On Bending, Breaking and Standing Tall: Preaching Across the Divide(s) by Aimee Moiso
The musical Fiddler on the Roof tells the story of Tevye, a Russian Jewish milkman with five daughters. As each of the three older daughters grows into adulthood, they begin to challenge norms of marriage and family. Eldest daughter Tzeitel resists a traditionally-arranged marriage to an aging widower, begging instead to marry a poor tailor whom she loves and has chosen herself. The second daughter, Hodel, wants to marry a Jewish man from outside the village who is active in revolution against the tsar. Marrying this man would take Hodel away from her home and family. Tevye weighs both decisions heavily, eventually giving in to the desires of his daughters out of love for them, despite the tension with his beliefs. When his third daughter, Chava, expresses her hope to marry a young Orthodox Christian, Tevye cannot acquiesce. Having flexed and changed for his first two daughters, he anguishes over his love for his third daughter and what constitutes faithfulness to God. In prayer, he considers the cost of turning his back on his faith and his people. “If I try to bend that far, I will break,” he confesses. When he discovers his beloved Chava has married the young man in secret, he tells his wife, “We have other children at home. You have work to do, I have work to do. Chava is dead to us. We will forget her.”
Tevye’s choices are set in a tumultuous era of early 20th century Russia, amid simmering revolution and Jewish persecution. By the end of the musical, Tevye’s entire village is broken up by a pogrom. As various families leave to seek fresh beginnings in other places, they ask what they quite literally should take with them, and what they must leave behind. Especially in times of dramatic change and upheaval, the choices of maintaining tradition or bending to newness weigh even more heavily, because what seem to matter most — community, ritual, boundaries, family, safety — are exactly the things being challenged from within and without. When the ground is shaking beneath our feet, how do we choose what to cling to, what to defend, and what to let go?
When I proposed the topic of “Preaching Across the Divide(s)” for this week of Ecclesio, I certainly had the U.S. political scene in mind. I have had multiple conversations in recent months with people who are dramatically at odds with families and friends over politics. Some have tacitly agreed to avoid controversial topics at the dinner table, while others have been driven to no longer speak to each other at all. A gay friend of mine posted that any of his friends on Facebook who support Roy Moore in the Senate election in Alabama can “unfriend me now (and not just on Facebook) because you have no regard for me or my people or our humanity” (Roy Moore has vocally supported the criminalization of homosexuality).
Politics has never been merely about party and platform, but today political convictions seem fully entwined with who we are, who we see ourselves to be, and what we believe about others: from racial identity and prejudice to gender equality and expression to patriotism and nationalism to religious conviction and freedom. More than at any other time I have known, the “us” versus “them” we hear in the public sphere pits people who live in the United States against other people who live in the United States. Across the spectrum, we have become strident and polarized with(in) our categories and groups, and show little tolerance for trying to keep a foot in more than one camp.
The church, however much we might like it to be otherwise, is not immune from these dynamics. For preachers (and their hearers), weekly sermons are a daunting reality in communities often as divided as the society around them — but which also comprise disciples trying to live lives of shared, faithful witness. In many of our congregations, those words — shared and faithful — are two of the hardest things to keep together, because what we believe faithfulness means might be precisely the thing we do not share, precisely the thing about which we vehemently disagree. This is not new for the church. This month as we commemorate the 500th anniversary of the Reformation era, we remember that division is in our Christian DNA. We have long struggled to live together as a body of Christ, and when differences cannot be reconciled, we frequently pick “faithful” over “shared,” and choose to separate over our beliefs. This idea brought Tevye to my mind, a father who finds the upheaval of society knocking on his door. Change pushes him to the breaking point, as he comes to believe that faithfulness to God requires severing relationship with his daughter.
And where are we as we look at the divided communities around us? In our season of upheaval, many of the major questions before us as Christians have to do with bending, with breaking, and with standing tall. Where are we who follow Christ called to flex, to open wider and broaden our thinking? Where are we called to draw a line, to say, “No, this is not who we are”? Is it more faithful to try preserving relationship across our divisions, or to take an uncompromising stand that further deepens our division? What are the consequences of being too inclusive, or too conclusive?
Four writers this week take the theme “Preaching Across the Divides” and make it their own, interpreting both “preaching” and “divide(s)” from their contexts as preachers, pastors, and persons. Leah Schade, a Lutheran pastor who teaches preaching at Lexington Theological Seminary in Kentucky, begins with research on how and why pastors choose to preach on controversial topics, and how they might preach in the “purple zone” — a place of conversation in between our “red” and “blue” political and social divides. Amantha Barbee, pastor of Statesville Avenue Presbyterian Church in Charlotte, NC, looks to the scriptures to call preachers to the task of self-reflection, and to speak truth and clarity in a context of confusion, misinformation and equivocation. Casey Thornburgh Sigmon, a Disciples of Christ minister who teaches preaching at the St. Paul School of Theology in Leawood, KS, reflects on the historical divide between the pulpit and the pew. She suggests ways in which technology and social media, among other things, might foster conversation and collaboration that bring together professional and lay voices in preaching. Scott Clark, Chaplain and Associate Dean of Student Life at San Francisco Theological Seminary in California, shares his own preaching process when his political and theological views conflict with congregation members, yet all have gathered together to hear the word of God.
As I reflect on these pieces and on my chosen theme, it occurs to me that “Preaching Across the Divide(s)” may suggest that “faithful” need not always be pitted against “shared” – or, more directly, that there might be something faithful about not being resigned to division. The preposition “across” is key: this is not preaching despite the divides, or preaching regardless of the divides, but preaching across the divides: as a prayerful cry from one side of a chasm in the hope someone on the other side might hear and want to call back. To me, “across” implies openness to the possibility that something someday may transcend what separates us, or at least that we should resist closing off that possibility. Because we are to love God and love our neighbors and our enemies, we are called to hold together faithfulness and a shared future with others whom we are to care for and about. Maybe standing tall, bending, and being broken don’t have to be distinct choices, but three simultaneous ways we creatively respond to that call: bending in some places but prepared to stand tall, standing tall while recognizing the costs of being broken, and breaking where we know God can make healing and regrowth possible.
The Rev. Aimee Moiso is an ordained Minister of Word and Sacrament in the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) and a Ph.D. candidate in homiletics and liturgics at Vanderbilt University. Previously, she served as Director of Ecumenical and Interfaith Ministries at Santa Clara University, and is past chair of the PC(USA) General Assembly Committee on Ecumenical and Interreligious Relations. Aimee loves saving abandoned or neglected plants, baking savory and sweet treats, keeping garbage out of landfills by finding new uses for old things, and hearing stories about how people got to be who they are.