Jesus continues to prepare his Disciples for what is to come. He warns them that they will be put out of the synagogues, as the religious leaders threatened to do to the blind man in Chapter 9 and the other leaders who believed in Chapter 12. He warns them that they will be killed by those
who will think that by doing so they are offering worship to God. And they will do so because they have not known the Father or me. (16:2-3)Obviously, as discussed before, John's community faced this exile and shunning from the synagogues of their own time. Jesus' promise of the coming Advocate (the Holy Spirit) was--and is--an important one.
More and more Anglicans are learning what it is like to be cast out of their religious communities. Lbgt folks have been experiencing this for years. Now many conservatives are experiencing it. And now that they are experiencing that pain, they are attempting to take their communities--their churches--with them, casting out those who disagree with their actions.
That is one problem with their actions--the casting out of others who have been members of those churches. Another is that no one is actually casting them out, no matter what they say about lawsuits, etc. They have chosen to leave. They try to turn it around and say that the Episcopal Church has left them by its actions and heresy, but they are not being asked to leave their churches. They are trying to take their churches with them.
And finally, no one is trying to kill them or advocate for stringent legal sanctions against their personal liberty. No matter how the rejectionists try to twist it, a number of high-level Anglican leaders in the provinces to which they are "fleeing" have publicly supported proposed legislation curbing freedom for lbgt folks and spoken out against our civil liberties.
So where is the Advocate in all of this? Sometimes it's hard to tell. As Mom commented on my post of the other day, where was God when Matthew Shepherd was beaten and left to die?
Peace,
Jeffri
Preaching off the top of my head...
ReplyDeleteGod is where God always is: right here with us, weeping and mourning, angry and frustrated. Clearly, it's not enough [for many of us] that God took flesh and was reviled and beaten and killed in a manner not too far removed from what happened to Matthew Shepherd. We've got to continue to do the same to one another--in God's name, no less--to constantly try to prove to ourselves and one another that we are worthy of the sacrifice that's already been made. It is self-defeating, self-loathing behavior and it is sadly human. Thankfully, in the infinite grace of God, we're never left to deal with it alone. God binds us to one another even when we do our best to tear ourselves apart.
But I think you know all of this already.