Manners – The Reverend Dr. Michelle Bartel

Carrying the manners of the sacraments with us, for we are called out and sent out, so people can see an outward and visible sign of the inward, invisible grace we have been given and created in. (Pope Francis, Joy and evangelism) Decades before I started reading the Miss Manners column, I learned the word “obsequious” from The Wittenberg Door when they printed a poem by Steve Martin:

Be courteous, kind, and forgiving

Be gentle and peaceful each day

Be warm and human and grateful

And have a good thing to say

Be thoughtful and trustful and childlike

Be witty and happy and wise

Be honest and love all your neighbors

Be obsequious, purple and clairvoyant

I found the stanza hilarious, and began incorporating the word “obsequious” into my vocabulary as a young teen. Of course, I had missed the point of the preceding lines from “The Grandmother’s Song,” which is the advice of good manners that can lead one to a solid basis for absurdity.

There is a balance between being obsequious and rude, and at that point we find proper etiquette,  according to Judith Martin (aka, Miss Manners). Etiquette supports us in maintaining healthy relationships, since it precludes being a doormat as much as it precludes being rude. The key here is good manners, since the forms of etiquette can be used at cross purposes with its proper function, to shame or embarrass someone, for instance, through condescension. Like the disciples being full of joy as they shake the dust off their feet from a town that won’t accept them, Miss Manners prescribes a cool and calm demeanor. A straightforward demeanor, but one that allows a person to be both present and (in our current language) self-differentiated.

The horror she expresses at instances of rudeness includes pretention. “Miss Manners has been accosted by a variety of people who do missionary work under the pretense of friendship, generously spreading their newly acquired insights in the hope of making others as attractive as themselves.” (p. 26) These sorts of people, she says, try to convert the other person, telling them what they should feel, willfully and completely ignorant of how they actually do feel. To the missionaries of etiquette, the feelings of others do not matter because their desire is to improve these others.

Therein lies one of the church’s struggles as we continue to deepen our understanding of mission. With all our good intentions, we are quite often rude. We want to improve others. We carry the gospel with which we are sent in strange ways. Pope Francis in his Apostolic Exhortation 2013, Evangelii Gaudium, points out that it is hard to receive, soak in, and carry forth joy with a dour disposition. In fact, the joy of the gospel of Christ entails joyful manners. It is infectious this way, a fountain, always new and renewing since joy takes unique shape in every moment and circumstance. The way we greet each other, treat each other, touch each other, converse with each other is a rather startling way in which sacrament converges with mission.

He writes, “The Joy of the gospel fills the hearts and lives of all who encounter Jesus… With Christ joy is constantly born anew. In this Exhortation I wish to encourage the Christian faithful to embark upon a new chapter of evangelization marked by this joy, while pointing out new paths for the Church’s journey in years to come.” (Introduction, 1.)

Pope Francis takes seriously the bodies of all human beings in the world as the beloved human beings who are all created to receive the joy of the Gospel. He has a deep concern about those who are poor, and those marginalized groups where “God’s voice is no longer heard, the quiet joy of his love is no longer felt, and the desire to do good fades.” (Introduction, I.2.) He cites Benedict XVI’s assertion that to be a Christian is not an ethical or theological choice or an idea, but an encounter which “gives life a new horizon and a decisive direction.”

We hear of “table manners” in Christian discourse, which refers of course to the Lord’s Supper, and how that sacrament affects our ethic. But sacramental theology nourishes us way beyond the particular, located celebration as those table manners become our manners in general. Joseph Sittler writes that because of grace, everything is redeemable and transformable. And John Calvin, in the Institutes writes that a  sacrament “embraces generally all those signs which God has ever enjoined upon men to render them more certain and confident of the truth of his promises” (IV.14.18). Sittler quotes Calvin, describing God as “the Fountain of all livingness,” that livingness thrumming through all of creation which is “the theater of God’s glory” (Institutes, I.5.8).

If our Christian comportment is to reveal the beauty, joy, and glory of the Triune God, rather than obscure it, then our manners matter. They, too, are sacramental for we are within the theater of God’s glory, part of God’s creation. And if we want to share the delight that the chief end of humanity is to know God and enjoy God forever, then our mission’s form should cohere with rather than contradict its function. The manner carries the matter. Miss Manners provides an insightful foil: “But two wrongs make a blight, and if rudeness begets rudeness, which begets more rudeness, where will it all end?” (p. 22)

If grace begets graciousness, which begets more joy and delight and graciousness, where will it all end? In all of creation knowing God and enjoying God forever? In peace, since “the earth will be full of the knowledge of the Lord as he waters cover the sea?”

Ironic, then, my experience at an evangelical megachurch several years ago. I attended worship there because a former student was playing in the orchestra. Various liturgical elements were irritating to me, especially when wafers (clearly ordered in bulk) were passed for communion while everyone (thousands of ones) were up and milling about during the time of greeting. A diatribe started taking shape in my mind as a voice suddenly thundered “Judge not, lest ye be judged.” While it was someone on a loudspeaker beginning to read the text for the sermon, I took immediate note of the connection and I willingly received the chastisement of my bad manners.

We are a measuring people and our judgment soaks into us like water into a dry sponge. Those people we know who are gracious and non-judgmental should be considered exemplars, not merely described as having a certain personality characteristic. Their manners are the manners of Christ’s blood as we read in Colossians, Christ’s blood in which all things in heaven and on earth are reconciled to God.

All human beings we encounter have “a right to receive the Gospel. Christians have a duty to proclaim the Gospel without excluding anyone. Instead of seeming to impose new obligations, they should appear as people who wish to share their joy, who point to a horizon of beauty and who invite others to a  delicious banquet. It is not by proselytizing that the Church grows, but “by attraction.” (Evangelii Gaudium III.15)

We are called to be people who wish to share the joy of the gospel! Jesus Christ commissioned the disciples not only to teach everything he had said, but also to baptize in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. And so they were called to touch, to greet, to be with and spend time with all human beings they encountered. We should also note that the Great Commission was just that: a commission. The disciples were sent out rather than commanded to hang out and see if anyone came along. To have an encounter is to be in front of someone or something, which means to encounter is to be “confronted” in a more spacious sense of that word. Beautifully, being confronted comes from Latin roots that essentially mean “foreheads together.” An intimate encounter, then, skin to skin, eyes to eyes, person to person. We are that close to these individual, embodied human beings who are beloved of God. We bear witness with outward and visible signs of the inward and invisible grace of the joy of Christ’s gospel. Our manners carry sacrament.

Neither obsequious or rude, “let us try a little harder to take the first step and to become involved. Jesus washed the feet of his disciples. The Lord gets involved and he involves his own, as he kneels to wash their feet…An evangelizing community gets involved by word and deed in people’s daily lives…it embraces human life, touching the suffering flesh of Christ in others.” (Evangelii Gaudium, I.24.) This is a good call for us to heed, since ultimately it is the call of Christ.

When we leave church after worship we carry the manners of the gospel in our bodies, our smiles, our laughs, our cooking, our gardening, and on and on the list goes. This isn’t trying to make people be like us, as Miss Manners’ acquaintances who use friendship as a false pretense for missionary activity. This, instead, is an etiquette of joy, doing whatever we can in our daily encounters to embody Christ so that others are enabled to receive the same joy within themselves. After all, the Great Commission from Matthew 28 concludes with Jesus saying “Look, I myself will be with you every day until the end of this present age.”

Michelle Bartel is a Teaching Elder in the Presbyterian church (USA). After receiving her M.Div. and Ph.D. From Princeton Theological Seminary, she has worked as a college professor, college chaplain, and pastor, and is currently teaching at Bellarmine University in Louisville, KY. She has also served on denominational and presbytery committees. Her current writing projects include beauty as a vital dimension of Christian life and discernment, as well as the relationship between stewardship, formation, and vocation. Her interests include poetry, movies (from the sublime to the ridiculous), music, walking, cooking, dark chocolate, and bourbon.