Something that seems often missing in our fragmented world is a sense of community. We often don’t know our neighbors and we are poorer as a result. Being a member of a church is no antidote to this lack of community.
Community requires us to have a conversation with the people sitting next to us. This conversation often doesn’t come easy. In community, we must be willing to see, listen and care for those around us. In community, we understand that our actions have consequences to others. When we understand the consequences of our actions, we are then faced with a huge decision.
One of the big news items last week was the bombshell announcement by Alan Chambers, President of Exodus International who apologized on behalf of himself, his organization and the church to the the LGBT community. For those unfamiliar with Exodus, they were a Christian organization who were once among the biggest advocates of reparative therapy, which is the attempt to convert gay people and make them straight.
One of the things that made Chambers apology so stunning was it’s honesty and forthrightness. In my twenty years of Christian faith and thirty-five years in the Church, I never recall hearing such a contrite and unequivocal apology from a Christian leader, especially on what many in the church would consider a “theological issue”. Chambers didn’t mince words and instead offered up a total repudiation of Exodus International and it’s ministry to “reform” gay and lesbian people. He acknowledged and took full responsibility for the hurt was caused to people. He acknowledged that actions and those of Exodus poorly represented God and that some people even took their own lives as a result.
What changed in Alan Chambers? In his interview with Anderson Cooper, Chambers says that this was something that was a “long time coming,” but that an important part of this process was listening to people’s stories.
All of this brought to mind my recent reading of Jeff Chu’s book “Does Jesus Really Love Me.” Jeff Chu is a young man who grew up in the church, and who discovered his sexuality at relatively young age. In Does Jesus Really Love Me, Jeff Chu takes a kind of road-trip across America interviewing people on the topic of being gay and Christian in the church. He interviews Christian leaders of all stripes and he interviews gay and lesbians on the difficult road they navigate if they wish to be a part of the church. He interviews closeted gay people, and gay people who left the church and God altogether. He also interviewed Alan Chambers. On the whole, I found Chu’s approach to this issue to be remarkably fair and even-handed. While you might not necessarily agree with everything Chu writes, or the people he interviews you’ll come out of his book with a greater appreciation for other people. If you’re a follower of Jesus, you’ll particular find a better understanding and empathy towards gay and lesbian people.
It’s easy to take a stake out an abstract position on something like homosexuality, but it’s much more difficult for us to stake out a position when we realize how our actions and words effect others. Words have meaning, and words and actions carry hurt, shame and grief.
Andrew Marin is a Christian who has been on the leading edge of having conversations with members of the gay community. Through his foundation, Marin has advocated cultural engagement and in person interaction with members of the gay community. He has actively apologized to gay people for the role played by the church in alienating people from a God who loves them. In this process, I find it informative that one of the big things Marin advocates for is conversation and interaction with people with whom you may not necessarily agree. In an interview with Jonathan Merritt, Marin was asked what should congregations know about the experience of gay people in the church.
Marin responded:
The best I can offer is to go to an LGBT person you know, sit down with them, keep your mouth shut and just listen to their reality. Any agreement or disagreement one might have with an LGBT person’s reality must be a secondary issue. The primary issue is learning what it means to validate someone’s journey, story and experience as legitimate to them. No one likes their reality to be tossed aside as illegitimate. People yearn to be heard.
People yearn to be heard.
I started off this post talking about community and lamenting how our society has become fragmented. We even see the church becoming disconnected from people.
When we are disconnected from people it’s easier to misunderstand them, or to even hate them. Community is about interconnectedness. We see other people and they now have an identity. We are linked to them. We understand that our decision and choices to love or to hate, to share or to hoard, to conserve or to waste are not just decisions which we can take in a small bubble, and these decisions effect more than just the members of our immediate circle.
In the case of Alan Chambers, he sees other people, and hears their stories. He hears how his actions and the actions of his organization have had a devastating effect on other people. He might have been sincere and he might have had the best intentions. He might have felt as if he was doing God’s will. None of this matters, because he was hurting other people and far from bringing people to Jesus, his actions were pushing people from Jesus. This is something Chambers realizes when he begins to have conversations with people and when he opens himself up to community.
In Jesus’ own ministry, he often challenged the disciples to see the people around them and for the disciples to increase the size of their hearts. In the story of the Good Samaritan, Jesus offers a story that tells us who is our neighbor. Our neighbor isn’t the person who look likes us, or who even necessarily share our values or faith. Our neighbor is that almost unrecognizable person who lies beaten and broken on the side of the road.
In the story of the feeding of the five thousand, the disciples were overwhelmed by the crowd following Jesus. They asked Jesus to send the people away. For the disciples, “Why should we be responsible for feeding the crowds?”
What does Jesus do? He has compassion on the masses. He tells the disciples to do something about it, and then using their modest effort Jesus feeds the 5000. It’s a miracle and like many miracles we’re left with more questions than answers. Bottom line is that before Jesus took action, these people were still hungry. Jesus stepped into the gap for these people and he feeds them.
In the story of the feeding of the 5000, the disciples wanted to send the people away. They could not be responsible for all these hungry people. This is how we often feel like. You see, it’s always much easier to live in our world in a state of denial.
I’m just trying to do the right thing. I’m not responsible for those people. This is out of my control and power. We rationalize and we temporize. Those people are responsible for their own actions.
Jesus turns around and tells us, “Wrong”.
We do have a responsibility. Jesus sees the people and he has compassion on them, and he calls on us to take on a different role in the world, one of interconnectedness.
We can assume the disciples saw the 5000, since they wanted to send them away, but in a certain respect, they didn’t really see all of these people. At least the disciples didn’t see the people in the same way that Jesus saw them. Jesus saw the 5000 and he had compassion on them. They weren’t nameless, faceless people. They were people who needed help and who needed compassion.
When we see people, as people, instead of problems or even sinners, we are creating community with them. When we allow them to share their stories with us, we are doing something transformative and possibly subversive. We are opening the door and our own hearts and allowing God to speak through the voices around us. What could the end result?
It’s impossible to know what might happen if we actually listened to people. Like Alan Chambers this might lead us to make a heartfelt apology to millions of people, or like the disciples, we might end up feeding 5000 people with our friend Jesus.
