Day Four: Spiritual Borderlands and Drag Queen Bingo
The theme for the Festival this year is “Preaching On the Borders.” It has cropped up in various places throughout, many sermons and many lectures pointed toward it. But today it came rushing to the fore. Or maybe it is because this event is almost over and I’m about to head back home. Home to transition. Home to a border crossing, from one place to another place of service. To say there are mixed feelings doesn’t adequately describe it. But a part of the anxiety is the change itself. Crossing into the unknown is always daunting. But perhaps that’s where we’re called to go. Perhaps that’s where God is. Oh, certainly God is in the safe center too. No question. But on the borders, or as the Celts called it, the thin places, God seems more real.
The day began with Bishop William Willimon. Bishop Willimon is a United Methodist Bishop, long time Dean of Duke University Chapel and pastor in North Carolina, and kindred spirit of mine. He speaks with a biting sarcasm and talks of biblical characters as though he met them at a bar. I like that. He also seems to make up his sermons on the fly. And is surprised as we are when they end. “The Light of Love Comes Shining Through” was the hopeful title of his sermon this morning. He talked about his ministry, as pastor and bishop, and concluded that his best times were when Jesus pushed him over a boundary. Jesus, he says, never met a door He couldn’t kick in, a border He couldn’t cross, or a boundary wall He couldn’t tear down.
Willimon told of receiving a fill in appointment to a declining church in Raleigh. He was told it would be a couple of months, he was there for a year. He decided to try to make it go, to make it relevant to the changed neighborhood where the church was located. He sought out some folks who knew the area and asked them “Where do we go to find out what is going on in this neighborhood? How do we become relevant to our community.” The urban expert said “Drag Queen Bingo.” Bishop Willimon said, I’m not sure we are ready for that. The expert said, “Oh, I thought you were serious about evangelism. Better go back and prepare to close down.” The bishop and a few members of the church went to Drag Queen Bingo.
They crossed border into a world they didn’t know existed. Their eyes were opened and so were their hearts. Was the church saved? Did the community find Jesus and give up their wayward life? The bingo addiction I mean. Well, he didn’t actually say. These things take time. But doors were opened. And Christ will go through.
After a break the Bishop moved from preaching mode to lecture mode, “Confronting Racism through Preaching” was the title. Not quite a hopeful, or easy. He spoke of attending a Methodist camp one summer as a youth, and being asked to room with a “Negro.” Willimon claimed that when he left that camp he no longer lived in the same world he had occupied before. His world was wider, deeper. His roommate grew up a few blocks from him, he discovered, but his experience of their home town was different, and a town he never knew was described to him. This border, what was once called “the color line” is a border in our hearts, but also in the structures of our culture in ways many of us don’t want to or can’t acknowledge. But one of the things that Jesus can do is open eyes. And one of the tools He uses to do that is preaching. So it is on us preachers, and us congregations to raise these issues and open our eyes. Biblically we can look at the stories of Jews and Samaritans, or later Jews and Gentiles. These too are racial divides. And demand proclamation. Demand salvation from this sin. The bishop reminded us that God only saves sinners. Let’s confess our sin.
Grace Imathiu is a Kenyan Methodist preacher now pastoring in the States. Her sermon was called Border Scandal. Based on the story of the Woman at the Well, Grace is the one who invoked the memory of the thin places. But thin places while holy and full of Presence, are also dangerous places, she argued. Dangerous because change happens in those places. Transformation happens. Be prepared to cross over into a new way of seeing, a new way of being.
The current Dean of the Chapel at Duke University is Dr Luke Powery. Powery has degrees in theology and preaching but also in music. He is an advocate of the place of the Spiritual in both the history and theology of Christian proclamation. And, oh my goodness, can he sing them. Spiritual Borderlands, Powery says, means not just Spirit, but spiritual. And the songs shape the experience theologically, even as they shape the singers spiritually. The spirituals are keys to speaking the truth, too preaching on the borders.
First of all spirituals sound the note of the reality of human suffering. Not the health, wealth and prosperity of an easy gospel, but the blood and tears and death of a real world. Proclamation tells the truth. Spirituals sound the note of divine suffering .. Were you there when they crucified my Lord? We proclaim his death until he comes. But then Spirituals also sound the note of the ecology of community, the reminder that the only way we live in this world is together. The only way we make sense, make meaning in this world is as a body together. And we do it singing, as spirituals sound the note of the practice of singing as a homiletical strategy. We are a community that proclaims, and sings our faith with confidence and joy. Luther said Music is the handmaiden of theology. We sing our way across the borders.
Which is part of what David Lose said, the final speaker of the day. “Proclaiming Truth in an Alt-Fact World” that was his title. And he starts by admitting, he didn’t know how to do that. Shortest lecture of the week. Actually no. He raised some questions, gave some pointers and said that we all are sorting our way through this crazy world. But the point that resonated the most with me was when he pointed out that in this current climate, studies have actually proved that facts presented rationally are the least effective means of changing minds. We have learned, Lose presented, to seek out information that affirms our opinions and biases. We don’t seek information to learn or to change, but to be agreed with. And facts that contradict our opinions are at best ignored and at worst slammed as fake news. So, if facts don’t work, what does work? Well, what works better is story. Or what we in our tradition call witness. We tell it from a personal perspective.
What’s your story? Where are your borders?
Shalom,
Derek
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