Great news: weird is good

I received a piece of email humour this week about the difference between men and women:
Friendship between women: A woman didn’t come home one night. She told her husband that she had slept over at her friend’s house. Her husband called her 10 best friends. None of them knew what he was talking about.
Friendship between men: A man didn’t come home one night. He told his wife that he had slept over at a friend’s house. His wife called his 10 best friends. 8 of them confirmed that he had slept over. 2 said he was still there.

This week I had a motorbike accident and the news spread pretty quickly. The support from friends was very affirming. I know that I am loved.

My women friends called: are you ok? Wonderful! What did the doctor say? Uh-huh, what’s the diagnosis? And the prognosis? So what actually happened? Does it hurt? How are you feeling? It must have been awful! What will you do? How long will it be sore? Are you taking medication? Can I bring you something? Can I do anything?

My men friends called: are you ok? Uh-huh… how’s the bike? Ouch!

When I first started working at Central Methodist Mission I did a bit of preaching at the other 5 churches that form part of the Table Bay Circuit. On a Sunday there isn’t much transport and I didn’t have a car, so I would often arrive on roller blades at preaching appointments. When I was accepted as a candidate for the ministry, a member of the congregation insisted on getting a photo of me in clerical gear – full gown and collar – riding down Church Street on my roller blades.

Over the years I have been blessed with the acceptance of people who have accepted my idiosyncrasies with grace. But I’ve also been dismayed that so many people’s individuality is not accepted in the church. By and large, ministers get away with more than lay people and this saddens me even more. It is very difficult to be an eccentric in the church, particularly if you are not clergy.

Naomi Klein, in her book No Logo, points out that the important gains made by the identity politics of the 90’s had the unfortunate side effect of diminishing the importance of uniqueness, of individuality. Fighting for racial and gender equality has been a critical movement of the last few decades but there is a danger of subsuming the important differences between people under the banner of equality.

For instance, we often talk of “unity despite our differences” but if genuine, just unity is to be achieved it is differences that hold the key. Let’s see why…

First a bit of background: humans have evolved as the most successful species on the planet at the moment. One of the skills we have honed to perfection is that of co-operation. While many animals co-operate, humans have made it a cornerstone of their success. A mechanism that is very important to co-operating organisms, particularly humans, is the ability to conform.
If an individual arrives in a new environment which is unfamiliar the best way to learn how to survive is to copy the behaviours of the majority of individuals already in that environment. The degree of accuracy in copying these behaviours determines the newcomer’s ability to adapt quickly and efficiently. Sometimes this means that superfluous behaviours are copied indiscriminately together with the adaptive behaviours.

For instance, a hunter from the highlands comes down to the coast. There is not much game to be had near the sea but the hunter can learn to fish from the fisher folk who live at the sea already. To gain access to their knowledge, it is in the interests of the hunter to quickly assimilate into the culture of the fisher folk and so many behaviours will be learned which have little or no immediate survival value apart from allowing the hunter to gain access to the valuable fishing skills of his new people. Depending on how stringent the culture of the fisher folk is and how assertive the hunter is, there is also a danger that important information carried by the hunter may be lost as the hunter becomes a fisher.

By and large, over the broad expanse of evolutionary history, the benefits of conformity have outweighed the problems. Until now that is.

Humanity’s extraordinary adaptive power has created for the first time a being that threatens the whole biosphere and we can longer rely on the randomness of evolution to determine our survival. While there is a strong likelihood that humanity’s extinction will not necessarily result in the earth’s destruction, there are too many possible scenarios in which our extinction will have cataclysmic results for all other species and the biosphere as a whole. Be that as it may, our survival is important – at least to us – and that survival cannot happen without the planet

Hence Jesus calls us to a new creation. We are the first creatures that have the chance to consciously affect natural selection. We have become what God has longed for: a being able to make decisions equivalent to God’s own; a being able to choose to love.

If we love the world we live in, indeed, if we love ourselves, we have to start choosing behaviours that are good for us and our world. We can longer conform to standards that once worked. Those behaviours have resulted in overpopulation, expended resources and death. What is needed more than ever is the eccentric – an individual prepared to break the mould.

Read Luke 4:14-21

Jesus goes home for a visit and pops in at the church he grew up in. I imagine him remembering his days in “Sunday School” and “Confirmation Class” – the way Rabbi Z’s beard used to bounce when he got excited about some Talmudic obscurity. He is invited to preach. The congregation want to see what all the fuss is about. They’ve heard about young Jesus’ controversial sermons in other parts of Galilee.

Jesus reads from Isaiah. What many modern readers miss in this quote is the fact that Jesus has deliberately edited Isaiah. Instead of carrying on into verse 2 from Isaiah 61, Jesus skips back to Isaiah 42:7 and inserts those words. He is quite careful in this selection because it still fits with the rhythm of Hebrew poetry in the text. Jesus’ deliberate change means that the words of “God’s vengeance” are taken out and instead he reads about the recovery of sight for the blind.
Jesus deliberately chooses to ignore hundred’s of years of theology about the vengeance of God.
Ever since Jesus, the church has tried to resurrect that vengeance.

Whereas, Jesus’ mission statement is all about grace visited on those whom his society regarded as beyond the pale, the church has consistently created filters through which only those who conform to its standards of acceptability may enter.

Jesus deliberately chooses those unable and even unwilling to conform. The church chooses those whose conformity is most nearly perfect.

If humanity is to survive Jesus’ project of a new creation is critical. A key component of that project will be the management, celebration and encouragement of people’s differences.
Further on in the story of Luke 4 we read how the people in the Synagogue took offence at Jesus’ sermon. The gist of his sermon was that the “Chosen Nation of Israel” was not so “chosen” after all. Jesus was effectively saying: “You think you’ll get into heaven because you come to church? Think again…”

Jesus’ “Good News” was bad news for this congregation. They had their insurance policies all signed and up to date but their investment was misplaced. The good news is not some ecclesiastical maze through which one may gain access to heaven. The good news is that this world can change for the good and the ones who will change it are those who don’t fit in: the poor, the oppressed, the prisoners, the wretched, the downcast, the persecuted, the children, the little ones, the disabled, the computer illiterate, the weird, the incompetent, the ignorant, the dykes, spics, niggers, hobos, the ingrate, the stupid, the fashion unconscious, the bullied, the failed, the forgotten, the god-forsaken, the last and least of these.