My Imago Dei is So Awesome

I’m over at Stand Firm today. Enjoy!

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Providence has been kind this week and brought into my way several ridiculous creeds and prayers written probably by committees of people who can’t remember why they’ve been lugging themselves into those old, crumbling…what are they called? Ah, “church” buildings all these years.

Let’s begin with the most recent, shall we? Here is some sort of statement of, well, I dunno, is it belief? Or what?

“We believe that God is present in the darkness before dawn; in the waiting and uncertainty where fear and courage join hands, conflict and caring link arms, and the sun rises over barbed wire. We believe in a with-us God who sits down in our midst to share our humanity. We affirm a faith that takes us beyond the safe place: into action, into vulnerability and into the streets. We commit ourselves to work for change and put ourselves on the line; to bear responsibility, take risks, live powerfully and face humiliation; to stand with those on the edge; to choose life and be used by the spirit for God’s new community of hope. Amen.”

Amen indeed. This curious accumulation of words was said altogether by a group of people assembled to hear the Presiding Bishop of TEC preach. Jeff Walton does a nice breakdown of their time together:

“Rather than customary scripture readings, participants heard the poem ‘The Creation’ by American author and civil rights activist James Weldon Johnson. The gospel reading was the Magnificat, adapted from A New Zealand Prayer Book. In his sermon, Curry preached that love looks like “death to self,” rising to a “true self” and giving to others. Paraphrasing the Apostle Paul in Romans chapter 6, Curry preached that “those who have died to self, rise in newness of life.”

Apparently, the sermon closely resembled his other moment of triumph, preaching at the wedding of Meghan and Harry. Love is all you need, and it will be a lot of work for you to accomplish, so go to it. Which underlying assumption—that if you work hard enough you can bring about God’s love on earth—is in whatever that thing is, that everyone should take risks, live powerfully, and face humiliation; to stand with those on the edge; to choose life and be used by the spirit etc. etc. Pretty sure that by “choosing life” they don’t mean everyone’s life, as TEC has an ongoing and deep affection for the death of so many unborn babies.

What I like best about this little creed is the virtue signaling, the ‘look at all the clever things we’re going to do and how good we are not only while we’re doing them, but because we’re doing them,’ the ‘thank God I am not like those unenlightened people over there who aren’t linking arms over the barbed wire. Actually, let me amend that, I love that “barbed wire” made it into whatever is passing for creeds these days. Anyway, I happen to be in the way of having some others of these things, also written by committees of people who shouldn’t have bothered….read the rest here!