From Separation to Solidarity
a sermon
During college I was part of Mizzou’s pro-life organization. I helped splash huge images of aborted fetuses all over campus. I saw myself as a champion for unborn babies who exposed the murderous evil of women, doctors, and Democrats. This made me feel good and holy. Years later, I became disillusioned with the binary thinking of “us versus them.” I found my heart moved in deep solidarity with women facing unplanned pregnancies. But when I rejected the boundaries of the pro-life community, I found myself swiftly rejected as well.
Beth Moore, the famed Bible teacher and longtime darling of conservative Christians, has experienced rejection in spades. Because she spoke out against the injustices facing people of color, women, and abuse victims, she was thoroughly rejected by the evangelical community. She lost her publisher. Churches burned her Bible studies. She parted ways with her denomination. Beth Moore is by no means progressive, but that doesn’t deter evangelical purists from blasting her as “woke” at every possible opportunity.
Today I want to talk about why it’s worthwhile to risk rejection, but I also want to talk about why we reject others. If we understand why we reject others, then we can be compassionate towards that tendency. If we can do that, then we will be freer to risk rejection when necessary.
Permit me to do a bit of midrash with our Scripture today. If you’ll recall, midrash is a Jewish interpretative method that not only engages the text but also what’s left unsaid by the text. It is a playful posture that invites imagination into our Scripture reading.
As we heard a few minutes ago, Mary of Bethany risked rejection in a big way. She interrupted a fun dinner party, so not a good start. And then, she poured a bottle of expensive perfume—and probably lots of tears, and all of her love—on Jesus’ feet, wiping it all in with her hair. She washed Jesus’ feet before he washed anyone else’s; perhaps she even inspired the sacrament.
And upon witnessing all this, Judas freaked out. He invoked Scripture in order to condemn Mary for not giving her money to the poor. His reference to Deuteronomy had a subtext, and it’s the same one I hear from Beth Moore’s Scripture-citing trolls: “You’re not following the rules!”
But then we hear from Jesus. “Hey! You will always be able to bless the poor – as you very much should,” he told Judas, “but you won’t always have me.” I wonder if his voice broke when Jesus uttered those last few words. As Amy-Jill Levine points out, this moment wasn’t about helping the poor. No, this was about someone finally understanding what Jesus had been trying to convey: he was on death’s doorstep. Mary of Bethany was the sole disciple to recognize her rabbi’s internal landscape, or at least the only one who did anything about his isolation. And it seems Judas was desperate to distract from Mary’s tenderness towards Jesus—my question is why. The author of John would tell me it’s simple: Judas was a thief, a backstabber, and an all-together horrible person. I don’t buy it; I see Judas as deeply human.
When my husband and I fight about super important things like toothpaste, it’s never about the toothpaste. On the surface, marital spats, and children’s tantrums, and triggering moments for disciples can be about a million different things, but the heart of the matter is always the same: feeling unsafe. And while these incidents can and do happen anywhere, the internal location is always the same: the amygdala. This is the small structure in the lower part of our brains that prompts us to fight, flee, or freeze when we perceive danger. The amygdala is laser-focused on survival. It doesn’t do logic. It reacts, unlike the prefrontal cortex which responds. Psycho-therapists Dr. Dan Siegel and Dr. Tina Payne Bryson refer to the amygdala as the “downstairs brain” and the prefrontal cortex as the “upstairs brain.”
In my imagination, Judas’ “downstairs brain” saw Mary as a threat and acted quickly to make him feel safe again. Maybe he learned as a child that vulnerability led to punishment, or that affection would be rebuffed. Perhaps he’d heard some version of, “Stop crying or I’ll give you something to cry about!” Maybe it was more about his desire for a messiah that would conquer Rome, and he couldn’t stand the implication that Jesus would let Rome conquer him. I can only speculate of course, but I’d guess that Mary’s actions triggered some trauma or fear in Judas, and that his downstairs brain rightly sounded the alarm.
I will further speculate that Judas was relying on “the cult of innocence,” a framework named by Nadia Bolz Weber. “The cult of innocence works on a simple formula,” she writes, “an innocent victim to defend, plus an evil villain to oppose, equals [personal] innocence to enjoy.”
It seems that Judas applied the formula this way: he aligned himself with the poor, he opposed Mary as a wasteful sinner, and this added up to his own righteousness. Or, considering the text from another angle, we can see the author of John’s gospel using this formula too. His innocent victim was Mary (and ultimately, Jesus), his villain was Judas, and he conveniently comes off as the faithful disciple who chose sides correctly. Beth Moore’s critics consider “biblical Christianity” the victim, Beth of course their villain, and as a result they view themselves as defenders of the faith.
The cult of innocence might be one of the amydgala’s favorite tactics to keep us feeling safe. I imagine that Judas, like most of us, thought of himself as unwounded, and, for whatever reason, Mary was terribly inconvenient to this fantasy. The English word “innocence” comes from the Latin “in” which means “not,” and “nocens” which means “harm.” Not harmed, unwounded. Or, in amygdala-speak, safe. Unaffected. Untraumatized. Unblemished. Unguilty. Completely fine.
Like our brother Judas, we are uncomfortable with rule-breaking. We don’t want our sense of homeostasis to be disturbed. It’s stressful when people blur the lines we rely on to navigate our world. This isn’t inherently bad; we just have well-functioning amygdalas! We are afraid of vulnerability, we are afraid of not appearing good, and we are afraid of seeing our shadows.
“The shadow self” according to Richard Rohr is, “Not the bad self, but the self we are not ready to see…It’s not evil. It’s the unwillingness to be seen as evil. And that ironically ends up making us do evil…you could say the cult of innocence follows directly from the denial of the shadow” (emphasis mine).
Because the downstairs brain wants to return us to safety as quickly as possible, it takes the shortest route available. To accomplish this, the amygdala literally hijacks the rest of the brain so it can’t interfere. If Judas’ amygdala could talk, here’s what I imagine it would say: Nope! This makes me feel things that I don’t want to feel! Soon I may have to see things about myself that I don’t want to see! Quick, tell Mary how horrible she is so that I can feel safe in the world again!
If you have an amygdala, then sometimes you also employ reflexive shortcuts to innocence, shortcuts to feeling good about yourself, shortcuts to feeling safe. Some people do what I did in college: align with unborn babies and vilify Planned Parenthood. For others, hardworking employees are the victims and billionaire CEOs are the villains. Many transfuse their sense of innocence from identification with Palestine and denouncement of Israelis. Put another way, everyone is prone to scapegoating. It could be Republicans or Democrats. White police or Black citizens. This church or that church. Don’t get caught up in which of these evils are real and which are only perceived as evil by people less enlightened than you—you’ll just be making my point. And my point is that we all tend to worship our own purity as a way of distinguishing ourselves from others.
After all, if we are separate, then we are pure. If we are pure, we are safe. This is the cult of innocence: not to be good, but to appear good.
You know who didn’t care about this? Jesus. Richard Rohr points to Jesus’ response to the rich young ruler in Mark 10. The man addressed Jesus as “Good Teacher,” and Jesus responded with a freedom we can barely fathom: “Why do you call me good?” His sense of self wasn’t dependent on what other people thought of him! He ate with sinners; he didn’t care one iota about guilt by association. He embraced his shadow; he was willing to be seen as evil. (He must have had stellar emotional regulation, which is what allows us to prevent amygdala hijack).
Listen to me. We were created in the image of God. We are good inside. That is immutable. We are also human, meaning that we sin. Like Jesus, we contain divinity and humanity. But for a religion centered on grace, we really want to pretend that we have no need of grace.
1 John 1:8 says, “If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us.”
Because I’ve lived this and done this, I speak with authority when I tell you it is incredibly easy to go from being one type of fundamentalist to another. When I was rethinking the ethics of abortion, my first impulse was to just flip-flop the victims and villains in my head. “Oh man! The women and doctors are actually the victims, and the pro-life movement is the villain!” Do you see the problem? I switched teams, but I was still playing the game. I was still associating with the innocent and maligning the guilty—to whom I was certain I had no affiliation.
None of this is to say there isn’t really evil out there; of course there is! And we should oppose it fiercely. But we better get real intentional about what’s inside of ourselves. I am not telling you to abandon concern for systemic injustice; I am urging you to find out how you perpetuate systemic injustice and do something about that.
I confess to you that I read Beth Moore’s memoir a couple years ago and enjoyed it immensely. It was good for my soul to connect with her as a fellow human being, to remember, as Brene Brown says, “people are hard to hate close up.” I’m a progressive, agnostic Christian—I’m not supposed to enjoy Beth Moore. Just as there is a conservative cult of innocence that hates her, there is absolutely a progressive one too. I disagree with her about numerous things, but I don’t hate her, in fact I appreciate her.
I do hate some people. Despite my efforts, I haven’t figured out how to consistently reject evil without also rejecting some people—scapegoating is just so alluring. Make no mistake, I am preaching this message to myself as much as I am preaching it to you.
We cannot have mercy for humanity if we do not have it for ourselves. We can’t have mercy for ourselves if we think we have no need for it. If we pretend that we are strictly divine, unwounded, always and only locating evil outside of ourselves, in one villain or another…we may paradoxically bring out the worst of our humanity. We may denigrate or ostracize others while telling ourselves that we are crusading for justice. If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us.
What are we risking if we don’t risk being rejected, being human, being seen, shadow and all?
I exhale deeply when friends tell me they yelled at their kids or spoke badly of their spouse. Oh thank God, it’s not just me! Phew! If we can find common ground with each other’s struggles, instead of distracting ourselves when someone lets their guard down, then we will be on the way to profound healing.
To end, I’d like to offer you a strange encouragement as disciples of Jesus: go get rejected. Go wash feet: be vulnerable enough to engage a reality or person that you are expected to ignore. Go interrupt someone’s isolation, even if you have to make a scene. You cannot stand in true solidarity with anyone if you care about appearing good. Say that you have sin. Embrace your own humanity so that you can embrace the humanity of others.
You will be punished by those who reflexively reject lest they be rejected. Some will fight you, some will flee. You may become someone’s villain, someone’s goat banished to the wilderness, so that they might feel unblemished and safe. It will sting, but remember that it’s about their amygdala and not about you.
As for your own amygdala, thank it for tirelessly keeping you safe. Talk to it like a friend who has the purest of intentions, and reassure it as needed that vulnerability isn’t necessarily a hungry tiger chasing you through a jungle.
Brian McLaren asks in his most recent book, “Do we follow Jesus or do we follow the cult of innocence?” Mary chose Jesus, which meant choosing rejection for coloring outside the lines.
May we follow her example. Amen.