Choosing solidarity with God
In a sense, I am asking my parishioners the same thing John Wesley asked: Are you going on?
A Lampedusa Cross, made from the wreckage of boats transporting migrants to Europe from North Africa (Photo by Doyle of London / Creative Commons)
We do a lot of denouncing and pronouncing. Churches—other Christians—are just so embarrassing to us. Maybe it’s time for a different tone of voice. Announcing, maybe.
Recently I preached at a weeknight service at my own church. Some while ago we’d earmarked it as an occasion to induct eight new members of our Nazareth Community. Each member takes an annual vow of silence (observed three times a week), sacrament, study, sabbath, sharing, service, and staying with. We started it in 2018. It now has 88 members. It’s the most diverse community—in race, class, sexuality, ability, and much else—I’ve yet encountered. Its online sister, the Companions of Nazareth, has 135 members.
Then one of my clergy colleagues decided she wanted her baby baptized at the same service. Fine. Then a new member of our congregation said he wanted to be baptized too. This was another matter. He is from the Middle East. Turns out it’s tough to be gay in the Middle East. We have to be careful with a lot of our congregation’s members who’ve fled to this country: careful they don’t appear on the livestream video, careful we don’t use their names in public. It’s our moment of encounter with the early church and the catacombs.
