Our conviction, and our fear, make some choices too easy. Too quickly can we decide what is right or wrong, what ought to be and what is intolerable. Our uncertainty lets us hide in some frightful places setting defenses we might never need. This happens in all aspects of life, but fits least well in our understanding of Church. For poor reasons we limit roles and deny the value of those with whom we disagree, simplifying positions with which we disagree. We pretend it is not the role of orthodoxy to resist change, and not the function of all believers to consider the meaning of meanings already understood, wondering what more might be said and how belief might have greater depth.
To be faithful to itself, each aspect of Church must be critical in its appraisal of what it believes and free to question what is offered from any other quarter. Where we run into problems is when any of us say that ours is the only answer, the only ministry, the single truth. Resistance to change, a critical appraisal of what is newly proposed is a valid and true ministry. Moving backward into tradition is as needed as is the consideration of what is on the horizon, an incorporation into faith of what was never before considered or known.
We may wish others were not part, and may try denying a relationship to those with whom we disagree, but denial does not make it so. No matter the names we call each other or the indictments we offer, each aspect -- whether we call it progressive, conservative, radical, reactionary, or anything else -- is a legitimate and even necessary expression and reasonable formulation of Church. Each offers a service to the rest, even if it seems no service at all. A Church in which there were only agreement would eventually nod in boredom as much as it would in agreement, offering less validation than is available in the airing of differences. We need not want each other, but we do have need of what each can provide.
Difference is a necessary part of any group larger than one (and is perhaps necessary even within that one if he or she is to be whole). In the offering of differences, consensus can emerge and in that moment in marking of the entity's growth, a line drawn to say here is where we stood today. It is a line from which some may look forward, and others back. Here all may say, if only for now, this is where we grow from.
No member of this family has the entirety of the family's heritage or mission. Even if we would want to avoid this family's reunion, or wish others had stayed away, it is a family made more complete for having us all. Even if you were uninvited to the reunion you are free to come, entitled to its name, a sharer of its past, its future, and in this very moment. You own its faults and successes. At the reunion you may stand only with those who share, and reinforce, your view; and so you will have less to take from it. It is your choice, but all of us are here and all of us belong no matter in which direction we pull, push, or drag our Church. It is us. To be itself it needs what each offers and what each would reject. It is its fullness when it is all of its parts.
It is a big enough umbrella for all of us to stand under, and will even grow to continue over us as there come to be more of us offering even more to the rest of us.
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