30 August 2005

Today is a continuing look at the chapter in "A Better Hope" called On Being A Christian and An American by Stanley Hauerwas.

In writing about what seems to be the necessity for Christianity to provide a "moral account" for the country, Hauerwas writes...Christianity becomes the the master story to sustain a republic that officially can have not master story.
A story not unlike this has been tempting for liberal and conservative Christians alike. Liberal Christians assume that something like a religious appeal is necessary or at least important to sustain the quest for justice; conservative Christians assume that without Christianity people cannot develop the virtues necessary to sustain a free society. Thus the imporantance of intermediate institutions of which the church seems to be a ready exemplification. Calls for Christians to make the family work are but the out-working of such strategies. The only problem is that the only institution more destructive of the family than capitalism is Christianity.

The Church is not a people who help to sustain the government and culture in which we live - from either a liberal or conservative perspective. We are called to be followers of Jesus...a contrary movement that will not settle for the many ways people want our societies "fixed" by the Church. For example, as we learn to live with one another as brothers and sisters in Christ and we have no need for patterns of separation that so often rule our society, we may find that the freedom of life within the Reign of God will run quite at odds with values of the community. Imagine the problems within the family that begins to break down the barrier of race and culture and ethnicity. Imagine the problems within the family that does not go along with the prevailing economic expectations of the society. The teachings of Jesus may indeed work against the cultural picture of family that is so accepted among us. We suffer from the "affluenza" in our society and we probably suffer from a touch of some kind of "family-uenza" that works to keep us separate from one another rather in touch with one another.

Connection: We are a people who do not fit in with the cultural demands placed on us in order that we conform to the rest of the people around us. The Church must be the church even when we are people who do not settle into the patterns of our neighbors or our own family.

Lord of All Lands, you have called out a people who will shine within the light of your blessed Reign. When that light shines it will not be welcome by all of us. Keep us steadfast in the ways of your Reign even as we must walk along a path not chosen by the people around us. Amen.