John Pavlovitz - A Bigger Table, Expanded Edition with Study Guide: Building Messy, Authentic, and Hopeful Spiritual Community

A Bigger Table

Expanded Edition with Study Guide

A Bigger Table

Building Messy, Authentic,
and Hopeful Spiritual Community

E XPANDED E DITION WITH S TUDY G UIDE

John Pavlovitz

2017, 2020 John Pavlovitz

Foreword, afterword, study guide 2020 Westminster John Knox Press

Expanded Edition

Published by Westminster John Knox Press

Louisville, Kentucky

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Unless otherwise indicated, Scripture quotations are from the New Revised Standard Version of the Bible, copyright 1989 by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the U.S.A., and are used by permission. Scripture quotations marked NIV are from The Holy Bible, New International Version. Copyright 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.

Book design by Drew Stevens

Cover design by Mary Ann Smith

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Pavlovitz, John, author.

Title: A bigger table : building messy, authentic, and hopeful spiritual community / John Pavlovitz.

Description: First edition. | Louisville, Kentucky : Westminster John Knox Press, 2020. | Expanded edition with study guide. | Summary: A Bigger Table invites readers to envision a church that is big enough for everyone, by holding up a mirror to the modern church and speaking clearly on issues at the heart of the Christian community: LGBT inclusion, gender equality, racial tensions, global concerns, and theological shifts. This new edition includes a small-group study guide along with a new foreword by Jacqui Lewis and new afterword by the authorProvided by publisher.

Identifiers: LCCN 2020027874 (print) | LCCN 2020027875 (ebook) | ISBN 9780664264901 (paperback) | ISBN 9781646980031 (ebook)

Subjects: LCSH: Christianity and cultureUnited States.

Classification: LCC BR526 .P39 2020 (print) | LCC BR526 (ebook) | DDC 261dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020027874

LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020027875

PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of the American National Standard for Information SciencesPermanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1992.

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This book is dedicated to Jen, Noah, and Selah,

to Mom, Brian, Eric, and Michelle,

and to my father, John Pavlovitz,

who taught me how to be a dad,

and who believed in me before I ever went viral.

Youre still my hero, and I miss you.

Contents

The framers of our nation had a radical idea, a revolutionary dream. It was a dream hewn out of their oppression at the hands of a monarch. They dared to dream of a world in which the voices of the common people mattered, the lives of the regular folks mattered.

And so, they rebelled against the monarch; they set sail for a new shore; they threw a Tea Party in the land of the free and a home of the brave. That they stole the land in order to build a sanctuary for themselves, that they built what they needed on the land with the labor of stolen bodies are horrific wounds to the soul of our nation; those wounds have not healed. That dream of white, landowning men has led to a nightmare for poor people, Black and Brown people, women, LGBTQIA people, immigrants, and non-Christians.

There is no question, in my mind, that the election of Barack Hussein Obama and the election of Donald J. Trump are two phenomena that point to the same realities. Obamas election to the highest office in the land, to be the leader of the free world, stretched that less-than-perfect dream further than most of us could imagine. When my parentsboth born and raised in Jim Crow Mississippi, great-grandchildren of enslaved Africanswent to the polls to pull a lever for this man born of a white woman from Kansas and a Kenyan African man, they wept, each time. That they lived to see a Black family in the White House built by Black bodies laboring under the lash blew their hearts wide open with joy.

Im convinced that for all the progress that Obamas election represented, for all the joy and fist-bumping and celebration of just how far weve come, there was an equal and opposite reaction. A Black family in the White House, a dream come true for so many people in this nation, not just those of African descent, was a nightmare for many others. It cemented a feeling they had about a loss of power and privilege; that their lives did not matter, their suffering did not matter, their whiteness did not matter. This nation owed them a debt, and the presence of Obama, in a zero-sum mentality, meant they had lost. Big time. Rather than joy, their minds were blown with grief, with rage.

And so, they elected Trump, with his misogyny, racism, bloated ego, and bank account. They elected Trump and went on to declare that he was chosen by God, for such a time as this. They elected Trump, and they pinched their noses at what smelled like lying and manipulation and they prayed to God that this malcontent with a terrible reputation of womanizing and not paying his debts and discriminating against the poor would make America great, like it used to be, in their good old days.

Under this administration, the reaction to the so-called other has been violent, bloody, and the stuff of nightmares. The polite racist who knew to save certain kinds of comments for the bar or the locker room is now free to share those venomous, outrageous thoughts out in the open. Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram, radio shows, cable news, and op-eds. These spaces are littered with not only anti-Black racism but also bias against Hispanic/Latinx people; Jewish and Muslim people (after all, wasnt Obama a Muslim?); immigrant people (and he wasnt an American either, right?); women; LGBTQIA people; and poor people.

What breaks my heart daily is the way this hatred for the other is too often codified and sanctified by parts of the Christian church. The vitriol shows up in pulpits. That some clergy traffic in hatred rather than mercy, in the name of a poor, Brown, Jewish, homeless, refugee baby who grew up to be an itinerant rabbi preaching love, is shocking. That they preach from their pulpits that Jesus and justice are incompatible; that they aim to restrict the welcome table to those who look like them, believe like them, who are wealthy because they are destined to be sothis mocks the gospel of rabbi Yeshua, the gospel of Jesus, whom weve come to call Christ.

That many of those same religious leaders continue their unwavering support for the Trump administration, even though his policies and practices, his rhetoric and writing is so anti-Christ, speaks volumes about the ways fear, anger, and insecurity can erode the better selves of good people looking for a way to make their lives work.