Are We Tribal?

I have just returned from the Holy Land, a place rife with tribalism.  My heart broke as I witnessed this play out in the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, the place that stands as edifice over the rock of Calvary and the tomb of Jesus.  The tribal bodies that dance there have been doing so under tense détente for the last 150 years.  They are the Greek Orthodox, Syrian Orthodox, Ethiopian Orthodox, Armenian Orthodox, Egyptian Copts and Roman Catholics.

As I watched with judgment their displays of power and posturing, I began to wonder, and continue to wonder, how do we in the Episcopal Church do the same thing?  Are we tribal in ways we don’t see?  What do we do that isolates us from others or others from us?  What language do we speak that we take for granted in a way that causes us to be tone deaf to the world around us?

To start this reflection I’d like to look at tribe as a concept. Merriam Webster defines tribe as “the social group comprising numerous families, clans or generations together, who share common characteristics, interests, occupations and customs.”  This definition kicks our church community pretty far down the road toward being tribal. Our liturgy is a good place to start.  To us and to our children it is the most familiar thing in the world; to others it is the most foreign thing they have ever dropped into.  Many of us organize our liturgy in a way that allows anyone who can read to have a good shot at being able to follow along.  But still there is confusion, sometimes unease, during the Peace, the Eucharist, Baptism, incense, asperges, bells and holy fire.

Is our liturgy enough to keep people away from our church?  For some, the answer is yes; for others no.  Must we change it as a result?  The conclusion, at least for me, is no.  I believe our challenge is not breaking down our way of worship, nor is it trying to be something different than we are as a particular contextual community.  It is, rather, to put the other, whoever that is, ahead of our idiosyncratic ways of being.  When new people wander into our midst, we have the opportunity to invite them to be most authentically themselves.  This begins, of course, with finding out something about them, asking them questions, listening to their stories, finding ways to connect, and then offering to be their tour guide in this strange Episcopal Church land they have just wandered into.

God incarnate came to us as a man, Jesus, not to break down the framework of tribe, but to relegate it as secondary to the bigger framework of the kingdom of God.  When we encounter strangers in our midst, the hope is not to swallow them up or take them over or reduce them to rubble, but rather to get to know them for their own authentic selves.

While we will still have our particular tribal ways, relationship is always primary in the kingdom of God.  There is plenty of space in God’s divine economy to make room for other, even within the spaces we cherish and love.   Doyt+