I Say Potato, You Say... Wait, How's That Gonna' Work

Sometimes people who feel the need to justify why they are not a Christian via Christianity's many foibles use the division of Christian traditions/denominations as a reason to reject the ideas and practices of Christianity. Does that make sense? What I mean is, for some it's possible to look at all the various and incompatible yet passionately defended expressions of Christianity as evidence that there can't be anything worth committing to, with the infighting itself providing a "See, it's all bunk," opportunity.

First of all, people looking for that opportunity should realize it's perfectly acceptable to be indifferent to all manner of things. I think we are blessed to live in an age wherein it is unnecessary (more and more so anyway) to justify why one would not be a Christian alongside the many other things that one is not. Go with it. You don't live with Bushido, or feudalism, or Magik, or Shaktism, or chivalry and you do so- or do not do so- without justification. That's fine. It can be just like that if you let it.

Just leave it alone. No. Stop. Don't pick at it or mess with it. Go on, you have nothing to say with it.

Hmm... Maybe, if you can't stop, it's likely because it's more a part of you than you'd like it to be, in which case you're stuck with it. Sorry.

Secondofly, haven't you heard the justification that denominations/traditions are like different flavors of the same thing? Each denomination contributes something unique to the broader body but is uniquely for itself. You could say it's similar to what happens when ordering a pizza for a large number of people. I like mushrooms but not olives. So-and-so likes olives but hates onions. She likes pineapple but won't eat meat. Who's-his-face has to have anchovies. What's-his-stink likes everything except bell peppers. It's a big confusing mess, but when we all come together and make our contribution we finally have something we can all agree on and consume: a pizza with half cheese and half everything from which some people can pick off the things they don't like. It's like that, right? Or it's like a restaurant that serves something for everyone. It's all one pizza or it's all one restaurant so there's really not the division that some people see. It's all a matter of flavors and preferences piled on top of the dough in the pizza trope or prepped by Latin American immigrants in the back a la the kitchen metaphor. Isn't it one big happy family of consumption?

Ugh, really? You think so? How could you think something like that? Your faith as a matter of consumption and no more than aesthetic preference? Yeegads that's awful. How much more shallow could we be? He likes dunking but she likes sprinkling; we say Jesus is in the cracker but they say around, but who cares because those are matters of taste? Yeesh.

A friend and I, The Brownloveshark, if you must know, were talking about the Lord's Supper (as it's called in some places) this past weekend and I was getting all excited about the possible beauty of a Friends perspective on the matter. I was also getting pretty despondent about the emptiness of some of our actual Friends practices and statements about it. But then I was quickly cycling back to optimism in thinking about the allowance for the diversity of practices that are technically possible given our position on the matter in our present version of Faith and Practice. Then I took a nap with my baby. Then I made dinner.

Anyway, I don't believe that one who says "Jesus is literally in this piece of bread" is in the same camp as one who says "around" the piece of bread nor are they of the same camp that says, "Skip the bread all together." Same camp? Pfft. It's not even the same planet. Those are completely different ways of seeing the world, of understanding how humanity relates to divinity and vice versa. I don't believe Jesus is literally in a piece of bread, or around a piece of bread, or symbolically present with a piece of bread (though I will drink wine) and not believing those things is at the core of the content of my faith which is my relating to God. I will say though, if you believe that a piece of bread is somehow a conduit for God's love, if you really believe that, you'd better eat that bread as a matter of relating to God. I don't so I won't. But whether one does or not, it's a matter of the most important type of commitment and a source for the deepest kind of difference.

Really.

It's not the same thing. However in our present Evangelical context we try to overcome that difference by saying we are united by agreement in the doughy core of faith. (Well, some Evangelicals are more honest and say Catholics aren't a part of the deal, though how they then excuse Lutherans and Episcopalians is a matter of dishonesty. But it's the best kind of dishonesty: religious.) So our written statements of faith carry the life of our bodies and we say if we agree on these basics then there is no division among one group that says by practice you really must consume God's grace through this bread and another that by practice says we symbolize the reception of God's grace in ritually eating this bread, or between one that says in its actions women are by their very nature unable to have religious authority over men and another that says in its actions men are just as qualified as women to be church leaders (see what I did there?), or one group that shows marriage is only for the pairing of a penis and a vagina and another that shows... Oh wait, no. Not that last one. They are out of the fold no matter what they say. Am I right? (High five). My point is, this Statement of Faith phenomenon, this imposition of agreement is a type of unity, but it is not the unity of "The Lord's Supper" or anything that might be called "good news".

I suppose it's necessary, if we're committed to an idea of God bound to a kind of geometric certainty that these very real differences be washed away so the diversity of practices give way to a unity of statements. After all, it's not a very coherent world that would have Jesus present in a piece of bread and not present in a piece of bread. So, in a world of certainty we skip over the bread and emphasize the Jesus, but by emphasizing the Jesus we destroy the practices in which Jesus is known in life, well at least the lives people live as existing humans. But who told you to be committed to an idea of God bound to geometric certainty? Well, aside from those silly men who got all wrapped up in their Logic or Philosophy 101 classes and parlayed that into Christian radio shows, who told you? We, well Christian "wes" are not committed to a broad philosophical or logical concept of God; we say we're into the God revealed by the story of the Bible. But, and this is a big "but" we often seem to think that this God revealed in the Bible should be like the God of Philosophy 101 and that puts us right back into this whitewashed Christianity trap. (See how unfortunate it can be to take your college underclass years too seriously?)

Pathetic.

As Friends, sometimes we say that our practice of Open Worship is Communion. We've come together as like-minded people, we've sung this, we've read that, we've said such and such, and now we have a time to reflect on what we've sung, read, and said and if inclined, share those reflections with others.* And that's pretty good. I mean, to get people who, if pressed, would be revealed as more different than similar to come together in an act of devotion is laudable. In this respect, the pizza bit is maybe something to affirm. But insofar as it remains a matter of conformity to these external media, it's not communion. Maybe we could call it looking in the same direction, collective worship, sharing in devotion, shared assent and affirmation, something like that. But when we call it communion, well, that's where I say it's a sad thing if only because we settle for less (I say "if only" because I'm sure it's more). It's one of the sadder aspects of Evangelical Friends that we confuse the Word of God with the word of God and imagine an awkward and wooden conformity to the latter can be communion with the former.

That we can collectively say "P-I-G" means "pig" is a simple matter of human cleverness and should not be called communion. Our getting together periodically to say "God is big, hooray" is of similar stuff. It may take a degree of work and ultimately be impressive, but let's not call it communion. It is us becoming and being with us. Or if I make a concession and say it's a kind of communion, I can only say it's communion among humans. Again, given our histories and regular demonstrations of how divided we are, human communion could sometimes be a step in the right direction, but a step that should be taken cautiously given our tendency to replace division with domination. But God with us communion, something divine and transcendent, the communion of the Word taking on a body and setting up his tent among us, that is something else. Unfortunately through what we've sometimes accepted as communion, we make it all the more difficult to be struck with the divine.

When we come together, in our Evangelical Friends Meetings for example, we do so as people who are on the same page. We are an "us". And as I've said already, that being "us" is not communion. Saying "God is big" in unison is not the rending of the veil that opens the Holy of Holies. It may, at times, most times, create a thicker and thicker insulation that adapts us to each other but prevents us from being in communion with God. The process of becoming more and more adjusted to each other does create community, but it depends on exclusion. The unity of those who know "P-I-G" is pig is not the fellowship, to refer to a model, of a Gentile and a Jew, a woman and a man, a free person and a slave, clean and unclean sharing a table. I don't mean there is a miracle in the meal, I mean that there could be a meal is the miracle. The revolutionary, dying to one's self, new life grace, is not the act but is seen in the act of people who ought not be together sitting at a table with each other.

I suppose we can say there's magic in some food and when we eat it we take in God. We could also replicate 1st c. Asia Minor to the last detail and say we are part of the same community as the true church so we have communion when that is done. Or maybe we can be more sophisticated and pick certain practices and rules we think are mentioned in the Bible that ought to be retained and repeated and somewhere in that is communion. No one will stop us. But I think as Friends we can have something else, especially when we recognize silence is not for reflecting on what we've said or done but on what God does do. Silence is not the thing we must do to build unity, but the starting point to seeing our practices as the barriers that God overcomes. It's the reminder that all our language fails, even, especially even our well-crafted statements of faith. It's the recurring starting point of a life together in solidarity through difference rather than an erasure of difference. It is knowing and showing that Christ is here to teach us.

We have the faintest hint of that in our current version of Faith and Practice (I'd better be careful or it may not be in the next). Of course there's a whole lot of else and inertia to deal with and most people don't want to do that even on their best days, and with our ever-growing fear of difference and willingness to draw faithless lines in the sand, we may not be presently experiencing our "best days".

But we can hope, and you know what they say, "Poop in one hand, hope in the other, and see which fills first." Oh wait, that's not encouraging.


*Of course, not every meeting in our Yearly Meeting cum Annual Conference practices Open Worship nor would they say this is a description of how they do it if they did. Whatever.