(Click HERE for last Sunday's readings)
If God did not choose to work in ways that confound us, grace would not be amazing. It would not be grace.Since much of this week's chapter concerns sexuality, I thought this might be a good time to blog about the apocrypha.
~ Kathleen Norris in Amazing Grace
To this day every time we read from the Apocrypha I get a tinge of the willies. I grew up believing there were exactly 66 books in the Bible. And none of these was called The Additions to Esther, or Susannah, or Bel and the Dragon. If asked to defend my response, I would probably offer a two point apology for a 66 book canon: 1. Oh, come on! and 2. Those don't sound like books of the Bible.
It's not just because I'm scared to blog about sexuality that I started with a diversion. Because I think we underestimate the power of our resistance to the unfamiliar. In fact I'm pretty sure that most of humanity's most elaborate philosophical and ethical systems arose in response to particular cases of the willies.
Maybe gay people give you the willies. Maybe Republicans or lawyers or insurance salesmen do. Maybe soldiers or hippies or bicycle riders do. But regardless, we ignore the sources of our willies at our peril.
Which brings me to Sunday's Gospel. You have to wonder what Jesus was experiencing with that woman at the well. Maybe you've heard often enough why Jesus' culture would have told him he had no business speaking to this woman. But nobody ever wonders whether she gave him the willies. What if she did?
I mean, when we are drawn across some threshold toward contact with the unfamiliar or the forbidden the most human response is visceral. Literally. It happens in the viscera.
Imagining Jesus with the willies adds a dimension to the story. It would mean that doing what he did took courage. Stepping across a boundary that was both outside himself in the culture and within himself in his culturally conditioned response would take courage. And I wonder if something like courage is being asked of us in this story.
I like very much Kathleen Norris's use of the old word 'forbearance' in place of the nearly bankrupt 'tolerance'. Forbearance strikes me as a more forceful word, a word that assumes some initiative on my part rather than clenched teeth and resignation. Forbearance is that careful and courageous act of acknowledging our willies, but not jumping in too quickly to validate them. Forbearance creates enough space for us to override the willies and experience something that might just change us.
Some of the grace that our struggle with issues of human sexuality might have in store for us is that nothing gives us the willies more reliably than sex. Do we ever really grow out of that first intense case of the willies that the thought of our parents' engaging in such acts brought on?
God does choose to work in ways that confound us. Because God chooses to work through other people. Strange people with different ideas. But when we learn to be forbearing, when we learn to give the willies a wide berth, we open ourselves to be changed. We open ourselves to see a little of God in the life of someone my willies would steer me away from.
It helps me to think that even Jesus might say, "I know how you feel."
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5 comments:
The Willies and the Common Cold
Seems like maybe the willies are kind of like the common cold. Sometimes you get the sniffles. Sometimes there's a cough. But sometimes there's fever, and chills, and in the weak and elderly it can turn into pneumonia, and even death.. The willies are sort of like that. I mean, there are willies and then there are WILLIES!
I'm like Scott. The Apocrypha give me the willies. The first time I heard a sermon on Susannah, it was by a female Methodist preacher (and that's not what gave me the willies) and she opened by saying we Protestants probably never heard of Susannah. She got that right. I guess when you're told as a child to memorize the books of the Bible, it makes an impression. Those other books, those “Catholic” books, will always somehow give me the willies. But it's just the willies of the sniffles variety.
I lived through the 1980s and watched as loved ones died of AIDS at a time when President Reagan could not even say the word “AIDS.” I think of Drew Toon, Doug Simpson, Steve Colvin, Lester Armagost, Steve Bowen, and so many others who needed for President Reagan to get over his willies and spend some money on research to find a cure. Finally some straight people starting getting AIDS, and things started changing. I guess people with AIDS gave President Reagan the willies. This is more like the willies of the cough and fever variety.
We have all watched as thousands have died and hundreds of days have gone by since President Bush declared “mission accomplished” in Iraq. No doubt, Saddam Hussein gave President Bush the willies. This is more like the lungs full of fluid, racked with fever kind of willies. This is the kind of willies that blinds people and distorts their judgment.
Homophobic fundamentalists who use the Bible to condemn gay people give me the willies. I was young the first time I heard the words fairy, fagot, pansy, sissy, queer, homo, (and words I won't force you to read least you get the willies) directed at me. Since that time in childhood homophobia has given me the willies. I try to forbear through it and not let it distort my judgment, but like Scott says, it's a visceral response. This is willies like the bad chest cold you get over for a while but it comes back.
Shortly after midnight on October 7, 1998, 21 year old Matthew Shepard met two men in a bar. They posed as gay men and offered Shepard a ride in their car. Subsequently, Shepard was robbed, pistol whipped, tortured, tied to a fence in a remote, rural area, and left to die. Still tied to the fence, Shepard was discovered eighteen hours later by a jogger. Shepard was still alive, but in a coma. Matthew Shepard died October 12, 1998.
Matthew must have given those two men the willies. This is the pneumonia sick to death kind of willies. This is willies that kills.
When Jesus approached the Samaritan woman at the well, she may have given him the willies. He had the forbearance to go to her anyway. He seemed to be attracted to people who should have given him the willies. He can love a war mongering fundamentalist and this gay man at the same time. He loves both Matthew Shepard and his killers. Maybe He is the cure for the willies.
The Willies
I'm going to start out right from the beginning and say that "those Catholic" books gave me the willies of the fever and chill variety. But not because the Catholic church ever taught us the bible or that I had to learn the books of the Bible as a child but, because they didn't and I didn't. That's why there were so many things about God I didn't understand and in some cases didn't know whether to believe. Pure ignorance!
It was the lack of the unknown that distorted my judgment and gave me the willies. Just like I didn't understand when God was giving me Grace through dreams. Maybe one of these days, someone will teach me about the Apocrypha and I can decide for myself if they give me the willies.
Sexuality isn't a problem for me. Maybe it's because I'm a woman; Someone who had to fight and protest for freedom of and recognition of my sexuality along with many other women in the 60's and 70's. Thinking of my parents and sexuality may have given me the willies when I was young but not anymore.
I wonder how Jesus feels about us now when he sees our behavior towards others and those things we don't understand. Especially, mine! I'd like to think that he's glad about some of the things that give me the willies today: like war, hunger, child abuse, lonely sad old people. Talk about visceral pain!
But he's also probably disappointed in me because I have no tolerance or forbearance towards many fundamentalists Christians. It's their beliefs and actions that give me the willies.
How can any Christian who knows the Ten Commandments believe the preachers that use the Bible to misinterpret God's word on what is right and wrong good or evil. The old "an eye for an eye" line to support war. Politicians and judges do the same thing when they argue strict interpreation of the U.S. Constitution to pass laws and create cases that restrict our freedoms.
Both these groups depend upon ignorance, hate and greed to advance their causes and the people listen. That gives me the willies. The sick to death kind.
As I told Scott once, I'll keep confessing my sins and ask for help and guidance to get over my extreme bad willies but I'm not sure how the world can progress in love while the fundamentalist's willies are dominating our ethical systems including sexuality. In fact, a lot of our sexuality. Anything from Gay rights to handing out condoms to kids who ask for them and classes on sex in schools.
The willies come from ignorance, in my opinion. Think about it! Homophobics are ignorant. Racists are ignorant, sexists are ignorant. Ignorance breeds contempt, and the willies. I think Jesus' actions at the well were trying to teach us something about the willies: I think he was trying to tell us that the Samaritan woman at the well is no different from the Hebrew in Jerusalem. He certainly wasn't going to judge her actions with all those husbands. He was leaving that to God.
Maybe I've answered my own willies problem with fundamentalists. Leave the fundamentalists to God's judgment and pray that we can all become strong enough to overcome our willies before they effect the visceral within us all.
Now, if I can just put my ignorance aside and my knowledge to work! Being human and especially, Italian will make it pretty tough.
Maybe one approach we can take to the fundamentalits is to help them understand the willies. As humans, we all seek security:Unknowns provoke anxiety and we work to avoid anxiety [ in the liturgy is the phrase, "... and protect us from all anxiety."] Daily life is so much easier when we don't have to experience things, beliefs and people that are foreign. I've always felt the fundamentalists were simply trying to be comfortable and, unfortunately, they might step on my toes as they go about the job.As Trey says, we might emulate Christ and look for the good in all people and, maybe by overcoming our willies of them, move all of closer to a more peaceful coexistence.
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