Second Terrace

on friday, marriage

On Friday -- on a day that the news should have focused entirely on the funeral of +Rev Clementa Pinckney (attended by His Eminence Archbishop Demetrios) -- the Supreme Court thought it appropriate to announce its decision on the case Obergefell v. Hodges: the Court determined that there is now a federally-protected right of same-sex couples to be married under civil law.

What does this mean? And what does this mean for us?

Historically speaking (that is, outside the Church), this is something new. In general, cultures across the world made marriage a “legal” thing between a man and a woman for the purposes of bearing children (i.e., “procreation”) and owning property. That is why society in general has always been so interested in marriage, and it has -- across the board -- legislated various laws to regulate and to support marriage.

This is what is called “civil marriage.”

We should remember that one of the main reasons why society upheld marriage by law was for the purpose of procreation. That is why marriage has been limited, historically and even outside Christianity, to a relationship between a man and a woman.

As far as the Church is concerned, marriage goes far beyond the legalized “civil union” that society or the State is interested in upholding. Marriage, in Holy Tradition, is a “sacrament.” It is one of the seven primary “means of grace” that God has given us for the sake of our salvation. We say confidently that we can be “saved” through marriage.

For the first few centuries of the Church (until about 900 AD), when early Christians got married, they first went to the city magistrate (kind of like our “Justice of the Peace”) and entered into a “civil union.” Then, soon afterward, they had their marriage blessed in Divine Liturgy on Sunday morning.

The Sacrament of Holy Matrimony -- or, better, the “Holy Mystery of Nuptial Union” -- goes far beyond the interests of society. Marriage, in the Holy Tradition of Orthodoxy, is an eternal union of a man and a woman (just like Adam and Eve, and -- more profoundly -- Christ and His Bride the Church). Every sacramental marriage is a part and a beginning of the cosmic reconciliation of Christ returning all of Creation to the Father in universal transfiguration. Marriage includes the possibility of children, but it extends into love and joy in every moment between the husband and wife. 

We Orthodox have deep and eternal view of marriage.

And because of that, we venerate and protect it -- not just as a civil institution, or as a “contract” that will cease at the end of life. Marriage, for us, is forever, always initiating a return to Paradise, always transforming a home into a “Garden of Eden.”

So what do we do when the Supreme Court, in a very poorly written, poorly argued and irresponsible opinion, has changed the legal definition of marriage? 

(The gaping holes in this opinion, written by Reagan-appointee Anthony Kennedy, are egregious. One unanswered question in this statement -- as if it didn’t matter -- is whether religious institutions who choose not to perform such unions will receive adequate legal protection.)

First of all, we need to remain “courageously peaceful” and remember that while this decision is huge for civil law, it does nothing to the Orthodox definition of marriage.

I doubt that the Church will ever be forced, by law, to perform same-sex marriages. Such a thing has not happened once in Massachusetts, which has legalized such marriages since 2004. 

But in the event that everyone who performs the “civil marriage” within the church ceremony -- which I and every other clergy do for the State in a wedding -- might be required by law to perform a same-sex marriage … then I -- and every other traditional priest -- will stop performing the civil part (i.e., I would no longer sign the marriage license).

I do not think this is a very big deal in itself. The “clergy-signed marriage license” was always a government function, starting around 900 AD with the hugely significant "Novella 89" of Leo VI. Historically, I think that any and every entanglement with the State has turned out to be a huge mistake.

We need to remember that there have been, for a long time, many “civil marriages” that the Church does not recognize as “sacramental”: “same sex union” is not the only impediment to Church-blessed sacramental marriage. There are other “impediments": marriage between too close of blood relations is prohibited; so also is habitual adultery and criminality. Age and consent also factor as significant concerns.

We need to also keep in mind that not only does the Church warn against homosexual activity, but it warns -- just as strongly -- against all sexual behavior outside of sacramental marriage (like adultery). It is usually overlooked that the Church warns against all lustful or fetishizing sex -- even within marriage. The Church warns, too, against childbearing attempts that take place outside sacramental marriage: e.g., sperm or egg donation; in vitro fertilization; surrogate motherhood; and any and all manipulations of human life, including DNA modification. 

But most importantly, we need to consider that these warnings are for the conservation of formal human life and culture, and for the beautification of human existence for eternity: so the Church warns against all destructive passions -- not only sexuality outside Holy Tradition, but also greed, anger, gluttony, pride and despair.

We are now in a moment when we need to think carefully about our response to this cultural watershed moment. Unfortunately, it is a watershed: but our response does not need to be so chaotic or reactionary. It is not the best thing, surely, to wage another round of "culture wars." Neither is a retreat from full-on engagement of from contemporary society (and history): we are neither Amish, nor are most of us monastic. So in general, I reject the "Benedict Option." It is neither robust nor comprehensive as a real strategy.

Frankly, we should have been thinking about "responses" to the devolution of contemporary society a long time ago. Maybe as far back as when usury was legalized in modern Europe, and everything became commoditized (even human labor). Maybe even further back as when Christendom lost its soul when the western Church itself began contractualizing the concept of "covenant" and all relationships, and secularity was thus invented and set loose upon human society.

Why do we notice how bad things are only when our hot buttons are pushed? I think our surprise and shock about Friday June 26th reveal not so much the badness of the world, but our egregious lack of wisdom, and failure to discern.

For now, I will offer only this, in the particular subject of marriage:

The best thing to do, in response, is this: We need to understand and reveal the truth of Orthodox Marriage. Our homes need to be islands of the joy and peace of the Risen Christ. Our marriages need to reveal the possibilities of Trinitarian love in our time. And we need to be able to talk freely, peacefully and courageously, about what our marriages mean in Orthodoxy.

the disappearing symbol

 

In just a little while, the funeral service will commence for Rev (and state senator) Clementa Pinckney at the Mother Emmanuel AME Church in Charleston SC. When the caisson bearing his remains passes under the Confederate flag, it will be the last time this good man will be troubled by the sight of it.

There is a simple reason for the absence of riots, vandalism and other violent disturbances that flared up after other recent deaths. One would have expected such, because these present nine victims were older, placid, so innocent, non-violent.

The reason is because they -- even in their suffering -- showed Christ, the Prince of Peace, so well.

I continue to be surprised when I hear the people and clergy of this AME community speak so confidently of Christ and the Cross, and the seamless link between their individual holiness and the needs and issues of the community.

They are examples to us all.

These days, we worry about events like this "getting politicized," and there is no small frustration at the removal of the Confederate flag.

We need to remember that all politics belong to the larger class of morality. There will always be a political side to a community event. One might get miffed at "people taking political opportunity from a tragedy" -- and this is a very old complaint. But that is like complaining about something that happens as predictably as daylight. 

There is always a political moment after every tragedy.

I admire, especially, the southern Republicans who are working hard to remove the Confederate flag from all positions of governmental symbolism. Yes, it is part of the heritage and history. Yes, it should continue on at battlefields and museums.

But these Republicans are responding to this horrific tragedy by empathizing with a population that looks upon the Confederate flag in a much different way. When African Americans look at this symbol, they do not see the romantic nobility of Lee and Jackson and the "Lost Cause." Nor do they see the down-homeness of Daisy and the Dukes of Hazzard. 

No. African Americans see -- and they must see -- the Confederate flag just as Jews see the flag of the Third Reich, emblazoned with the swastika. You can point out to me the long history of the swastika that has nothing to do with the Nazis -- and you would be right.

But now that symbol has been permanently stained by the satanic madness of Hitler and his movement.

The Confederate flag, for African Americans, must and can only stand for the Middle Passage of the horrible slave trade. It stands for an entire racial community suffering in bondage for three centuries in this country. It stands for the forced separation of husbands and wives, parents and children. It stands for the bodily mutilation and torture of thousands of escaped or "misbehaved" slaves. It stands for the Nazi-like money-addicted plantation owners and cotton magnates who profited from human suffering.

So since this symbol carries this horrific meaning to my brothers and sisters, would I insist on waving it from a position of authority, or anywhere in my community? Would I be so callous as to wave the swastika in front of those whose last names are written hundreds of times at Yad Vashem?

There is no boundary between morality and politics. All politics is an expression of morality, an interaction between good and evil. Every expression of goodness comes with a price tag in the exchange: at every act of peacemaking (because that is what the Prince of Peace calls us to do with the Cross), the price is the giving up of "personal right," of convenience, of personal taste and maybe, even, political opinion.

say "hypocrite" right

You and I hear this next phrase probably once a week: “I don’t go to church because it’s full of hypocrites.”

I have always wanted to reply, “Well, just go and make one more.”

That is not really nice, and it is too snarky by half. When we hear this line, it is obvious that the speaker doesn’t have a clue as to what the word “hypocrite” really means. And it is just as obvious that the speaker is bitter about something that is just as much his fault as it is everyone else’s. Or he is just defensive about his own fear of spiritual realities.

If you absolutely must respond to this worn-out and trite complaint, I suggest you try on this line for size: “The church isn’t full of hypocrites, but it is full of sinners, and I’m one of them. That is why we all go to church, because we need healed by grace, by prayer and sacrament.”

That may or may not work, but it is true.

And such a response spotlights the huge confusion that surrounds the word “hypocrite.” Most of the time when I hear or read this word in popular speech, it seems that what is being complained about is not “hypocrisy,” but “inconsistency.” We Christians are called to practice virtues and to deny the impulses of our passions. Frequently, we fail the commandments to love God and to love each other “as ourselves.” Some days we do very well at love, self-denial and giving mercy: once in a while we do not, and thus we are inconsistent.

And when others see this failure, they like to call it “hypocrisy.”

It is not, of course. When a Christian fails, he is guilty of sin, not hypocrisy. And when someone sins, we are called to forgive such trespasses. Sin requires repentance and restitution and remediation, and it needs forgiveness and restoration.

Hypocrisy is different. It is not inconsistency -- if you want a more correct term, I suggest “incongruence” rather than inconsistency. Hypocrisy actually turns out to be very consistent. Sin, hopefully, is not.

What I mean by “incongruence” is that in hypocrisy, there is a horrible “disconnect” between what is expressed on the outside, and what is actually going on inside -- in the heart. In describing such a nasty disconnect, Jesus once called the Scribes and Pharisees a bunch of “whitewashed selpuchres” -- that is, tombs that looked pretty on the outside, but filled with decay and corruption on the inside.

The Lord condemned the hypocrisy of these politically powerful men. What he condemned, interestingly, was not their sinfulness in general (which they denied). Instead, Jesus denounced their contradiction. In their hypocrisy, the Scribes and the Pharisees reduced religion to a “mask” in the way that trick-or-treaters don plastic faces of Superman or some Disney princess on Halloween.

Notice that these men were not just religious, but were politically powerful. They had turned religion into a business of commodification (e.g., moneychanging in the Temple, and the wretched practice of "corban" and tithing mint and dill), and power-mad domination (e.g., Saul stoning Stephen and hauling Christians off in chains). My point here is that modern sensibilities have restricted the meaning of hypocrisy to "religion," when in reality it is an existential term. Hypocrisy belongs to power.

The hypocrites who were denounced so scarily in Matthew 23 (“woe to you scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites!” the Lord said again and again, paki paki) had pushed religion to the surface and did not let it go any deeper. They had denied the main purpose of religion -- which was for a person saying yes to the Holy Spirit incorporating him or her into the Body of Christ, thus becoming godlike, a child of God the Father.

Hypocrites, as you might imagine, will have none of this.

Hypocrites are addicted to the outside. They cannot stand the inside, the precinct of the heart. They are invested in the fiction that God is distant and wrathful, and find the idea of damnation (that is, of other people) quite appealing. Ultimately, they’d prefer that God not exist, because power and domination are what they are really interested in, not at all true religion.

Hypocrites do not, by definition, ever really pray. They cannot pray because they refuse to repent -- prayer always requires the sacrifice of ego. A hypocrite would never do that. A hypocrite loves his ego but hates his own soul.

The church has always had problems with religious hypocrites: that is old news. There will always be charismatic preachers who rake in millions from their impoverished TV fan base, and take these widow-offerings to buy private jets, yachts, mansions with swimming pools and -- I kid you not -- golden faucets and toilet seats.

That is, as I’ve said, nothing new. We should not be upset by this.

What is new, however, is the arrival of “non-religious” hypocrites. Hypocrites of this sort deny any spiritual reality, but at the same time demand that you accept their "valuations," or their definitions of what is good or important. Hypocrites of this sort put a price on everything and, because they deny anything special about humanity, even put human life up for sale. Think here, in this regard, the practice of pornography, where women are turned into objects for profit. Think of fertilized embryos or fetuses that are discarded because they are not viable or valuable. Think of corporations who pay lip service to democracy, but extort government at all levels and profit from cultural decadence. Or think of real hardworking people who are denied a living wage.

“Non-religious” hypocrites have even changed the definition of “freedom.” Freedom, in this modern secular hypocrisy, now means “freedom to choose,” or “freedom to purchase and own,” or “freedom to change the TV station” or “freedom to be whatever kind of individual you want to be.”

However, “Freedom,” says Holy Tradition, means “freedom to be, freedom to become.” Certainly not freedom to choose.

For us, such freedom is found only in deification -- a life that starts in liturgy and never ends in an infinite ascension into Beauty Divine.

That sort of freedom a hypocrite -- religious or non-religious -- just cannot stand. The sharp irony here -- which is kind of funny -- is that the only ones who call the Church “just a bunch of hypocrites” are hypocrites themselves.

So. I think there are far more non-religious hypocrites than religious ones. In fact, there may be no authentic "religious" hypocrites because a hypocrite will not really pray.

And, you and I will have our problems with inconsistency.

It is true.

We are sinners, to be sure.

But we may not be hypocrites.

Which is far, far worse.