The Post Modern Preacher

How many support the Baltimore platform? In deconstructing my beliefs I keep coming back to an ontological need for a divine. While I play at process and the metaphysics that Whitehead used to describe God along with Tillich's definition of the seat of being, I need to find a way to explain to my trinitarian colleagues what really sets me apart since I do accept Jesus as a teacher, do follow the wisdom tradition in the Hebrew Bible, and all of my favorate theologians are Christian even if they are naturalists. Also, I feel that far too few among the UU laity bother to learn our historic development so I'm cribbing the Baltimore Platform from Channing:

We object to the doctrine of the Trinity, that, whilst acknowledging in words, it subverts in effect, the unity of God. According to this doctrine, there are three infinite and equal persons, possessing supreme divinity, called the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. Each of these persons, as described by theologians, has his own particular consciousness, will, and perceptions. They love each other, converse with each other, and delight in each other's society. They perform different parts in man's redemption, each having his appropriate office, and neither doing the work of the other. The Son is mediator and not the Father. The Father sends the Son, and is not himself sent; nor is he conscious, like the Son, of taking flesh. Here, then, we have three intelligent agents, possessed of different consciousness, different wills, and different perceptions, performing different acts, and sustaining different relations; and if these things do not imply and constitute three minds or beings, we are utterly at a loss to know how three minds or beings are to be formed. It is difference of properties, and acts, and consciousness, which leads us to the belief of different intelligent beings, and, if this mark fails us, our whole knowledge fall; we have no proof, that all the agents and persons in the universe are not one and the same mind. When we attempt to conceive of three Gods, we can do nothing more than represent to ourselves three agents, distinguished from each other by similar marks and peculiarities to those which separate the persons of the Trinity; and when common Christians hear these persons spoken of as conversing with each other, loving each other, and performing different acts, how can they help regarding them as different beings, different minds?

Victory

Yesterday I attended the Mass Equality support for the procedural kill of the ammendment to the Massachussets Consitution that would ban same sex marriage. I was standing with my friends Alex, Todd, and Doug when Alex turned to me right before the official announcement was made and said, "Tripp, when you have a family, tell your kids you stood with three homos when the decision was made to allow justice."

The victory came with a whimper since the cause was won by assimilation, not by revolution. It was a case of don't fear, same sex couples are just like you with marriages and houses in the burbs and don't look at the glitter or feathers in the closet. I don't know how hard it will be to break down the negative cultural view of truly out life. It isn't about forcing the trappings of heteronormativity upon queer culture or the appropriation of queer culture by the heteronormative society we live in. It really needs to be about radical acceptance of all in what they find meaningful when they engage themselves with respect.

Ultimatly it is the call of the free faith to stand on the side of love. It is the call of the free faith to shatter the bonds of oppression, prejudice, hatred, and tilt the world toward justice. The God of History speaks to us now as God has spoken through the ages with the loud message couched in the tiny whisper that we are to love one another as we love ourselves. We are to be servant to all, be slave to none. We are to unshackle ourselves from the burdens of tyranny and rise up when we hear the call to marshal our forces to let righteousness grow. Faith is nothing if it doesn't transform us to live our lives in a way that puts faith into practice. When that day comes when I have children, and I sit down to tell them my story, they will hear of the day I stood with three homos, three of my best friends here in Boston and watched love overcome hatred for this time in my life.

Let the people say amen.

This holiday time is one of trouble. We celebrate a time many see as one of mourning. This dichotomy was spoken to when the First Peoples did not come to bless the opening ceremony of GA this summer. My hope would be this rift can be healed because there is a salvific theology to thanksgiving with a lower case t. Both the Pilgrims and the First Peoples understood a need to thank the divine. Both the Pilgrims and the First Peoples understood that this world is greater then them. Since then we have had centuries of genocide, ignorance, hurt, anger, and shame. What does that mean?

We need to build bridges of common hope. We need to give thanks that we share this common earth. We need to give thanks that we are interdependent for wholeness. We must be thankful for this because if we don't have interdependence we will be broken forever. Too much guilt rests on the shoulders of too few. The generations of shame cause seemingly insane acts of self destruction on one side and blindness on the other to the reality of a common future for all.

Radical inclusivity means authentic ownership for the rifts between us. Radical inclusivity calls for each to be in relation with community. The divine within us cries when we ignore the divine in the other because it is ignoring the living testimony of the divine. With the coming Christmas season, I am brought to the lyrics of O Come O Come Emmanuel. Our society is in exile of right relations, of wholeness and of love.

Oh come oh come Divine with us
and ransom the people who wrestle with the Divine
that mourns exile away from the promised land
until through our suffering we are redeemed
rejoice, rejoice, Divine with us
shall be with us who wrestle with the Divine

I do not know of many outside of Thoreau who did not wrestle with the divine. Some of us bear scars from our battles. Still, I must give thanks that as I am alive I can experience and hold relations as troubled as they may be because in the relations my sufferings are redeemed and every breath can be a hallelujah.