This blog post is a reflection on Where the Edge Gathers, by Yvette Flunder, and "The Broken-Open Heart," by Parker Palmer.
I found reading Yvette Flunder's Where the Edge Gathers to be a frustrating experience as a third-year seminary student. This is not because she doesn't write well; she writes fine. It's not because she has nothing valuable to say; she does. It's because at this point, as a third-year seminarian in a left-leaning, mainline seminary, there's very little I read in Flunder's book that I haven't read a thousand times before. Yes, we are called to preach at the edge. Yes, there is a need for radical inclusivity in the church. Yes, there is a need to break down the barriers set up by human beings, and to build towards the community God envisions for us in the New Jerusalem. There is absolutely nothing wrong with these assertions; I support them.
In fact, one thing I see as necessary in my own ministry is to do what the PCUSA's "Brief Statement of Faith" says: "to unmask idolatries in church and culture" in the power of the Holy Spirit. My hope is that God can use me in my ministry to help look at the various idolatries against which we struggle. The idolatry of American culture, to which we're all prone; the idolatry of prosperity, to which we're all drawn; to bibliolatry, by which the church and all its members are ever tempted. This is perhaps my biggest hope for my own ministry: to work with my congregation to find the places in which we're blinded, and to work through them and through our human limitations and temptations to work for God in the world.
As I said at the top, Flunder's book (the first half, anyway) was very frustrating for re-hashing things that have been rehearsed so many times they can almost seem trite. But her sermons were very good. In particular, I was drawn to the sermon "Juneteenth" (pg. 77). The story of Juneteenth (which she re-hashes in the sermon) is that of the slaves in Texas finally learning that they were freed on June 19, 1865 - two-and-a-half years after the Emancipation Proclamation. I think the reason I was drawn to that particular sermon on that particular topic is that Juneteenth illustrates to me Palmer's idea of the "tragic gap."
Parker Palmer, in his essay "The Broken-Open Heart," defines the "tragic gap" as "the gap between what is and what could and should be." Juneteenth is an example of this because what could have and in fact should have been was freedom for the slaves of Texas (obviously, morally, they never should have been slaves in the first place; I'm speaking to the legal reality that they were no longer slaves). Yet, on that very day, they found themselves living in the reality of slavery. Juneteenth is the day that people were made aware of what was already true: they were free.
In essence, I hope that my ministry can function that way, as well. That it can serve as a way to help people identify "tragic gaps." Of course, there is the ultimate tragic gap we all face, and to which Flunder refers on page 79: that we are set free in Jesus. That's the obvious one to go after in ministry, though. And while that message undergirds all of what I hope my congregation(s) and I can accomplish, I hope that we can find the more "mundane" tragic gaps in people's lives, and help to bridge the is and could/should be more easily.
Obviously, these are lofty goals for ministry. I don't intend to set out to fix the world's problems: that's God's job. But I do believe in working for the world God intended. And I hope that my ministry will reflect that goal.
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