Reflection: Image - Accusing finger (image used with permission from artist, Wendy Newbery)
Thoughts on this week’s image? What do you see here?
Story: This image comes from a participant named Joanna. She and her partner received marriage preparation counselling from the pastor who promised the church would walk with them throughout their married life. When her son Noah was born, he spent the first several months of his life in a neonatal intensive care unit (NICU). During this time, they learned that he would live with significant physical and intellectual disabilities.
When Noah finally went home, the parents were excited to show him off to the church family. Noah was happy to be at church. He enjoyed the music and got excited. Following worship, the pastor told them Noah had been too noisy and disruptive. They were asked to sit at the back of the church in the future. They were also told that Noah’s disability was a consequence of their sin. They have stepped away from the church and have not looked for another community because they fear judgment.
From this experience, Joanna describes the church as a person pointing a finger. She clarified that she does not believe God judges her in the same way. In fact, she describes God as a big hand carrying her.
Thoughts?
What is at the heart of judgment? Is it a rejection of what is different? Is it a need for people to fit into the small boxes we create? How many other ways have members of the church judged people to the point where those individuals no longer feel welcome and become unwilling to try any faith community for fear of judgment?
Joanna is not alone in this experience. The study includes other stories of parents being told their child’s issues are related to their sin. Some experience microaggressions – the looks, the back handed comments, the unwillingness to adapt. Imagine being at a church that made no effort to ensure your children had something to eat during fellowship times because it was too much work and your child’s needs did not fit with the congregation’s traditions? How many other ways do church’s, who like to say, ‘all are welcome’, actually say, you are welcome as long as you conform to our context?
What does God say about that?
The first reading today speaks volumes about the challenge to balance faith and inclusion. Peter, as a devout Jew, knows the law about what is appropriate to eat. As the early Christian church meets Gentiles, they meet people whose food choices are different from their own. They have long judged others for not maintaining the same intentional diet. This conflicts with a desire to welcome these individuals into the new community. God says to Peter: “What God has made clean, you must not call profane.” And then, Peter sees how God welcomes the Gentiles by gifting them the Spirit too. It is because of God’s acts and Peter’s openness to see God acting in this community that the Gentiles are welcomed into the early community. There will be further bumps in the road, but it is a start.
What do you think? How does this story invite us to consider the ways the church continues to judge others and what God’s response might be? Note: yesterday was the International Day Against Homophobia, Biphobia, and Transphobia. To what extent does this reading speak to the church’s relationship with the Queer community as well?
We have a lot of work still to do to fully embrace God’s diverse Beloved children. May we continually seek to be spacious in our welcoming of people, seeing each as a valued and valid member of the church and the Body of Christ. This we pray as we sing: (VT) 36 Let Us Build a House
