breathforthebones

(Published in the Rome News Tribune, October 10, 2014)

The baseball playoffs are here! Since opening day, the 15 teams of the National League and the 15 teams of the American League have all been moving (or attempting to move) toward a fixed goal: the World Series and, ultimately, Champions of baseball 2014.

In social theory speak, each baseball team is a “Bounded Set” – that is, there are rituals and rules about who is in and who is out on each team. Perhaps it’s stolen bases, RBIs, batting average; or on-base or slugging percentage. Not just anyone can walk onto the field and play for the team; it is a “bounded set.” All teams in MLB constitute a “Centered Set” – it is the team’s relationship to the center that is significant. Every team aspires to be at the center as post-season play ends. Movement toward the center is the goal of every team.

“Wait a minute,” you may say. “I thought this was a column about religion, not sports.” Right you are! But I want us to think about set theory as we consider the state of the Church today and her relationship to the world around her. Most churches (in the West) today, still adhere to the “Bounded Set” theory. Those wishing to cross the “boundary” into a congregation or perhaps a denomination, must do so through prescribed methods and rites, and are expected to adopt language, values and life styles consonant with the congregation/denomination. For instance, if I, a Presbyterian, want to join a Baptist congregation, I must undergo the ritual of baptism within the Baptist understanding of baptism (a profession of faith and baptism by immersion), even though I was baptized as an infant within the Presbyterian tradition. Or to take communion in a Catholic parish, I must be a Catholic. All denominations (my own Presbyterian denomination included) have rites and rituals that must be observed for a person to be considered a member.

There is a new movement within the Church today toward “Centered Set” practices. Let me give you another analogy besides baseball. In the Australian outback, cattle ranches often run thousands of head of cattle. I am told that it is impossible to construct and maintain enough fences to keep the cattle in (the bounded set theory of cattle ranching) so they drill wells instead (the centered set theory of cattle ranching).

Many on the outside of the Church today take a look in the window and much of what they see is rigid rules and mean spiritedness. Like the Pharisees who brought the woman “caught in adultery (John 8:1-11)” to Jesus (I always want to ask, “Where’s the man who was caught in adultery with her?”), many congregations are about keeping strict boundaries in an effort to protect the faith. Throughout the Gospels, the Pharisees were harshly critical of Jesus: “He eats with sinners, (Luke 5:30)” “If this man were a prophet, he would have known who and what kind of woman this is who is touching him—that she is a sinner (Luke 7:39).” They constructed rigid rules and expectations. They were not bad people; they just wanted to protect the faith. But it is to the Pharisees that Jesus directs his greatest criticism, ““Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you are like whitewashed tombs, which on the outside look beautiful, but inside they are full of the bones of the dead … on the outside [you] look righteous to others, but inside you are full of hypocrisy and lawlessness. (Matthew 23:27-28)”

What if, instead of erecting more and higher boundaries, the Church were to drill some wells? “Let anyone who is thirsty come to me, and let the one who believes in me drink. (John 7:37-38)”

What might it look like for churches to be wells? They would be places where the grace and mercy and forgiveness of Jesus was the invitation to come in.