Sara Miles | betsybeadhead

I once saw a photo of a lay person distributing the ashes for Ash Wednesday. Now, the lay person was Sara Miles, so there is that. She is part of an Episcopal congregation in San Francisco and she is a writer about religious matters. This congregation also distributes the sermons on podcasts, so I’ve learned that she has delivered many sermons.

Wait. A lay person, someone who isn’t ordained, distributing ashes, and delivering sermons? This is in a denomination that licenses people to be able to distribute the wine at communion. In order to distribute the wine at communion, you have to be an adult member in good standing. That translates to showing up for service weekly, and paying tithes. Then the priest has to send a letter to the Bishop nominating you, and then you get a certificate signed by the Bishop to do this.

There are a lot of control issues in the Episcopal church. I suspect the same is true in a lot of churches.

Note this is just for the wine. Regular, un-ordained people can’t distribute the bread unless there is something pretty severe going on like the priest has hurt his back. And they certainly can’t bless it. You have to go to seminary to learn that trick.

Jesus didn’t go to seminary, and neither did his disciples. And they weren’t ordained either.

There is definitely a hierarchy of us and them. The lay people are told that they are ministers too, but they certainly aren’t seen as equal, and they certainly aren’t encouraged or taught how to deepen their ministry.

So this lady, doing priest things, really woke me up. I first thought how dare she? I then thought, I wonder if the Bishop knows? Then I thought why not? Then I was jealous.

It reminded me of all the micro managing that my old priest did. And that my old manager did. And it makes me wonder why I keep getting myself into situations with controlling supervisors.

And it makes me think that the worst kind of controlling person is one who acts like they aren’t controlling you at all.

We’ve been bamboozled. We’ve been deceived. We’ve voluntarily given over the care and feeding of our souls to people we thought we could trust. Even if the priest / pastor / minister is a decent human being and not secretly embroiled in a scandal involving money or sex, you are still being led astray.

Consider a teacher. You’ll only learn what the teacher wants to show you. You won’t learn anything about what you are interested in. The teacher won’t be able to answer all your questions and if you ask a lot of questions (as I did) you’ll get some surly reactions from said teacher.

People in authority don’t like it when you ask questions. It undermines their authority. It reveals what they don’t know. It proves they are fallible. It unmasks the guy behind the curtain. You may learn it is all smoke and mirrors.

Don’t give them your power. Don’t entrust the care and feeding of your soul to another person. Question everything and everyone, and if they resist your questions, get as far away as you can. Worse, if they welcome your questions but distract you and don’t answer them or show you how to answer them for yourself.

I was lulled into a sense of complacency with the church I was in. It was pretty progressive. Big on women’s rights, gay rights, equality for all. Open to other faith traditions. But there is still that division of lay versus ordained. There is still the training that ordained people get that lay people don’t.

The priest can’t be everywhere. Remember the idea of don’t put all your eggs into one basket? Don’t put all your ministry into the hands of one person.

What would it be like if Jesus had fed only his disciples with that bread and fish?

He didn’t. He gave thanks for it, and broke it, and it was distributed and fed thousands. This is what we are do with everything. This isn’t just about food, or money, or power. Nothing is for keeping or hoarding. If we build up for ourselves treasures on earth, we are missing the point.

Today I’m going to meet Anne Lamott. She is signing her new book at the main branch of my library system. She is the author of “Traveling Mercies,” “Grace, Eventually,” and “Plan B.” All of these contain her thoughts on faith. She and Sara Miles are two of my favorite Christian authors. They both get into the trenches of faith and don’t pull any punches about how hard it is to live this life.

So many Christian authors talk about how wonderful their life got when they became Christian. They write that everything got better and easier. They live in really nice houses and drive really big cars. They write about the huge churches they started and how their congregation is growing every week.

This doesn’t synch up with what I’ve experienced.

I do not know what floor they got off on when they got on the elevator of Christianity. They must have gotten off on the floor that was marked “fancy stuff” and “easy street.” When I got on the elevator, I got off on the “broken people” floor. I got off on the “time for hard work” floor.

So many authors I’ve read have left me feeling like I didn’t do it right. That maybe I didn’t press the button hard enough. Maybe my prayers weren’t heard because I wasn’t trying correctly. Maybe my connection is faulty.

I feel like Anne Lamott and Sara Miles are my sisters in the trenches. They talk openly about how hard it is to be a Christian. Things break. New things don’t just start appearing. People are mean. Sometimes those people are the ones you go to church with. From reading Anne and Sara’s work, they’ve let me know I’m not alone in my experience. They’ve let me know it is OK for me to write about it too. They’ve affirmed me, and given me permission.

I feel that once you become a Christian, everything gets harder. You are aware of your responsibility. You realize how much you have not done well and it is time to make amends. It is like getting sober. In AA, part of the twelve steps is making amends to those people you wronged when you were drunk. Now you are aware of all the damage you’ve done, and now you have to try to fix it. There is no twelve step program in Christianity, or at least, not openly. But the same rules apply. “Love your neighbor as yourself” is the same thing. Part of showing love is making amends. You have to go rebuild that bridge if possible.

Anne and Sara both tell about how hard it is to go slogging into that muddy, raging river and digging up those stones to try to rebuild the bridge. They talk about how the person on the other side yells at you because they like the broken bridge just like it is, thank you very much. That person hasn’t been through the same experience you have, so he doesn’t want the bridge rebuilt.

But what about those who have decided to follow Jesus? Is it any easier to live and work with them? No. Not at all. You’d think we’d all be on the same team, working from the same playbook. You know, same Lord, same Bible. You’d be wrong, sadly. There are many times where I wonder what they are thinking when they say and do crazy things.

I just read about a lady who objects to the term “Deviled eggs” and they call them “Jesus eggs” in her house. It is this kind of stuff that I’m talking about. Then there are people who slaughter elephants to then take the ivory from their tusks and carve them into statues of Jesus. I can’t even begin to tell you how horrified I was when I read that story in National Geographic. It was a blog post from a local Rabbi that gave words to my feeling. Rabbi Rami Shapiro said “True religions teach you to see the Lord in the elephant, as the elephant, and not collude in the murder of the elephant to honor your Lord. Jesus died for your sins, not to excuse them.”

I’m not ready to throw the baby out with the bathwater. I think that Christianity has gotten a bad reputation, and it is often due to really whacked-out Christians. I feel the need to apologize for all of Christianity. We have sinned against God and our neighbors by not showing love. We have gotten sucked into the materialism. We have gotten greedy. We have gotten tripped up by the legalistic nature of religion. We’ve forgotten that Jesus came to fulfill the law – but by getting to the heart of it. Rather than fulfilling the letter of the law, he fulfilled the spirit of it. He worked on the Sabbath to heal a crippled man. So he broke one rule, but honored the real rule.

We humans often lack Jesus’ keen insight into what we are supposed to do. This is an understatement. The bad part is that there are a lot of sins that we Christians do, and we do them in the name of God. We are hostile to people who aren’t Christian. We are hostile to people who are Christian but aren’t members of our denomination. We are hostile to people who are in our denomination but don’t share our views. We argue over interpretations of the Bible – should we or shouldn’t we do this? We argue over whether we should have stained glass. We argue over whether women should be ministers. We argue over how old the Earth is. We argue over who can receive Communion.

We forget that everything that Jesus did was to teach us to love each other. To be servants.

Father, forgive us, for we know not what we do. Please send your Holy Spirit to us so that we can truly hear Your Word and be Your Body on this Earth. Give us the knowledge and strength to mend the divisions between us. Give us patient hearts to be loving and kind to everyone, seeing everyone as Your child. I ask this in the name of your Son, Jesus.