Whether you like it or not...

If you have seen the recent issue of Harper's Magazine (June 2008, Vol. 316, No. 1897), you'll see that Garret Keizer has written a brilliant little article called "Turning Away from Jesus." I am still reeling from my experience of reading this fantastic article. Lest you think this is only about gay rights and the so-called war in the Episcopal church, let me say that this goes beyond those "little issues" and really takes all of us to task for being human beings on this planet.

From the very beginning, Keizer puts to rest any doubts about what we will delve into as we plunge into this assignment (which he says he didn't ask for), and tells us that we had better care, and care deeply, because we are involved, too. He says, "what might strike you as an irrelevant story about a religious dispute is in some ways your story, whether you are religious or not, and whether you like it or not. The story invites us to ask if what we see happening to the institutions we love is not at least partly the result of us having loved them less attentively than we supposed."

For Keizer, the crisis in the church (and I suppose he means both the Episcopal church, and the global church, the church universal) is really one of several "cosmetically differentiated versions of the same earnest quest for moral rectitude in the face of one's collusion in an economic system of gross inequality" (43). And we are more than familiar with that kind of crisis.

What ought to shame us is not a particular cleric's sexual orientation. Regardless of what faith community we participate in, regardless of our faith traditions, as human beings, we ought to focus on "our treatment of the poor, the distribution of wealth, of resources, and the danger of wealth to our souls."

For me, as a Christian, I am plagued by the question that we ought to argue and debate about and lose sleep over: How does a Christian population implicated in militarism, usury, sweatshop labor, and environmental rape find a way to sleep at night?

"This assignment wasn't my idea," he says. "Becoming a priest wasn't my idea either. I was asked, and I did what I could," says Keizer. I often feel like he does. Powerless -- and so I want to struggle. But, I'm less skilled than Keizer. What Keizer articulates, I wish I could articulate with half as much eloquence and a third of his passion. And I wish I could be as forgiving and accepting (of those who harbor views so different from mine) as I am called to be. Unlike Keizer, I find myself more often than not too blinded, too raging, and too muted to share anything more than communion.

Keizer ends the essay by expressing what so many of us feel in the midst of our ministries -- most of the time blinded by exhaustion or rage. The great mystery and power of Grace and Love means that sometimes, we can't say anything at all. We can only listen.

Do you love me? Feed my sheep. - Jesus to Simon Peter, John 21:16