GENERAL SYNOD, DAY 5: "Covenant and Confession"

GENERAL SYNOD, DAY 5: Today's conversation has revolved so much around covenant and confession. In a committee exploring "gender equity and safety," we heard from a range of friends and pastors, giving voice to the inequities many of our sisters and siblings experience in our own denomination, in our own churches. We heard about the dual standards against which women in ministry are often evaluated, and the harrassment and even violence many have encountered in the church. It's a matter of covenant, say proponents of a resolution we're considering. We covenant to be the church, to embody the gospel promise of integrity and mutual encouragement and care. And when we fail one another, when women and genderqueer friends are mistreated and maligned in the church, we have broken that covenant. And we need to confess our sin, grieve the brokenness of the church; and only then can covenant be rebuilt, renewed. It's a process, sometimes a difficult and long one; but it has to begin with confession and truth.

I would add, by the way, that this process is a sign of strength and hope.  It's the only way for the church to be church, and the only way to realize our vision of beloved community.  This doesn't make it easy--and big feelings come up in confession and truthtelling.  But it is the way to covenantal life and fidelity.  In the church.  In the neighborhood.  In the family.  In the world.

Then, too, a working group near and dear to me continues to advance a "resolution of witness" on a just peace for the peoples of Israel and Palestine. Around that conversation, an equally lively discussion is emerging around confession and covenant. Is it fair to say that we have not cared as we should, we have not loved as we should, we have not advocated and sacrificed as we should--for the peoples and communities of Palestine? Is it fair to say that the continued occupation of their homelands, the continued evisceration of their culture is a sin, a sin in which we are complicit as a people who invest billions every year in that same project of occupation and oppression? And if so, what does confession mean? How does a denomination like ours confess the ways we've broken covenant with the poor, with the landless, with the forgotten indigenous of the world? And what kinds of action, what new patterns of solidarity emerge from such confession? Again, this is the way to renewed covenantal life, to patterns of faithfulness, discipleship and peace. Confession and covenant.

It's also important--and other Synods have addressed this--that we continue to confess anti-Semitism as it exists in the church, in our self-understandings, and in our life in the world.  There too, a covenant is broken, rent and violated--whenever and wherever bigotry manifests in hatred, whenever and wherever it compromises robust partnership and respect.  And to be real, there really is no Christianity at all, apart from a meaningful covenant with Jewish allies and partners.  [What this GS 33 resolution is addressing, in particular, is the way the charge of anti-Semitism is sometimes used (on college campuses, even in religious life) to limit criticism of Israel and principled support for Palestinian freedom and liberation.  Indeed, in our view, this is misguided and terribly cynical use of the language of anti-Semitism itself.  But that's not to say we're not accountable for anti-Semitism where it does exist, and where it is resurgent in this post-Trump environment.]

So--I'm thinking and praying on covenant tonight, and on confession, and how it is that these central practices come to be embraced, risked and practiced among us--in churches, in my life and yours, and in our alliances for justice and peace around the country.  I'm grateful for those who are humble enough, and wise and strong enough, to recognize the wisdom of confession, and to follow in the steps of our faith in embracing the path.

Our Lady who brings the walls down:

We confess that we are more practiced at putting them up.

We confess that we have turned from covenants of neighborliness and solidarity--

and pursued self-interest and easier paths.

And in so doing, we know that we have hurt the very ones you have called us to love, to protect and to cherish.

Help us now, that we might turn toward You, 

and toward one another.

Inspire the work we must do to repair what is broken--

in us, in our churches and systems.

Pour out your Spirit upon us, with courage and tenderness, 

so that we might take heart for the good work ahead.

By this work, we would be your church.

By this work, we would embrace the covenants that manifest faith and love.

By this work, we would bless your holy name, now and always.

Amen.

Picture: Icon of "Our Lady Who Brings the Walls Down"--Bethlehem, Palestine, at the Wall