I belong to a church that practices “extravagant
welcome.” Each week the pastor extends a
welcome to all who enter the sanctuary, regardless of age, gender orientation,
race, or level of religious commitment.
It is a joy to be part of a church community that strives to be the
people of God.

The choir member, taken aback, tried to continue the
conversation about the life of the church community when other comments and
questions began to surface: “Isn’t this the church that has a close
relationship with the synagogue?”
“Christian churches should keep their people in the church. Why do they associate with Jews?”
It is hard to know whether the graceless questions and
comments were simply two people expressing opinions and views or whether there
was something deeper and darker behind the unexpected visit. Given the social and political climate in
which we live, the incident evoked anxiety and a sense of threat in both the
Christian and the Jewish congregations.
“Surely this can’t be happening here!”
Another small congregation wrestles with the decision about
whether to fly the rainbow flag, to publicly identify themselves as a
“welcoming congregation.” The process of
concerted discernment has been activated
by their denomination’s recent decisions to refuse ordination to “practicing”
homosexuals, to prohibit their clergy from performing same sex marriages.
One sentiment says “No” to flying the flag because it
represents a “political” stance and
"politics and church don’t mix." Another
sentiment says “Yes”. Flying the rainbow
flag tells the world something about who we are as a committed Christian
community. Still other voices say “We
will leave the church if the flag is displayed” even though the congregation
loves its gay members who are fully included in the administration of life of
the church.

Did the two strangers truly represent an implied threat? Or
were they simply socially inept? We may
never know. The tragedy is that their
inquiries immediately sparked anxiety and concern and the need to take some
kind of protective and defensive action.
While the smaller of the two Christian congregations
wrestles with whether the rainbow flag is a political symbol that transgresses
their sensibilities about the overlap between politics and religion, I am moved to understand better for myself how it is a symbol for a certain
spiritual, theological and biblical morality.

At the end of the deluge, the Author makes a lasting promise to the humans in the
ark: “I have set my bow in the clouds
and it shall be a sign of that covenant between me and the earth…every living
creature of all flesh that is on the earth.”
The covenant? “I will never again
curse the ground because of humankind…”

Viewed from this mythic perspective, the Rainbow Flag may be a
spiritual symbol of a divine moral
imperative - it gets to the heart of
what a Christian or Jewish community is about as we strive together to
fulfill the calling we jointly inherit - the call to be holy as God is holy.

Vicky Hanjian
No comments:
Post a Comment