Sermon Blogging

Catching up on my sermon blogging:

A sermon for the 6th Sunday of Easter: Not a Private Kingdom

A sermon for Pentecost Sunday: Pentecost Mission

A sermon for Trinity Sunday: Trinity and Community

A Sonrise Story

I have just come across the sermon entitled A Sonrise Story by Paul J. Nuechterlein which does an excellent job of explaining how Girardian non-violence fits into the story of salvation.

Not a sermon I could preach to my congregations! Nevertheless, I think it explains some Girardian ideas in a more accessible way than either Girard himself or most Girardian theologians.

I particularly like the explaination of mimetic theory at the beginning of the sermon. Nuechterlein manages to explain mimesis in a way that I've been striving to do for awhile.

Dualism?

A weird sort of brainstorm at 11:00 at night and a question:

In a Christian theology which uses Girardian paradigms, is dualism in and of itself a manifestation of sin?

If human sinful nature is all about creating categories of 'them and us' and about expelling 'them' in order to keep 'the in group' pure.....Isn't this process exactly what dualism is about?

I always thought of dualism as being an overly simplistic analysis which failed to see the complexities of any given situation. But I wonder if it's actually our need to scapegoat others that is at the heart of dualism?

For example, why have UK children's reading abilities dropped down the European league tables? The actual answer is probably quite a complex one with no easy answers. But if we can apply a dualistic formula that 'It's because of lazy teachers' or 'It's because of parents who don't want to spend time with their kids', not only do we have an apparently simple remedy ('they' just need to behave more responsibly), we are also able to say 'It's nothing to do with me'.

It's a scary thought with respect to the media as well; dualism sells.

And, as Christians, how do we guard against this when much of Christianity seems to function in the dualistic categories of 'me good, you bad if you don't think like me'?

What People Said Today

I paraphrase two things that were said to me today:

At a Funeral Visit Mum was a good person. We don't believe you have to go to church to believe. Church people aren't any better than anyone else and a lot of times they are worse. (Female, estimated age 40)

At a Communion Service in a Residential Home All this business about 'inclusion' is something you didn't hear 30 years ago or even 15 years ago. I wish I could say that it's Christians who are promoting 'inclusion' but it isn't. Christians, by and large, are still promoting 'exclusion' and 'inclusion' is being promoted by the government and the world at large. (Female, estimated age 80+, staunch church-goer)

These remarks reminded me of a comment on this blog post on the ‘Preaching Peace’ blog:

I can't seem to go to worship any longer or be anything but a fringe participant in my semi-former faith community because of exactly what you say here, that institutional religion is designed to contain violence; and, I'd add, from my observation and experience, it often (maybe always?) does so by mandating and maintaining circles of exclusion and inclusion. I don't want to scapegoat 'church' and yet I don't see how I can be part of it, either, because of the way it operates and its intention in so operating.

I see that a separate blog entry on the 'Preaching Peace' blog is attempting to address this question.

As a minister, this is an important question for me and one which I find that I don't have a coherent answer to. I know why a faith community is important to me, but it's hard to answer the question as to 'Why church if it is an excluding institution?

Perspective

Just a musing after having looked at a blog of someone who has been to a theology conference. The blog is filled with photo after photo of the speakers at that conference. All male. The pictures of all male speakers made me depressed and even angry (even though I know that in my egalitarian branch of Christianity that there are in fact very few female theologians).

Reflecting on it, I think that the reason I had those feelings was because it seemed like a pictoral collage of what it means to be a female Christian in such an environment: it means literally having no voice. It means censoring the voices of any human being who shares one of the most important things about my humanity: my gender. "Male only" Christianity is depressing not because men are awful or because they are depressing, but because it means that there is something "not quite 100%" about being female. Whatever is said about "all are equal", not allowing one category of person to speak makes that category of person unequal - whether the reason be gender, race, class or sexual orientation.

I honestly believe that there is a connection between silencing a category of person and violence. It probably would not be accurate to call this way of thinking "violent", but in Girardian theory, violence begins when individuals strive for (what I'd call) radical individuality at any cost. I must be an individual; I must not be like you and I must not believe that I am imitating you. At the extreme end of this behaviour, I will make a scape-goat of you and I will murder you. Less dramatically, I might bully you. Less dramatically than bullying, I construct a theory that you are not to speak and I get you to agree with my theory; if I do not have to hear your perspective, then I do not have any worry about being like you.

Just a theory. I wonder what others think?

Christian Peace Bloggers

Michael Westmorland-White at the "Levellers" blog has just started the Christian Peace Bloggers web ring. I've joined but I'm a bit nervous about being able to fulfill his criterion of blogging on peace at least once a week. So why am I nervous and why I have joined?

I've joined and I'm nervous for the same reason. I never set out to study Christianity with a "peace agenda" and I've not really studied any sort of "theology of peace" in depth. My convictions about peace and reconciliation have come out of my study and devotion as a Christian person. To me, peace and reconcilation are at the very heart of the Gospel. Being in a "peace blog ring" seems rather like being in an "Agape-love blog ring".

But maybe the fact that so many other Christians consider peace and reconciliation to be periperial issues or even matters of "worldliness" is part of why being identified as a Christian pacificist and reconciler is a necessary thing.

So I will leave the academic theology of peace to Michael and other ring members who have studied this issue in depth. For me, my basic belief is that selfishness, greed, competition and violence are all out-workings of original sin. I believe that peace and reconciliation (God with humanity and human beings with other human beings) are only possible through Christ and by the grace of the Holy Spirit; I believe that peace is an out-working of holiness. To say that "peace" is a worldly issue or something that God is not concerned about is to say that God does not care about holiness and that God does not care about salvation or reconciliation.

The basis for many of my ideas on peace and Christianity is Rene Girard's theory of mimetic desire.