Guilly's Guide day 18: A word to the "Progressive Church"

Guilly’s Guide day 18 is dedicated to clergy, deacons, preachers, priests, bishops, church adjacent, those like me who have constructed frameworks Jesus is happy to walk with us in, and the actual church: the people. 

Greetings in the name of the one who was crucified on Golgotha, vilified at the temple, was arrested and murdered through legal means by a colonial state from Europe, and had a fish fry with the homies after overcoming death, Jesus of Nazareth. 

I still read the RCL y’all.

If you don’t know what the RCL is I pray the powers of the Spirit continue to bless you with long and peaceful days. It stands for Revised Common Lectionary and it is a three year cycle of the scripture verses, themes, narratives that a large number of churches in the world will be reading and preaching on. A custom from when the western European church was truly “Catholic.”

The RCL was created in 1992 based on the common Lectionary or CL published in 1983. This is based on Ordo Lectionem Missae in 1969, and Vatican 2 changed the catholic church to a three year cycle from a one year cycle. 

This all comes from our Jewish siblings and medieval era habits of rabbis of reading the Torah in a sequential order with a reading from the “haftarah” to follow. 

I tell you all of this so when I tell you that I have been going to Grateful Dead and Phish shows longer than the RCL has been around, you don’t think I am being flippant just truthful. You are locked into a pattern that is younger than the license to ill album.

A Patten you have hopefully with your current community decided to follow the RCL. Not treat it like some ancient Christian rite.

Like me. 

And if you do follow the RCL that Isiah text I bet is calling your name this week. Sheesh: 

Isaiah 6:10 Hebrew; Septuagint ‘You will be ever hearing, but never understanding; / you will be ever seeing, but never perceiving.’ / 10 This people’s heart has become calloused; / they hardly hear with their ears, / and they have closed their eyes…..

I mean if I was a fired up pastor in a country such as this living in times such as these, after seeing the treatment of Bishop Budde, the Lutheran Immigration Services, and other folks doing non partisan good work attacked I would be pretty sure this the text.

But it aint. 

Look team, I know for some of you these last few weeks is a real full on shock to your nervous system. I really mean this, and I hope you can hear the love in these next few sentences. I know for many of you this is the first time it has ever truly felt like the systems you knew were always contentious, or perhaps being crafted into at times a rowdy but more perfect union, were actively working to harm you and those you love. It is a terrifying prospect to realize that the flag you have pledged your allegiance to, the government that you have spent your whole life participating in, and those you have entrusted with power, mean you harm.

Not just harm, but have overtly threatened political, social, economic, and literal violence against you and your community. To make matters more surreal, they are making those threats into real policy and law often met with thunderous applause.

I know it is not a great feeling to think law enforcement, federal officers, or local PD may kick in your community's door, and commit acts of violence , even extra judicial murder in the attempts to capture these loved ones.

The sinking feeling of watching someone go out the door and wonder if they will come back, or to be that person looking back in the door. 

Welcome to the fucking party kids. 

This is how your black, indigenous, brown, trans, immigrant, and queer family feel almost every day of the week since the day they were made aware they weren't part of the American dream. For some of us this happens in elementary school, or out with friends you realize are not friends, or emerges from the utter silence of those we thought we knew as the most heinous things happen to us. I’m not trying to shame you, I am telling you for some of us this a hundreds of years old battle. 

We are still here. 

I actually am going to commend Bishop Eastons Message to anyone, even non ELCA folks. I have famously disagreed with her, and think the overall strategy of “both sideism” is why we are here, but: she preached the damn Gospel a few days ago. Here is a link  in particular I commend the last part. 

“Let me tell you a story. In the year 258,  the Roman Empire during one of its many  persecutions of the church, ordered that the  church turn over its treasure. The task fell to a young deacon named Lawrence, who was given  three days to complete it. Immediately, Lawrence  sold all the liquid assets and gave that to  the sick and to the widows. He also liquidated all of the property and divided that  up amongst the poor. On the third day,  he appeared before the emperor who demanded  to see the treasures of the church. Lawrence  gestured behind him and there were standing those  who were sick and hungry, the poor, the naked, the stranger in the land, the most vulnerable  and Lawrence said, "These are the treasures of  the church." He was martyred for that. Be of  good courage, church and let us persevere.”

The Right Rev  Elizabeth Eaton,  Presiding Bishop of the ELCA.

In Dear Church I said it was time, like Deacon and Martyr Lawrence, to use the treasures, pearls, gold, myrrh, frankincense, and what little power it still clung to in society as its sphere of influence and spill them out for the poor and oppressed. All of it. Here and now.

Shrinking attendance, not enough clergy to fill pulpits, shrinking endowments, it seemed like we had reached the end of our road as a church together, and we were entering a new period. A period where the very principles of what it means to be a believer in the liberated palestinian preacher from Nazareth would come under attack. That these antichrist forces would be wearing the finery of the church, and carrying Jesus as their mascot.  

I still follow the RCL and I think I would rather be fishing in Luke. I would rather be sitting at Jesus’s feet and listening as he convinces the richest merchant of the Sea of Galilee to abandon wealth and follow him. I would rather hear a story of a long day at work that felt fruitless until this mercy encased enfleshed came across human toil, society, profit, power, hierarchy and said drop that and follow me. 

Because the Presiding Bishop is right. It is time to stand up even in the face of violence for what you know is the truth. It is time to be of good courage. 

For that you will need to gather community, fish yet again, cast wide the net. Not evangelize fools, organize. Create community power. People power. 

I’ll talk more about that offline with leaders, but y’all know the deal. You know what I have been calling for. A radical re-organizing of the faith based community as an arm of liberation work in this country. This is the time, the place, the battle, the moment. 

You were chosen before the stars were formed, before the Earth cooled enough for atmosphere, before the first blades of grass spread across the prairie, before the first peoples looked to the sky in wonder, for this time. This place. We are the ones we have been looking for. All we need is right around us if we have the ability to see. We have the treasure of the church, the people.

It may be a time where you stand before authority to testify about the poor, oppressed, and the marginalized. Or to turn over your power to the State. Remember Lawrence, remember our baptismal vows.

Be of good courage church. 

Written in love and liberation 

rev/awo lenny duncan