Day Two.
1.
On Sunday, a group of us went to worship at Third Presbyterian Church, on the outskirts of St. Louis. The choir was fantastic and led almost the whole service. There was an excellent and inspiring sermon on the Good Samaritan story by Rev. Portis. I had a wonderful and lively time with this growing African American congregation! It gave me hope.
2.
Referencing in his talk Liz Theoharis’ presentation from yesterday on poverty, Stated Clerk J. Herbert Nelson called for transformation in the way we function on many levels. Of the four qualities we hope God inspires in people as they are ordained — energy, intelligence, imagination, and love — Nelson indicated that love is the most important… but we are weakest in the area of imagination. Imagination is where we could us the most significant growth. He called for a church that cultivates a "sanctified imagination,” that is able to think in different ways. Instead of being wedded to our often crumbling, increasingly empty, but overly beloved buildings, our congregations need to address the deep and crushing needs in local communities.
Nelson is right about imagination. Too many churches have none. Instead of imagination we have a crippling nostalgia as an expression of the denial, anger, bargaining, and depression stages of grief. Too many Presbyterians want things to be the way they were, which pushes out of their consciousness any imagination about they way God wants us to be in the future.
But we are beginning to get glimpses of a new future for the PCUSA. Things only imagined a few years ago are beginning to be realized.
3.
Speaking of imagination, among the issues facing the General Assembly this year are some groups set up to peer into the future and start reorganizing new ways of doing mission. In Presbyterian fashion, and as perhaps an indicator of part of the problem, we turned this over to not one but three different entities: Vision 2020, the All Agency Review, and The Way Forward Commission. Each deals with different but related things, from casting a general vision, to restructuring the denominational bureaucracy.
This is often couched in hyperbolic language, as we try to psych ourselves up for this or that vision and change. So: “The way is clear, all we need do is arise and walk. The survival of our denomination is at stake!” And: we are “Stepping boldly into the new epoch!”
Let’s not go overboard here. This is largely a bureaucratic structural rearrangement. There is nothing “adaptive” about it. That doesn’t mean the recommendations of these groups are not needed and helpful. Sometimes technical change works. And I hope that their work does at least keep us afloat and more or less together while real transformation happens.
4.
Theologian Ada Maria Isasi-Diaz came up with the brilliant word, “kindom,” to reimagine the word kingdom as really referring in the NT to an alternative structure to the Empire. Perhaps the most important word at this General Assembly is “kindom.” It is a reimagining of “kingdom,” which is a translation of the Greek NT word, basileia. The NT uses basileia in an ironic and oppositional way against the pervasive and oppressive power of Rome, the secular basileia of the time. The gospel community presented itself as an alternative basileia or an alternative basileia, or kingdom. Jesus himself uses the word to describe the central focus of his ministry, the Kingdom of God. It is a new, oppositional order of relationships and community, giving us a totally different kind of social organization. Where Caesar’s kingdom was centralized, top-down, extractive, exploitative, and oppressive, the new kingdom proclaimed by Jesus has all of us as equals under God, with an economy of sharing and justice rooted in inclusion, forgiveness, and non-violence.
Unfortunately, the church has misunderstood kingdom language for most of its history as if it blessed and authorized the very power structures and rulers Jesus rejects (and which crucified him). I guess irony and oppositional language is hard to maintain over generations under the pressure of wealth and power.
Anyway, at this General Assembly, the approach is to use the English word kingdom, removing the g in the middle, which leaves “kindom.” Kin, of course, is an old English word for family relationships. Kindom, then, expresses a social order characterized by equality and sharing, as in a family, under one divine Parent. And it presents this as the alternative to kingdom. Kindom is the anti-kingdom that Jesus declares and establishes. Kindom is what the NT means by using the word basileia against the earthly kingdoms that were agents of oppression and violence.
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