During a sermon I delivered for Ash Wednesday, I recommended that we practice dismantling whatever unjust privileges we happen to have for Lent. In fact, I am convinced that divesting of such privileges is one of the most important spiritual practices that American mainline Christians can do in order to be faithful to the way of Jesus today. These can be issues of class and consumerism, ecological domination, race, heteronormativity, etc.
Why is this a relevant Lenten practice? Each of us experiences oppression in some ways, and we each receive advantages from the oppression of others in other ways. Christian faithfulness today involves uncovering these dynamics and helping us heal from these wounds - some self-inflicted and some other-inflicted. Whenever we or our churches ignore our complicity in these social sins, or say that they are irrelevant to matters of doing church, we end up supporting the status quo in our culture and in us.
When that is the case, all the prayer in the world won't do any good, because we will have missed the context and problems in which we find ourselves: like fish we unknowingly swim in water. We end up focusing on removing splinters (not attending worship every week) and not the log in our eye. Spiritual disciplines and practices are crucial for transformed hearts and lives, but without naming the context they are for, they too easily repeat forms of self-righteous piety. By taking our complicity seriously, we can help to heal each other and our world. It's never too soon, and it's never too late, to begin!
In repentance,
Timothy Murphy
Executive Director