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Graceful Practices
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| We should also preserve Calvin’s insight that even rules that have served the church well in the past should not be foisted on future generations as non-negotiable. | We should also preserve Calvin’s insight that even rules that have served the church well in the past should not be foisted on future generations as non-negotiable. We have to think with sympathetic imagination about the well-being of the future church. It is possible that tomorrow’s church may require new rules for its flourishing. Our faithfulness is not to a particular configuration of our common life, but to the promise that God’s grace in Jesus Christ will accompany us in the spiritual practice of shaping community. I see in Calvin an attempt at graceful spiritual practice around the contentious issue of ministerial leadership. He concedes that the weight of church tradition is on his opponents’ side; the proposal to accept married clergy was in a bold and risky one in that context. Calvin does not pretend that he has it all correct or that church order will never have to be rethought. He is doing his best to put together Scripture’s witness and pastoral and personal realities, trusting not in the exemplariness of the church’s practices of shaping community, but in the God who meets Christians in their searching and struggling to be faithful. |
| When those who disagree agree at least to stay in the same room, studying the same Scripture, then the way is open for a deeper and more honest wrestling with God’s word. | Shaping Readers of Scripture A related question is how we go about shaping graceful communities of readers of Scripture. One of the most heartening things for me about the deliberations of the Peace, Unity and Purity taskforce was their insistence on studying Scripture together. They found that Bible study in diverse groups “enriches our understandings and corrects our misunderstandings and helps us wrestle with God’s word more deeply and honestly.” When those who disagree agree at least to stay in the same room, studying the same Scripture, then the way is open for a deeper and more honest wrestling with God’s word. Bible study in communities of the like-minded has its place. But it does not bear the same gracious promise of enriching our understandings and correcting our misunderstandings. The truth about contentious matters seems so clear when you can just get those who disagree with you to go away! But that is not a shortcut to becoming a graceful community of readers. Reading Scripture is a communal practice. The sensus fidei, the mind of the faithful, deserves a respectful hearing, even when its opinions fall short of moral unanimity. Respecting the mind of the faithful requires listening to the voices of GLBT people and their allies. But it also involves listening to those who out of scriptural convictions oppose a change in ordination standards. For example, are we willing to listen to our Christian brothers and sisters in the global south on this issue? Are we willing to read Scripture with them? If not, doesn’t our push to change ordination standards risk being perceived as a unilateral maneuver all too reminiscent of American foreign policy? Won’t it risk looking like an American pursuit of their own ecclesial interests without much worry about their impact on the rest of the world? What does graceful practice require here? |
| Christian history has shown us again and again that one of the most spiritually dangerous questions we can ask is: “What does the Bible say about them?” | We need the help of the Spirit in reading Scripture gracefully. Our confidence in holding “the biblical view” has been shaken so many times across church history. Is the earth the center of the universe? Is the pope the antichrist? Is slavery in accordance with God’s will? Is divorce ever permissible for Christians? On these and many other subjects Christians in different time and places have changed their minds on what “the biblical view” is. This change of mind is usually brought about through the web of spiritual practices, rather than feats of exegetical brilliance. It happens through prayer, repentance, efforts at reconciliation, largehearted attention to the spiritual gifts and discernments of others. Christian history has shown us again and again that one of the most spiritually dangerous questions we can ask is: “What does the Bible say about them?” Whether it’s Christians asking that question about Jews, men asking that question about women, slaveowners asking that question about slaves, Protestants asking that question about Catholics, straight people asking that question about GLBT people, church history has shown us that when we ask that question—what does the Bible say about them—we often hear a self-justifying answer. As we gather here in support of the goals of the Covenant Network, we too have to be on guard against this. How easy—and how alienating—it is to compare those who disagree with us to the Pharisees, to the circumcision party, to those who are tone deaf to the new thing God is doing. When we are surrounded only by our like-minded friends, it is tempting to read the Bible in graceless ways, ways that reinforce rather than challenge our comfortable perceptions of ourselves and others. We’re on much firmer spiritual ground in our practice of shaping readers of Scripture when our question is, “what does the Bible say about us?” That question presupposes a community, a community not always in internal agreement, but willing to place its life before the witness of Scripture and to ask for discernment. Our aim in the communal reading of Scripture, as the Catholic priest James Alison has said, is to give glory to God and to create “merciful meaning for our sisters and brothers as we come to be possessed by the Spirit” of the crucified and risen Jesus. A graceful practice of shaping a community of Scripture readers will aim at “undoing our violent and evil ways of relating to each other,” and show us “how together to enter into the way of penitence and peace.”12 |
| Spiritual practices within the community of the church are not badges of spiritual accomplishment but means by which we are opened to God’s transforming grace. | Within a Reformed theological framework, this Christian purification and transformation are understood to extend over lifetimes. That is why we need the church. God’s grace works by creating this communal space where sin can be repented of and forgiven, where brokenness can be healed. Spiritual practices within the community of the church are not badges of spiritual accomplishment but means by which we are opened to God’s transforming grace. “We take great pains,” says Calvin, “to prevent anyone from deceiving himself by boasting of his works, and we openly teach that we can do nothing good without the guidance of God’s Spirit. We have countless weaknesses, and nothing in us is strong of itself or of any consequence in proving our worthiness before God. The only foundation for that holy living which constitutes genuine righteousness is to cast everything else behind us and embrace the cross and death of Christ with both hands.”13 God’s grace is the only foundation for holy living: let us practice our faith gracefully. |
12 - James Alison, “‘But the Bible says…’? A Catholic Reading of Romans 1,” xiv-xv. http://www.jamesalison.co.uk/eng15.html (return) 13 - Calvin, Ecclesiastical Advice, 56 (return)
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