The Church: Parade or Carnival?

Recently NPR featured a segment on a man named Carlos Lezama, who was referred to as the man who brought the West Indies to Brooklyn. Lezama started the annual West Indian Carnival, which was technically a parade but was more like a carnival. There are not the corporate supporters like most large parades have, nor does it lend itself to the stop-and-watch-the-show attitude of most Americans. And although there are definitely some who are more "official" as dancers or entertainers, they mix in with the rest of the crowd. This is more like a grassroots parade, with nobody, including Lezama getting rich off of it. Instead, it's more like a call to participate; hundreds of thousands of people streaming into the streets to drum, dance, sing and laugh together. There is no "leader," no official destination. The crowd joins together, the people decide together where to go or not go. And in the middle of it all; Carribean music, which is ironically probably not part of most of the participants' past. But they are introduced into it and allowed to join into it and make it their own.

Compare this to the Macy's Parade, which occurs in nearby Manhattan. The name itself reminds you of a massive American corporation. The floats drive by advertising new games, cartoons and toys. Maybe a celebrity rolls by on a car to remind you to watch their show or movie. And all the while, Americans sit on the side of the road or at their TV screens, watching. They apparently have nothing to add. Their voice is never heard. And maybe they don't even want to be heard. They sit passively and are simply entertained. Maybe when a certain band goes by they sing along, or cheer when they really like a part of the show, but overall their presence/viewing matters very little to the whole show.

Now, which one of these two parades more resembles the local church you are a part of?

A while back, Ryan Bolger blogged about Mikhail Bakhtin and the "Carnivalistic Life." He wrote:

I wondered, as followers of Jesus, how we might create
these free zones, these spaces where the oppression of
the world does not reign. I was thinking not only in our
times of meeting together but separately as well, in our
workplaces, neighborhoods, schools, parks. How do we
create this alternative space where hierarchies are not
observed, where everyone has a voice, where people
experience liberation, where laughter is frequent, where
the terror is lifted, even for just a few moments? What if
our 'witness' is not a performance but the creation of an
alternative space, a space that does not yield to the powers
of this world but strives to point to the next?

Just because Luther tacked some paper on a door does not mean we have stopped being oppressive and repressive in the church and as the church. So how do we start erasing some of the lines we have drawn? How do we start to display a kingdom announcing church where everyone is participating, invited in, and has something to offer?

In her book Desire in Language, Julia Kristeva tackles some of Bakhtin's thought and adds her own. She says (and yes, it's a complicated quote, but stick with it), "Carnivalesque structure is like the residue of a cosmogony that ignored substance, causality, or identity outside of its link to the whole, which exists only in or through relationship" (p. 78). This is dialogical discourse, as opposed to monological discourse. According to Kristeva, society as a whole is moving in this direction, which she also claims "is anti-Christian and antirationalist" (p. 79). But I don't think it is anti-Christian.

Dialogical discourse is in opposition to the christianity of modernity, though this brand of faith has actually been going since Constantine's time. Before we can answer any of the questions from the paragraphs above, it seems that we have to first make a bigger decision; can we as the Church let go of power and choose to be a church of weakness? The hierarchies we create cause the people of God to remain infatuated with power, to worship a God of power, and to speak and live in ways that reflect that power struggle. Maybe it's time to start living the Jesus way, making ourselves last, putting the needs of others before our own, giving up our own lives. Maybe its time to realize that the idea of paid "ministers" rather than laymen is not the best idea. Maybe its time to realize that every person in the church has something to offer and that if we really believe this we can't preach at them for twenty to forty minutes a week and really believe that we are giving them a voice. Maybe it's time to listen to each other. This then forms us into a carnival people, a people who share together and can break bread together in such a way that there is unity and nothing lacking in anybody. But it starts in our realizing that we are complete only together, not as individuals, or as Francis Ponge is quoted in Kristeva, "I speak and you hear me, therefore we are."

Peace,

Matt