Holiness is driven by a purity psychology that, given the features of that psychology, undermines lives of welcome and compassion. But a concern is raised that if welcome and compassion are privileged -- or perhaps over privileged -- where does spiritual formation take place? Where are Christian virtues modeled, practiced, and acquired? Where is saintliness and sanctity promoted, even expected?
So, where does holiness fit in?
I think these are deep questions that deserve some real thinking.
The people I tend to hold up as hospitality exemplars -- people who showed radical compassion -- are very often people of great holiness and sanctity. People of worship, prayer, moral discipline, and religious observance. I'm thinking here of people like Dorothy Day, Mother Teresa, St Francis, Jean Vanier, and Dietrich Bonhoeffer. I'm thinking of the people at my church: The most hospitable are often the most holy. I'm thinking of the holiness of people outside my religious tradition, like Gandhi and the Buddha.
And, of course, I'm thinking of Jesus.
The most holy people are the most hospitable.
This, it seems, is the opposite of a great deal of the perception of Christians in our culture. Think Westboro Baptist. The pursuit of moral purity oftentimes undermines the life of welcome of "sinners". The morally "unclean" can be easily shunned or excluded.
I saw this as a parish minister. After an introduction to the parish by the bishop, I received a phone call later that night. The head of the Vestry asked if I had an earring. I responded: "Would that be an issue?" The head of the Vestry then said, "Yes, it's not something we'd welcome in our church." I was aghast: "If you can exclude me for a simple violation of a moral code, think how easily you can exclude outsiders. This isn't simply a question of morals, it's a question of Christian hospitality." It took not a few conversations to get that parish to understand the complex of issues involved in holiness and hospitality.
And that's not a lone story. We could all share those church stories that illustrate this dynamic.
So what's the trick? How do we pursue holiness in a way that makes us more hospitable instead of less?
Isn't this what Jesus was saying when he said don't worry about the speck in your sister's eye but attend to the beam in your own? Isn't Jesus saying that holiness is a first-person issue rather than a third-person issue? That holiness is about me and not about you?
(This is the point I've been trying to drive home recently with friends who are so caustic about the Pope. But that's for another day.)
When holiness becomes a third-person affair, we end up as the moral police. We end up judging the behavior of everyone else. I think this is the root of the problem with the Christian culture wars. Across wide swaths of evangelical Christianity there is third-person finger wagging about the decline of values and morals in the larger culture. Christians become moral police and holiness Nazis. (In American culture speak: No soup for you!).
But in the Sermon on the Mount Jesus preached that holiness is a first-person, private, and closeted affair. Holiness is for you, not your neighbor. And what's the goal of all that holiness? I'd phrase it this way:
Holiness is training in becoming more hospitable. In short, holiness is becoming more like God.
This, I think, is also the heart of Christians misreading the Old Testament. We tend to think of holiness as an exclusive otherness. But the Levitical code -- those laws about purity in the Old Testament -- is also that legal code that insists we love and care for neighbor! Holiness, in the Old Testament, is an invitation to become like the God we serve. And that includes a radical openness to the stranger, the widow, the oppressed, the orphan, the fatherless.
Instead of thinking of holiness as purity, we should think of holiness using athletic metaphors. Discipleship is training. When I think of athletic training, I think of the phrase, "a finely tuned athlete". I think holiness is doing something similar, creating finely-tuned spiritual athletes.
The trouble is, to keep with the athletic metaphor, for most of Christianity holiness has become a spectator sport rather than a regimen of personal fitness. This is, I think, the heart of the issue. Christian discipleship, after the Enlightenment, has become a third-person effort. We're detached. Discipleship from a distance -- it's the spiritual equivalent of Lessing's "broad, ugly ditch".
This is what makes Lent so essential to the Christian year. In fact, I'd argue that spiritually, Lent is the beginning of the Church Year, as opposed to Advent.
Holiness is a first-person effort. For Jesus, taking up one's cross is a participant activity. It can't be done from a distance. It isn't third person. Holiness shouldn't be moral blood sport, a spectator sport of moral finger wagging at the culture. Holiness should be a matter of personal training and fitness.
Holiness is about becoming a finely tuned instrument of welcome.