Tag: Identity

Acts 23:12-35 Playing with status

~ KPB Stevens ~ Leave a comment

I don’t know why I’m finding the ending of Acts so anticlimactic. Maybe it’s because I’ve been reading it through a contemplative lens, and there’s nothing very contemplative about what’s going on here. We get told about maneuvers by the Roman authorities to keep Paul safe, and there’s something of the potboiler about this section, but it doesn’t really lift the spirit or edify the soul. And since the entire ending of Acts has something of dry reportage about it, I will use these last posts to close out this study by returning to some of the themes I’ve frequently touched on. Today I’ll talk about identity and status, because Paul is relying on his status as a Roman citizen to keep him safe.

A very important thing happened long before the Diocese of Southern Ohio launched this Big Read of Luke/Acts. I was sitting with a group of friends and colleagues who were planning the Becoming Beloved Community initiative, and I said something like, “we need to be clear that a large part of Becoming Beloved Community is about combating racism.” Several of my African American friends immediately spoke up, and what they said surprised me. In essence, they wanted no part in one more anti-racism initiative. We’ve spent our whole lives trying to explain racism to white people, they said, and all of the church’s efforts have been about the conversion of white people. If we’re going to have any real change, it will only come when white people stop being the center of attention, when their need to understand or feel that they’re good stops taking all of the oxygen in the room.

I went away from that meeting troubled in my heart, because I knew that they were right, but also that their correct assessment of the situation meant that I couldn’t play a central role in the work. They were saying to me, and to other white men, it’s time for you to sit on the sidelines, to be patient and listen, to help where you can, but to give up the illusion that your transformation is actually helping us in any profound way. I affirm that it’s time for us white men to pay attention to a story that isn’t about us, and to not try to make it about us in any way. Obviously, the fact that I’ve written an entire blog about Luke/Acts demonstrates that I have a hard time doing this.

Like Paul, when I venture out to do or say something radical, I am always protected by my status. And during the last nine months I’ve been engaged in what people in the improv world would call a status negotiation. People like Keith Johnstone have written about how status works in our everyday lives. Status is a given. In any situation we are either playing low or high status. Johnstone uses the example of three teachers he knew in his youth to demonstrate this.

We’ve all observed different kinds of teachers, so if I describe three types of status players commonly found in the teaching profession you may find that you already know exactly what I mean.

I remember one teacher, whom we liked but who couldn’t keep discipline. The Headmaster made it obvious that he wanted to fire him, and we decided we’d better behave. Next lesson we sat in a spooky silence for about five minutes, and then one by one we began to fool about—boys jumping from table to table, acetylene-gas exploding in the sink, and so on. Finally, our teacher was given an excellent reference just to get rid of him, and he landed a headmastership at the other end of the county. We were left with the paradox that our behaviour had nothing to do with our conscious intention.

Another teacher, who was generally disliked, never punished and yet exerted a ruthless discipline. In the street he walked with fixity of purpose, striding along and stabbing people with his eyes. Without punishing, or making threats, he filled us with terror. We discussed with awe how terrible life must be for his own children.

A third teacher, who was much loved, never punished but kept excellent discipline, while remaining very human. He would joke with us, and then impose a mysterious stillness. In the street he looked upright, but relaxed, and he smiled easily.

I thought about these teachers a lot, but I couldn’t understand the forces operating on us. I would now say that the incompetent teacher was a low-status player : he twitched, he made many unnecessary movements, he went red at the slightest annoyance, and he always seemed like an intruder in the classroom. The one who filled us with terror was a compulsive high-status player. The third was a status expert, raising and lowering his status with great skill. The pleasure attached to misbehaving comes partly from the status changes you make in your teacher. All those jokes on teacher are to make him drop in status. The third teacher could cope easily with any situation by changing his status first.

Status, then, is always a negotiation. We “play” status. That is, with different people we are high status or low status, and we indicate our status to them by eye movements, posture, gestures, and words. What my friends in that meeting about the Becoming Beloved Community were asking was that I agree to accept low status for awhile. Sitting and listening in silence is a low status thing to do. Accepting that I don’t actually have any experiential “in” to another person’s story is a low status thing to do. Being humbled by my own lack of understanding, and by the array of human experiences that I have no knowledge of, is a low status thing to do. They were asking me to play low status so that they could, finally, play high status. In my own clumsy, misbegotten way, I’ve been trying to agree to their request. And yet, still, I’ve been writing this blog. I feel very much like Paul in this moment, full of a vision of a Beloved Community, but all too willing to fall back upon the status that my identity has given me without a second thought.

 

Acts 13:13-52 Spoken from the Bridge

~ KPB Stevens ~ Leave a comment

By my count, this is the fourth big retelling of the scriptural narrative in the Acts of the Apostles. First, Peter retold the story on Pentecost. Then Stephen retold the story when he was brought before the temple authorities. The third retelling was Peter again, talking to Cornelius’ household. At each retelling the emphasis has shifted, and the audiences have expanded the circle of those who have a claim to this story. Now the storyteller is Paul, so recently known as Saul, and his retelling creates a bridge between the community of the synagogue and the gentiles who gather to hear him. It makes sense that it is Paul who does this because he is, as Justo Gonzalez points out, a bridge person in himself. He is both Jewish and a Roman citizen, both Saul and Paul. He belongs, effectively, to two cultures at once. His early life as a pharisee and persecutors of Christians feels like the attempt of a young person to deny one identity by overly claiming the other. Now he shows that he can stand comfortably astride both identities at once. Unlike the rejected guest at the Parable of the Great Banquet, he can put on the proper clothes to attend either party, that thrown by the Jews or that thrown by the gentiles, because he holds both identities lightly. His only real identity lies in Christ, and it’s not really an identity at all, but the awakened soul stretching itself and fluttering, sometimes awkwardly, through the world.

Justo Gonzalez invites us to realize that there are many bridge people like Saul/Paul living in our world, and that there are bridge communities as well. Gonzalez writes that

“Saul, who is also Paul,” reminds us of the situation of the millions of Hispanics living in the United States, a country whose Spanish-speaking population is now the fourth in size in the entire hemisphere (1). The fact itself of a name change happens every day. A boy whom his parents called “Jesus” is told by his teacher that he cannot have such a name and is immediately “rebaptized” as “Jesse.” Anyone entering as an immigrant from Latin America into the United States immediately finds it practically necessary to drop one of his or her two family names. However, all of this is a symptom of a greater reality: the Latino people in the United States live in two realities. As Virgil Elizondo would say, to be Latino in the United States is to be “mestizo.” The word “mestizo” originally referred to a person of mixed blood, and was used pejoratively. Elizondo uses it in the sense of the “in between-ness” in which Hispanics live in the United States. In that situation, they find that they are neither Latin Americans nor Americans, and are often discriminated against by both groups as also happened to Hellenistic Jews, discriminated against by Gentiles and Judean Jews. However, this very painful situation also allows Hispanics in the United States to serve as a bridge between the two main cultures that share the Western Hemisphere. Saul opened the way to the future because he was also Paul. Perhaps the Latino Church in the United States may open the way to the future precisely because it finds itself in the difficult space between two cultures – or, in other words, because it is a mestizo church.

I quote Gonzalez so extensively here because he is pointing to a hallmark of the Beloved Community that I have been thinking about and trying to describe as I write about Acts. Such a community is proudly, unapologetically, in-between. Like Saul/Paul, the members of this community carry many identities in their ordinary lives, some of which are accepted, some of which are scorned by the people they move among. And yet Beloved Community, which understands this, doesn’t try to impose on them a new identity. Instead, it tries to draw forth the shy souls of those who come to be a part of it, and reassures them that there is something much more important than identity. There is gratitude, and beauty, the inflowing of grace, the movement of the Holy Spirit through the world’s life, forgiveness, joy in each other’s gifts, patience with each other’s failures, and above all, the ability to catch glimpses, from time to time, of life as its seen through the eyes of God, to see the world with heart-breaking compassion and unending love.

Let me add another addendum here. I’m using this addendum space as a way of presenting my ongoing questions, and acknowledging that I might be hopelessly wrong in my assertions in any given post. I said above that there’s something much more important than identity, and I just want to acknowledge that, as I white man, that’s easy for me to say. I have rarely had to think about, let alone defend, my identity. For people who aren’t white, heterosexual men, both questions of identity and any kind of idealism about transcending identity take on a different light. I can’t presume to speak to those questions, and stand, in all humility, to be corrected by the ongoing conversation.

 

  1. Gonzalez was writing in 2001, so this number is now probably greater than it was even when he was writing.
  2. Justo L. Gonzalez, Acts: The Gospel of the Spirit, pp. 156-157.

Acts 7:1-60 The Second Retelling

~ KPB Stevens ~ Leave a comment

The first retelling of the story of Jesus and the disciples took place on the day of Pentecost, and Peter was the storyteller. This second retelling occurs before a much more hostile audience, and the storyteller is Stephen, who was unknown to us, though present, on Pentecost. The church has raised up new storytellers for its story’s retellings. Stephen doesn’t just repeat verbatim what Peter said. He greatly expands the narrative, adding new thoughts and plot lines, changing the story’s reach and its intention. This is the story retold for the authorities who are threatening the disciples, yet Stephen has no intention of placating them. He doubles down, claiming, in effect, that Jesus’ story is their story, even if they refuse to acknowledge it. Jesus is like Moses, who tries to defend the Hebrew slaves and expects to be credited for it, but is blamed instead. Jesus represents that long tradition in Judaism that worried about seeing all of the religious power in the land concentrated in the temple in Jerusalem, and Stephen quotes Amos and Isaiah to make the point that this worry is and has always been central to the Jewish story. So his retelling is an extension of, not a rejection of, the tradition that the disciples share with their fellow Jews, and that may be why they stone him. He presumes to have authority over the narrative, and their power and control comes, in part, from claiming the narrative for themselves.

This is, in part, why it’s never convincing to me when we try to excuse someone’s bad actions in the past by saying that they were simply a person of their time. A president who held slaves while espousing freedom, an otherwise charitable cleric who could not imagine that African people had the same souls as European people – these persons might be admired for the good things they did in their lives, but they should not be excused from the bad. Particularly when they were part of a community that told a story that, if they listened to it closely enough, would have shown where they were failing in their actions and imaginations. They were trying to live by a number of different stories, some cultural, some religious, some political, and they didn’t know which to prioritize, or how to get the mixture right.

We all do that, of course. These stories constitute the identities that I talked about when commenting on the parable of the great banquet in Luke 14:1-24. The stoning of Stephen presents us with a way of judging which identities we should cling to and which we should let go of, or at least hold lightly. The simple question is this: which of your identities are you willing to die for? It seems a little dangerous to write that, since extremism thrives when one identity takes over and banishes all the others, so I want to make it clear that I’m keeping my question plural, allowing for the possibility that we might have several worthy identities, and that I’m talking about self-sacrifice, and not the sacrifice of others. I’m not asking which identity you’d be willing to kill for. But which of the stories you live by are so important to you that you’d die for them? For me there are only two – my faith and my family. And because I know this, I also know that the stories of faith and family are the only ones I really want to tell and retell. There is remaining mystery in both stories. I’ll need to tell and retell them again and again, and I’ll never fully understand them. But they are the stories that intrigue, that keep me coming back, and they are the stories that give me courage when I’m afraid, strength when I’m weak, hope when the world as it is seems hopeless.

 

Luke 14:1-24 The Death of Identity

~ KPB Stevens ~ Leave a comment

We have talked about how the Christian response to fear and to the loss of political and social power is present-mindedness, superrational hope, and a willingness to enter into suffering.  Now we come to the final response and expectation, the release of identity. Again, Jesus is with the Pharisees, although now he’s banqueting with them, rather than arguing with them. He begins to critique their understanding of their own identities in the small sense.  He doesn’t question their overall identities as Jews and Pharisees at first, but he does question their status-consciousness. In their small circle of mid-first century Jews (not a large proportion of the world’s population by any means), and in the even smaller circle of Jews who consider themselves Pharisees, they are still worried about privilege and prestige.  Free yourself from the need for status, he says, and then he tells them how. Take the most low-status position imaginable. I should note that he says this after having healed the man with dropsy, breaking the rules and thus rendering himself low-status in the eyes of the Pharisees. And yet, obviously, he’s the guest of honor. So he’s confused all of the categories before he even begins his teaching, a teaching which is intent on confusing those categories even more.  

But the status we hold within our own little social and political groupings is only a tiny part of our identity.  Jesus continues his teaching, questioning those groupings themselves through his parable of the great banquet. Let’s let Peter Rollins provide his wisdom to us:

In this parable we are first introduced to the natural division that those who first heard this parable would easily recognize: namely, the division between those who should rightfully be at a wedding party and those who should not.  Like so many parables, this one begins with what people would understand and accept. But then it turns common ideas on their head and introduces the reader to something that cuts across what we take to be natural and right. A genuinely new, shocking, and distinctly unnatural division is presented to us – one that emerges between those who want to come to the party, despite their tribal differences, and those who exclude themselves by wanting to hold tightly to them…In this new type of party, “the good” refers to those who are willing to accept the invitation and stretch across party lines, while “the bad” refers to those who so tightly cling to their own identity that they are not willing to encounter others, listen to them, or allow them to be an instrument of their further transformation. (The Idolatry of God, pp. 111-112)

The Christian way is to try to free ourselves from all of those identities that would prevent us from attending the great banquet, to look past the divisions of us and them and not merely accept the other, but become the other.  This is exceedingly hard to do. We come to our identities early and hold onto them tightly. They are a kind of shortcut for understanding ourselves and our places in the world. When I was a teenager it was very hard to wake up every morning wondering who I was.  When someone offered me an identity, I accepted it with relief, because it eased the burden of authenticity. I have spent much of my adult life trying to unlearn this shortcut, to set it aside so that I can attempt to discover my soul.

On an individual level, these identities are dangerous because they are a tool that our egos use to keep us separate from God.  Rollins explains why:

By embracing…cultural, political, and religious narratives and by identifying so directly with them, we gain a sense of knowing the truth, of having a God’s eye perspective on the world.  These narratives [of identity] offer us a sense of mastery, a way of understanding things that might otherwise appear foreign, peculiar, and frightening. When we are faced with pain, these narratives offer us a way of understanding it and giving it significance.  They act as a type of compass that helps us navigate our world.

On the surface this might seem good and necessary.  But we are not masters of the world, and when we assume that we understand things that appear foreign, peculiar, and frightening, we shut them out and turn away from our own capacity for growth and change.  Rather than truly having a God’s eye view of the world, we exalt our ego and understanding to the status of God, and worship our identities.

These identities can be dangerous to individuals. Collectively, they can become disastrous for our collective life on this planet.  In times of crises we double-down on them, oppress others out of fear, or ignore their suffering because we tell ourselves that they are not like us.  Far from seeing through God’s compassionate eyes, we descend into the bunker of identity and hope that we’ll survive as the world burns above us.

And so Jesus calls us to let these identities die.  If we can’t, we won’t be able to taste the banquet that God spreads before us.  The parable of the banquet is not about us, from our position of high status, being kind to the poor, the crippled, the blind, and the lame.  It is about us admitting that we are the poor, the crippled, the blind, and the lame.  That everyone is. It is about setting our identities aside so that our egos can’t use them to assert mastery, and so that we, humbled, can learn to love like God loves.

 

Luke 9:28-62 The Transfiguration

~ KPB Stevens ~ Leave a comment

When Jesus comes down the mountain, he is not meek and mild.  He seems to chastise a parent whose son is possessed. He rebukes the disciples for wanting to consume the Samaritan village with fire.  Set against this is his kindness to a little child, his refusal to ostracize exorcists who aren’t in the in-group. Finally, he is mournful at the end of the chapter, and unbending towards those who would be his disciples.  This is a section of Luke’s Gospel that challenges our understanding of what religious experience is like, and the ways in which it transforms us.

First, the Transfiguration.  The past is present in this moment, in the persons of Moses and Elijah.  They also stand-in for Jewish identity, for the understanding of God that has been argued about and slowly articulated over thousands of years as the Hebrew people are formed, settle, and strive.  We often think of these two things as the most constitutive of our human nature: the experiences that form us; and, the identities that we’re born into and the identities that we choose. Jesus is in conversation with these two things, yet he refuses to stay with them, even though the disciples urge him to do so.

Instead he comes back down the mountain and immediately encounters a man in the crowd who has a demoniac as a son.  The disciples have failed to exorcise the boy’s demons, even though they’ve recently returned from all the towns and villages where they had no problem casting out demons.  Why are they failing this time? Perhaps it because of their remaining allegiance to the past and to their identities. When Jesus says he will be betrayed into human hands, he’s speaking to this allegiance.  After all, it is those who cling most fervently to the power and prestige that their identities provide who send Jesus to the cross. And it is the experience of insurrection after insurrection that lead the Romans to agree to crucify him.

Then comes the episode with the little child.  The disciples, in their fear, are trying to claim status and prestige.  Jesus confronts them with the child, who has neither status nor prestige.  Children are born into a set of identities, of course, but these identities have to be learned over time, and aren’t as settled with children as with adults.  The experiences that settle such identities haven’t happened yet. And these identities really don’t matter to the work of the Kingdom of God. Non-disciples who cast out demons in Jesus’ name are permitted.  The Samaritans, who reject the work of God because of their own settled identities, are left alone.

Finally, we are left to reflect on what an identity-free life that is uninterested in the past looks like, and what it costs.  It’s a wandering life, more unstable than the lives of foxes or birds. It’s a life where our past relationships really don’t matter that much.  All of this is present in this section, yet I struggle with it, just like the disciples do. I can’t pretend that I’m not a person who is made up of memory, like everyone else.  Can I hold those memories lightly, so that they don’t control me, for good or for ill? It’s dangerous to pretend that I don’t have an identity, that I’m not a white, heterosexual male and privileged in all of the ways that my identity is privileged in our world.  I want to hold my identity lightly as well, but I can only do that after admitting that it exists. Jesus does converse with Moses and Elijah, after all. He just doesn’t stay with them.