well some years ago the new yorker ran a
cartoon
i particularly loved and it's a
wonderful lampoon of the
loopy ideology of inclusivity which is
characterized now so many of the
christian churches
it showed a uh a minister
addressing a very uh attentive
congregation
in a neat and tidy church and the
minister said
like he's just finished his sermon it
was now in accord with our policy of
equal time
i'd like to give our guest speaker an
opportunity to express his point of view
and then you see right next seated and
dressed perfectly
and tapping his pages on his knee is the
devil
so there's you know the commitment to
inclusivity has become so great that
christians will listen even to the devil
preach well i was put in my cartoon when
i read
this astonishing uh sermon that was
delivered by catherine
jefford shorey who is the presiding
bishop of the episcopal church of
america so we're not talking about a
low-level figure this is a very you know
weighty figure within the christian
world she's the head of the episcopal
church in america
she gave a sermon in curacao venezuela
on the issue of what else diversity she
talked about how beautiful the country
was and all the diversity and so forth
nevertheless she laments that we have a
very hard time accepting things that are
different
and so on well if you make the right
distinctions between what's you know
intrinsically bad and what's just
different or unusual you can make
her point that sure there are a lot of
good things that are unusual that we
should be open to
fine but she in fact moved in this
astonishing direction
as she explicated this point she was
commenting on acts
chapter 16. the story of paul arriving
in philippi and he's accosted by this
young girl
who is possessed by a dark spirit who
has given her the spirit of
divination and she's being employed or
really enslaved and used
by these nefarious people that use her
to make money so she's a young
woman in a pretty bad situation demon
possessed
and now being manipulated by abusive
people
and she shouts things out to paul and
follows him around
finally paul's had enough and in the
name of jesus christ he exorcises her
and the evil spirit leaves her now
up until last month i was saying the
entire christian interpretive tradition
read that
as a story of liberation of paul
liberating this young girl from this
terrible enslavement both to dark powers
and to human
manipulation but not a bishop
jeffrey shorey who written instead as a
story of
paul's a deep intolerance i just want to
read
a little bit of her interpretation here
she says
paul is annoyed perhaps for being put in
his place
and he responds by depriving her of her
gift of spiritual awareness
paul can't abide something he won't see
as beautiful or holy
so he tries to destroy it well here's
the problem the bible tells us it's not
beautiful holy
it's the devil and paul is delivering
her from it
but the bishop here reads it as a story
of paul's sort of patriarchal
arrogant intolerance of of difference
that a christian bishop would read that
story that way simply beggars
believe but then it actually gets more
bizarre as she goes on because
in the story in acts once this girl sort
of handlers
her enslavers discover what paul has
done
they're angry with paul because it's
going to cost them money right
so they stir up opposition to paul and
there's a riot in the city and paul's
thrown into prison so there's a famous
scene where paul is imprisoned in
philippi it's because of this
act of of compassion on his part that he
delivered this young girl
the bishop reads it in an entirely
different way and again it's it
beggars belief but here's what she says
that getting thrown in prison is pretty
much where he put himself
by his own refusal to recognize that she
too
the little girl shares in god's nature
just as much as he does
maybe more so in other words she's kind
of
rejoicing that some first century
philippian version
of the liberal thought police was uh
careful enough to throw upon prison
for his deep act of patriarchal uh
intolerance
and then she goes on uh that night in
prison
paul we hear you know reaches out to his
jailer and there was you know the
earthquake and all this
business but paul um reaches out to the
jailer and compassion and brings him
actually to christian faith well the
bishop reads that as paul
finally coming to his senses dropping
his patriarchal hang-ups
and rediscovering compassion because he
had forgotten about god
in the early episode wouldn't it be a
lot clearer to say
paul who had never forgotten about god
delivered the young girl
by exorcising her and delivers the the
jailer by giving him the christian faith
in other words it's not paul passing
from patriarchy to compassion
it's the consistently compassionate paul
delivering people in different types of
of enslavement uh i would suggest that's
a much
cleaner way and clearer way to read the
story
now here's what's the at the heart of
this matter the hinge of it
is this typical confusion we have today
between
love which is a great gospel value and
toleration and inclusion which are the
great values today
love as i've often said is to will the
good of the other that's what love means
that's the the gospel the bible value it
means to
will to want the good of the other and
then do something about it
paul is consistently showing love in
this story
by willing the good of the other in the
first case delivering the girl
excluding the evil spirit he shows love
toward the jailer by bringing him the
christian faith
what's happened today though is love is
not the real value
the value is toleration and inclusion
see but real love means you're not going
to tolerate
lots of things real love means you
sometimes
have to exclude certain things
what's happened is a dangerous
conflation
of toleration inclusion with love
now how dangerous is it i suggest read
this sermon
because you might begin to see the devil
himself
as something beautiful and holy