The Conditions of Mercy

 Music is unconditional.  It plays—I listen.  Or not. When I turn on my stereo and tune into Alabama Public Radio, music pours forth from my speakers, filling the room and cascading upon me in such a way that I can be drawn into its depths and float in its ethereal melodies.   I can choose to be engulfed in the notes and sounds of wind and string instruments in such a way that it stirs my soul.  Or, I can turn on my radio and allow the music to enter the room, but not enter me.  I may hear it, vaguely maintaining awareness of it, but in no way connecting with it.  The music hasn’t changed—it pours forth from my speakers unconditionally—regardless of whether or not I listen.  I am responsible for whether or not I hear it, not the music.  The very nature of music is to present itself in a particular way.  But to listen to music requires one to be in relationship with it, to choose it, to engage it.  The music is there.  The question is—am I?

                                            'The Unanswered Question' by Charles Ives 

Last week there was another mass shooting.  This time the shooting took place at a movie theater in Lafayette, LA.  Two people were killed, nine injured, and the shooter took his own life.  After hearing about the shooting, I posted on Twitter, “3 mass shootings in a month.  Lord have mercy. Christ have mercy. Lord have mercy. #Lafayette #Chattanooga #Charleston.”  I grew up in the Catholic and Episcopal traditions and we often say this prayer during the season of Lent as a preparation for delving into the Word.  Lent is a penitential time; the shooting in Lafayette felt like it needed a penitential response (for reasons I am not going to go into—that’s another post).  The next morning when I looked at my Twitter feed, I had one reply.  Steve_J wrote, “What has the US done to cause Christ to show mercy to the US, much less the rest of the world?”

It took me a while to reply to Steve_J for three reasons:

1.     I don’t want to get into a “back ‘n forth” on Twitter;

2.     There is no easy answer though there is a faithful one; and,

3.     I’m not giddy about correcting someone else’s bad theology on social media.

We have been led to believe that we can do something to earn or lose the love of God.  This bad theology permeates our religious culture. Nothing we can do, or not do, lessens God’s grace and mercy for us.  Just ask the eleven disciples, the ones who abandoned Jesus on the cross and hid in the Upper Room after his crucifixion.  He greeted them with the word “peace” after his resurrection, not judgment and condemnation.  How much more does he greet us with that same word?

The U.S. (much less the rest of the world) can do nothing, nothing at all, to cause Christ to show mercy upon us.  Jesus pours out his mercy upon us of his own accord.  It is his nature to do so.  He will not give or deny mercy based on what we do.  Instead, the conditions of mercy were met a long time ago on Golgotha.  I don’t deserve that mercy, few do, and yet, the Good News is that it is not up to us.  It is up to God.

Suspending the Rules

After years of talking, debating, fighting, leaving—we made a decision on same sex marriage at General Convention.  Two resolutions passed—one provided a trial liturgy for marriage, another changed the canons to incorporate gender neutral language--maybe there was an inevitability in that, maybe not.  But what was sure, was the relief.  We were no longer spinning our wheels in the mud, getting everyone dirty.  Now we could begin to move forward, pour new wine into new wine skins because the old skins had been bursting for some time.  But in this moment of celebration for some, we cannot lose our pastoral stance.

For the most part, General Convention #78 delighted me, an event where a true spirit of unity and congeniality pervaded the floor of the House of Deputies.  Following a standard rule of order, agreed upon by all the deputations at the start of the legislative sessions, assisted that delightful spirit.  Our chaplain, The Rev. Lester McKenzie, who led us daily in prayer and singing, “We are one together—Yo, Yo, Yo,” also nurtured that spirit.

Often,  those words would be sung by various deputations who spontaneously broke into song at various times over the course of the convention.  Even though we knew we all didn’t agree on everything, those disagreements did not feel like rivalries or a classic "winning vs. losing" scenario.  (Though, yes, I am aware that there were those deputations who, in not having the vote go their way, felt that they had lost—especially in the marriage vote.)

Now, more than ever, we must come to this new thinking on marraige with compassion and concern for those who continue to struggle with same sex marriage—especially those whose context is vastly different from our own.  So, it was with some degree of empathy and frustration that I watched as the deputation from Honduras attempting to read a “minority report on marriage resolutions”, run out of their allotted time frame of four minutes to speak on the floor. In keeping with the Rules of Order, their microphone was cut off by the President of the House.  The report signed by twenty bishops voiced their dissent with the recently adopted resolutions.

After so much movement forward in the face of so much angst and challenge, our momentum became too great to stop or turn and we barreled into the iceberg.  We allowed legalism to once again silence the minority.  Maybe the rules didn't allow for it, but I wonder when compassion, especially in the face of dissension, became defined as fairness and equability? 

Jesus walked this earth to remind the Jews—and by extension us—that there is nothing more worthy than compassion, which is the only transformative agency we can participate in with God. I do not sit in judgment over the President of the House of Deputies—goodness knows what decision I would have made in her place.  And I credit her with admitting that she may not have made the best decision in the way she handled the situation.  She apologized to the deputation from Honduras and told the House where to find the dissent on-line.  But I wonder, had she to do it all over again, would she stick to the rules, or allow for their suspension?

Jesus drew the bottom line: People matter more than law, compassion more than reasonableness.  I grow weary of dissent and division, but I am more and more aware that weariness is no excuse and legalism cannot be acceptable, even in the governance of our church, if we truly desire to be part of the Jesus movement.  To be part of that movement, sometimes and maybe even most of the time, we’ll just have to suspend the rules.