stories of Draupadi, wife of the Pandavas, and one of the main characters in the Mahabharata - one of Hinduism’s two main epics (the Ramayana being the other). It’s written in poem form and is the longest in the world. The Bhagavad Gita is but a part of the Mahabharata.

She’s significant because she’s a protagonist, someone with her own story, independent of the men who lead us to her, someone who doesn’t kowtow or apologize for wanting good things. She’s also beaten up for it - because she’s not pliant or submissive. She chews out her husband for gambling and losing her, saying she wasn’t his to stake in a dice game. She has moods and rages. Plays favorites. She’s human in a way that’s relatable.

~Sohini Baliga

Too many hours have passed. No ordinary dicing match has ever taken this long. Her husband is wealthy—a prince—but even if he has lost everything he owns, it should be all over by now. The women’s quarters are at a considerable remove from the court itself, but even back here one senses that something has gone terribly wrong: the silence is heavy as the monsoon cloud.

She is a princess and a woman of great distinction and beauty—“fragrant as the blue lotus,” chaste and devout. Her hair is unbound, and she wears nothing but a single piece of fabric wrapped loosely and barely secured.

Suddenly, she hears running footsteps and the protesting cries of her maidservants, and before her is a breathless emissary from the court.

“Impossible,” she answers, bewildered and angry together. “Can’t you see. . . ?”

He quails and vanishes, and in moments the sequence repeats itself. But this time there are no words. Strong hands seize her rudely, and when she resists, they bury themselves in her long black hair and drag her along as she clutches at her wearing cloth and tries not to fall to her knees.

She is in the court, the sabha, where a woman of her class would rarely be, and one in her condition never, and she knows before she is told that her husband has indeed lost everything. Lost everything he’d owned—but then kept on gambling. He has staked his four brothers and lost them, staked even himself and lost himself, and finally, sure his luck would turn, he has staked his wife. The man who has won the toss (luck could not have turned in this game, for the very dice were crooked) hates her and the whole class she’s married into. With lewd gestures he mocks her now and boasts of how he will use her.

“Impossible,” she whispers, as her eyes search the room. On every side are men she knows revere her and love her, but none of them moves. Frantically, she calls upon each of them by name—cousins, elders, brothers-in-law—and many of them are visibly anguished, but an unspoken understanding keeps every man’s hands at his sides. No one will come to her defense, no one will look at her. Something dreadful has been released in this room that is proof against any appeal.

“Strip her!” comes the order, and again the powerful hands close on the woman—a warrior’s hands, callused and brutal—but this time they seize the cloth she is wearing and tear at it roughly, and still no one moves, and mingled with their anguish and their shame is something else that is more truly their shame and that has to do with the loveliness of her and their inability to look away.

One sound she makes—throws back her head and hurls it at the heavens. Her eyes close, and she stops struggling, and her whole being is prayer—one prayer, one word, a name—her very self. Insensibly, she lets go of the wearing cloth, and rough hands pull at it now with growing excitement. They pull—and pull, and pull, and the fabric piles up around her feet and his feet, and he begins to sweat with the effort he is making. For something extraordinary has happened.

There is no end to this fabric. Ad she doesn’t need to open her eyes to know it. She feels her freedom and dances it. Spins around the room, oblivious now to everything but a song she alone can hear.

This comes from the book At the Root of This Longing: Reconciling a Spiritual Hunger and a Feminist Thirst.