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Offering a conversation

While visiting my parents last week, I joined them at a local restaurant for their weekly “trivia night” of dinner, good company, and some mental gymnastics. Among the many questions we fielded – from “bands that played at Woodstock” to “how many columns surround the Lincoln memorial” – was a question about Bruce Jenner. It was a simple question for those keeping up with pop culture, “what new name is Bruce Jenner now going by?” After taking a few minutes to determine the right answer (“Caitlyn,” if you are wondering), derogatory comments and jokes began to pop up around the room. While I won’t bore you with the particulars, suffice it to say this question was seen by some as fodder for disdain masked by humor. Of course, the next question was already bearing down upon us (and who likes to lose at trivia?), so the moment for any thoughtful conversation was quickly gone.
While this incident felt like a lost opportunity, the truth is, even with all the time in the world it is difficult to have productive conversations around sexuality these days. The stakes are high on all sides and our proper passions for faithfulness, love, justice, and holiness can sometimes override our ability to hear another viewpoint with charity.
2014-Matriculation-91-2-300x200At Seminary of the Southwest one of our core values is conversation. By this we don’t simply mean speaking nicely to one another. We promote conversation that involves “listening to and critically engaging a variety of cultural and religious voices in order to commend the Christian tradition and discover fresh wisdom.”
We begin with listening because for most of us this is the more challenging task. The apostle Paul was right to call us to “speak the truth in love” (Ephesians 4:15), but we also need to learn to hear the truth in love. This involves giving to the other the benefit of the doubt, striving to interpret their word in the best possible light. We have no other way of knowing what it is like to experience God and the world in the skin of another without hearing their own self-description. And we have no way to engage or respond to the discernment of another if we do not listen closely to the reasoning by which they explain their views.
We need not, however, stop at listening, for the next step is critical engagement. We are all aware that self-description can at times involve self-deception, and this awareness can help us become both humble in our own views and ready with critical questions to test the views of others. This testing need not be an act of distrust but rather an act of mutual discernment – turning our eyes together to the Christ who exceeds the grasp of any one of us.
I recently helped lead a diocesan “council of advice” through a conversation about same-sex blessings. The two days of listening, learning, praying, and eating together blessed the group despite the differences that remained as we parted ways. We began our first day with a Eucharistic service but stopped at the offering. Our time of conversation constituted our offering to one another and to God. As we ended, we completed the liturgy by coming to the table having heard and received what one another offered. This was no small task, given the disagreements in the room, but the council had profoundly embodied Paul’s admonition to “let no evil talk come out of your mouths, but only what is useful for building up, as there is need, so that your words may give grace to those who hear” (Ephesians 4:29).
As we discuss issues such as blessings, marriage, and sexuality, we do well to think of our conversation as offering, as gift – not as a final word but as a thoughtful perspective laid down upon the altar to be transformed by God and presented back to the community.
How do you think we could change the conversation around sexuality so that it might become an offering?

scottScott Bader-Saye (@ScottBaderSaye) serves as academic dean and holds the Helen and Everett H. Jones Chair in Christian Ethics and Moral Theology at Seminary of the Southwest. He joined the faculty in 2009 after teaching for twelve years at the University of Scranton, a Jesuit university in Scranton, PA. His academic interests include political theology, sexual ethics, ecology/economy, and Jewish/Christian/Muslim dialogue.

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