Almighty God, whom truly to know is everlasting life.
As humans we are in constant search for our person, our knight in shining armor or the princess in the ivory tower. We want to belong, we are in constant look-out for our tribe. It begins in earnest once we enter school. Sometimes we pick our tribe and sometimes others pick it for us. The jocks, the nerds, the losers, the mean girls, the bullies. It's why we join athletic teams, the marching band, the chess club or the drama club. It's why we join fraternities and sororities. And for some it's why they join gangs, for a sense of identity and camaraderie.
I found my first tribe in high school. It was the drama club, Thespian Troupe #1. It wasn't until many years later I discovered another one of my tribes, the Queer Community. I didn't come out until I was fifty. The tribe in which I spent most of my adult life, however, was the church. The Episcopal Church to be exact.
I had become interested in spirituality in high school. I was basically unchurched. My father was Lutheran by birth and my mother had a family background in the Reorganized Latter Day Saints. But our family never went to church. Somehow I was drawn to it, particularly the Roman Church. It was the pageantry, the mystery, the costumes (I still see a lot of church as theater), and the community. Catholic families always seemed so tightly woven, at least on TV and the movies. I never attended a Catholic service, but I did date a couple of Episcopalians. In fact, I married one. That lead me to my first parish, St. Gabriel the Archangel, very high church Anglo-Catholic with a group of young adults about our age. I also found out that same group was involved in the charismatic community prevalent in our Diocese.
After only our third Sunday service, a young couple with children slightly older than our son, invited us to dinner. We got to be friends and socialized with them frequently. They introduced us to other couples in church and before long I was experiencing what I had always longed for, a close knight group of friends, my tribe.
The lessons for the Fifth Sunday of Easter contain the collect that I used for the title of this piece, "Almighty God, whom truly to know is everlasting life: Grant us so perfectly to know your Son Jesus Christ to be the way, the truth, and the life." In the Gospel Jesus says to the Apostle Philip, “Have I been with you all this time, Philip, and you still do not know me?"
God is love, love is relationship, and relationships are about knowing each other. It's no wonder the bible uses the intimate word for "know" that is used in the relationship between a married couple. In his book, "The Tears of Things," Fr. Richard Rohr talks about our relationship with God as mutual presencing, which he describes as, "a gradually learned nakedness and vulnerability that requires deliberate and focused attention, receptivity, and persistent awareness on both sides." God knows us and we then grow into knowing God. It's a knowing that you see and feel, not a doctrine to which you must adhere.
As I look around at the shrinking of traditional Christianity based on love and forgiveness and see the rise of a religion based on power and privilege, I see people giving up on true knowing and community and settling for a tribe mentality. Church is not a Country Club, a political party, and social gathering, or a gang. Church is about being vulnerable enough to give and receive love. My call to The Church is focus on that transforming love. People must come before programs and liturgies and dogmas. Start being real and loving folks where they are. Get to know them and let them feel your love. When they see God's love through you, they will find their road to everlasting life.
Comments
Post a Comment