Heckling the rector.

I generally express my displeasure with sermons with my feet or my fingers (more than one). If it's a relatively minor disagreement, I email the rector afterward with my observations. If it's a major disagreement, I walk out in the middle of the sermon. If it's a very major disagreement, I stomp out as noisily as I can and never return. (I have done the last one twice, once when Tim LaHaye was speaking at the First Baptist Church of Atlanta. It was before the Left Behind books, but LaHaye -- and his wife Beverly -- were already well known in evangelical Protestant circles. I left after LaHaye identified women who left their kids in day care as the major cause of the decline of American society.)

This morning, the rector was giving his sermon. The way the 9:00 service works is there is a kids' sermon during the service, and then after the service, while the kids go to Sunday School, the adults go to the Parish Hall and drink coffee and eat bagels and listen to the adult sermon. I was sitting up relatively close to where he was speaking, but my attention was wandering in and out. (For some reason, even though I got eight hours of sleep last night, I am incredibly tired and sleepy today.)

He started to read the first and third paragraphs of this piece by Timothy Ash. As Ash talks about the descent of New Orleans into a "war of all against all," my mind kicked into gear. I thought about how there are a lot of indications that the reports of massive looting were exaggerated. I think about the riots that did not happen when buses pulled up and took away wealthy tourists, leaving behind the poor who had been in the hellhole of the Superdome. I thought about the cooperation shown by people working together for survival, and how the most egregious behavior had been shown by people who were not in danger. I thought about how the city had not been burned to the ground, figuratively, by people "acting like apes."

Something snapped.

"That's NOT what happened in the wake of Katrina!" I said. Loudly. I don't think I yelled, but I'm pretty sure I was emphatic.

It says something about my church that there was neither a shocked silence nor horrified gasps. It says a great deal about my rector that he neither ignored me nor was derailed in his sermon.

"We're not going to discuss that here," he said. I think he saw my look of frustration and anger. "But what do you think of what Ash says, Pat?"

"I think it's garbage," I said curtly. I would probably have used a different word than "garbage", but this was still church, after all.

"You're right, it is garbage," he said, and then proceeded on with the rest of his sermon (after bringing up Hobbes, of course), to the effect that this reflects people who have embraced a covenant with death and not a covenant with life, with God. He also talked about being appalled at a "God, Guns, and Guts made America Great" bumper sticker. He also made the point that, "if you act like an ape towards your neighbor in the wake of a disaster, you're already acting like an ape towards your neighbor in other less obvious ways now."

Afterward, I went and apologized for my outburst, and he said not to worry. I did feel a little silly in one way -- if I had kept my mouth shut, he was going to make the same point I did anyway, but part of me felt good to have spoken up.

Sometimes you just gotta speak the truth, you know?

But I don't think I should make a habit of heckling the rector mid-sermon : )