Which Side Are You On?

GOD IS NOT a neutral observer of our worldly affairs. “God takes sides,” the Brazilian theologians Clodovis and Leonardo Boff explain in Introducing Liberation Theology. God is not a dispassionate consultant, nonpartisan mediator of divisions, or a disinterested negotiator of political antagonisms. “God takes sides and comes on the scene as one who favors the poor,” Mexican theologian Elsa Tamez writes in Bible of the Oppressed. “The God of the biblical tradition is not uninvolved or neutral,” U.S. theologian James H. Cone argues in A Black Theology of Liberation. “God is active in human history, taking sides with the oppressed.”

God has already decided to live in solidarity with people who have survived injustice after injustice. The incarnation reveals the partisanship of God—that, in Jesus, God becomes one of the “disinherited,” to use Howard Thurman’s language. The life of Jesus is the story of how God takes the side of “people who stand with their backs against the wall,” as Thurman puts it in Jesus and the Disinherited, populations “disinherited from participation in meaningful social process,” groups segregated from “any stake in the social order.”

The Bible passages this month call us to examine where we stand. They illumine the borders of power—the divide between privilege and oppression that slices through our communities—and prod us with a question: Which side are you on?

July 4

Shaking the Dust Off

NEARLY A DECADE ago, a colleague asked to meet with me for an important discussion. I had met this pastor over the years at denominational gatherings. Early one morning , he drove from his town in Virginia to my house in North Carolina. When he arrived, I invited him in, poured us coffee, and waited for him to say what he needed to say. He clutched his leatherbound Bible and leaned toward me. “Do you believe in God’s word?” he asked. “Because if you do, I don’t know why you’ve been saying that homosexuality is an appropriate lifestyle.” He flipped from verse to verse proving his argument against the inclusion of LGBTQ people into church membership, as equals, without restrictions against gay marriage or the ordination of people who are queer.

After hours of biblical disagreements, he ended with a prayer for God to convict me of my misguided teaching and wayward leadership. As he walked to the sidewalk, I thought I almost saw him knock his shoes against the curb, first one foot then the other, before he got into his car. “As you leave,” Jesus once instructed his disciples, “shake off the dust that is on your feet as a testimony against them” (Mark 6:11).

After I officiated my first same-sex wedding, I saw this same pastor at a denominational gathering—this was after the regional conference of churches to which we both belonged suspended my ordination in perpetuity and disowned my ministry. From a distance we exchanged a glance. He put his head down, turned around, and walked the other way—a modern version of the Anabaptist tradition of shunning, updated for the convoluted denominational micropolitics displayed during biennial national assemblies.

Many of us have reached an impasse with one another due to a fundamental disagreement about the full belonging of LGBTQ members of our households of faith. Leaders in authority have asked me to repent, which I will not do, and I’ve found them to be inhospitable to my biblical arguments. So, we go on, each in judgment of the other’s testimony, amazed at each other’s unbelief. We need time to shake the dust off after our ecclesial clashes before we can figure out how to be together again.

July 11

Obscene Wealth

HEROD IS PART of the “one percent,” a member of the class of people who feast while others struggle for the next paycheck. He throws a party for “his courtiers and officers and the leaders of Galilee” (Mark 6:21). The powerful eat more than they need and drink from bottomless glasses. Herod and his friends leer at Herodias’ daughter—enlisted as their entertainment—in a scene of sexist exploitation.

Amid extravagant consumption, Herod executes John the Baptist, whose head is brought on a serving dish ready to be eaten. John’s life was sacrificed for the party, collateral damage for a way of life driven by insatiable appetites and rash decisions.

This is an image of our world—a world where the rich leech their gratification from networks of production, from economic systems that feed on the masses who struggle to buy groceries and pay rent and keep the creditors away. The global financial order enslaves countries and individuals by means of debt—a force of subjugation that intensifies according to the logic of interest rates.

Amos prophesies apocalyptic destruction for these kinds of oppressive worlds: The high places shall be made desolate, and the sanctuaries laid waste (Amos 7:9). This leveling is a consequence of a stratified society built on the foundation of an unjust economy. “They sell the righteous for silver,” Amos attests earlier, “and the needy for a pair of sandals” (2:6). For a people who benefit from a system that produces such dehumanizing disparities, salvation will mean desolation. “Why do you want the day of the Lord?” Amos asks. “It is darkness, not light ... gloom with no brightness in it” (5:18, 20). To hope for redemption is to open our lives to judgment, to wonder if we are on God’s side.

July 18

When We Wander

JEREMIAH PROPHESIES GOD'S condemnation of leaders who forsake their people, shepherds who neglect the flock. “Woe to the shepherds who destroy and scatter the sheep of my pasture” (23:1). The leaders consolidate their authority with terror. They torment the flock. In distress the sheep scatter and await a righteous shepherd who will care for them with justice.

In Roman catacombs during the third century, when Christians held hidden worship services under the city, the faithful would paint the walls with scenes from Bible stories. Archeologists have discovered that a favorite image was Jesus as the good shepherd, with him carrying a lamb over his shoulders, returning the lost one to the flock. “I am the good shepherd,” Jesus says in John’s gospel. “The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep” (10:11).

To recognize Jesus as our shepherd makes me wonder about my pastoral role. I am not in competition for his flock. I am not a rival for the authority of his staff. Instead, I’m one of the sheep, like the others, all of us looking to Jesus as our guide, our herder. To discern God’s will for a community is not the job of one person.

This month is the 15th anniversary of my pastoral calling. I have served the same congregation for all that time. As a member of this church, I’ve learned how to discern God’s will as a community—to struggle with one another as we agree and disagree, as we hash out the truth about the world and ourselves and God. With Jesus as our good shepherd, I’ve been able to settle into a gentle confidence in God’s care, that the one who has called us will not abandon us, even when we wander.

July 25

Bread and Child Care

I DON'T TRUST storytellers who don’t mention food. I do not know what to do with history books, with novels, with biographies, that neglect to mention the most ordinary thing about human beings: that we make and eat food. We can’t do life without laborers, somewhere growing and preparing food—someone planning out how food is going to get to our hungry mouths. We schedule our days around eating and making sure other people in our lives have something to eat.

In graduate school I read a lot of political theology—books about revolutionary Christian politics. Caught up in page after page of serious arguments and important ideas, the rumbling of my stomach would remind me to eat. The interruption of hunger made me notice that these books did not spend much time on food production and distribution. What were the theological revolutionaries supposed to eat, and who was going to make the food? That never seemed to be a concern. Neither did they worry about child care, which always clued me into the shortcomings of their visions for the world. Who would make the meals and provide child care while they planned for the kingdom of God? Church life has taught me to think about ordinary and vital needs—to prioritize the “tedious logistics” of mutual care, our provisions for bodily life.

In John 6, we read a story about food. Jesus wanders out into the wilderness and a multitude follows him. There is not much that happens—just thousands of people waiting around with Jesus, until evening when stomachs begin to growl. With the crowds around him, Jesus blesses bread and fish, then passes around the food for the hungry masses.

We pass along what has been given to us—heavenly blessings, the gifts of creation, the grace of God. Jesus reveals the inner workings of the miraculous: that providence happens when we share our provisions. All we have is manna, our resources multiplied through redistribution.