"Until the lioness tells her story, the hunter will always be the hero."
Part II of thoughts on PB Sean Rowe’s op-ed, "Once the church of presidents, the Episcopal Church must now be an engine of resistance.”
Throughout the next two weeks, I’m going to be sharing some thoughts and questions that spring from Episcopal Church Presiding Bishop Sean Rowe’s July 3 op-ed, “Once the church of presidents, the Episcopal Church must now be an engine of resistance.” My hope is that both the thoughts and questions will spark conversation and even collaboration. Please feel free to use comment or chat to join in. This is Part 2 of 5
Click here for Part I – Pride makes us artificial and humanity makes us real
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In 2 Corinthians 5:18, Paul writes:
“All these things are from God, who reconciled us to herself through Christ and who has given us the ministry of reconciliation”
The word Paul uses for reconciliation is καταλλάσσω (katallassō) which literally means to exchange places.
When we put the healing of broken relationships – with each other, ourselves, creation – in a context of katallasso we are invited into a process where the wounded, not the wounder, has the power.1
Jesus reminds us of this in Matthew 5:21-24:
“You have heard that our ancestors were told, ‘You must not murder. If you commit murder, you are subject to judgment. But I say, if you are even angry with someone, you are subject to judgment! If you call someone an idiot, you are in danger of being brought before the court. And if you curse someone, you are in danger of the fires of hell.
“So if you are presenting a sacrifice at the altar in the Temple and you suddenly remember that someone has something against you, leave your sacrifice there at the altar. Go and be reconciled to that person. Then come and offer your sacrifice to God.”
Three things here.
First, Jesus doesn’t pull any punches – this is clearly a big deal.
Second, we cannot individually be in right relationship with God until we have done the work with each other.
Third, Jesus puts the onus of reconciliation on the one who has done the wounding – “you suddenly remember that someone has something against you.”
Fortunately, we have an app for this … the sacramental rite of reconciliation (or, as the Rev. Gayle Fisher-Stewart rightly reminds us, in cases where there has never been unity, better stated as the rite of “conciliation.”).
In our sacramental tradition, reconciliation has five distinct steps:
Self-examination
Confession
Repentance/Reparation
Amendment of Life
Absolution
All five of those steps are critical … but perhaps none more important than the first.
Given that our primary scriptural texts about reconciliation talk about exchanging places and putting power in the hands of the wounded, we actually should find a better term than self-examination.
Saying “self-examination” tempts us just to “think about it for a little bit” … when truly what Christ invites us into is by necessity a communal process.
In this context, self-examination bids us “leave our gift at the altar and go and be reconciled.” It is the action of seeking out those whom we have wounded … or think we might have wounded … and inviting them into a process of katallasso. A process where as best we can, we who have done the wounding try to “exchange places” with those we have wounded.
In practice that means the wounded, not the wounders – get to name where they get to name the wounding and the wounders get to listen, listen, listen and listen some more.
And then when the wounders are done listening … we get to listen some more.
And then when the wounders think they have understood the depth, nature and impact of the wound, the wounders share what they have learned with the wounded and ask one question:
“Am I getting this right.”
Then and ONLY THEN, can we move to the next stage of confession, knowing that the brokenness we are confessing is not just what the wounders think it is but – more important – what the wounded know it to be.
If you want to write a new story … you have to tell the whole story.
In his op-ed, Presiding Bishop Sean Rowe writes:
The reckoning, if we are honest, is long overdue. Every July 4, our prayer book reminds us of our failure to stand against the enslavement of Black Americans with a prayer for Independence Day claiming that “the founders of this country won liberty for themselves and for us.” But not all of us. The Episcopal Church did not make a moral stand against slavery, and some of our eminent leaders were pillars of the transatlantic slave trade. Our church ran residential schools for Indigenous children at which they were denied their culture and God-given humanity. And in the mid-20th century, our foreign missions aligned with U.S. foreign policy in Asia and the Pacific, and in Central America and the Caribbean.
This is an excellent and important list … and I am grateful to the Presiding Bishop for naming it. It is certainly not exhaustive (which could have been mentioned) … and an exhaustive list could not have been contained within even a dissertation-length opinion piece.
I don’t know the process PB Rowe went through in coming up with this list … and I will assume it involved some of the deep and uncomfortable listening that is necessary. To the extent he has engaged this process, I am grateful.
And … he is not the one who gets to decide whether he has listened deeply or accurately or enough … only those who have been and continue to be wounded by the church’s racist past and present can do that.
And … our track record is not good. And wittingly or not, the Presiding Bishop’s remarks fit too easily into a history that centers white comfort and ignores the exchanging of positions of power that the liberation of a katallasso life demands.
In my experience, the Episcopal Church does self-examination about race until it becomes uncomfortable or in any way challenging to the existing status quo. We then do a loud confession, token reparation (which again does not extend to addressing power dynamics or true reparation), amendment of life that is 99% word and 1% deed …
And then we demand a loud absolution. And if we don’t get it, we give it to ourselves.
That we have not done true self-examination is evident in the litany of diocesan and general convention resolutions and programs about “the sin of racism”
… none of which, to my knowledge, involve the deep listening and exchange of power needed for katallasso.
… none of which end with us asking the wounded “Are we getting this right?”
… none of which involve asking the wounded “what would reparation and amendment of life look like to you?”
… none of which have in any significant way changed the power structure and culture of the church.
Particularly as white people who like to self-identify as progressive, we have a long and undistinguished history of substituting saying different versions of the same words over and over again for actually engaging in the process of true reconciliation.
I appreciate that, intentionally or not, the Presiding Bishop used the term “reckoning.”
Reckoning is a moment of judgment or decision when we must face the consequences of our actions.
The paragraph that begins: “The reckoning, if we are honest, is long overdue” and precedes the list of offenses, comes after two paragraphs that talk about a judgment that we have made that in certain areas we can no longer cooperate with the federal government.
The Presiding Bishop talks about a reckoning where we are the ones judging ourselves and our relationship with the state and the culture. That is all well and good … but that still keeps us in the power position.
There is another reckoning that is upon us … one that is long overdue for us to notice and heed. It has been happening and continues to happen … and the question is what the church’s response will be.
If we are listening to the voices of black, brown, AAPI+, indigenous, queer and other people we as the church have continually wounded and kicked to the curb …. who we have demanded accept ornamentation as equity and, as the brilliant Rev. Alfredo Feregrino notes, “give them crumbs and expect them to make banquets” – we will hear the judgment against us.
If we are listening to the silence of the absence of all but a few black, brown indigenous, young, queer and other people in our churches – we will hear the judgment against us.
If we are listening to the cries particularly from younger generations of non-white people that they are not interested in white tears or convention resolutions or even an academic listing of historical sins … we will hear the judgment against us.
There is a reckoning that is happening … and it is not so much long overdue as it has been happening for a while … and it is why our church continues to be largely white, older, moderate and irrelevant.
There is a reckoning that is happening. And that reckoning is an invitation … perhaps for the last time, because the patience of the wounded is not infinite.
That reckoning is an invitation to katallasso.
That reckoning is a judgment against our church and against all among us who believe that reconciliation or conciliation can happen on the timetable of white comfort and without the exchange of place and power that katallasso demands.
So, I ask in deep gratitude to any black, brown, AAPI+, indigenous, queer and other people we as the church has wounded who are still willing to engage this church that has continually triumphed justice up to the point of our own discomfort …
*What is on your heart?
*What are the wounds from the church and this nation we have helped build and continue to support that you bear on your hearts, bodies and souls?
*What have you been crying that we have refused to hear?
*What else should we be asking that we have not been asking or when we have to which we have not been listening.
And for the rest of us who look like me … we need to do our own research (I recommend the works of Gayle-Fisher Stewart – both Black and Episcopalian and Church Hurt – as an excellent starting point) … and we need to offer just compensation for the time and lived expertise of those whose cries we have been ignoring until this moment when we have decided we might need to listen.
We will get to confession, reparation and amendment of life later.
If you want to write a new story, you have to tell the whole story.
The Rev. Traci Blackmon regularly reminds me of an African proverb:
“Until the lioness tells her story, the hunter will always be the hero.”
The Presiding Bishop’s words are maybe … maybe … a first halting step to us being open to a story of the church that we who have been in power since its inception do not write and of which we are not the hero.
If you want to write a new story, you have to tell the whole story … that story.
We have said the words before.
Are we ready to listen?
I am indebted to Allan Aubrey Boesak and Curtis Paul de Young’s groundbreaking book, Radical Reconciliation: Beyond Political Pietism and Christian Quietism, for this scholarship - you can order the book here —https://www.left-bank.com/book/9781570759765
And thank you for the shout out for the books!
Thank you, Mike. Until we have deep conversations, fewer book reads without action and "churchy" -- pleading guidance, we, as the church, will remain in our sins. We need people, like you (and a couple of others), white people, to accept the mantle for change because the wounded are tired. it is a fight we fight every single day. We can't breathe without whiteness trying to asphyxiate us. It would seem that in this season after Pentecost, we could actually have a church on fire for the truth. I am reminded of the quote from Rev. William Sparrow that greets you every time you enter the Bishop Payne library at Virginia Theological Seminary, "“Seek the Truth, Come Whence It May, Cost What It Will.”