All posts by Rod White

Partnership

The Mission

I thank my God every time I remember you. In all my prayers for all of you, I always pray with joy because of your partnership in the gospel from the first day until now…Philippians 1:3-5

When I first parachuted into Philadelphia, my conviction was that I was sent to catalyze a group of partners who were already in town and build the next generation of the church for the next generation of the megalopolis. I found them. To be honest, it was a little shocking to see my conviction come to fruit. I don’t mind tilting at windmills, but seeing God make Circle of Hope was not like that at all. It was ready to be realized.

Lately, the leaders of Circle of Hope have discovered we are a whole new church. What we need to do is do it again. To express heart all that Circle of Hope has become: 50-plus cells, almost four congregations, mission teams large and small, we need to find the partners the Lord is touching. These are people who can see the possibilities of who God has made us and take hold of the vision of what He would like to do. We need to welcome them in and catalyze the next 600.

I’ve always liked the word “partner” to describe the relationship I have with people who have been plucked from nowhere with me by the story of Jesus. What we end up doing is so much like being dance partners: moving together to the music of God. How we end up moving so often begins like the Jr. High dances I remember so well: full of anticipation, fear, awkwardness and thrill. Coming together and moving together for a common good given by God is being truly alive.

The word “partnership” in the NIV translation of  Philippians, above, could have been translated “dance moves,” I suppose. It is trying to make sense of the rich Greek word “koinonia.” A few years ago, it became popular to just use the word koinonia without translating it at all. That might be the best idea, since the idea of it is often too rich to sum up in English. In the various translations of these few sentences of Paul’s letter to the dancers in Philippi, the translation leans two appropriate ways. On the one hand, some translators lean toward the “being” side of koinonia — like when Jesus says “good trees bear good fruit,” they lean it toward being good trees. Thus Paul is thankful for their partnership, fellowship, communion, and sharing in the gospel. Others lean the translation toward bearing good fruit. So Paul is grateful for their participation, sympathetic cooperation, help, contribution and collaboration in the gospel.

I have always been interested in this interplay between being and doing. The monastic discipline organized the day around contemplation and action from the earliest times to get a handle on it. It is like a dance. A broken creation that is spirit and flesh needs to keep practicing that dance. Circle of Hope (a good tree) and its mission (to bear good fruit) is a way to work out that ancient discipline in the Philadelphia region. I am amazed at how we are doing it! At this point, we have made room for many more partners and we have been given a vision that requires them. If we often resemble a Jr. High dance as we are getting all those people to move together, that’s OK.

A Chance to Submit to the Past

Psychological growth,

  And he said, “Hagar, servant of Sarai, where have you come from, and where are you going?”
      “I’m running away from my mistress Sarai,” she answered.
      Then the angel of the LORD told her, “Go back to your mistress and submit to her.” The angel added, “I will so increase your descendants that they will be too numerous to count.”… Genesis 16:8ff

I am moved to take Circle of Hope’s reading for this day of Lent another direction. I am tempted to run away from my “mistress.” Maybe you are too.

My “mistress” this week is the past. I am going to California at the end of the week to help celebrate the 25th anniversary of the Riverside Brethren/Madison Street Church. The Sierra St. Household planted it, and I was the pastor. It is not that I don’t want to go, don’t want to see people, or don’t think it will be a lot of fun. It’s just that I am sort of a “right now” person and I am faced with the need to look into the past. Like Hagar, I am getting asked “Where have you come from?”

Today, it is like that question has finally caught up with me, and I don’t have a much better answer than Hagar: “Well, I guess I am running away.” Hagar actually had a pretty good reason to take off. My reasons for moving on were more developmental than because someone was abusing me. I felt a call to move into what I needed to do next. I’m generally better with the question, “And where are you going?”

But pondering the past has merit, if for no other reason than because the Lord has used it as a field in which to plant the present. Generally, my memories of my 20’s and 30’s in Riverside come mostly in golden tones. I learned a lot and did a lot with people who loved me and loved God. That’s enough. But taking a good look again, as I am doing today as I prepare to go, also digs up the seeds that never sprouted, causes me to run into the stumps that weren’t removed and threatens me with a couple of leftover land mines, too.

Go back to your mistress and submit to her.

Right now, I am hearing God’s command and promise to Hagar as something relevant for me, too.

“Go back to your mistress and submit to her.” The past doesn’t own me, but running away from it gives whatever might be harmful in it even more power. It will do me good to submit to it. Even the parts I might like to get away from, I can fearlessly look at with Jesus by my side. How about you?

I think the promise is true for me, too: “I will so increase your descendants that they will be too numerous to count.” I don’t think that means literal grandchildren for me – I have enough to keep up with, as it is! But I do think it means I have some fruitfulness that will come from being submissive to my past, in the sense that I need to listen to what it teaches me, and celebrate what God has grown from it. Is the angel moving you that way too?

Survival vs. Lent: A little story

A life in the Spirit,

Lent begins on Wednesday. I have this horrible feeling that it will be overshadowed by further snow removal. I hope I am not unsympathetic to people who have been overwhelmed by the double blizzard of 2010. But I am moved even more by the realization that we might “survive” rather than live.

I got thinking about this as I read about the Lt. Gov. of South Carolina’s quote. He’s been all over the news for saying that feeding the poor is like feeding stray animals. It just encourages them to breed. When the economy goes poorly, people often hunker down and stop caring for the poor. They will support a politician who blames the poor for their poverty and tells people they need to protect their own share of the pie. The added cliché goes something like, “We certainly should not give more pie to the government to waste on stray people – it’ll breed more of them!”

This defensiveness is a basic instinct of fearful people. When the big snow comes (or the big economic avalanche) we go into survival mode — and survival mode is generally not reaching out to connect or reaching out to help. Survival is hunkering down and conserving — hide your stuff from thieves; protect what you’ve got.

I experienced a small example of this over our own snow removal. We have four garages that share a common driveway behind our house. One of my neighbors did not shovel out the area in front of his garage door after the first big now. This was not too surprising, since he does not own a car. When we and the other neighbors were shoveling out after the second snow, we piled shovelfuls in front of the car-less neighbor’s door. He was upset when he saw the pile, since he wanted to park a rental car in the driveway. One of the neighbors was upset back – “You didn’t help shovel the whole driveway! Get involved and we’ll apologize.” It was the language of survival. She blamed him for his own poverty. His poor health and other issues didn’t change her mind. He didn’t do his share and now he wanted pie!

I was honestly in a dilemma. I thought I would get in trouble if I shoveled off the snow we’d piled up — it was the principle of the thing! I let it go overnight and then thought the Lord wanted me to make him a spot. It took me a half an hour of secret digging. It was not much effort, but it was not effort required by neighborhood justice. I had to risk getting into trouble.

All this makes me wonder if Lent will be ignored this year because we’re too busy surviving the way we do when we are not living. The poor will be too busy fighting for a parking space and the hard-working people will be making sure their pie is not stolen and the rich will be doing whatever the rich do. Nothing will require us to reach out and connect with God or reach out to love like Jesus. And the Lord’s promise of something else will slip onto the calendar without much notice.

Frog in the Militarism Kettle

The Mission, , , ,

I had the shocking feeling yesterday that I might be the proverbial frog in the kettle. I am not sure who discovered the facts behind that proverb (some mean “scientist” with a pet frog, I guess) but, apparently, if one puts a frog in a kettle in normal frog-water temperature and then slowly turns the heat up, the frog will not jump out of the kettle. It will acclimate, bit by bit, until it is cooked.

For the last thirty years or so, since Ronald Reagan, I have been mildly upset that the president runs a huge war machine that conducts dubious if not flat-out wrong activities without much debate. Then George Bush ran the machine like a monarch and I got a little hot. Then Barack Obama got elected on the basis of his mild criticism of the military-industrial-complex and now he is, effectively, a nice George Bush. It is like we are boiling in our militarism and no one can turn down the heat.

The C-17 Globemaster III T-1 flies over Owens Valley, Calif., for a test sortie. (Air Force photo)

My shock of realization came during a day when I got to sit around reading and even bumping into a bit of Brian Williams on NBC. The Inquirer had some thoughts about Gary Willis’s book Bomb Power: The Modern Presidency and the National Security State because he was speaking at the Free Library. One thought really caught my eye: No president before Ronald Reagan was ever saluted by the troops. During Reagan’s regime, the heat took a little leap and I was there to feel it. But no one did anything; we acclimated. Willis says that, “In a way Barack Obama is a hostage” to the beast.  “There’s too much invested in the machinery” for any president to dismantle it. It’s a juggernaut composed of the entire intelligence and defense machinery and the corporations that furnish it with weapons, manpower and services.

Then Brian Williams had one of his “Fleecing of America” segments. The C-17 transport plane got on the public radar for a few seconds because President Obama and Defense Secretary Gates wanted to stop making them. The Pentagon has enough of them. But the plane is made by about 30,000 workers in 43 states. So even though the C-17 isn’t  necessary, the congress has them on order for $250 million a pop. The Pentagon’s base budget for planes, ships, missiles, and guns has grown more than 50% since 2000. It is projected to be $107 billion for 2010 alone—a 5% rise over 2009. In the budget for 2010 are 10 additional C-17 “Globemasters.”

So what is a Christian in the militarism kettle with the rest of the hostages, (including the President!), supposed to do?

1. Be outraged. Start by saying “Ouch, it is hot in the kettle. I think we might be boiling!” If all we can do it talk, at least talk. Jesus made a lot of difference just by telling the truth about the situation. Let’s speak up.

2. Rely on God. Psalm 20:7 “Some trust in chariots and some in horses, but we trust in the name of the LORD our God.” Perhaps you have grown acclimated to trusting in a yearly 5% rise in the “defense” budget. Let’s defiantly trust Jesus.

3. Discuss some thoughtful comparisons with people. For instance, I have a family member who is among the people with pre-existing conditions who can’t get insurance for less that $1700 a month or so. My calculations are simplistic of course, but wouldn’t refusing to pay for ten needless transport planes free up $2.5 billion dollars? If the government just gave back the money they already took to waste, didn’t even bother with other health-system reforms, but got the money to people with pre-existing conditions,  that would make insurance affordable for half a million people. Let’s generate thought.

4. Pray. Boiling in militarism is a spiritual matter. I don’t think God desires for everyone to die in their kettles. He doesn’t use that metaphor, but the scripture does say in 2 Peter: “He is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance.” The shocking state of our captivity in our militarism is sad. I don’t really think the president and most of the congress even want to be there; they are stuck managing a monster, and Frankenstein does not obey the master anymore. We need to be saved.

That will get us started. You may have some bright ideas yourself.

Nineteen Flame-tending Women, to Start

Building community, Leadership, , ,

February 1 is Ibolc. It marks the first stirrings of spring in Ireland. St. Brigid’s Day is attached to it. Candlemas is also attached to it, marking the 40 days after Christmas when Mary went to the Temple, with baby Jesus in tow, to honor the rules for being ritually purified after giving birth, and thus meeting Simeon and Anna. It’s the Candle Mass in the old days because everyone in Ireland brought their special, home-use beeswax candle to the meeting for a blessing. Those candles symbolized the presence of God, the flame of the Spirit with them. As with all the big days of the Christian year, Brigid’s Day is all mixed up with legend, the seasons of paganism, and arguments over what is the best way to honor her memory.

I’m not bothering with the controversies too much. I feel free to strain out good things from not-so-good things whenever I can. I’m into “testing everything and holding on to what is good” as Paul instructs the Thessalonians to do. Using Jesus’ metaphor another way, I think we should strain out the gnat of good and not swallow the camel of nonsense when we need to.

The site of the perpetual flame and a flame keeper at Kildare ca 1780

I like to remember the Brigids of my own era on Brigid’s Day. As the church was first forming, brilliantly, in Ireland, Brigid was a great leader (see last year’s blog about it, if you like). At the site of the community she founded and lead in Kildare, we visited the enclosure for the perpetual flame that Brigid tended and which burned for over a thousand years before Protestants doused it. The flame was a sign of the presence of Jesus in the heart of Ireland. The guide told us that the flame’s keepers were on a twenty-day cycle. Nineteen women were selected to keep the fire going and on the twentieth night Brigid kept it herself.

I like the idea of nineteen women keeping the flame of faith going. I know several sets of those kind of women, and so do you. They are keeping faith alive in a time when there are a lot more than Protestants trying to douse it! I collected my own roster, just to celebrate the idea that women are still courageously tending the flame. I listed the first nineteen who randomly came to my mind, below, and resisted listing nineteen more. I know many women who keep the flame burning among the Circle of Hope. I thought you might like to add one or two to the list, as well.

Brigid’s Day is a good day to celebrate what burns with the fire of Jesus. It is a good day to celebrate faithful women who tend the flame and to imagine all the good they are causing to stir up springtime in the winter of the world. By selecting nineteen I did not mean to deselect all the rest, of course — this is not the Grammy Awards of spirituality! I just want us to look around on Brigid’s Day and note the spark of the perpetual flame in each one, celebrate what God has done, and anticipate what God  might do.

Here’s my random nineteen.

Gwen – spiritual director, promoter of mental health, flame-builder in children
Sarah – leader of cells and cell leaders and network builder
Rachel – pastor to many and group leader for those in need
Marquita – homemaker, daring leader, student
Aubrey –vision keeper, compassionate teacher
Jen – risk taker, church planter
Martha – business maker, fearless leader
Tracey – tenacious servant, overcomer
Megan – hardworking environment maker
Katie – hospitable faith builder
Christina – business builder, evangelist, mother to many
Kelly – ambitious talent user, seeker of the deep
Angie – teacher in song, empath
Missy – missional organizer, persistent servant
Mimi – peacemaker, missional educator and fire builder
Emily – visionary organizer, risk taker, networker
Melissa – consistent caregiver, safety net sewer
Brittney – visionary outreacher, passionate leader
Courtney – multi-talented creator, brave life developer

If you feel like contributing to the formation of another nineteen flame-tenders (or more!), add a comment!

Keeping the Covenant Real

Building community, , ,

Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ. –Ephesians 5:21

Paul writes the sentence above to exhort the Ephesians to a new way of relating. He immediately proceeds to exhort husbands and wives, in particular, to relate in that new way as married people, to have sex like that, to form families suffused with mutual respect and fidelity, just like Jesus relates to the church and the church relates back. I think Paul presumes (wildly assuming the presence of the transforming Holy Spirit, as he is wont to do!) that most of the believers to whom he is writing know how Jesus and the church relate, so he can boldly exhort people to apply the example to their marriages and to other relationships in the body.

Such love is a struggle

We’ve been struggling to be that deep as we ponder living in mutual submission as a covenant people who call themselves Circle of Hope. It all came into focus when we talked about the Love Feast this past fall among our leadership team and then at our discerning retreat. Oddly enough, the Love Feast had become a very popular public meeting! People would invite their mother, their unbelieving friends, people would wander in off the street. We were not sure what to do with that.

In some ways it was kind of great. It is exciting to think that people are interested in looking at Christians making love at their covenant members celebration. But it was also kind of creepy to have people looking in, being invited into the intimacy of communion when they don’t even believe, even being called on during the event to accept people into a covenant they don’t intend to make. I suppose that since we put up all our intimate pictures on Facebook these days and invite strangers to look at them (that is, until we understand the privacy controls – which I don’t), we are kind of comfortable with public “intimacy.” And I suppose that since so many of us have sex with random people and spend a couple of years living with our spouse before we marry them, we don’t have a great deal of respect left for the boundaries of covenant.

 

So what about the Love Feast?

So we did not know what to do about the Love Feast. On one hand, by being so public about it, we invited people to drink the blood and enter the covenant circle when they had no idea what they were doing. Paul says this could make a person spiritually ill, handling spiritual things one has no business handling! On the part of the covenant members, it might be something like leaving one’s door open and letting the toddlers watch you have sex, inviting a person into intimacies they have no way of processing.

What’s more, on the other hand, it was awkward to be asking those who have a common covenant to listen to a person’s story, to accept another person into their covenant when they knew that all sorts of people at the feast had not made the covenant themselves. That dilutes the idea, at best, and mocks it, at worst. In some ways, allowing that to happen, is caving in to the strange propensity we have these days to always be a show, like it would be OK to be making a covenant with the body like we were on reality TV with people watching, somehow virtually – but then it would be “like” doing it, rather than doing it. It is not a show, we are really doing something!

Trying to hold on to the depth of covenant

There are many ways we follow Jesus. Most of them are public but some are done in secret. Some are easy, others are difficult. Some bring honor, others reproach. Some are suitable to our natural inclinations and personal interests, others are contrary to both. In some ways we may please Christ and please ourselves, in other ways we cannot please Christ except by denying ourselves. In all ways, Christ is our way and gives us the strength to follow.

The covenant we make with the others in our face-to-face, heart to heart rendition of the church is more on the secret side, like closing our door and praying to our Father in secret. We have the relationship, we act on the relationship and then we express our character in public. The act of making a covenant and making covenant love is more likely to be difficult, not just another party. Crossing the boundary into a public allegiance to the body of Christ is more likely to bring reproach, and should not be diminished so it seems more “normal.” Committing to treat people like Jesus treats the church, becoming vulnerable to receive the love of Jesus like the church receives grace is probably contrary to the natural inclinations and personal interests of most of us, so it must be entered with reverence for Christ if it can be entered at all, Christ who is the one who gives us the strength to make such submission, who so completely demonstrates such submission.

So we are figuring this out. We think it is crucial for people to learn to make a covenant like Jesus makes with us, if they are going to be a long-term believer, if they are going to live in love and truth. I’m sure we will never feel free to be invulnerable and restrictive and so bar the door to people who shouldn’t be at the love feast – that is not our way, and not the Lord’s way. But we need to get better at not luring people into places we have not prepared them to be and to make sure we are maintaining our sense of being the people of God with an unalloyed allegiance to Jesus in an age where all the forces are working to erode that.

For the Cadets on Jean Donovan Day

The Mission, , , , ,

Last night the president had some uphill sledding to do with his speech to the cadets at West Point. I admit I did not listen very well to every word, since I was also reading a magazine and writing our Christmas letter (sorry Barack). But I did notice that the poor man could not get any applause for the longest time! And, if nothing else, he is a good applause-getter! He finally loosened them up with the sheer power of a great speech. But the cadets didn’t get their hands moving until he complimented them! It was glaring. They were either feeling reticent about showing too much emotion (they were apparently instructed not to smile until the end – attenshun!) or they were reticent about him. But they finally got clapping when they were essentially clapping for themselves!

Applause for ourselves?

Am I making too much of this? I doubt it. I think we have been raising people to be aggressively self-centered and amazingly entitled for twenty years, now. Of course the cadets applauded for themselves! I wouldn’t be surprised if the line was purposely inserted in the speech to make sure they would get what they wanted. Why wouldn’t the president be a deliveryman for one’s self-interest?

It may have been more interesting than that. There was a lot of politicking going on in that speech. Obama talks to the cadets, then he turns to the camera and talks to the nation. He turns back and talks to the military in general, then he turns to the camera and talks to the world. He’s good. Plus, he was doing some slight variations on the stock, “We’ve got to pull out the stops and keep the war going” speech that people will be talking about today. The pundits were already being amazed that he was saying “We’ve got to build up so we can pull out.” And John McCain was already doubting that ever having an end point to a war is a good thing. I think his point is, “Even if it bankrupts us and we can’t really hope to dominate them, we need to try.”

Or applause for Jean Donovan

It is quite jarring to think about all that when I go to bed and then wake up and realize it is Jean Donovan Day. She was martyred by a Salvadoran death squad on Dec. 2, 1980, when she was twenty-seven years old on a two-year mission with the Maryknoll sisters. She was supposed to be advancing literacy among the campesinos and ended up a disciple of Oscar Romero burying people caught in the crossfire of the government’s attacks on “subversives.” Her famous note to a friend, a few weeks before she was raped and murdered, said: “The Peace Corps left today and my heart sank low. The danger is extreme and they were right to leave… Now I must assess my own position, because I am not up for suicide. Several times I have decided to leave El Salvador. I almost could, except for the children, the poor, bruised victims of this insanity. Who would care for them? Whose heart could be so staunch as to favor the reasonable thing in a sea of their tears and loneliness? Not mine, dear friend, not mine.”

Yes, I do want the cadets to care about the children and do unreasonable things to serve peasants. They will certainly find enough of them in Afghanistan! Honestly, I think a lot of the cadets would like to do that, too. So I want the president to help them change the world in the Jean Donovan way. Honestly, I think he might like to do that. So I want Jesus to keep defeating evil for us so we are not so foolish and controlled by self-destruction and the president gets to do what he must really want to do. In the meantime, I hope each of us will honor Jean Donovan today because she knew how to be in league with Jesus in a very practical way.

With Teresa of Avila: Who Are You?

A life in the Spirit, , , , , ,

Tomorrow is the day we remember Teresa of Avila (1515-1582).

The famous Teresa was a reformer from the center of Spain, along with her protégé, St. John of the Cross. In response to the radicals of the protestant reformation — which was like an earthquake in the Church of their time, Teresa and John wanted to return their order to the ways of the hermits that founded it near Elijah’s well in Palestine, on Mt. Carmel (see 1 Kings 18). They ended up with an offshoot of the Carmelites called the “barefoot” or “discalced” Carmelites. [As a total aside, we stayed in Aylesford Abbey last year when in Kent, the site of the first convocation of Carmelites in England in 1240. They had a yard full of elementary kids when we arrived, befitting the order’s traditional love of children.].

Teresa’s vision

When we were in Avila a few years ago, Gwen and I went to the house where Teresa got started on her remarkable, influential ministry. For some reason we were the only pilgrims at the site and had a great museum all to ourselves. On the stairs there was a mannequin of a little boy, replicating one of the moments of ecstasy that popped up in Teresa’s prayer. One day, as she was preparing to ascend stairs leading to the upper rooms of the convent she met a beautiful child. He asked her “Who are you?” She replied, “I am Teresa of Jesus, and who are you?” To which the child responded, “I am Jesus of Teresa.”

Biographers say that encounter with the Lord, as a child, affected her so deeply that whenever  Teresa set out to found a new house (she founded eighteen in all) she always brought a statue of the Child Jesus with her. She did a lot of teaching on contemplative prayer and encouraged everyone to leave their hearts open to visions and mysterious connections with God. But she didn’t want people to seek them or to rely on them.

Who are you?

In Carmelite spirituality there is an ancient custom of choosing a name which uniquely expresses a member’s personal relationship to the mysteries of the faith. Thus there are people like Teresa of Jesus, John of the Cross, and Elizabeth of the Trinity. In honor of these ancestors in the faith, I have been pondering what name I should have.

If the risen Lord were to ask you today, “Who are you?” How would you answer? If you were a Discalced (or other kind of) Carmelite, what new name would you choose for yourself? What mystery of the faith has been central to your life-journey in Christ?

When I pondered this in Teresa’s honor, I realized I have been blessed with so many ways to connect with God it is hard to choose something central (and Teresa cobbled together another name for herself, as well, since she couldn’t quite decide either). Rod of Jesus works for me, too. Rod of the Silence. Rod of the Pioneers. But mainly, I think, Rod of the church. The mystery of the body of Christ in action: restoring people to their rightful place, redeeming the creation, fulfilling what is left of the Lord’s suffering as a living organism of many diverse parts – I have never been diverted from my passion for it.  Maybe that is why I have a hard time figuring out a name – I would prefer to be named, by my brothers and sisters, as they recognized Jesus in me, Jesus living through me to contribute what I have been given to share.

“Who are you?” How would you answer?

Pray for the sifted: The betrayals of love

Building community, , , , ,

“Simon, Simon, Satan has asked to sift you [all] as wheat. But I have prayed for you, Simon, that your faith may not fail. And when you have turned back, strengthen your brothers.” Luke 22:31-32

Simon (Peter), one of the core disciples of Jesus, did get “sifted” like chaff getting separated from wheat. He got torn apart. You might even say he got broken up. His courage failed him; his anxiety controlled him; his weak heart couldn’t take it. He betrayed Jesus and he betrayed his true self. But, ultimately, his faith did not fail. God held on to him. Just as Jesus prayed, Peter did go on to strengthen the other followers who had been sifted and were about to be sifted.

Broken up

I am particularly interested, today, in the idea that Peter got broken up. We use that term when we get separated from our intimates. I am surrounded by people experiencing being broken up. They are getting sifted. They are in a spiritual battle. I pray for their faith not to fail. I pray that one day they will be through it and will strengthen us.

So many of us are experiencing this brokenness ourselves or experiencing it in someone else that it bears admitting in writing. Intimacy breaks us and builds us. Our connections come with suffering and cause suffering. Today, I’m thinking of being broken up in two ways: 1) someone is getting sifted because they were let go; 2) someone else is being sifted because they can’t let go, even though the person is gone. For others, it is both. I don’t have great definitions or solutions to share, but I am feeling the brokenness, too.

For every Christian who got attached, who gave themselves physically, who made the commitment (some by getting married) and then broke up, it is a spiritual battle. Some of you did not have a tough time moving on; you might be good at hardening your heart, now, as a result. I am not really talking to you. I am feeling for the people who are still being sifted and they feel the brokenness. You are in a spiritual battle. Don’t lose your faith. Don’t let your suffering turn you. Turn back.

Let go

Some people are struggling to let themselves be let go. Pray for them. I won’t tell a story, but it is a common one: “I did not intend to get connected to this person, much less have sex, but I did. Now they are with someone else.” Or “It never crossed my mind that they would go out on me. I feel so stupid and embarrassed.” Or “I don’t know why I still want them after what they did to me, but I do.” They are getting sifted. I pray that one of the results is that they accept their true value before God and escape the power of the betrayal.

Some people are struggling to let go. Pray for them. Again, I won’t tell a story, you can tell your own. But they are common: “I repent of the immorality, but I long for the intimacy.” Or “I want two people for different reasons.” Or “I can’t believe that what I am or what we had could have been this damaging.” Or “Maybe there is a way to work this out if we just get away from the family and all these people.” They are getting sifted. I pray that one of the results is that they turn away from hunger and find true sustenance.

Being sifted could be good

Whenever I am talking to people sifted by the betrayals of love I often make surprisingly little headway in convincing them it is a spiritual place to be. For Christians, in particular, they often think they need to keep their pain or their desires secret from people who won’t understand, and they often act like it is all a secret from God. Even though they see Jesus discerning the secrets in the heart of his intimate friend, Peter, they fall under the spell of their feelings and can’t get loose. They seem to think that if they admitted the situation was about more than their attachment, they would lose the attachment, and they either think that is impossible or undesirable. Pray for them. Being betrayed or betraying is about more than the two people involved. And “in him we live and move and have our being.” (Acts 17:28)

Broken up people often don’t imagine that what they really need to do is strengthen their brothers and sisters. They are so wrapped up in being sifted, it can become an identity. They are so wrapped up in how they have sex or not that they forget about everything else. Satan would love that.

They often think their loves and lusts are happening in private, but their actions usually end up as tools for sifting us all. Pray that in being let go and letting go they let us all go.

Pray their faith does not fail — because that failure is a distinct possibility for them. You who are enduring this or who have honestly endured it know what I am talking about. But having been sifted, it is also a distinct possibility that they, and all of us, will develop true strength to share.

Well-centered hope: The alternative to a new oppressive holiness

The Mission, , , , , ,

Circle of Hope is among the co-conspirators behind Conspire magazine, brought alongside by our covenant-pal, Shane Claiborne. I like the passion. An article in the first issue by Nate Buchanan gives me an opportunity to talk about something I have been meaning to work on for quite a while.

While I like the direction Nate is taking when he is working on participating with God’s liberation of the oppressed, I am wondering about the theology of one of his statements. I am not rebutting his article, as much as he is allowing me to think out loud about something that has been troubling me. He says:

“Sadly, our communities often mirror ‘the powers that be’ in the dominant culture. While we profess to be counter-cultural, we are most often represented, spoken for, and led by white, heterosexual, educated males – despite the large numbers of intelligent and capable women, persons of color, and GLBT members of our communities. If we seek to follow a Messiah who, by Luke’s account, silenced a male priest and had a pregnant teenage girl proclaim the greatness of his coming, this is a crucial issue.”

Democracy does not equal righteousness

I think our communities (Nate’s and Circle of Hope’s) do often mirror “the powers that be” in the way Nate describes and that needs to keep changing. But I also think there is an even deeper change that needs to happen. We need to give up thinking that democratic rights = righteousness.

In the U.S. the dominant culture (and I am talking about the culture at its semi-God-fearing best) fully believes that when everyone is given their rights, when the marginalized are given their share of the power and wealth, when everyone is free to be their self-actualized self, then the kingdom will have arrived — or, at least, that must be what God is working on. Whether Bush is “liberating” Iraq or Obama is easing the situation of the oppressed, political “freedom” is the goal.

While I think having whatever passes for “democracy” or “human rights” in our day is better than being subject to some other philosophy — like the Taliban destroying schools, I still don’t think Jesus came merely to give teenage girls the aspiration to be president one day, as if getting one’s share of the power will save you. And I think people who believe in such aspirations so fervently should admit that they generally think it is a good thing to deprive the Taliban of their religious duty to oppress.

One Nation Under God by Jon McNaughton. Click for website

Does Jesus rule or the founding fathers?

I doubt that anyone is interested in being that consistent. But I do think people unwittingly assume Jesus would have written the Declaration of Independence, if he’d had a chance. Among the Circle of Hope we have a cadre of people who spend an inordinate amount of time judging themselves and others for how well they or we meet the criteria the insubordinate-to-Jesus-world places on society for what is right these days.

The genuinely oppressed and the so-called white males, alike, (the latter who are still generally clueless about their privilege, in my opinion) end up seeing themselves through the eyes of some bureaucratized sociological definition, not the eyes of Jesus. Even in the church, somehow, Jesus does not have a right to rule the community, but the last guilt-ridden professor who assessed someone’s status, does — “If my household or church is not balanced properly, I am living in sin!” It is a strange new holiness. I don’t think it was great when the Christians were a bit like the Taliban and they thought it was holy for men to avoid women, to segregate people of color and to invisibilize GLBT folks, but I’m not sure it is that much better to live out a reaction to that and be damned if you don’t. Better to err on the side of the latter, I think, but can we skip the damning?

Our former lenses need to pass away

If we are really going to live in the kingdom, the definitions we had for ourselves when we lived in league with the passing-away world need to pass away, so we can be named and empowered by Jesus, not by our cultural status or by our rejection of cultural status. I keep thinking of these verses from Colossians as I mull over what I am being taught by the new holiness teachers:

“So then, just as you received Christ Jesus as Lord, continue to live in him, rooted and built up in him, strengthened in the faith as you were taught, and overflowing with thankfulness.  See to it that no one takes you captive through hollow and deceptive philosophy, which depends on human tradition and the basic principles of this world rather than on Christ. (Col. 2:6-8)

Obviously, that is just what Nate is talking about, since the church has been the lapdog of the system for centuries and it should be appropriately countercultural! My problem is that I keep getting taught a new “hollow and deceptive philosophy” to replace the previous one. I need to test out what I am hearing to see whether I am depending on Christ and not becoming dependent on the most attractive “basic principle of this world” I can find.

I fully respect people who are on the front lines of liberation, undermining the powers that be. I see myself as among their number. I was working on it last night when we were talking together about how to make a covenant of love with one another as the body of Christ, a circle of hope. In our group of thirty or so there were people of color, women and men, younger and older, professional and not so much, wealthier and poorer. I did not have all the sociological elements I prize in full bloom, although I thought we were getting closer. But I did have my hope well-centered, I think. The new humanity I long for won’t arrive merely as a result of my tireless attempts to bring it in — even through my power to give up my power! Jesus needs to reign.