Preached · February 26, 2023
Series · Shift (Re)Starting a Faith that Can Fully Bloom
Text · Luke 6
Jesus Ticks Off the Moderates Earlier in our sermon series called Shift, Erin preached on multigenerational community. And she mentioned a saying of Jesus, "Whoever welcomes a child in my name welcomes me."
But let's look at the next verse.
“As for anyone who causes these children who believe in me to stumble and fall into sin, it would be better for them to have a huge stone hung around their necks and be drowned in the bottom of the lake.
Now, imagine Jesus today posting this on the social media network of His choice. Let's imagine the kinds of responses you'd get from polite Christians.[^1]
• "Why can't we just talk to each other anymore? I blame Twitter."
• "God can be trusted with his anger, but you can't. You sound really upset."
• "People abusing those without power and people who tell the truth about those abusing those without power: both sides have their problems, and you're proving my point."
• "Instead of throwing them in the lake, how about you invite them to dinner?"
• "If we validate 'little ones' as victims, they will never accept their identity as a Christian."
• "It's not the little ones stumbling I'm concerned about: it's the antagonism that Jesus advocates for here. That's the real problem."
• "Drowning? Millstones? This is what happens when you let yourself get caught up in worldly polemics and binaries."
• "Pray for your enemies, Jesus."
• "Look at how much fewer little ones are stumbling than used to be stumbling. Let's focus on the progress and be patient."
• "Stumbling little ones you will always have with you, Jesus, let's focus on the gospel."
What's going on in these responses? It's a type of moderate centrism that is more concerned about the reaction to injustice than the injustice itself. Instead of getting offended at people who would make children trip and stumble, it's getting offended at the people who are angry at the fact children are tripping and stumbling.
**The headlines that lament a “divided” America suggest that the fact that we can’t all get along is more significant than the issues over which we are sparring."** —Tayari Jones
Today's shift is about both myself and this church. It's the shift from "Centrism to Solidarity."
Not LGBTQ Affirming When I got to The Table in March 2020, it was not an LGBTQ-affirming church, although I had previously thought it was. You could forgive me for making that mistake. A gay man was on the elder board. Another gay man served as a volunteer pastor and routinely preached and served communion. There was a thriving LGBTQ Affinity Group. So, during my interview to become lead pastor, I made the mistake of calling The Table an affirming church. But I was corrected. "Actually, we don't call ourselves affirming."
Why not?
Well, The Table had had a long history of being a church where people of all sorts could belong. The original bulletin for the church said as much: "Gay or straight; Republican or Democrat; White or Black...you are welcome here." This meant practically that LGBTQ people did end up coming to The Table. They were allowed to serve, lead, and even preach in a contemporary church environment, while other churches in the city would have either outright rejected them; or provided a worship experience that was not their liking.
It also meant that The Table was home to folks who were friendly to gay people but were theologically unaffirming. During my interview (and since), I was told stories of people who came to [[The Table Church]] with a non-affirming stance. And then, thanks to building relationships with LGBTQ individuals, they changed their views.
Therefore, it was explained, The Table never became a clearly LGBTQ-affirming church because it would prevent those types of unaffirming-to-affirming conversion stories from happening.
From that interview forward, I knew that, if I were to be offered the position of lead pastor, that stance would need to change.
Centrism There are a lot of terms for what [[The Table Church]] was trying to be. Centrism, being [[Moderate]], "third way," "purple church," "meeting in the middle," "finding common ground." These are all ways of dealing with significant differences, usually around identity, with the goals of building relationships, compromise, and maybe even finding a new way forward.
Purple churches are those that have significant populations of both Republican (Red) and Democratic (Blue) voters. Third Way churches attempt to split the difference between LGBTQIA believers and non-affirming believers by saying that both are welcome to serve, lead, and teach. Even multiracial or multicutural churches trend towards a form of "centrism," where no one culture or race is highlighted over another. There are also forms of centrism or being moderate on issues of female leadership (soft complementarianism; "neither complementarian or egalitarian").
The goals of centrism sound virtuous. Who doesn't want less division, less fighting, less angst? However, centrism fails to take into account a significant factor in sociology and human relationships:
Power.
Power is the ability to exercise one's will over others.[^2] There are demographics in the United States that have more power—and therefore more rights—than others. A good way to tell who has power is by checking to see if your demographic has needed the Supreme Court to grant you a right that others have already had. In my case, I have never needed the Supreme Court to tell me if I could:
• Vote
• Own land
• Receive an education
• Get married
• Have a bank account
• Not be owned by someone else
• Be ordained
• Get a passport
• Drive a car
• Get a job without being discriminated against
• Receive equal pay as other people
• Have access to healthcare
Individuals and the communities they are a part of who have not had those rights will naturally have less power in society. And—this can be difficult to grasp—even if someone born today has all those rights, if people similar to them in years past have not had those rights, that affects the power they have access to moving forward. The ownership—or lack—of power carries forward in time.
As Dr. King put it:
It is obvious that if a man is entered at the starting line in a race 300 years after another man, the first would have to perform some impossible feat in order to catch up with his fellow runner. [^3]
The Table's History This played out at The Table Church. In 2019, a gay couple went to the lead pastor at the time and asked him to perform their marriage. The pastor—who, keep in mind, allowed for LGBTQ elders and preachers—told this couple no. He had (seemingly out of nowhere) decided to no longer perform weddings.
This sent shivers down the spines of every LGBTQ person who attended The Table. This church, which supposedly was one of the few safe Christian faith spaces in the city, had just denied a gay couple marriage.
When centrism is made a goal, something predictable happens: the needs of the person or culture with more power will win out over the needs of those with less power.
I don't know the mind of the pastor who denied this couple marriage. Perhaps he was trying to future-proof his career in ministry by not crossing the line of gay marriage. Maybe he just really didn't like performing weddings. His motives don't matter. The impact was a couple who had to find a different person—someone who was not the lead pastor of their church—to perform their wedding. The needs of a straight man won out over the needs of a gay couple.
This pattern routinely prevails. Centrism often ends up being a way of withholding justice from a person or community so that the needs of the culture with the most power can be catered to.
**The burden of [[Centrism]] is borne the most heavily by those who have the most to lose.** —Melissa Florer-Bixler
• In my last church, it was said a woman shouldn't be hired as a lead pastor because it would be a turn-off for potential male attendees. Maybe a woman can be the discipleship pastor instead.
• A church shouldn't become affirming for fear of scaring off unaffirming straight people. Let's let gay people serve, but not be put on the payroll.
• Affirmative action is unfair to all of the high-achieving white students. Let's require testing so that admissions are fair.
In every case, the injustices against the harmed demographics are ignored (9% of women are pastors; LGBTQ people are victims of religious abuse; BIPOC students are discriminated against in school and workplaces). The feelings of straight, white people (often men) are the things we need to pay attention to.
Centrism is a form of accommodation to supremacy. Hurting, pushing away, or offending the supremacy culture (of whiteness, straightness, maleness) is seen as more egregious than the harms caused to the culture or identity pushes to the margins.
Jesus Took Sides Now, why are we talking about this at church?
Because Jesus was not a centrist. Jesus took sides. Thank God.
In Luke 6, we get a version of the beatitudes that we see also in [[Matthew 5]].
“Happy are you who are poor, because God’s kingdom is yours. 21 Happy are you who hunger now, because you will be satisfied. Happy are you who weep now, because you will laugh.
But, the part we may not be as familiar with is that Jesus keeps going.
But how terrible for you who are rich, because you have already received your comfort. 25 How terrible for you who have plenty now, because you will be hungry. How terrible for you who laugh now, because you will mourn and weep.
Jesus doesn't pull punches. He sides with the poor, the hungry, the mourning. He doesn't take a moderating position.
Jesus invites us to love our enemies. He does not command us not to have enemies. In fact, Jesus made a lot of enemies because of who he loved and how he spoke to those who had power in his day.
One of my favorite ignored Jesus-sayings is Luke 6:26, "How terrible for you when everyone speaks well of you." In other words, if you're not offending anyone, this is not a good sign.
You may be thinking of examples of Jesus having table fellowship with the rich or the powerful. But these are not examples of Jesus being a moderate. Because in each case, he publicly shames those with more power and honor in his culture.
In Luke 7, Jesus is dining with Simon the Pharisee. A woman known as a notorious sinner comes in and anoints Jesus' feet with oil and tears. Simon gets offended. Jesus says this:
“Do you see this woman? When I entered your home, you didn’t give me water for my feet, but she wet my feet with tears and wiped them with her hair. 45 You didn’t greet me with a kiss, but she hasn’t stopped kissing my feet since I came in. 46 You didn’t anoint my head with oil, but she has poured perfumed oil on my feet. 47 This is why I tell you that her many sins have been forgiven; so she has shown great love. The one who is forgiven little loves little.”
Jesus doesn't set at the tables of the powerful and the religious so he can try to "bring them together." He does it to publicly shame them.
[[Preferential Option for the Poor]]
Something that the Methodist-Wesleyan movement as well as Roman Catholics get right is what's called the "[[Preferential Option for the Poor]]." It was an observation of Latin Jesuits and bishops that Scripture trends towards favoring the marginalized, poor, or pushed out. It's actually baked into Catholic Canon law, "Christians are also obliged to promote social justice and to assist the poor from their own resources." Which, if anyone accuses you of being a woke, Gen Z social justice warrior, you can just point them to the church's literally centuries-old teaching on social justice. Sweet Jesus.
This "preferential option" was not only for the materially poor but "includes all who are marginalized in society, including children, persons with disabilities, the elderly and terminally ill, and victims of injustice and oppression."
Jesus didn't come to bridge political divides or to love across the aisle. He chose the side of the oppressed and invited everyone to do the same. The Gospel is open to everyone--but you will be transformed by it to be an advocate for the oppressed." —Jonny Rashid
Favoritism
I think there's a misconception that the Bible is against preferential treatment or favoritism. But this couldn't be further from the truth. Favoritism is baked into the message of the Hebrew prophets, Jesus' ministry, and the early church. We are meant to favor those with less power, access to resources, or social status.
In [[1 Corinthians 12]]:22-26, Paul gives us his metaphor of the church as a body. "Christ is just like the human body—a body is a unit and has many parts; and all the parts of the body are one body, even though there are many. We were all baptized by one Spirit into one body, whether Jew or Greek, or slave or free, and we all were given one Spirit to drink." Here Paul is emphasizing unity.
But later, Paul has a different point to make. In a series of statements that would make most middle schoolers giggle—and probably some adults too—he uses the example of how we treat our private parts with more dignity than, say, our eye or nose. You would be shamed or lose honor, in Paul's culture, to show off your private parts. So listen to this:
In fact, some parts of the body that seem weakest and least important are actually the most necessary. 23 And the parts we regard as less honorable are those we clothe with the greatest care. So we carefully protect those parts that should not be seen, 24 while the "more honorable parts" do not require this special care. So God has put the body together such that **extra honor and care are given to those parts that have less dignity.** 25 This makes for harmony among the members, so that all the members care for each other. 26 If one part suffers, all the parts suffer with it, and if one part is honored, all the parts are glad.
There's that preferential treatment again. What Paul is talking about, for the Corinthians church, is the tension between the poor and the rich. Rich people, in society, already have honor and dignity. Poor people don't. They're better off not seen, not heard. So, in the church, we need to treat the poor with more dignity, more honor, more respect. Why? "For harmony among the members, so that all the members care for each other."
This is not being a centrist. This is not being moderate. This is choosing a side, of righting wrongs, of reclaibrating the scales of justice.
What This Means for Us So what does this mean for The Table Church?
It means overall an emphasis on clarity. It definitely affects our preaching. I don't believe in vague preaching on important subjects. It would be better to not say anything at all. I'd rather preach in such a way that those who have been pushed to the margins know that God is on their side—at the risk of offending those who have already been told that all their life.
"Oblique treatment of important subjects can be little better than not addressing the issues at all. Vague preaching is fairly pitiful, really. Trying to offer a transcendent word sounds nice but can become an excuse for avoiding messy subjects." —David Gushee
Listen, friends, I mean this in love, The Table Church is not a church for everyone. A church "for everyone" doesn't actually exist. I just think we need to be honest about it.
If given the choice between creating a church for someone who is unsure about LGBTQ rights and a church created for a queer person needing a spiritual community, I'm going to choose the queer person needing community. There are already lots of churches where straight folks can work out their affirming theology without fear of being kicked out or publicly shamed. There are not nearly enough of those churches for queer folks. The unaffirming straight person is not at risk of having someone question their right to exist, get married, or be in love. But the LGBTQ person is. So, we're going to be a church for queer folx.
If given a choice between a person who is uncertain about the existance of systemic racism and white supremacy and a Black, Brown, Asian, Jewish, Indigienous person who has actually experienced those forces, I'm going to choose the church for BIPOC people. There are lots of churches where folks can work out their thoughts and feelings on racism without fear or being ostracized. There are not nearly enough churches for people of color to be their complete selves. So, let's be that kind of church.
If this sounds antagonistic, or like a line drawn in the sand to you, you're right. There was an earlier version of this sermon written that had a lot more caveats and exceptions and footnotes and addendums. But I realized I was falling prey to the very thing I was preaching against. I was trying to preach in a way that made moderates feel comfortable. I was footnoting my way back to centrism.
But for the person of color being descriminated against; the trans person having their life being legislated out of existance; the woman who's losing rights to her pay or her body; the poor person who has no where to sleep tonight—they're not asking for centrism. They're not asking for a moderate approach. They're asking for solidarity. And, following in the footsteps of Jesus, I want to give it to them. I hope you'll join me.
[^1]: Matt Tebbe came up with this idea in Facebook post [^2]: Max Weber. [^3]: Why We Can't Wait
