From Creating Space to Sharing Space

Tomorrow we are going to have a man name Brian come to our school and share his narrative of growing up in a Christian home, going to a Christian school, and knowing that he was a same-gender attracted person who basically had nowhere to turn (does this sound like a familiar story in too many Christian churches, schools, and homes?) It is a big step for our community as we try to move away from a "is being gay right or wrong?" to "what does it mean to be a hospitable community?" As I was reminded this week, it is and always will be a disputable matter. That people think people with same-gender attractions can be cured seems to miss the point completely, or trying to unpack causation, or fill in the blank with whatever angle people take to turn this into an often ugly argument. We are struggling to find a way to be a community that emodies Christ and deals with difficult issues in a redemptive way is what we are after.

Christ took amazing care of those who did not fit into the traditional system; he seemed to make room where there was no room--I think both literally and figuratively he created safe space. This doesn't mean he didn't engage in difficult conversations, but somehow managed to do so in a way that valued people over the issue at hand. Christ demonstrates perfect love. I think our schools and churches have been good at filling the space with traditions, rituals, and inhospitality so there was no room for the outsider.

Yet Christ not only created space, he goes the second mile and shares a listening ear, words of wisdom, and a meal with those who were offered no space. He goes the second mile-creating the space wasn't enough--sharing the space was what he was after. So I suppose when I say "emobdies Christ" I am thinking of a school or church that just doesn't create space, but shares space with those who have been cast out of the system because they just don't fit. Making room for those outside the establishment is a start, but that is only the beginning. As Pete Rollins says below, we need to "disturb the strict balance and create a possibility for change that disrupts the caste systems we live in and opens us up to a world of liberation.

The following reading from Pete helped me a little with this tonight.

"Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you…
If anyone comes to me and does not hate his father and mother, his wife and children, his brothers and sisters - yes, even his own life - he cannot be my disciple

Jesus, according to the Gospel of Luke

Do these words not help us to get to the heart of Christ’s anti-Empire ethic as expressed in the Gospels? In order to understand why this is we need to grasp how the family is the ultimate tribal unit: the insiders, those who are like us, who love us, who look out for us. The family, ideally speaking, can be said to be the ultimate cell of undifferentiated unity, of sameness. In contrast, the enemy is the monstrous other, the one outside our network of trust, the one who threatens it, who calls it into question, who makes unwanted demands on us. If we imagine a circle that wraps around our friends and family, those outside the circle make up strangers and enemies.

In the ethic of Empire one looks out for ones friends (inside the circle) and punishes ones enemies (outside the circle). It is an ethic that looks out for those who look out for us and loves those who love us. It is an ethic of economy (where we mutually give to one another). It would appear however that Christ ruptures this by giving preference to the one outside our systems (the alien, the enemy, the exile) over and above those privileged within our systems. This counter-ethic shows how the Christ trajectory is one that pushes outside the circle to those beyond its borders. Privileging those on the outside over those on the inside and offering a radical, impossible hospitality.

In this way, every time we draw a circle of who is ‘in’ and who is ‘out’ who we love and who we hate the Christ-action involves pushing away from those who are ‘in’ and identifying with and helping the outsiders, the scapegoat, the stranger, the monstrous other. If the Empire ethic is an ethic that seeks to draw people into the circle of exchange the Christ ethic privileges the exception. Always pushing out to those who are excluded, who live beyond the fortified boundary.

Yet there is more, not only did the challenge to love ones enemy strike at the heart of the Roman Empire, the idea behind hating ones family challenged the pagan view of the universe as hierarchical, ordered and balanced. By identifying with the outcast and breaking free from our established place in society (symbolised by the family) we disturb the strict balance and create a possibility for change that disrupts the caste systems we live in and opens us up to a world of liberation.

The word ‘hate’ may seem overly strong, yet to make this break with the inside, with the socio-symbolic universe that envelopes us and defines who we are, we need a moment of rejection. To be a disciple of Christ involves a breaking out of our established place and entering a new place beyond Jew and Greek, slave and free, male and female. It offers the possibility of disturbing the balance and finding a different identity beyond the identities of nation, race, belief, gender (robbing these of their dividing power). This is a profoundly violent move, hence the strength of the language.

We will all have experienced what this is like in some small way when, for example, in our adolescence we can only really discover something new when we are compelled to push away from the old. Is this idea not hinted at in the popularity of jokes that relate to the true horror of a young person seeking to write music: the horror that their parents were lovely, caring and did everything right (thus suffocating them with the selfishness of giving them no reason to hate)?

The point however is not to give up one identity so as to embrace another, but rather so that we may inhabit a place where we no longer allow our socio-biological identities to define us.