…but she’s my Mother.  

This is my submission for the Eighth Letter, a conference that is asking writers, bloggers, tweeters and everyone else to compose a letter, in any form, to The Church in North America, a la the letters to the seven churches in Revelation. Here’s my submission below (Cheers, David Henson)

To the Church of North America…

 From birth you have been nurtured by Mother.  You have nursed at her breast, ignorant of the bands of love that pulled you from grace to grace.   You learned from Her about your Father in Heaven, and waited anxiously to be confirmed so that you might proclaim for yourself His age-old story.

As you matured you naturally became more aware.  You seemed ready to eat the fruit; to see your nakedness.   And when you did, you discovered your Mother to be a whore.

She is often found in bed with the nation and any number of special interest groups.  Her blood-stains are not that of the Lamb who was slain but of the lions she attempts to tame.  

She has propagated numerous injustices, from blessing countless wars to sanctioning slavery to subjugating women.   

She has lost sight of her God-given calling to make disciples and has instead succumbed to the easier, more placating mission of making good citizens.  

She has been obsessed with sex, judging some while victimizing others.  

She has forgotten the meaning of stewardship, choosing instead to fill her coffers with the gifts of her suitors and hoard them for self-maintenance rather then self-sacrifice.   

She may be a whore but she is very selective about her bed-mates, welcoming only those who look and think like herself, making her the most segregated harem in all of America.  

But I have this against you…

When your eyes were opened and you saw your nakedness you recapitulated the wrong story, and  you hid, ashamed.  

You think you know best how to be my Bride, taking countless scalpels to my dress, dividing and dissolving that which is not yours to rend.  

You rail continuously against the various ways my Body moves and breaths and has her being in your midst, always presuming the way you do church is the best and most valid way.   

You froth at the mouth in anticipation of the fall of denominations and ecclesial authority because you arrogantly assume submission is futile – a virtue for less enlightened minds.  

You gather in large rallies, thanking God you are not like your Mother, that your ways are higher and more sophisticated than hers, going even as far as to invite a nation of individuals long weened from their Mother to critique Her by way of an Eighth Letter.   Do you presume God is speaking to you?   

You have forgotten that you are a servant to one who stands over and against you, the Lord of heaven and earth.   God is not ashamed to be associated with a whore.  Why are you?

Recall the better story, Church…

There once was a certain whore.   The religious mob that charged her, that dressed her down in their eighth letter, were right according to their custom and law to do so.  They were prepared to tear her to shreds, to ridicule her, to take a scalpel to her dress and stone her unfaithful body.   They threw this whore at a Teacher and asked him to bless their intentions.   Falling to his knees, this Teacher quietly drew in the dust, the same dust from which everyone at this rally came, and the same to which they would return.   

“Let whomever among you is without sin throw the first stone,” he said.

When the rally had gone quiet, and no one was left but Jesus and the whore, when it was possible for her to hear, he turned to her and spoke, “Has no one condemned you?  Then neither do I.  Now go,

and

sin

no

more.”