“The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting. It has been found difficult; and left untried.” G.K. Chesterton, in What’s Wrong with the World
In one story of Jesus (Luke 11), Jesus said, “whoever is not with me is against me, and the person who does not help me to gather is scattering.” In another story (Mark 9) Jesus said, “Whoever is not against us is for us.” This apparent contradiction of Jesus own words is a good example of how easy it is for us to use Jesus’ own words for our own purposes that may have little or nothing to do with the ways of Jesus. In fact, these seemingly contradictory words were spoken in the midst of conversations where people were attempting to consolidate power and use Jesus’ words for their own purposes. In Luke 11, Jesus cast out a demon and the religious scholars said he did so by the power of demons. Jesus said this makes about as much sense as a person robbing their own house. And the person who does not help me to gather is scattering.
In Mark 9, Jesus’ disciples told on some folks trying to heal in the name of Jesus and the disciples said, “We told them to cut it out.” I can imagine Jesus chuckling at this then he said, “Don’t stop people from doing good things. Don’t you think it would be quite a chore for someone using my name to heal to then turn around and say bad things about me? And hey, you don’t have to say my name every time you do something good in order for it to count in heaven. So give cold water to a thirsty person because you belong to this movement of love and your reward will be great.
Over the years, I have watched as church leaders, myself included, have been the characters of these religious scholars and disciples. We’re all confused. We don’t know when to scatter or gather. I’ll step back in time only about a lifetime but these things have been operating since the time of these Jesus stories. During the civil rights movement, churches did not know whether to scatter or gather. Rather than write more, go watch the movie, A Time for Burning, directed by Barbara Connell and Bill Jersey, 1966. As you watch, see people struggling with scattering and gathering. More than that, watch as people with benefits and dominance in society who use neutrality as a tool of inscribing and re-inscribing ongoing systemic white supremacy, or the four hundred year old affirmative action plan for white people.
When AIDS was scaring and scarring and killing people and the intensity was similar to COVID without accurate knowledge of how it is passed, much of the Christian Church at large condemned gay people and affirmed parents who abandoned them, while former hippies from the 70s became nurses and hospice caretakers for dying women and men. If you don’t believe me, I ask you to listen to one of the caretakers in this eight minute story on CBS, “All Her Sons.”
Watch as one woman decided this horrifying disease many called “gay cancer” in the early 80s was a time to gather and care for sick people abandoned by their religious relatives. In the beginning of the twenty-first century, religious people again could not decide whether to scatter or gather. When the world might have been brought together, many of us believed another war would help rid the world of evil. When the way of Jesus has always been a way of peace, the ever-warring United States decided once again for the way of violence, casting it as most kingdoms and countries through the ages have, as a holy war. So the response to the destruction of 9-11 was to destroy Afghanistan and Iraq. Today the response to a terrorist attack on Israel is to utterly destroy Gaza and the West Bank. People don’t know whether to scatter or gather, whether to love mercy or vengeance.
Why don’t people in churches in particular, particularly religious leaders know whether to scatter or gather at the right time? I believe a root of this ambivalence, wrongly timed scattering or gathering, or so-called neutrality when action is more timely, is malpractice in reading the prophets. Over the course of five thousand years, prophets or preachers have proclaimed times of peace or times of war. Most, like bad weather forecasters, have tried to predict futures rather than looking at the current times and preaching a message of the right actions based on merciful theology.
This merciful theology is one that is rooted in ancient texts like Leviticus where Jesus has quoted “love your neighbor as yourself.” In the same ancient text the “law” also says, “love the stranger among you.” This is also translated “alien or immigrant.” Jesus even goes further to say, “love your enemies and those who persecute you.” Across history, we’ve all found actually walking the way of mercy and love as too hard. As G.K. Chesterton said in What’s Wrong with the World, “The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting. It has been found difficult; and left untried.”
Neutrality is an attempt by an individual, group, or entity as a political act in order to re-instate a status of the dominant class, whether or not such persons actually benefit from or are part of that class or harmed by its dominance. When someone says, “keep politics out of the church,” it may be for several reasons.
- First, a misunderstanding about prophets. Prophets have always preached truth to power publicly, to the face of a king, and in so-called holy places. Prophets are not predictors of the future but preachers about injustices now.
- People say keep politics out of the church when their way of life might be threatened by a view that challenges the status of people benefiting by neutrality.
- Fear drives neutrality and inaction. When an action of scattering or gathering may be what produces fruitfulness and good in lives of people, fear prevents action because someone is worried such an action will offend another person or impact the bottom line of nickels and noses in a religious organization.
- Pretend neutrality is often a cover for willful ignorance of people suffering whether in our cities or across the world.
So don’t be afraid to scatter or gather at the right time. Don’t withhold seed during planting or scattering season and don’t prevent gathering during the harvest. How can we know when is the good season for scattering or gathering? What I do is apply what is called Constructive Theology to the world around me and scripture. Constructive Theology looks at the world and tradition around a certain idea or action and asks questions like the following:
- What has been the history of neutrality and its harmful impacts or helpful impacts in the world?
- After learning from history and traditions, what can we lament about ourselves and history about people seeing violence, discrimination, harm, war, murder and doing nothing?
- What voices from other religions, classes, races, genders of people can I learn from on this topic of neutrality?
- Where can I listen and lift up new voices of mercy, love, justice, and healing to form new traditions or actions?
- How am I part of this problem and history of neutrality, and what am I doing about it now and in the future?
What do you know about this subject of gathering, scattering, and neutrality that I can learn from?
Feel free to comment or if that is a problem for you, email me.
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