Disappointment, Yet Reverence

 I finally arrived in Los Angeles yesterday, and today went by Homeboy Industries to let them know I had arrived and was excited to begin.  The short version of the story is that they were not ready for me, and the coordinator will not be able to meet with me to figure out a definite spot in which to work until mid-June.

 Already the words of François Fenelon—that "the true Christian, whatever the misfortunes which Providence heaps upon him, wants whatever comes and does not wish for anything which he or she does not have"—are testing me.  I will be on-site at Homeboy, sitting, watching, talking, taking notes, and the like, but without a specific job I can imagine 3 weeks here will feel like a waste.  If I am to “want whatever comes,” then perhaps Barbara Brown Taylor’s words on reverence will help me.

 “Reverence is the recognition of something greater than the self—something that is beyond human creation or control, that transcends full human understanding.”

 I will have to remember that my coming out to Los Angeles this summer is bigger than me.  It is greater than my creating; it is not in my control.  Already this thought has dropped my level of agitation. 

 "God certainly meets those criteria, but so do birth, death, sex, nature, truth, justice, and wisdom."

 I intend to spend these first weeks practicing reverence in this place.  When I am eating in the Café, when I am reading in the Bakery, when I am sitting in the Headquarters, I will struggle to prayerfully hold the people who walk by me in the reverence that the imago Dei in all peoples deserves.

 Too, I hope that this type of mindset will help me to see the habitus of community at Homeboy more clearly.  The life that has grown here has been in the works for 25 years.  It is a healthy community, vibrant, which means to me that the mysterious complexity of the Kingdom of Heaven has been revealed here; if I fail in this reverence, I might be one to whom Jesus will say, “The days are coming when you will long to see one of the days of the Son of Man, and you will not see it… In fact, the kingdom of God is among you!” (Luke 17.22, 21).

 I pray that I might give reverence this summer to the Kingdom of God among us here at Homeboy.

Due to a Rush of Life

In my last post, I spoke a bit about the idea of living in holiness, that in fact holiness is all around (and within) us and we are meant to draw it out.  I just finished reading C. S. Lewis' "Perelandra," the second book of his very Christian "space trilogy," and was brought back to what is actually happening when I think of walking in holiness.

I will leave all spoilers aside and focus on one chat.  A Human, named Ransom, is explaining what it means to obey God [whom the Lady to whom Ransom is talking calls "Maleldil"], and the Lady responds thus:  "Oh how well I see it! We cannot walk out of Maleldil's [God's] will: but He has given us a way to walk out of our will."  This way of holiness to which my mind gravitates, this path of wisdom by which I see all Creation ordered (and all new life in the Kingdom brought forth), is to walk out of my will—rather, to walk my will into God's.

And to do this, I must choose to do it every day.  That way of life only actually brings life, in fact has life of its own, in so far as I have habitualized it.  This week I have begun reading some excerpts of G. K. Chesterton's Orthodoxy as a devotional, and this morning I ran across this: "The variation in human affairs is generally brought into them, not by life, but by death."  Without a death of some kind, without an ending or stoppage, humans will habitually continue along the path on which they have been walking; therefore, for a new habit to have life in me, something in me must die.

Creating habits is what humans do; it is not derived from a lack of authentic vitality, but rather an overabundance.  "It might be true that the sun rises regularly because he never gets tired of rising.  His routine might be due, not to a lifelessness, but to a rush of life... Perhaps God is strong enough to exult in monotony," much like a child seems to be, whereas human grown-ups are not.

To live in the habits which draw out holiness is to live a kind of magical life.  It is to be in harmony with the sun which always rejoices in rising each day, with the God who so loves even these little things that God says, "Do it again!"  Chesterton confesses, "In short, I had always believed that the world involved magic: now I thought that perhaps it involved a magician."

Today, I hope to live out a day that God would see and say, "Do it again!"  Today, I hope to live in the magic inherent in what God is doing all the time, a magic which I do not see to be much different from holiness.

An Altar in the World: Begins My Readings & Reflections on My Summer Volunteership

"The tender flesh itself

will be found one day

—quite surprisingly—

to be capable of receiving,

and yes, full capable of embracing

the searing energies of God.

Go figure. Fear not.

For even at its beginning

the humble clay received

God's art, whereby

one part became the eye,

another the ear,

and yet another this impetuous hand.

Therefore, the flesh

is not to be excluded

from the wisdom and the power

that now and ever animates

all things. His life-giving

agency is made perfect,

we are told, in weakness—

made perfect in the flesh."

—St. Irenaeus (2nd century; trans. Scott Cairns)

As I begin work on my field journals of reflections and observations, preparing to arrive in Los Angeles next week, I read the beginning of Barbara Brown Taylor's An Altar in the World, of which the above poem is its epigraph.

She has given me a most helpful framework for making the mundane sacred in her Introduction:  "Whoever you are, you are human.  Wherever you are, you live in the world, which is just waiting for you to notice the holiness in it.  So welcome to your own priesthood, practiced at the altar of your own life.  The good news is that you have everything you need to begin."

I have everything I need to educe what is holy around me because holiness—in which I include "wisdom of God" because the way of wisdom is often invoked as the path to holiness in God—is around me in all Creation (Ps 8.3-4; Prov 3.19; Wis 7.22, 8.6, 14.2).  I have everything I need because I myself have a holiness within me, which is part of God's grace (i.e. "gift") given to all humanity (Gen 1.26-7, 2.7; Eph. 3.7-12; Ps 8.5).  To bring forth the holiness of God within human beings and within creation is in fact the charge given to all who follow the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob (Ps 8.6-8; Eph 2.10, 3.10-12)—summed up by Christ's extension of the Law (Matt 5.43-8, 25.34-46).

[*Note:  I am most definitely proof-texting here, not a valid way of making a point from the Bible at all.  But Psalm 8, Matthew and Ephesians are all texts with which I have wrestled strongly and so intend to expand on them later.]

To bring out the holy in a present moment is to awaken to God all over.  Humans are invited to do so often, yet just as often Christians in our present society are distracted by their own present agenda; the trick is to act like one of the "royal priesthood" (1 Ptr 2.5-9; cf. Ex 19.5-6, Rev 5.10) and give honor to the sacred mundane.  

Taylor uses Jacob's dream (Gen 28.10-22) to make her point:  "Jacob's nowhere, about which he knew nothing, turned out to be the House of God.  Even though his family had imploded, even though he had made his brother angry enough to kill him, even though he was a scoundrel from the word go—God decided to visit Jacob right where he was... The vision showed Jacob something he did not know.  he slept in the House of God.  He woke at the gate of heaven.  None of this was his doing.  The only thing he did right was to see where he was and say so.  Then he turned his pillow into an altar before he set off, praising the God who had come to him where he was."

If anyone wishes to grow closer to God, holiness is the way—or, rather, holiness is an inherent component.  The first step of this path is recognition that this holiness comes from the grace of God, before and through all creation; the second is naming it and honoring it as we go about our lives.  By this, hearts are kindled; by this, lives are changed; by this, all creation is redeemed.

I resolve to hold this idea before me as i work in the midst of Los Angeles—Chinatown and Koreatown especially, with other nearby neighborhoods also coming to Homeboy—so that I can better honor those whom I see and nurture any dormant seeds, kindle any dormant flames, of the holiness of God all over.

Urban Immersion: Homestead Heritage

"Having attained the age of sixteen years, I began to love wanton company, and though I was preserved from profane language or scandalous conduct, still I perceived a plant in me which produced much wild grapes."  Fitting words from John Woolman, the 18th-centuray Quaker spiritual mentor who spoke so highly of the necessity of pacifism, the care for nature, and the evil of slavery in regards to "walking in the light as [Christ] is in the light" (1 Jn 1.7).

The second stop on our Urban Immersion spring break journey was near Waco, Texas, at a simple agrarian Christian community of almost 1000 members called Homestead Heritage.  This community began with a small group of folks in Hell's Kitchen, Manhattan, in the 1970s.  They desired to create intentional Christian community there, and struggled for many years.  In their attempts to following the leading of God, they eventually came to know they needed to create a place away from the worldly forces of "the city" and live simply—a place they found in a few hundred acres outside of Waco.

They felt like Woolman (themselves being greatly influenced by the Friends and Mennonite traditions), being surrounded by a culture that grew "wild grapes" instead of the fruit of the Christian life as they knew it.

"It's hard to grow bananas in Alaska," a number of the members would keep telling us.

The simplicity of life at Homestead Heritage felt so comfortable and welcoming to me.  They use as little technology as they "discern" that they can—which, for now still includes cars, SUVs, and iPhones, due to the spread out nature of their land and members.  But their buildings are log cabins, or refurbished barns (from 1700s and earlier New England areas); they make their own dishes in their pottery mill, their own furniture in the woodshop, their own food with a sustainable rotation of crops, their own metal items in the blacksmith's forge.

Until you walk into their chapel and see a massive array of realistic grape clusters, vines, and leaves, all made of iron by hand, plus beautiful stained glass windows made by community members as well, you will not understand how excellent this community is at everything that they do.

Seeing all of this showed me the importance of teaching skills to people so that they might grow in independence, empowerment, character, perseverance, and temperament.  We live in a world of modernity in which masses of people are subject massive, national systems based on utilizing oil.  Homestead Heritage shows how civilization endures while living in as close harmony with nature as they can at the moment, and most especially how 1000 people can live in deep relationships (which they parallel with marriage) by "submitting to God and submitting to each other."

In my own ministry, I want to find ways in which to build Christian community in a place where people who do not have much personal power can gain it, through encouragement and through learning skills that allow folks to see the work of their hands, to take part in the collective effort of Christ's Body showing off the "multifaceted wisdom" (Eph. 3.10) inherent within it to sustain itself and feed those outside of it.

The greatest blessing they gave to me, however, was the conversation I had with Dan, one of their ministers.  I understand the logic of a climate determining what fruit grows there, but then I see so many people still left in "the city"—materially and esoterically—so what hope is there for those folks to see the fruit of simplicity and community which Homestead Heritage fosters?

It was Dan's own idea that it is possible to create a "greenhouse" even in Alaska to grow the specific fruit of life for which we aim.  I'll need to know what those glass walls (not literal) will look like, to know what kind of soil is fertile to the fruit of the Spirit (Matthew 13 & Mark 4 anyone?), and to have a group of people already experienced in tending that kind of garden before planting it in the cold, concrete plain to which God calls me.

What that exactly will look like, I don't know—but I'm thankful for Homestead Heritage planting a seed for my own dreams of life in the Kingdom of God.

Urban Immersion: CitySquare

"Cities are the way they are because somebody wants them to be."

Sittings around a conference table in the CitySquare offices in downtown Dallas, John's words made me begin to reassess how I view cities.  I used to think that cities and communities are only products of their own past—for example, many southern cities that once upheld slavery and later Jim Crow laws still have extreme geographical segregation of races and socioeconomic classes.

As it turns out, this is true—but the remnants and wounds left by old systems are perpetuated because actual people use them for their own gain.

As time goes by, wounds left on a communal scale by first explicit then hidden forms of racism have not healed wholly.  Reconciliation remains absent.  Subsequently, in the areas left poor from that abhorrent legacy, often an individual rises to such social power that they become functional mob bosses, expecting a payoff for any business or any social project trying to move into their neighborhood.  Without their approval, nothing happens.

This is the reality of working in a non-profit, John tells us.
And I think that is true:  Christians forming an organization with the targeted purpose of a non-profit are committing themselves to work within a particular system to bring not only services for the immediate needs of the disempowered but also to change the culture, to change the power structures, within the city for the benefit of those who cannot defend themselves.

Bartolomé de las Casas, a 16th-century Dominican Catholic cleric in South America, provides an excellent example here.  He was complicit for a good portion of his early life in the buying, selling, and exploiting of Native American slaves, even as a member of the clergy.  After a while, however, he came to see the system as one completely without God.

"I have seen with my own eyes, not read in accounts that could be unreliable, I have felt, as if with my own hands, the cruelties committed there against those gentle, peaceful people, cruelties of a kind so great, so beastly, nothing like them was ever done in the past by harsh men or mindless barbarians.  These cruelties had no rhyme or reason other than greed, the insatiable hunger and thirst for gold in our people."

And later, "Unclean is the offering sacrificed by an oppressor."  He told his own king that the entire people were oppressing the Indians—and therefore their offerings to God were unclean.

Giving up his slaves, he used every ounce of social and political power within the Catholic world to fight for the freeing of all Native American slaves, using the argument that Christ "fashioned a way of attracting people to Himself, to a moral life, by attachment to Him, compliance with his laws.  The was was respectful, attractive, altruistic, germane to human kind."

I, for one, have no real belief that political structures, at least in the U.S., can be redeemed in such a way that government will actually operate on behalf of those who cannot defend themselves.  I especially do not trust Evangelical Christians here to be able to operate within that system in a way that advocates for anyone but themselves.

Yet Bartolomé gives me a bit of hope.  He did not propose to deconstruct the government perpetuating the evil, but he did spend all his time trying to change that government and to destroy a particular social project—the "encomiendas."  He further shows that the Christian tradition has the resources for turning its own evil systems upon their head (if and when they exist), plus he explains that if we imitate Jesus, then the nations will flock to the "mountain of God"—whether we use words or arguments or not.

"Many peoples shall come and say, 'Come let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, to the house of the God of Jacob, that he may teach us his ways..." - Isaiah 2.3

Urban Immersion: Detox - Jumping Out of the Boat

My intentional community learning/practicing cohort, MRNA (Missional Residency in North America), travelled to Dallas, Waco, and Austin, covering over 750 miles on the road and experiencing nine different contexts or communities related to Christian communal life in or near these cities from March 14 to 17.

I've entitled this post "Detox" because that's what I feel is happening.  I saw so many different contexts, which aroused just as manny reactions within me, then I heard so many things worth writing down yet many of which seem to contradict each other, that I almost feel my mind has become toxic holding it all simultaneously.

So I will be posting about a different community, context, or quote each of the next few days—partly to allow the sand swirling in the pool of my mind to settle, and partly because these things incited the passion that seeks the practical, tangible forms of Christian love, community, or responsibility with which this blog began.

______________________________________

Jumping Out of the Boat

Things got real in the back of the MRNA Urban Immersion van before the sun even rose Thursday morning.  My friend, we'll call him "Marty," began explaining his desire to write a letter to his heritage—a veritable wake-up call directed at ruts the likes of which all traditions tend to find.  As he was thinking about that, and about an upcoming speaking engagement, he told me how a passage from Matthew 14 grabbed him and held him against his will.

"Immediately [Jesus] made the disciples get into the boat and go on ahead to the other side, while he dismissed the crowds.  And after he dismissed the crowds, he went up the mountain by himself to pray.  When evening came he was there alone, but by this time the boat, battered by the waves, was far from the land, for the wind was against them.  And early in the morning he came walking toward them on the sea.  But when the disciples saw him, they were terrified saying 'It is a ghost!'  And the cried out in fear.  But immediately Jesus spoke to them and said, 'Take heart, it is I; do not be afraid.'

"Peter answered him, 'Lord, if it is you, command me to come to you on the water.' He said, 'Come.' So Peter got out of the boat, started walking on the water, and come toward Jesus.  But when we noticed the strong wind, he became frightened, and beginning to sink he cried out, 'Lord, save me!'  Jesus immediately reached out his hand and caught him, saying to him, 'You of little faith, why did you doubt?'  When they got into the boat, the wind ceased.  And those in the boat worshipped him saying, 'Truly you are the Son of God.'" - Matthew 14.22-33

"Marty" spoke of the courage it must have taken Peter to step out of the boat.  The synchronistic thing about this is that this exact passage is one over which I wrote a paper in undergrad—totally on my own, not for class, not for church, and only because I had this unyielding desire to write on it.

How often did I hear growing up of Peter's "little faith"!  How often did I ridicule him because he fell into the water—something the laws of nature already tell me would happen!  When we think like that, we assume the point is to ignore "the world;" we don't realize that the way we've chosen to do that is to stay in the boat and ignore the danger.

But here's the trick:  Peter knew all too well what was happening.  He and his fellow life-long fishermen knew the water, knew the boat, knew that they were in a storm that should terrify them because it could claim there lives.

And he didn't ask Jesus to come to his boat and calm the storm.

Instead, Peter told Jesus to call him onto the water.

Peter told Jesus to call him out of the world he knew, out of security, out of his best statistical chance for safety, into the waves, into the land of breaking the laws of nature.

Just because Jesus was there.

My friend, "Marty" seeks that courage.  Seeks the guts to be like Peter, stepping out of the safety of his heritage's traditions, because he sees Jesus in the dangerous, chaotic waves.  

Because Jesus, surrounded by danger and impossibility, is better than the boat.

So ask yourself: "Is it worth the fear, the humiliation, the danger, and the ridicule of falling, to step out of the boat, just to walk a few steps on the water with Jesus?"

Law of Love

The Body of Christ has rightly understood that Christ defeated sin and has ultimately won the victory of salvation from sin for humanity.  Yet in seeing Christ already ultimately victorious, as fulfilling the Law, and "that works of the Law cannot justify anyone before God" (Hans Denck, "Concerning True Love,' 114-5), many of the "body parts" have lost the connection between the perfect love and mercy and grace given to them through Christ and the holiness that should of necessity spring from it.

In a recent post on AtheismForLent.net, a contributor says:  "What if the resurrection was up to us?  How differently and passionately would we live if it was upon our shoulders to bring a resurrected Jesus to the lost, and without us God was dead?  Because I would argue [that] without a church willing to live as though this is true, we'll continue to live in a world that views God as nothing more than an antique."

That post is following the topic of Nietzsche's often-misunderstood "God is dead" quote, and I am not wishing to engage that nor to imply that I think we have anything to do with Christ's own resurrection.  However, I do resonate with this poster's statement that it is "upon our shoulders to bring a resurrected Jesus to the lost," to be "a church willing to live as though this is true."

Because of the social orders, the actions and the ways of living that the Church has professed and carried out in the past two millennia, God truly does look dead to many of the world—or at least an antique with no real impact in our present world but sentimental value.

Into this space Hans Denck describes our salvation as one that should make God very much alive to the world.  He contends that "only to the extent that one beholds [or holds in front of them, in their vision] the perfection of the Spirit is one saved" (114).  He explains that Moses, acting righteously on behalf of justice, killed an Egyptian to protect an Israelite brother—but perfect love would have moved him to die for that brother instead (114).

"We can see then why it is written that works of the Law cannot justify anyone before God.  The justification by faith which is worthy before God far surpasses the works of the Law.  For perfection forsakes the concessions contained in the Law...  Now one might object that nothing can be added to or taken away from the Law... Yet to this one must reply that love is the very essence of the Law, which nobody can practice too perfectly or understand too profoundly" (114-5).

If "love is the very essence of the Law," echoing Jesus' own words in Matthew 22, then Denck's conclusion absorbs the tension often felt in Matthew 5.17-8: "Do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets; I have come not to abolish but to fulfill.  For truly I tell you, until heaven and earth pass away, not one iota, not one stroke of a letter, will pass from the law until all is accomplished."

The law is fulfilled in Christ's perfection.  Yet, Christ's perfection does not abolish the law:  Perfection actually extends the law—as the rest of Matt. 5 shows Jesus extended common teachings, even some directly quoting the Torah ("You have heard it said... but I tell you...").  Gerhard Lohfink, in Jesus and Community, explains how this move by Jesus "makes clear that in Matt. 7.24-7 the teaching of Jesus takes the place of the Torah. Now the Torah was Israel's order of life, its social order... For the people of God to exist as a community, its social order has to be put into practice" (Kindle location 725).

Anyone who claims to follow Christ does not merely follow cognitive propositions about our present state or eternal destination(s):  Instead, we must continuously be the Body of Christ by holding Christ—his teachings and perfection—ever before us, so that love might rule us as law.

Bartolomé de las Casas concludes that "what Christ does teaches us, because the Father gave Him to us as a witness, a leader, a teacher... That means obey Him, imitate Him. He teaches not just by words but by deeds as well what one must do to imitate Him" (The Only Way, 80).  This same Jesus also speaks of the fundamental nature of the works he does.  In his own words, "If I am not doing the works of my Father, then do not believe me.  But if I do them, even though you do not believe me, believe the works, so that you may know and understand that the Father is in me and I am in the Father" (John 10.37-8); therefore, our life (and particularly our evangelizing) should be founded on living out the love which naturally perfects us first, then allow our words to rest upon that tangible reflection of Christ.

If the church, both institutionalized and not, should come to live this out, then even the world that doesn't know Christ would be hard pressed to deny the existence of Christ's perfect love.