A Post Pentecost Poem

We Christians love to affirm:

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Semper Reformanda!

Always reformed

Always reforming!

Until that reformation

Reforms the way we read the Bible

Reforms the kinds of families we approve

Reforms our understanding of how God made us

Through the unfolding dance of evolution

Reforms the ways patriarchy and hierarchy 

Have silenced and sidelined

Women and Queers and Outsiders

So we can at last hear Christ

Speak through them!

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When Reformation reforms too much

We cling to Tradition

To keep the boundary stones

Firmly in place

Predictably

Immovably

Inertly

In place...

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Return to Tradition!

What has been affirmed

Everywhere, always, by all!

Until we realize Tradition 

Has been at odds with itself 

For as long as Tradition has existed

From Easter to Filioque

From Archbishop supremacy to Toll Houses

From Tonsures to Miters

And even worse

Dig deep and find 

Deeply embedded in our hallowed traditions

Curious Anti-Consumerism

Vitriolic Anti-Violence

Wholehearted Anti-Warfare

Insistent Anti-Imperialism

And the strange and persistent Hope

That the Love of Christ one day

Will heal and save all!

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When Tradition betrays our expectations

We cling to the Scriptures

To shore up our sagging foundations

Once more

So nothing changes

And nothing challenges

The comfort of "how it has always been".

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Return to Scripture!

The foundational Book

That is plain truth for any sincere reader!

Ignore that Jesus and his Apostles

Radically reinterpret and subvert the Old Covenant

That Peter and Paul and James and John

All disagree at times

Not to mention Matthew, Mark, and Luke

Ignore that the God of the Bible

Always sides with the powerless

Against the powerful

With the outcast 

Against the establishment

With the oppressed 

Against the oppressor

With the outsider 

Against the insider!

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When at last even Scripture 

Plays Judas to our expectations

Ignore and admit

We really just want a mascot

Not a Lord

We want to put an image on an icon

Or a corpse on a cross

And raise it up

And make it talk with our voice

As the ventriloquist of Christ

So his mouth validates

Our hatreds and fears

Our complicit complacency

Our egocentric entitlement

.

Above all else at least admit

We don’t want Fire to fall from Heaven

As a wild and chaotic Dove

To burn away our sin and selfishness

To set us ablaze with the Love that made all worlds

To burden us with the Love that went to the cross

So the enemies of Love may be forgiven

And healed

And set free.

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We want what we want

When we want it

How we want it

There’s no room for the Holy Spirit in that

And only by admitting this is true

Do we open up cracks in our facade

For that Spirit to seep into our hearts of stone

And transform them into hearts of flesh.