All posts by Rod White

Four suggestions for how to follow Jesus at work

Doing Theology

Sometimes going to work can be tough for a Jesus-follower. Do we just shut off our hearts and souls and get the money, or do we dare to ask the questions that keep bubbling up? “Can I do what I am assigned to do and still honor Jesus?” Even harder, “Can I think as I am supposed to think as defined by my employer and still be a Christian?” We have to answer the question, “Can I dare to serve Jesus without reservation and still have a normal job?”

You’ve got to know who you are in Christ before you can know what to do. We are good trees that bear good fruit. So think about how Jesus-followers approach the idea of work.

We think everything we do matters

When we attend to our regular duties, they are made holy because God is with us in the process and we are in God’s world. We don’t do anything that does not matter. No matter what person or institution claims to own us, we know better — we are children of God. Even when we do wrong things, we know God can turn them to good because we love him. That’s how we go to our jobs.

For from [Christ] and through him and to him are all things. To him be the glory forever (Romans 11:36).

Jesus is the beginning of all good things for us. Even rotten things get turned around or finally judged, so we can go to work and receive whatever comes as full of possibilities.

Whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God (1 Corinthians 10:31).

On the active side, we can do whatever we are doing at the moment to God’s glory, meaning we do it as an act or service, or obedience, or hope. Everything we do has God in mind as an end point. The whole earth is destined to know the glory, or the presence of God.

We think work is good

 The Lord God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and take care of it (Genesis 2:15).

God created Adam and Eve to work in the Garden. Some Christians have the impression that work is a result of sin rather than a part of the created order. But Genesis makes it clear that God placed Adam in the Garden to “work it and take care of it” and then created Eve as his co-worker in the task. This work was part of Adam and Eve’s mandate to “be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it.” So work is part of who God has made us to be; it is part of the original created order that God designated as “very good.”

The work vs. leisure dichotomy has made a lot of us think work is an imposition. We know rich people get to sit around and we want to be rich too, so we work hard to get there until we can retire and sit around. As you know, a lot of men get to sitting around and quickly die from lack of work. We were made to do good work, it is how we create alongside with God.

25 years of Homer at work
25 years of Homer working hard

We know work is hard

To Adam he said, “Because you listened to your wife and ate from the tree about which I commanded you, ‘You must not eat of it,’

“Cursed is the ground because of you;
through painful toil you will eat of it
all the days of your life (Genesis 3:17).

Because of the humankind’s disobedience (we call it “the Fall” from innocence, obedience and  grace), work is hard. Work involves sweat. Or, if you prefer, work involves stress and overtime and oppressive bosses and boring meetings. Not everything in the world of work is as it should be. Work has been cursed. But work is still good. Work is not the result of the Fall; it is the difficulty of work in a fallen world that is the trouble.

Jesus redeems our work.

Being new in Christ transforms our view of work – how it is good, and how it is redeemed, though fallen. In Christ, work is no longer a necessary evil; it is now an opportunity, just like everything else. Work now has great spiritual significance, because it is a chance for God to be glorified. “Whatever you do in word or deed, do all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks through Him to God the Father”  (Colossians 3:17).

start imagining work from where you are at.
start imagining from where you are at.

All our work is done in service to our ultimate employer and the advancement of his kingdom. This implies that reflecting God’s image is central to a biblical view of work. Paul applies this principle to tasks as mundane as eating and drinking. The work doesn’t make me who I am, I make the work serve my deepest purposes. No matter what it is, I can be who I am in it.

That’s what Jesus does. You probably noticed that when he was doing his work, he never “went to work.” He wandered around being who he is and doing whatever gave him the opportunity to do his work. Jesus tends the garden like Adam. Christ did everything his Father commanded until he could honestly say, “It is finished” on the cross. “My food,” said Jesus, “is to do the will of him who sent me and to finish his work (John 4:34). “My Father is always at his work to this very day, and I too am working” (John 5:19).

Does Jesus live to work or work to live? I think he does both. He was born to do his work, and he says he is fed by the work he does. He worked for the nation of Israel with some rather incompetent co-workers and it only seemed to give him more opportunity to be who he was meant to be. We are called to share that ongoing work of re-creation in every generation. As you sent me into the world, I have sent them into the world (John 17:18).

When we show up at our jobs, our cells, our PM Design Team rehearsal, or our work day on the community garden we’re there for the glory of God. God wants to be honored in what we do and in how we do it.

Here are four suggestions that will help you follow Jesus at work.

Let your life speak

Advance God’s fame, not just your own career. It makes every day worth living. If you desperately want to make a difference in life, but you have a habit of not showing up to work on time, or you don’t return calls or complete assignments, people will probably not think God looks that great — should you ever reveal you know Jesus. Some people never mention Jesus at work because they know they are not going to live up to what Jesus should look like! Don’t get crazy, thinking your work is all Jesus has going for him, but you matter and you have the same job as Jesus. He probably would not have been a pastor or missionary the way we think of them, just like you; he probably would have worked at Target, since he would inevitably meet everyone on the planet there.

Look forward to problems

Every problem is an opportunity to rely on Jesus to redeem it. Problems are what keep us redeemers in business. So if you work with problem people in a problematic place, that might be the best of all possible worlds for the redemption project. You might know some way-too-happy Christians who go to work thinking that since they love Jesus, everything is going to work out. It’s not. You might miss your quota. You might lose a client. You might get fired. You might have tensions with your boss or your co-workers. These things don’t mean that Jesus doesn’t love you or that God isn’t on your side or that God is punishing you for that sin you can’t forget. The problems are just the inevitable result of living in a sin-ridden world. Thorns infest the ground. Work is cursed. Work is affected by the fall. Work doesn’t always work the way it should. So have a big idea of how you are a re-creator with God but be realistic about the Fall, too. Jesus hasn’t come back yet.

Get some rest

Rest is crucial to work. I’m not talking about the bifurcated idea of work-life balance, or work vs. leisure – those are more bifurcated descriptions that got popular in the 1800s and we have not shaken off the definitions yet. We don’t find ourselves in our leisure and we do work to pay for it. We are real 24/7.

Most of us are so used to constant music, TV, social media, entertainment and busyness that we have little experience with the art of resting. Maybe the best thing we can do for ourselves, for our employers, for our careers, and for the glory of God is to set apart one day in our week when we unplug — when the cell phone is off (horrors!), when we don’t check email or Facebook, when we take a really long nap, when we worship and pray, when we take a walk or watch a sunset.  If your work obligations don’t permit a 24-hour period of rest every week, then consider taking a personal day every month for solitude and silence and rest. Why wouldn’t you? Your co-workers  take personal days when a pet dies or when they break up or when they are hung over from a long weekend.  (Could you even entertain the thought of instituting such a discipline?).

Pray all day

If we pray without ceasing, like Paul teaches, it will add the right meaning to what we are doing, no matter what we are doing. Pray the Lord’s prayer to get started. There’s a reason Jesus taught his disciples to “pray in this way.” Jesus, the master teacher, knew that we become what we pray. When our prayers focus on our needs and our agendas and the ways we want God to bless us, we become self-centered, myopic people. To save us from this, Jesus gave us a pattern for prayer that keeps our eyes on the Father’s name, the Father’s kingdom, the Father’s will. When we use this pattern, we find ourselves beginning to care about the Father’s name, the Father’s kingdom, and the Father’s will — and we begin to see that work and all of life, comes from God and is moving God’s direction. That makes for good work and work that even feels good.

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Eight reasons to feel better about what is happening in your ruined place

A life in the Spirit, Psychological growth,

When I was on retreat last week, I felt guilty about being on retreat. Then I read an entry in my journal that said, “I am probably better for the church on retreat than I usually am in my office!” It was a good reminder. I felt less guilty about my luxuriant silence.

My review of my journal kept demonstrating other troubles that disturb my peace. Like how I swing from utter confidence in God to being “daunted” (that is the usual word). Silence overcomes what daunts. To be confident in God in the face of what is daunting takes enough silent time to recognize how God is present as I am present.

I am not sure I had enough time. I stayed in town, so now I remember why people go to the desert. But making the effort to retreat into some silence was richly rewarded, if only for the eight reasons I am about to share with you.

see what sprouts in ruined placesAs I meditated on my journal, looking for how Jesus has been leading me, these remarkable moments of grace kept popping up. Sometimes I feel, overall, like life is kind of overwhelming and my journal reflects that. It is like one of David’s Psalms where he is stuck in a cave somewhere and Saul is looking for him —  but then there is a paragraph in my journal entry that looks like the end of one of David’s laments when he, too, remembers how God has worked and praises him. “This is troubling…BUT God is glorious.”

Just last week (in one week!) I wrote down things people said to me that were so great they became part of my praise. I experienced regular flashes of unexpected glory. Put them all together and it was quite a week! Here are just eight of the reasons I had for feeling better in my often-ruined place.

1. I feel God

A friend who has been bravely struggling to get their journey back on track has been struggling for so long with feeling “dead” inside. They came up to me, gave me a hug and said, “I feel God.”

2. Why don’t we get a new building?

I sometimes think we have been thoroughly colonized by people who make the rest of us afraid to do anything but hunker down and survive — protect what we’ve got so someone doesn’t steal it. But someone was just thinking out loud about Broad and Washington’s future and said, “Why don’t we get a new building?” That courage and imagination moves me. Maybe we don’t need a new building — but why not imagine, “Why not?”

3. I think God is caring for me.

Another friend had some difficult circumstances to face last week. Their family background did not teach them to expect things would work out well. But they wondered out loud if their lack of anxiety meant they were just going off the rails. They had a strange lack of fear. Then they doubted their interpretation and said, “I think God is caring for me.” They were strangely not ruined.

4. The old me is not very tempting anymore.

Someone was contacted by some hysterical people from their boundary-less past. The expectation was that my friend would join in the troubled situation and play their usual part. But my friend realized “The old me is not very tempting anymore.” They had a whole new set of responses that did not quite feel normal yet, but which felt a whole lot better.

5. We should not sing that because of white privilege

Our Design Teams are always encouraging one another to think the best thoughts we can muster. So we think over what songs are in our repertoire. We were talking about some of the non-English songs we sing and someone suggested, “We should not sing that because of white privilege.”  They meant that so-called white people have the luxury to appropriate the cultures of others without too much thought. I am surrounded by deep thinkers.

6. I can come down.

Burglars kicked in the back door of the former, now empty, Shalom House the other night and stole copper pipes out of the basement. They left the water intake flowing and the basement was flooded!  My realtor got a call and so we were all pretty upset together. I called my friend, the plumber, at 8:30pm while standing in four inches of water. He said he wasn’t going to answer, but it was such an odd time for me to call that he did it anyway. Then he said some praiseworthy words, “I can come down.” He saved the basement from being [more] ruined.

7. We talked to each other and reconciled.

In the course of working together last week, a couple of comrades got into a disagreement. They are still learning from it. I ran into one of them at the store and they were still kind of mad. But they were quick to say, “We talked to each other and reconciled.” I hope they know how precious that is in God’s sight.

8. We stand like growing trees on a ruined place

By the time Saturday rolled around last week, it had been rather full and, in some ways, redwoodsdaunting week. I’m in a stretch here with a lot to do, so I sometimes do more doing than being. Just in time, the voice leading us in daily prayer offered a very encouraging piece of Bible story and poetry:

If we will have the wisdom to survive,
to stand like slow growing trees
on a ruined place, renewing, enriching it…
then a long time after we are dead
the lives our lives prepare will live
here, their houses strongly placed
upon the valley sides…

Lots of the Philadelphia region is a ruined place; many of the people are too — and parts of all of us qualify, I think. In my focus on the ruin, inside and out, I often forget about the resurrection we are perpetrating by growing in the Spirit for a long time in our place. As you can see, I have not even had to wait until years after I am dead to see the fruit from our forest; it pops right out of someone’s mouth — sometimes when I least expect it.

Our deep desire: Non-chemical ecstasy

A life in the Spirit, Music, , , , ,

When we imagine the far reaches of prayer, it includes how we feel. There is plenty of thinking when we pray, of course, but it feels good to know God. We followers of Jesus are being transformed by our relationship with Jesus. In prayer we are opened up to the influence of the Spirit of God in places we are built to receive it.

Spiritual ecstasy

The word “ecstasy” is not used in the Bible all that much, but people in the Bible are experiencing it. When people are having visions and are caught up into spiritual experiences it is called “an ecstasy.” So the word comes to describe an emotional/psychological place: “I am experiencing ecstasy. I am in ecstasy.” It is overwhelming feeling: happiness, joy, excitement. It is so overwhelming it can be like a trance, rapture, self-transcendence – it is beyond rational thought and self control. You might naturally associate the feeling with graduating from school, or falling in love, or having an orgasm. Spiritually, we might associate it with worship, speaking in tongues, or being brought to tears — the feeling of entering into a “huge space of grace” a friend once called it.

aguilera ramonesYou may or may not have had many experiences of ecstasy. You may not want to have them. There always seem to be two kinds of kids in high school when it came to feeling experiences. There were the Christina Aguilera kind who “just want to feel this moment.”  And there were always Ramones kind who want to be sedated.  I think most of us were in the middle somewhere kind of hovering on the edge of feeling and on the edge of sedation.

I think Jesus offers a completely new way, not on either extreme and not in the middle. Jesus eases our pain and helps us safely feel again. In prayer we find an ecstasy that is brand new, at least it has been for me. The experience and the feeling has reference points in my old self and my former way of life, but it is completely new, too, because Jesus has introduced me to God. The ecstasy that comes with knowing God may scare you or make you feel so skeptical that you want to run away from it. But it is also constantly enticing. We long for it.

Finding non-chemical ecstasy

One time in college my buddy and I went looking for an experience. At the time, I was more Christina Aguilera and he was more Ramones. I took him to a Pentecostal worship meeting at our piano teacher’s church. I am fond of Pentecostals and consider their way to be part of the 57 ways I can describe my faith. Experiences of ecstasy in worship with Pentecostals helped convince me that I was on the right track when I committed to follow Jesus. If the Apostle Paul experienced ecstasy, if the disciples of Jesus experienced the transfiguration with Jesus, I thought I ought to have some out-of-control experiences, too.

pentecostal worshipSo we ended up in a Pentecostal worship meeting among all these relatively normal looking people, (apart from some big hair here and there, which was popular among them at the time). Everything seemed like it would just be church until the music started and the ladies jumped up and started waving their arms. People cried. Someone shouted behind us and my friend flinched. Our piano teacher showed new sides of herself. Then they started singing loud and wiggling, some dancing, all waving. The music died down and they started shouting out prayers and then the speaking in tongues began. My buddy had had to get out of there and I left with him. He was one of the people that just could not get into the ecstasy, at least at that point. I don’t hold it against him. He was witnessing some non-chemical but maybe excessive kind of ecstasy. It was kind of scary.

Chemical ecstasy

You might be more familiar with the chemical called ecstasy: MDA — methylene-dioxy-meth-amphetamine. Ecstasy is the street named for a range of drugs. They are stimulants that speed up activity in the nervous system. They are hallucinogenic and typically affect perception in entertaining ways. I can’t resist this history; the Philly region has a lot of connection to this drug.

  • The original patent for MDMA was filed on Christmas Eve 1912 by the German pharmaceutical company Merck which has a huge plant in Bucks county. The original purpose to control bleeding from wounds.
  • Alexander Shulgin resynthesized MDMA for use with psychiatric patients in the 70’s. The drug soon escaped the lab and appeared in trendy bars and gay dance clubs, where it got the nickname ecstasy. By the 80’s and 90s it fueled raves. It is still around.
  • For instance, our local Diabolique Ball at Shampoo not long ago was themed Agony and Ecstasy: A Religious Experience.

Today ecstasy is one of the four most widely used illegal drugs in the U.S., along with cocaine, heroin and marijuana.

My_Chemical_RomanceOne of my favorite bands of the last decade was called My Chemical Romance. They were named after a very popular book by Irvine Welsh called Ecstasy: Three Tales of Chemical Romance.  In 2011 some people in Scotland turned the book into a movie. The main character justifies his use of the drug ecstasy with this thought: “It isn’t death that kills you; it is boredom and indifference that kills.” The drug ecstasy, apart from its well known side effects, like eating away sections of your brain, erases a person’s anxiety and allows them to connect more easily, which is why it is often called the love drug. People long to be free to connect and feel good.

People don’t want to die before they die. They want to live. If you don’t have Jesus, you might be tempted to try ecstasy to loosen up some life. But what if you are a committed Christian and drugs are on your do not do list because you have been resocialized not to kill yourself? What if you are still bored and still indifferent and you still don’t love and connect? I think we all need to face up to how we avoid ecstasy or we manufacture it. And we need to continue to discover how we feel in relation to God and even receive ecstasy from our renewed relationship with God. It should be a regular feature of our prayer and worship.

We were made for ecstasy

I think we are looking for joy; we were made for ecstasy. C.S. Lewis famously put it this way:

“I was still young and the whole world of beauty was opening before me, my own officious obstructions were often swept aside and, startled into self-forgetfulness, I again tasted Joy. … One thing, however, I learned, which has since saved me from many popular confusions of mind. I came to know by experience that it is not a disguise of sexual desire. … I repeatedly followed that path – to the end. And at the end one found pleasure; which immediately resulted in the discovery that pleasure (whether that pleasure or any other) was not what you had been looking for. No moral question was involved; I was at this time as nearly nonmoral on that subject as a human creature can be. The frustration did not consist in finding a ‘lower’ pleasure instead of a ‘higher.’ It was the irrelevance of the conclusion that marred it. … You might as well offer a mutton chop to a man who is dying of thirst as offer sexual pleasure to the desire I am speaking of. … Joy is not a substitute for sex; sex is very often a substitute for Joy. I sometimes wonder whether all pleasures are not substitutes for Joy…. All joy…emphasizes our pilgrim status; always reminds, beckons, awakens desire. Our best havings are wantings.”

Lewis was describing his own experience of ecstasy and how the longing for God was better than receiving all the substitutes he could find. His was not quite the same as my Pentecostal friend’s leap into the arms of God, or Aguilera’s longing to feel it, or Gerard Way’s romance, but I think they were all motivated by the same root, the same desire. Everyone wants the joy of knowing God, it is how we respond to that want, that desire that makes the difference. It is in who or what we trust to understand the want and ultimately meet the desire that makes all the difference.

Often when people come across the idea of ecstasy in the Bible, they lay it off to the side like it is for odd occasions or strange people, or for the special people who stay after class. But all Jesus-followers are met by God, which, in itself is joy. We are not just looking at the Lord’s back as he leads us to eternity. He often turns and looks us in the face and we see his glory. Our relationship with the risen Lord reintroduces us in so many ways to paradise. Once we have peered over the fence and smelled the flowers; we always want to go back. And we should go there daily and enjoy that connection to the place  from which we were created and to which we are going, where God lives. That feeling sustains us and moves us and no one should take it from us.

Jesus says, “I will see you again and you will rejoice, and no one will take away your joy. In that day you will no longer ask me anything. Very truly I tell you, my Father will give you whatever you ask in my name. Until now you have not asked for anything in my name. Ask and you will receive, and your joy will be complete.”

So now I have piled up some thoughts on the subject of ecstasy for you. I hope I have also given you some space to think and feel about your feelings. I defined the idea. I gave you some examples of it in relation to prayer. I showed the alternative the world offers in the drug called ecstasy. I countered that with a deeper definition by C.S. Lewis and topped it off with the promise of Jesus. I believe that promise is for each one of us — ask and you will receive, and your joy will be complete. The number one thing Jesus hopes we will ask for is himself — his grace, love, and Spirit. It is joy to us to know him and live in him.

My revelation from the past week

The Mission, , , , ,

I was encouraged by Michiko’s bold, vulnerable, faithful writing. So I asked her to appear as a “guest writer” on my blog this week. Here is her revelation:

It’s easy to look at the world right now and think that maybe there is no God.

On a personal level, as I’ve watched my son descend into addiction, I’ve at times wondered what God was doing.  Where was Jesus – when was he going to wake up and talk to him and bring him out of the hell he, and I were in?

Now that he’s going to NA regularly, I’ve started going with him.

Yesterday I was witness to the kind of love that I only see at Circle.  One young woman freely admitted her brokenness.  She was in full relapse, of food disorder, substance abuse disorder, and starting on the self-harm scale.  She also said she was apathetic.  She didn’t care.

One by one, the group acted as one.  It was one huge encouragement through many voices — One saying “You’ve done great to be here.” Another saying, “Push through; you’ll be OK.” Another saying, “We love you and are here for you.”

The diversity was amazing — every walk of life: burkas and backpacks, ties and sweat suits, the un-educated and the over-educated, all equalized by addiction.

It made me think that God is indeed at work here.

Consider that the work of the devil is to tear us down — to make us think we can do it all on our own, that we don’t need anyone, that we should be individuals who SUCCEED!, that we should push ourselves into some obscene success model that’s all about only us.  We are good to the extent that we “overcome” our weaknesses.  If we are weak, we are bad.  If we need others, we are bad, even “co-dependent.”

The brokenness of that message is revealed in that most of us fail to achieves its demands.  And the devil, as crafty as he is, then provides an instant-gratification scheme for the sadness and failure that we feel: smoke this, sleep with this person, drink this, shoot this…you’ll feel better.

So first we follow the broken message and then we get into life-breaking substances that keep us in hell.

Interestingly, in this very broken place, after we’ve failed, something in us knows there’s more.  And we try to find help and eventually land in a place like N.A.

By the time we’ve gotten there, all the stuff the devil has urged us to do, we’ve failed at.  So we no longer care about the world or what it thinks.  We have been broken by a broken model.  The individualist, do-it-on-your-own, be perfect, be strong, don’t-rely-on-anyone, its-all-about-the-money model has failed us.

So we walk into N.A. and everyone else is having the same realization. Its as if we’ve emerged from a battleground, taken off our heavy armor and said, “Dammit, that’s not my freaking war anymore.”

In N.A., addiction, which I guess the devil thought was his great tool, has now become God’s revelation.

Because what happens is that the identity of addict transcends all the names, categories and cultures that the broken world tells us we have to adopt.  In that transcendence, people start to work on relationships.  They realize that they need to work on relationship with others every day.  They realize that relationship with others is good medicine.  They realize that it’s OK to not be perfectly strong, that God never said we had to be.

The enemy said, “Rely on yourself only.  Don’t be co-dependent.”

God said that we should rely on him.  It’s OK to depend on others.

The enemy said, “Get a big house for yourself. Have your own things.  Let other people do their own thing. Don’t get too close or tell them what to do.”

God said we should live in community.  Our community should be about how we can live lives of love, sharing, and relationship with God and others.

The enemy said, “Figure out what’s wrong with you.  Fix it on your own.  You have to be calm and logical and rational and be successful and make money.  Take a substance if you’re not that way so you can be that way.”

God said we are always going to be broken.  Nobody is without sin.  He can heal us —  and its free!

The enemy said, “Be successful.  Get a degree.  Get a good job. Be as outwardly successful as you can.”

God said live a life as a body wholly filled with the light of Christ.   Does he even say be successful?  I don’t think so.  I think He says, “Rely on me. I’ll supply you with what you need.”

So on a societal level, trying to kick addiction kicks you out of the devil’s mainstream, but broken and ready to be healed.  It brings people back into community and levels the playing field.  There is no playing field; there’s just relationship — first with God, then others.    That is what I think God wants for us – simply live in community, have your relationship with God, and reflect that relationship with others.

Its hard to think that this is probably the way humans should be living because we are so far away from that.  When we look at tribes deep in the Amazon, or something, they pretty much all live this way.  They do things with each other, all day, everyday. They are aware of the group.  They are aware of the Holy Spirit in the group. They are not perfect. They usually don’t force any kind of perfection at all.

My son goes to an N.A. meeting every day, sometimes twice a day.  I understand it.  It’s really comforting to be open with people, to be broken and loved at the same time, to not have to do it all, to allow just being content to be a life goal.

I’m comforted and trusting the Plan.

Peacemaking will make your faith stronger — even if it endangers it

The Mission, , , , , , ,

Back in the mid-80’s I was lured out of my Protestant practices into Lent by an unlikely connection. We discovered the Lenten Desert Experience. Ever since then, I have been pondering all the things we learned from dipping our toes into protesting the ocean of violent work of the U. S. Empire.

nuclear testMaybe one of my readers will remind me how we got connected. I suspect it came from hanging around with our beloved Franciscans. However it happened, we got wind of a group now called the Nevada Desert Experience who were inventively protesting the ongoing testing of nuclear weapons in the huge Nevada Test Site north of Las Vegas. We could not resist going out there to see what was happening; we had to do something! Before long it was an annual event. Gwen even appeared in the local paper sporting plastic handcuffs.

George H.W. Bush ended full-scale nuclear testing in 1992 which felt like a surprising victory. His son, however, added the beefed up drone base at nearby Creech AFB and started less-invasive testing. We managed to stick our cocktail swords into the belly of the beast for a few years, but that monster has amazing recuperative capacity! That’s why we need a Savior.

Lenten Desert Experience in peacemaking

For those interested, here is a short history from the Nevada Desert Experience site. The rest of you can skip to my point after it.

The Lenten Desert Experience (LDE) began in the early spring of 1982 to honor St. Francis of Asissi’s love of nature, peacefulness, and opposition to governmental violence. The primarily Christian prayer-activists came to the Nevada National Security Site daily for six weeks between Ash Wednesday and Good Friday, just prior to Easter 1982. This was an obvious, creative, and bold peaceful witness against nuclear weapons testing in Newe Sogobia. Soon these experiences in the Nevada desert were drawing more participants, of a greater variety in faith traditions and spiritual paths. The folks who organized the first LDE continued to help facilitate other events in the region near Las Vegas, NV as part of a larger movement. The people coming annually for LDE formally organized themselves into a group known as Nevada Desert Experience (NDE) and this group remains steadily organizing nuclear abolition events to carry on the peaceful witness against nuclear destruction. Participants joining the NDE and other abolitionist events care sincerely about protecting the air, water, soil and earthlings, and against the spiritual sickness of mega-violence in the history of the world. In 1991 Dom Helder Camara commented in a way that challenges North Americans to use our spiritual power to put an end to the Department of Energy’s destructivity: “This is the scene of the greatest violence on Earth. It should be the place of the greatest greatest acts of nonviolence on the Earth.”

The Lenten Desert Experience was my first experience of witnessing for peace with the very diverse groups who make up the peacemaking movement. We were chanting with monks, keening with Quakers and dancing with Shoshones, none of whom we had ever really rubbed shoulders with. I began to form my rationale for sitting in holding tanks with people who might give Jesus a bad name if you met them without handcuffs. I based my thinking by stretching a saying from Jesus in Mark 9:

“Teacher,” said John, “we saw someone driving out demons in your name and we told him to stop, because he was not one of us.”

“Do not stop him,” Jesus said. “For no one who does a miracle in my name can in the next moment say anything bad about me, for whoever is not against us is for us.

What Jesus is actually saying is that “People who are with me, John, might not be part of your group.” That is always a good thing for divided-up Christians to remember. He didn’t mean to say, “People who do good things aren’t against me enough to overlook their lack of allegiance.”

Peace is too important to get it right

But I like the generosity of the latter interpretation, too. When it comes to the peace movement and many other social action movements, I make “unholy” alliances with people who are on my general wavelength, even though I might need to hold their spiritual direction at arm’s length. I let them know I am coming in the name of Jesus and sometimes that makes them hold my spiritual direction at arm’s length. But then we can get down to the business of sticking our cocktail swords into the belly of the beast together. They can meet Jesus on their own time schedule. For the time being, there is a monster to confront.

soa 2010The Circle of Peacemakers core team was discussing this the other day, since we are committed to providing a list of the comrades and acquaintances we have developed over the years. We want to give twentysomethings, in particular, a chance to do something before they crystallize into non-activist adults like most of the population. We would like to give parents options for interesting vacations with the kids! In the past, we have sent people to the SOA vigil at Fort Benning, GA (pic above), to the Migrant Trail protest in the Sonora Desert, to Christian Peacemaker Teams actions and a lot more (check out the new website). Sometimes the participants spend more time wondering about the other participants than they do focusing on the action! It might be the first time they ever rubbed shoulders with the likes of these radicals! Sometimes they understand where the unbelievers in the crowd are coming from better than they understand the Christians. Even with local allies like Heeding God’s Call and the Brandywine Peace Community, who are faith-based, you have to wonder how to walk with Jesus and them at the same time, especially when you run in to the little power squabbles of little groups of activists. Our team was worried about recommending faith-damaging relationships!

Forget your judgment and make peace

I go back to my interpretation of Jesus’ teaching. I think we can risk walking in love with people whether we agree with them or even understand them. If they are not against the cause of peace and the dismantling of the economy of violence, they are for us.  It is very tempting to begin with judgment instead of keeping our eyes on the goal. If we waited to sort out every potential bad influence from among the myriad or people and organizations we meet, it would be a full-time occupation! And for many of us, our faith is just that full-time occupation – we are judgers by nature, not peacemakers. That’s not right. I think being a proactive peacemaker, just like the Prince of Peace, will strengthen your faith much more than  avoiding potential bad influences will.

If we gave too much attention to judging the validity of our peacemaking allies, our suspicion and reticence could allow the U.S. government to make the traditional Shoshone nation in Nevada the most bombed place on the planet and make us overlook the Pentagon supplying excess war-making material to village police in Missouri!  We don’t have time for that. I don’t think Jesus wanted his disciples to become the judges of people trying to get it right. He did not want them to have a lack of discernment and miss following His heart, either! But the main focus of the Lord’s mission has a generous, reconciling mentality. We don’t know the exact right way to go on our journey through this desert, but we certainly have to keep going and we definitely need to love our fellow travelers.

Worship is PDA in the first degree

A life in the Spirit, Music,

So did we learn anything last night? (or whenever you were worshiping in public with the body of Christ)?

Worship is our PDA

Rembrandt — Adoration of the Wisemen

One of the things that is sticking with me about why we have public meetings that include worship is the Greek word proskuneo. In the Greek New Testament a version of that word is used sixty times. It was used by the ancient Greeks to designate the custom of prostrating oneself before a person and kissing their feet, the hem of their garment, the ground, etc.; the Persians did this in the presence of their deified king, and the Greeks before a divinity or something holy. By the time of the New Testament proskuneo denotes a kneeling or prostration to do homage to a person or make obeisance, whether in order to express respect or to make supplication. The wise men did it before the baby Jesus.

To a great degree proskuneo is something that is done on the “inside”—in our spirit—defined by Jesus in John 4:23-24: “…the true worshipers shall worship the Father in spirit and in truth.” Jesus unleashes a new relationship with God. Everyone can be true worshipers from our hearts. It is about love. Worshiping in our spirit is prostrating and bowing down our inner person before the Lord. It’s asking nothing of Him, but losing ourselves in adoration, reverence and homage.

God’s PDA

That inner movement is crucial, and Jesus calls us to have that private, personal sense of reverence for God, to experience that adoration and union. I think we can get one-sided about that, however. Individualistic, Eurocentric thinkers love that element of our spirituality. It pretty much fits our DIY sense of the world. But they often miss something very important: what God is doing when we worship. They often just get us to think about what we ought to be doing — we need to “get right with God.” For instance, the interpreters of John 4 often fail to note that Jesus is having this conversation about worship in spirit and truth in public. He doesn’t ask the woman for obeisance; he asks her for a drink, for connection. She not only makes the connection herself, she ends up connecting her whole village with their Lord.

While I think it would do every one of us a world of good to stop reading this right now and get down on our knees and touch our foreheads to the floor in a deep sense of being in the presence of our holy God, there might be more to proskuneo than that. (Really, before you go on, do it. Have you ever done that? Try prostration for a minute. Your heart lives in a body). One of the Lord’s teachings that is rarely applied to worship should be applied. It is this amazing paragraph from the parable of the prodigal son:

I will get up and go to my father, and I will say to him, “Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you; I am no longer worthy to be called your son; treat me like one of your hired hands.” So he set off and went to his father. But while he was still far off, his father saw him and was filled with compassion; he ran and put his arms around him and kissed him. Then the son said to him, “Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you; I am no longer worthy to be called your son” (Luke 15:18-21).

The son had it in his mind that he would stop being a rebel; he would end the sin addiction. It came to his mind that he could go home and kiss the hem of his father’s garment in humility. Though he was unworthy, he could appeal to his father’s mercy and perhaps be treated as well as one of his slaves. To his surprise — and this is the endlessly-wonderful surprise of the Lord’s story and of the Lord’s work — the Father was looking for his child to come home and ran down the road to meet him. Right when the child was going to fall at his feet, the father lifted him up and embraced him, he kissed him. It was in that embrace that the son cried out his great fear, despair and hope “Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you; I am no longer worthy to be called your child.”

Many teachers encourage us to recover our sense of proskuneo and kiss the dirt. That is a good thing. But I think we should make sure not to miss the message of Jesus as he shows us God’s part of the worship relationship. God also “kisses the dirt,” so to speak, when he kisses us prodigals! Worship is a drama of reconnection. Our public meetings are, among many things, a public support group for people who need to learn how to be in love with God in public, to claim their identity as God’s child, no matter where they came from. Among the many things we are learning about worship, I am focused on the kiss. When we worship, it is a lot like kissing God. When we have our Sunday meetings, it is PDA in the first degree.

Mary Magdalene restored

Doing Theology, Leadership, , , , ,

mary magdaleneOne of the most maligned women in the Bible is actually a very interesting example of someone who dramatically overcame her past and pioneered a new direction for others to follow as she followed Jesus. I am talking about Mary of Magdala — Mary from a little town not far from Capernaum called Magdala, the Magdalene.

A new investigation of this Mary

I approve of the new interpretation of Mary Magdalene seen in the picture above. I am happy for her to get reformed from all the nonsense that has been pasted on her over the years. For instance, long about the 600’s, the church in Europe went into a new phase of reinterpreting the Bible and women got a raw deal. This can especially be seen in the way the two most famous Marys in the New Testament were developed. Mary the mother of Jesus and Mary Magdalene end up on the opposite ends of the stereotype of women: Mary as an untouchable, perpetually virgin saint and Mary Magdalene as the all-too-touched, perpetually repentant sinner. Instead of the saved people Jesus and Paul so obviously saw women to be, they end up stereotyped and back in oppression.  I find that painful.

Mary Magdalene even ends up with a derogatory word attached to her stereotype: maudlin. You may have never used that word, but if you read English novels, you may have run into it. It means affectionate or sentimental in an effusive, tearful or foolish manner (especially when you’re drunk and self-pitying). It is a very British word. The ways Brits pronounce Magdalene is “maudlin.” So her name means weepy.

mary magdalene maudlinIn church art, Mary has almost always been pictured as a loose woman who is weeping, since her main scene in the Bible is one in which she is weeping: “Now Mary stood outside the tomb crying” (John 20:11). For some reason the church kept her weeping, even though in just a few more lines of John she recognizes the risen Jesus and becomes the apostle to the apostles.

Mary Magdalene’s background

We know just a little from the Bible about Mary Magdalene, although she is mentioned much more than most of the twelve disciples. Here is one of the places we get some details: “Soon afterward he went on through cities and villages, proclaiming and bringing the good news of the kingdom of God. And the twelve were with him, and also some women who had been healed of evil spirits and infirmities: Mary, called Magdalene, from whom seven demons had gone out,  and Joanna, the wife of Chuza, Herod’s household manager, and Susanna, and many others, who provided for them out of their means” (Luke 8:1-3).

Seven demons is having an extreme problem! But nobody knows what kind of life Mary Magdalene had been living before she met Jesus. When Luke says women followed along with Jesus who “had been healed of evil spirits and infirmities” he could be talking about a variety of things we regularly see: a person who is sick physically, relationally, mentally, or certainly spiritually.  Later in church history, the legend of Mary Magdalene was used to discredit sex in general and to disempower women, so her “demons” were characterized as the torments that accompany someone who is promiscuous. She was tagged as a prostitute, for which there is no shred of evidence in the Bible or even in the extra-Biblical books from the early years in which she is mentioned. Regardless, she had been consumed by something horrible and Jesus freed her. His grace made her thankful and devoted. That we know. Just last week one of us told me they felt a spirit leave them when they gave up a sin. So we understand what Mary felt like and why she was so tied to Jesus.

Mary Magdalene the lead woman apostle

She was not only tied to Jesus, she was important to Jesus. During the time of her life recorded in the Bible, Mary Magdalene’s name is one of the most frequently found. In Matthew, Mark and Luke the women who were with Jesus are listed. Each time, Mary Magdalene’s name appears first. In Luke the three main disciples are listed and Peter is listed first.  I argue, with many, that Mary Magdalene must have held a very central position among the followers of Jesus. She could have been the lead woman like Peter was the lead man.

At the time of the crucifixion and resurrection Mary Magdalene comes to the fore. Uniquely among the followers of Jesus, she is specified by name as a witness to three key events: Jesus’ crucifixion, his burial, and the discovery that his tomb was empty. In Mark, Matthew, and John, Mary Magdalene is the first witness to the resurrection. She is the who told the disciples what happened and gave them a message from the Lord. So Mary Magdalene was the “Apostle to the Apostles.” After her first report to the other disciples that Jesus was risen, Mary Magdalene disappears from the New Testament. She is not mentioned by name in the Acts of the Apostles, although she may be one of the women mentioned in Acts 1:14. Her next acts are undocumented.

In the time of Jesus himself, there is every reason to believe that, according to his teaching and who was in his circle, women were unusually empowered as fully equal. In the early church, when the norms and assumptions of the Jesus community were being written down, the equality of women is reflected in the letters of St. Paul (c. 50-60), who names women as full partners—his partners—in the Christian movement. In the Gospel accounts that were written later, evidence of Jesus’ own attitudes can be seen and women are highlighted as people who had courage and fidelity that stood in marked contrast to the men’s cowardice.

Mary Magdalene’s deformation

As the church was co-opted into the state and then when the church of Rome became the state after the Roman empire fell apart, Jesus’ rejection of the prevailing male dominance was eroded in the Christian community. In the books of the New Testament, the argument among Christians over the place of women in the community is already a regular feature. Mary Magdalene became the poster child for the argument as time went on. I say she was a leader, an apostle to the apostles. She became a weepy prostitute repenting of her sins.

The Mary Magdalene creator, Gregory I
Gregory I dictating a chant

Here’s an example of how her deformation happened. In the late 500’s Pope Pelagius II died of plague and one of the most influential popes ever succeeded him, Pope Gregory I (c. 540-604).  When the disciplined and brilliant Gregory was elected pope he at once emphasized penitential forms of worship as a way of warding off plague, among other things. His reign was marked by the codification of spiritual disciplines and thought; it was a time of reform and invention. But it all occurred against the backdrop of the plague, a doom-laden circumstance in which the abjectly repentant Mary Magdalene, warding off the spiritual plague of damnation, was created. With Gregory’s help, she was transformed from leader among women to maudlin prostitute.

In about 591 Pope Gregory I gave a series of sermons that rewrote Mary’s history. He took a few of those Marys in the Bible, squashed them together and made them into a composite Mary Magdalene. He said that Mary’s seven demons were the seven deadly sins, heavy on the lust. He said that she was the same woman who poured ointment on Jesus — repurposed ointment that formerly made her a nice-smelling sex partner. She was the one who washed Jesus’s feet with tears and dried them with her wantonly uncovered hair. He said,”She turned the mass of her crimes to virtues, in order to serve God entirely in penance.”

Thus Mary of Magdala, who began as a powerful woman at Jesus’ side became the redeemed prostitute and Christianity’s model of repentance — a manageable, controllable figure, and an effective weapon and instrument of propaganda against her own gender. What most drove the anti-sexual sexualizing of Mary Magdalene was the male need to dominate women. In the Roman Catholic Church, as elsewhere, that need is still being met.

The church did her wrong. It may have done you wrong and may do you wrong again. But I pray that you maintain your own sense of how Jesus freed you and let you touch him and made you his messenger, even if someone tries to steal that from you.  Mary Magdalene is a cautionary tale about how the story of redemption can be warped. But she is also an example of how the truth retold has a remarkable capacity to shake off the corrosion of the misguided. People overcome what loads them down and stride into their fullness when they follow Jesus.

The lack of difference between private and public

A life in the Spirit, , , ,

My recent work on my dissertation has taken me into unexpected territories. Last week it was a conundrum about what is private and what is public. The psychotherapists I am studying are, in some ways, at the cross roads of many of the confusing recent advances in communication technology. They wonder if they can keep the boundaries they are used to keeping. I think we are all wondering whether the cherished privileges of privacy that United States laws started codifying in the 1970’s make sense any more.

Some therapists I have met report that their clients (more than one!) have asked whether their sessions can be filmed as part of the reality TV show they are on! They have to decide whether to have a Facebook page and let their clients spy on them. They have to navigate how to work with confidentiality when divorce lawyers want evidence from their sessions. It is a new world.

People want more privacy at the same time that the society is allowing for less of it. We can hardly walk out of our homes without being documented by some unknown camera! As I personally found out this year, newspapers no longer research the truth of what they print; any letter to the editor will be printed as factual and added to the Google’s eternal repository of items that mention my name. What is private and what is public? Does anything need to stay private any more until it qualifies to be public?

Public worship confronts private spirituality

As Jesus-followers, we have some interesting things to consider when we think about the public vs. private divide. When the PM Team Leaders were discussing Sunday meeting plans last Saturday we got off on an important tangent about “spirituality” versus “religion.” For many people these days, personal spirituality doesn’t have a lot to do with religion. “Religious” people still attend “rituals” of the institution that used to have the corner on the spirituality market: the church. But these days people feel more righteous having a private set of beliefs that don’t include public expression. During the meeting, I noted that the government has successfully sold people the “freedom” from every institution but itself, including church, family and tribe — but that’s another discussion.

When people worship, they are in a conundrum of sorts. Many feel that only their private experience is valid. The public add-on we perform kind of seems superfluous. They feel like they should attend the meeting out of some honor to their spiritual ancestors, but it feels kind of awkward and they avoid telling people they do it. I think they feel like they are kind of out-of-date when they worship, an uncool throwback, like a hippy or a Civil War re-enactor who is a little too into their hobby.

Maybe we should give up on singularity

extremely not private

Like so many contributions of the modern era that are coming to their logical extreme these days,  the arbitrary dichotomy between private and public is another one of those things we need to deal with for some reason, like whether we are labeled black or white, gay or straight, single or married or some other this or that which probably wouldn’t make much difference it we weren’t labeled by the nation, legalized and crammed into a niche market.

We might be better off if we let go of the technology of singularity altogether. A thought made the rounds of Facebook last week that talked about how much longer it takes restaurant patrons to eat dinner because they spend so much time alone on their phones together not paying attention to who they are with or to their waiter! When we come to worship we struggle to find a way to be together when we are so condemned to being alone. We know a little bit about private worship and our own sense of spirituality, but it doesn’t always seem to fit in to what we are doing together. We spend more time comparing and contrasting our private sense with our public experience than we do having the public experience!

Public and private is really a both/and

I think I have more practical things to say about this. But I just wanted to offer one generality today. How about giving up the strict sense of private vs. public as an either/or and return to what most people in world history have already done and see it as a both/and?  Circle of Hope has a proverb that reflects this sense of both/and: Life in Christ is one whole cloth. As we participate in and love “the world,” we bring redemption from the Kingdom of God to our society. Jesus is Lord of all, so we have repented of separating “sacred” and “secular.” Other modern dichotomies do not make much sense to us either, like private (which is where “sacred” usually lives) and public (which is dominated by the “secular”). We are one person in relationship with the one true God. We are in that same relationship whether we are at home or at work, on the beach or on the bus. We don’t change our ways because of our context because our context is the Kingdom of God. So whether worship is private or public is not a big deal. The worship may be different in character, which is nice, but the relationship with God and his people is the same. The public is part of the private and the private is part of the public. I am with you, in Christ, when I am alone, too.

Last Saturday we had a great example of how private faith lives in public and public faith feeds the private. At our love feast we had people revealing personal, private stories about their relationships with God that led them to their communal, public baptism or their public entry into their out-of-the-closet commitment to the body of Christ formed as Circle of Hope. In an age when people long for community so much, in which they are so alone, one would think everyone would be piling in to the togetherness of covenant love. But as we heard, there were many obstacles in the way of our friends’ commitment. Like my therapist friends, we will probably face more challenges that make us wonder what is private and what is public and whether the distinctions matter. Maybe a reality show will be asking to commodify our covenant relationships when they are done with all the other stuff they broadcast (Extreme Religious Makeover?). More likely, there is going to be some habit of the heart that needs to change so we can stay out of merely private and appreciate the public, too, like when we are having dinner together, maybe.

Six reasons why we don’t care about Palestine

A life in the Spirit, , , , , ,

Why can’t we care about much of anything beyond getting through this week?

I suppose a few of us feel some crushing guilt when we hear such a question. A few of us effectively screened out questions like “Why don’t you care?” a long time ago. We exempted ourselves, because we don’t want to feel guilt anymore. It crushes us.

Ideally, we think of ourselves as caring people. If we are Jesus followers there is quite a bit of pressure to care about others. I think most of us think we are doing OK at meeting the standards. We are probably more caring than other people — especially Israelis who are creating an apartheid system in the occupied West Bank and Gaza, and Palestinians like Hamas who would sacrifice their whole people for their ideology.

college gilr

You probably are more caring than they are, and I like to think I am too. But let’s face it. When it comes to the Israeli/Palestinian tragedy the vast majority of us have just barely heard about what is going on — that’s true even though our own church people have been talking about it regularly for over two years.  We didn’t read a blog post, we didn’t go to the movie, we didn’t read a newspaper or listen to a broadcast. What’s more, we did not pray about it; we did not figure out how to give money to help suffering people; we did not support others who care more than we do; we did not protest to our elected officials who fund the whole thing; we did not demand an end to weapons production and distribution, etc. If we care at all, why don’t we do something?

I think there are a lot more reasons for not caring about Palestine than we are just wicked, guilt-resistant, pseudo-Christians.

I think we may be dramatically underestimating just how powerful and demanding the powers that be really are, and way underestimating just how damaging it is to buy the philosophy of self-reliance and “freedom” capitalism keeps selling.

Here are some good reasons you don’t care, or at least don’t do much to show that you do:

1) You’ve got student loan debt that must be paid off.

It is the all-purpose excuse millions of people have for tunneling into their careers and keeping whatever job they have at all costs, working whatever hours are required to do so.

2) You either have high rent or you are stuck with a high mortgage.

Nationally, 50% all renters are now spending more than 30% of their income on housing, according to a comprehensive Harvard study, up from 38% of renters in 2000. In PA the average renter needs to bring in about $17.21 an hour to make the average rent for a two-bedroom. The stats show that the phenomenon of twentysomethings living with mom and dad is proven by more than anecdotal evidence; the few who have ventured into their own homes spend all their hours making money to make the payments.

3) You need to pay for private school for your kids.

This is mainly because people do not want to pay taxes or sensibly elevate standards for public education. The average private school tuition in the U.S. for a non-sectarian elementary school is $15,945 a year, and $27,302 a year for secondary school. Catholic elementary school will run you on average $4,944 for elementary school and $7,826 for secondary school; other religious schools average $6,576 for elementary and $10,493 for secondary. Everywhere we turn, some giant institution is costing a lot!

4) You have to master the insurance system and might need to pay exorbitant rates.

This is mainly because people do not want to share in each other’s well-being. In PA the average monthly health insurance cost for a single person is $271 but could be as high as $1200. If you actually go to the doctor, be prepared to take the day off as the system tries to frustrate any use of it.

motherboard

5) You have to master technology that is too complex to master.

That is just in order to participate in the society. Plus, you have to pay a fee to do so at every step: internet, phone, TV, security systems. And those are just the systems we can see. Behind every institution from law to transit, the complexity is increasing exponentially. Many of us would love to respond to injustice if we could get our computer to work.

6) You have to master consumer capitalism.

We did a kitchen in our home a few years back. We already replaced the dishwasher. Last week we paid $350 to fix the fridge. Our beloved repairman told us there were no better machines available. They all have the same problems and they are all junk because people have learned to expect them to fail and to change them like they are fashion, not utilities. Such obsolescence is a business strategy. To stay on the treadmill takes economic staying power. Which means a lot of time on the treadmill, which does not leave a lot of time for Palestinians.

I still ask for outrage

I sometimes ask my favorite twentysomethings why they are not more rebellious. A lot of them gave it a whirl with the Occupy movement — and some are still engaged in the aftermath of that. Some are implementing beautiful responses to the traps the culture has set for them. But most of them are just too busy and tired to do anything. I feel their plight. It is hard to be an agent of transformation when the powers that be are so damnably well-outfitted. For instance, whatever one might try to do just might be filmed and analyzed by some faceless authority  That alone could make you want to hunker down with a good video game. If anyone is choked by the cares of the world, the transformers are. If they complain, they get, “You’re free. Make any changes they want. Just DIY. You’re special and your country is exceptional,” shoved down their throat.

I hope my honesty about what it is like for many people also sounds like sympathy. We want to care about Palestine and much more. But a lot of us are pretty busy just trying to get through this week. Even saying “Jesus will give you strength,” just sounds like there will be another duty to perform if he does! But Jesus is the master of overcoming gigantic powers. If you are doomed to some kind of slavery, He’s your savior.

Imagine something beyond your “state.”

Doing Theology, , ,

you can't killWe often sing this revolutionary song at the PM: “You can’t kill the Spirit; she’s like a mountain; she goes on and on.” But even so, it sometimes feels like the Spirit is quite dead —  particularly in our own hearts.

Living in a “state”

So what kills the Spirit, if in fact it can’t be killed? I think we don’t feel alive enough sometimes because we can’t imagine not being dead. We can’t imagine not being subject to what is killing us. We can’t imagine being alive because our dominant image of where we live is in a “state” and not in love. It is so often that “state” that is killing the Spirit, who just goes on without us. So let’s imagine.

Revolutionary imagination has always been basic to radical Christianity. The Anabaptists honed their distinctives on 1) their basic refusal to live in the arbitrary construction of nation states and 2) their basic conviction to live in the kingdom of God. They resisted and restored. Everybody else crammed their Christianity into the idea of the nation state and let their faith be ruled by whatever king or political philosophy ruled the state. Most people still do that and get mad at you if you don’t. It might sound like basic Bible to be ruled by God, not by humans. But even when Anabaptist practice sounds like an obvious and attractive idea, it is hard to realize.

In our era the “state” has effectively become the end-all of most people’s sense of authority. It has captured our imagination. We belong to our country. We are Americans. It isn’t even a discussion item. So if you want something done, you have to get the state to do it. The liberals and conservatives in the United States argue about how much the federal and other governments should do, but I don’t think any will argue that the governments (at least the kind implemented in our exceptional country) are not the inevitable arrangements civilization requires. When we ponder the big problems confronting society, like poverty, disease or environmental degradation, we don’t ask, “What should the church do?” or “What should General Motors do?” We think about governmental policies and action. We are used to thinking about the state as the chief social actor. Even at the BIC General Conference meeting on Saturday there were many times when the leaders told us how they formed their proposals on the advice of lawyers and by imagining future relationships in relation to possible lawsuits — in the back of our minds the state was imminent and the Kingdom distant. The kingdom was preferable, but the state is practical.

All over the world, the commitment to the power of the state has become so complete and overriding that people lose their imagination for a world without nation states that is better than the present order of things. We even end up thinking of ourselves in terms of our “state of being” rather than in terms that are much more familiar to Jesus. For instance, in John 5 the Lord confronts opponents who object to him healing on the Sabbath. They object to what he is doing because it is outside what they think everyone agrees are the God-given boundaries. He has what seems to be a strange notion of how things work when He says,

“My Father is always at his work to this very day, and I too am working….Very truly I tell you, the Son can do nothing by himself; he can do only what he sees his Father doing, because whatever the Father does the Son also does.  For the Father loves the Son and shows him all he does. Yes, and he will show him even greater works than these, so that you will be amazed. For just as the Father raises the dead and gives them life, even so the Son gives life to whom he is pleased to give it” ( John 5:17, 19-21).

Imagination beyond

How Jesus responds demonstrates the kind of mindset that allows the Spirit to live freely. Jesus could never have a red state/blue state argument because it would be too static to talk about. His “argument” is an act of love that doesn’t even recognize the state of being dead as relevant!  You can’t kill His Spirit. The working of God that Jesus demonstrates is alive, moving. You can experience it, but you cannot capture it. You might be able to harness it, but you can’t manufacture it. It produces; it gives; it creates. It is outside of death and brings life to that state. It is a positive force spoken into being by God in every circumstance so that it always has a relational sense to it — relating to people as they are in their present condition, insisting on being heard, on touching. The working is about connecting, embracing, collaborating and reconciling. It is truth revealed in love.

Resistance and restoration are always possible. The Spirit-born love that graces us is a world-recreating power. It cannot be captured in one social, political, economic or cultural form. We are always working with God who is always working regardless of the present form, which may or may not be useful to His cause. Every act of love is leading to another as we keep following the Truth. We are given the life and what we can do with it is amazing, if we can lift our imaginations beyond the godless forms that demand our attention and allegiance.