The Social Body, Family Values and Jesus

In a "profound, earthy and funny" (from the book blurb by Paul J. Griffiths) book--Tortured Wonders: Christian Spirituality for People, Not Angels--by Rodney Clap I find inspiration for this piece. This all started when I decided to read the whole book, having read a few chapters a few years ago. You know how that is. By the way, it's an excellent book and is still available; I just checked the Baker/Brazos website.

As the host of a house church with some participants who are new to taking the Bible seriously, weekly prayer and communion, I find myself (lifelong Christian) thinking deeply about how to communicate effectively. And so, when I read the following in Tortured Wonders I brought this into our discussion about a healing story in Luke the next Sunday. These two excerpts are central to this essay.

Unlike any known culture before it, the modern West has seen individual physical bodies as the basis of the social body. The individual is real and primary, the social body a derivative fiction. The modern West has, in essence and contrary to the apostle Paul, said that individuals as "hands" or "feet" are most themselves in isolation from any social body of which they may be members. Premoderns saw matters differently. The individual, inasmuch as such a creature could be conceived [emphasis mine], was preceded by and dependent on the social body. The whole person exited only in community (72).

When I introduced the healing story, I invited people to think about how this played out for the whole community, not just the individuals, how healing might have taken place in the social fabric. I am going to be pondering this for a while, remembering that many of the second-person pronouns in the New Testament are second-person plural--which we lose in the English translation, and in our individualist mindset. OK, back to the topic at hand.

But still I have caught a glimpse of what St. Augustine called concupiscence, the darkness of disordered desire which would make of the self a god and of all other creatures (and even of God Almighty) means or tools of the self's satisfaction and aggrandizement (67).

 My impression is that this "disordered desire" has primarily been identified in the sphere of human sexual relations, however, does it not make sense in terms of much of human failing in other spheres as well?

A great deal of Christian rhetoric makes the news when it addresses family values, the constitution of a family, the parenting of children and marriage. On one side, people argue on behalf of what is commonly referred to as a conservative agenda, countered on the other hand by a so-called progressive agenda.
A: Marriage and family look like this... vs
B: No, marriage and family look like this.
Taking the Bible seriously leads to a close reading of the whole text (from Lot to Abraham to David particularly) and not finding a lot that supports a definition of family values that "conservatives" would affirm. And then there's that troublesome story about Jesus in Mark 3:31-35 (NRSV):

31 Then his mother and his brothers came; and standing outside, they sent to him and called him. 32 A crowd was sitting around him; and they said to him, “Your mother and your brothers and sisters are outside, asking for you.” 33 And he replied, “Who are my mother and my brothers?” 34 And looking at those who sat around him, he said, “Here are my mother and my brothers! 35 Whoever does the will of God is my brother and sister and mother.” 

Proclamations from all sides of the family debate tend toward an expression of "concupiscence," in other words, what serves the individual self's satisfaction. Making biological/adoptive/chosen family a primary value apart from the will of God is a disordered desire. Echoing what Clapp says in terms of Christian spirituality not wanting to erase all differences between person (76); neither do followers of the Way of Jesus want to deny the existence and importance of families (variously defined). We are called to rightly order our desires (to use Augustinian language) and to recall that Paul wrote in 1 Corinthians 13 about the love that is to be found in Christian worshiping communities--which then would facilitate that love in all relationships, including marriage and family.

Because we post-moderns have lost this rootedness in communal ties in which premodern cultures were steeped, we desperately seek for alternatives and elevate them beyond the importance that is rightfully theirs. Nations, sports teams, corporations, families, political parties, etc--all are found wanting as social bodies to convey identity. At the same time, modern spirituality focuses on self-realization or self-fulfillment, which "in the terms of Christian spirituality [is] perversely making the fall its ideal. It puts forth the alienated and amputated individual as the highest and healthiest human condition. And--seen with Christian eyes--that is an illusion. The amputated limb is a dying limb" (Clapp, 77).

Death is all around us: addiction, violence, greed, species extinction, suicide, hatred.
For us to choose life, we must re-member the social body, and recognize that our choice for life in God's realm is a communal reality.

2013 Clergy Session Prayer

The context for this prayer: I have been the "shepherd" for candidates for ordained ministry during their interviews. When those who have been approved come before the Clergy Session at our United Methodist Annual Conference, the shepherd is called upon to offer a prayer before we vote in affirmation of the recommendations by the Board of Ordained Ministry (which comes from that day of interviews noted above). This is the prayer I wrote this year.

As your children, friends and partners in the gospel by the grace of baptism and sanctifying grace, O Lord we come to you in prayer for ourselves, for all your creatures and for your world.

Called and gifted for your service, we see the intersections of powers and principalities that cut and break lives and communities: greed, selfishness, lust for power, racism, sexism, hatred, violence and deception. Grant that we may participate in your healing and renewing of all creation, trusting that with you all things are possible.

Whether in small towns or large cities we see the shattering of your will in creation and blessing of all you have made. And we see the power of grace in enabling us to choose the good in so many ways: the countless people who deliver Meals on Wheels, who tutor in schools, who march and pray and write for justice and peace, who clean up the neighborhood park, who pray with their neighbors in illness or tragedy, who plant and share the abundance of their gardens, who understand their daily work as a vocation in service to you no matter the status conferred by the world. In these and more, your light shines as from many cities on many hills.

Bless these who stand before us, with grace in commissioning and ordaining, that they may join in your healing work and in proclaiming the good news of your realm that is both a present and hoped-for reality. In their strengths may they serve the flourishing of your kingdom with humility. In their weakness, may your strength carry them and make known your love and power more and more.

"Lead us in being a people that follow after the things that make for peace, love and unity. Pour your love into our lives, such that we shall love all and desire the good of all" (Margaret Fell Fox, 17th-century Quaker leader).


Amen.