The messianic hope was never the hope of the victors and the rulers. It was always the hope of the defeated and the ground down. The hope of the poor is nothing other than the messianic hope.
I posted the above cartoon on my Facebook profile earlier today and it has lead to some interesting discussion. I actually posted the comic because I was considering this post and looking through some various images on Google that I was considering linking to from within the post. You see, I have been struggling with how I feel much of the Western church has been responding to the Ebola epidemic. This is just my opinion and I have no data to support it, but my online twitter and Facebook feeds (I can’t say this is true of my Google+ feed) seem to be full of people responding in fear to the crisis rather than in the hope that comes from the good news of Jesus.
I understand this fear. People want to keep their loved ones safe. If keeping those loved ones safe means not responding to someone else in need by either going to them with help or responding to them in hospitality (by which many have entertained angels without knowing it) within our own country, well that stinks, but you do what you have to do to keep your loved ones safe. I understand this type of fear. After all, I believe part of my duty as a spouse and parent is to keep my family safe.
Unfortunately that type of fear isn’t very Christian. Jesus didn’t come that we might receive a spirit of fear, which keeps us from responding to crisis, but a spirit of power, love, and disciple, which causes us to respond to crisis. In the 25th chapter of the Gospel According to Matthew the King (i.e. God) separates the faithful from the unfaithful based on whether or not they have responded to Him in certain circumstances.
The King says:
34 “Then the King will say to those on his right, ‘Come, you who are blessed by my Father; take your inheritance, the kingdom prepared for you since the creation of the world.35 For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in,36 I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me.’
“I was sick and you looked after me.” Whoa now! That could be risky. Of course, if you and I really believe that Jesus defeated death and therefore death no longer has anything for you and I to fear, then a little old disease shouldn’t stop us from taking care of our Lord in any of His most distressing disguises. There’s no need to fear something that no longer has a stinger. A stingerless disease can’t really have a major affect on us.
Christians are usually at our best when responding to the most need. Such as the Antonine plague of the Roman Empire.
This is why the Christian church has a history of running into disease devastated cities to be with and take care of the sick. There are records of Christians responding to plagues as early as the Antonine Plague of 165–180 AD. Christians ran into towns that everyone else was fleeing because they believed they had nothing to fear from the death the plague might cause, but tons to fear from not ministering to Jesus when He was sick. The church that follows the Christ Who defeated death has nothing to fear from death and we ought to act like it.
So what does this mean for those of us who are followers of Christ? Well it means we need to respond to our fears of the present disease (and future ones too) as we would to Jesus. Most of the Christians I know wouldn’t hesitate to do something if they knew it involved Jesus. If they saw Jesus sick they would stop and help. The problem is we often simply don’t see Jesus where we should. For example, in West Africa right now. If we Christians saw Jesus right now in West Africa we would do everything we could to make sure He was ok.
Well Jesus is in West Africa RIGHT NOW and we need to realize it and get to work taking care of Him. We need to do everything we can to send over all the aide and help we can manage (and maybe even more than we can manage) and we need to respond in hospitality to those that need to come over to the States. Will this open us up to risks? Yep, it sure will. It might not make for good foreign policy but it does make for true Christianity.
While listening to a “To the Best of Our Knowledge” podcast I heard the segment “Life Inc“, which is an interview with Douglas Rushkoff. In this segment Rushkoff talked about the history of corporatism and made some specific small recommendations for changing some of the negative effects of what he sees happening in our present economic situation – i.e. not paying off debt by creating value but paying off debt by convincing other people to go into debt. He focuses on specifically small acts.
I believe we tend to perceive important things as usually being big. Big acts are impressive. Big acts talk about being movements, and movements look good and make the people in them feel like they are doing something important. Big acts have cool graphics, logos, catch phrases, and good looking leaders. Big acts have their own insider vocabulary. Big acts spawn t-shirts and other merch. Big acts look good on resumes. Big acts lead to their leaders talking at conferences and getting book deals. The church loves big acts and the people who have a “vision” for them.
I’m tired of big acts because I feel like they usually don’t usually last, though they do create a large number of t-shirts and other swag. They last just as long as they are cool and then are quickly forgotten when the next big movement comes along. Don’t get me wrong, I believe there is a place for big acts. That place just doesn’t have the prominence that I believe we tend to give these “movements.”
I like small acts. I think Jesus does too. Many of His miracles were small (personal) acts. A wedding runs out of wine and Jesus provides more wine without anyone but the servants and His mom knowing about it. Many, if not most, of His healings were “small” acts. They weren’t spectacles. They were huge in their impact but small in scale and the fanfare around them. When you really get down to it few of Jesus acts were big.
Actually it might be cool to write a theology of little acts versus big acts. I think it would be come apparent quickly that Jesus was much more about little acts than He was big acts. His big acts seem to flow from lots of small acts. i thin that’s another post.
I realize there is a danger with small acts. Sometimes we can think that small acts mean there is little, if any sacrifice, involved. For those of us who claim to be followers of Christ we can pervert the idea of small acts into just being nice. I believe Jesus wants us to be nice to people, but that isn’t what following Him is all about. Jesus calls us to follow Him, and He sacrificed Himself for others. He did this in some big ways, and lots of small ways. Jesus’ little acts were big in sacrifice. They cost Him a ton. I believe He calls us to act in little acts that are big in sacrifice. Small acts toward our neighbors that are more costly than most people can imagine. Little tasks for those who hurt us, that are huge in their grace and impact. Little acts that leave your worn out at the end of the day because they took every bit of energy that you and I have.
Francis of Assisi had huge impact on the church, but that impact began with what I think was a relatively small act. He believed God was calling him to rebuild His church. Francis took that very literally. Not in some grand scale, but an actual, local run down church building. He gather stones to rebuild it. One stone at a time. One little act after another.
The prayer typically called The Prayer of Saint Francis (though he probably didn’t write it) is full of such little/big acts. Here it is:
Lord, make me an instrument of Your peace;
Where there is hatred, let me sow love;
Where there is injury, pardon;
Where there is discord, harmony;
Where there is error, truth;
Where there is doubt, faith;
Where there is despair, hope;
Where there is darkness, light;
And where there is sadness, joy.
O Divine Master, Grant that I may not so much seek
To be consoled as to console;
To be understood as to understand;
To be loved as to love.
For it is in giving that we receive;
It is in pardoning that we are pardoned;
And it is in dying that we are born to eternal life.
Those are little/big acts.
These little/big acts don’t result in t-shirts, books, logos, or movements. They do result in God being glorified. Our culture loves big things. It loves movements. So when the church does them we are actually just doing what the culture already does. Little/big acts are counter-culturally. Little/big acts reflect living in the kingdom of God.
This week I will try to do little things that are big in sacrifice.
A quote from Martin Buber’s classic I and Thou that is hitting me pretty hard right now.
Martin Buber – Smart man, funny name, awesome beard.
Even in the original relational event, the primitive man speaks the basic word I-You in a natural, as it were still unformed manner, not yet having recognized himself as an I; but the basic word l-It is made possible only by this recognition, by the detachment of the I.The former words splits into I and You, but it did not originate as their aggregate, it antedates any I. The latter originated as an aggregate of I and It, it postdates the I.
Martin Buber, I and Thou, p. 73-4.
I’m not sure I could adequately express the thoughts that are running through my head as I struggle with this quote. I am just amazed at the thought of us defining ourselves as “I”s through separation, which those produces an “It” because a “You” requires relation. Treating others as objects/”It”s leads to “I”s and separation, whereas being in I-You relations leads to union and an understanding of each other and ourselves in relation to others. In I-You relations we understand ourselves through a connection with a “You”, while I-It relations to us defining ourselves through separation.
I believe the God Who is relational in His being created as to be relational creatures,
I called Pam to talk through some of this and see then blew my mind (yep that’s right, my wife is as smarter as Martin Buber). She mentioned from her knowledge of child development that babies do not initially recognize themselves as separate from their parents. The infant/parent relationship is so tight that the understanding of “I” in that relation doesn’t happen till later. The “I” in that relation comes out of the initial “I-You” relation. Whereas objects are initially understood as separate. How do experts determine this? That is a question that you would need to ask Pam. She explained a little but not enough for me to be able to describe it adequately.
Struggling with understanding the implication of what Buber has written. How often have I defined myself through treating others as an “It,” rather than my “I’ coming out of and I-You relation?
Buber is brilliant, while I am not the best and conveying his brilliance. See, I think I just defined myself through separation from Buber.
I am presently reading Practice Resurrection by Eugene Peterson (an author who always challenges me) and Peterson just quoted the following statement from Annie Dillard:
Why do people in churches seem like cheerful brainless tourists on a packaged tour of the Absolute? … On the whole I do not find Christians, outside the catacombs, sufficiently sensible of conditions. Does anyone have the foggiest idea what sort of power we so blithely invoke? Or, as I suspect, does no one believe a word of it? The churches are children playing on the floor with their chemistry sets, mixing up a batch of TNT to kill a Sunday morning. It is madness to wear ladies’ straw hats and velvet hats to church; we should all be wearing crash helmets. Ushers should issue life preservers and signal flares; they should lash us to our pews. For the sleeping god may wake someday and take offense, or the waking god may draw us out to where we can never return. Annie Dillard, Teaching a Stone to Talk
Reminds me of much of what Mark Buchanan says in Your God is too Safe. The real God of the Bible (YHWH) is not a god to be handled. He is not the god that works things out for your life and guarantees that the harvest will be good this year as long as you know the correct religious rituals. He is not the god who is always on your side of an issue and against your enemy. He is the One Who says “follow me” and then leads us into worlds that we would have never gone to on our own. He is the God Who we need to wear a hard hat around because He often needs to destroy some part of our lives and world, before He builds something much better. He is the God Who says that we only find true life when we loose our life in Him. To quote Mr. Beaver from The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe.
“Safe?” said Mr Beaver …”Who said anything about safe? ‘Course he isn’t safe. But he’s good. He’s the King, I tell you.”
May you and I remember to wear our crash helmets when we approach the true God, and may you and I both run away from images of Him that aren’t this dangerous.
The above comic is from Adam Ford aka Adam4d. I just discovered his wonderful illustrations today and I am enjoying looking through them. I think the above photo is a great reminder that Jesus actually meant the things he said. Sometimes it would be so much easier if He didn’t, but He did.
While working on Sunday’s sermon I ran across the following quote from Dietrich Bonhoeffer:
Christianity preaches the infinite worth of that which is seemingly worthless and the infinite worthlessness of that which is seemingly so valued. What is weak shall become strong through God, and what dies shall live.
I was challenged by it, liked it, and thought I would incorporate it into Sunday’s message. I do however hate attributing things to secondary sources so I thought I would go find the original source and look at the context of the quote. I found it in a collection of Bonhoeffer’s writings from 1928-31. I think the context makes the quote even better. Unfortunately it is rather long to share on a Sunday evening so I am, therefore, posting it here on the blog.
Ethics and religion and church all go in this direction: from the human to God. Christ, however, speaks only and exclusively of the line from God to human beings, not of some human path to God, but only of God’s own path to humans. Hence it is also fundamentally wrong to seek a new morality in Christianity. In actual practice, Christ offered hardly any ethical prescriptions not already attested among his contemporary Jewish rabbis or even in pagan literature. The essence of Christianity is found in its message about the sovereign God to whom alone, above the entire world, all honor is due; it is a message about the eternally other, the God removed from the world who from the primal ground of his being has loving compassion for those who render honor to him alone, the God who traverses the path to human beings in order to find there vessels of that honor precisely where human beings are nothing, where they fall silent, where they give space to God alone.
Here the light of eternity falls upon that which is eternally disregarded, the eternally insignificant, the weak, ignoble, unknown, the least of these, the oppressed and despised: here that light radiates out over the houses of the prostitutes and tax collectors . . . here that light pours out from eternity upon the working, toiling, sinning masses. The message of grace travels over the dull sultriness of the big cities but remains standing before the houses of those who spiritually speaking are satisfied, knowing, and possessing. It pronounces upon the death of people and nations its eternal: I have loved you from eternity; stay with me, and you will live. Christianity preaches the infinite worth of that which is seemingly worthless and the infinite worthlessness of that which is seemingly so valued. What is weak shall become strong through God, and what dies shall live.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer, “The Essence of Christianity.” In Barcelona, Berlin, New York: 1928-1931. Minneapolis: Fortress, 2008. pp. 354-55.
Pam and I have recently begun watching “The Good Wife.” Please don’t spoil anything for us because we are only in the second season right now. One of the things that I have found most interesting about the series thus far is how the concept of faith has been dealt with in the show. A couple of the main characters (bouncing off the title I would refer to them as “the bad husband” and “the do the wrong thing daughter”) have had close encounters with Christian faith and the response of the family around them has seemed to be to view the possibility of these discovers of faith as a threat to their political ambitions and way of life. This might change in future episodes, like I said Pam and I are only in the second season right now. All I know is that I love this portrayal of faith as a danger to the present power. I believe it is honest.
Real faith in Christ is a threat to one’s present way of life. Jesus has a manner of coming into a person’s life and turning everything around. He especially likes to play around with the power dynamics of a culture that a believer lives in. That whole “first shall be last” and “when [you are] weak, then [you are] strong” thing goes against the way a society typically functions. If it is really lived out it has a tendency to really mess with people and society.
The Romans understood this about early Christians. Jesus was killed by the Romans because he was viewed as a threat to the peace of the Empire. He was handed over by the religious leadership of His culture because he was viewed as a threat to their power and possibly sparking trouble with Roman. Jesus and His kingdom were a threat to the powers of the culture of the day because Jesus’ kingdom would change everything from priorities to practice. Powers don’t like that kind of change.
Power has a tendency to deal with threats of that kind of change by trying to annihilate the threat. After all, those of us who are followers of Christ know that Jesus gave His life for sinners like me to have a relationship with God, but the Empire of the day thought they were sacrificing Him to maintain their power. From their view the only appropriate response to the threat of Christ was to get rid of Him. Caiaphas, the high priest, saw the threat Jesus’s new kingdom represented and said “it is better for you that one man die for the people than that the whole nation perish.” It made sense to them because they needed to protect the powers of that time, which they thought brought stability, from the obvious threat of instability that Jesus brought with Him.
After Jesus death and resurrection His followers continued to be a pain in the side of the powers of the day. Thus the persecution of the early church. Early Christians were killed over a theological debate but the debate wasn’t was
Some of the Anabaptist leaders that I admire the most viewed suffering and persecution as a mark of the actual church of Christ. As the Anabaptists learned from personal experience the powers of a society don’t respond nicely to people that they view as threats to their power and way of life.
If Jesus would only morph into everyone’s personal agenda then everything would be nice and cozy. He wouldn’t be a threat then. He would just be a god who wanted us to be better citizens and work within the powers of the society to make everyone nicer. He wouldn’t be pushing His own kingdom where everything that the powers value is flipped on its head.
Of course, the real Jesus doesn’t fit into other people’s agendas. He has His own agenda and that is summarized in His kingdom where the last are first and weakness equals strength. Jesus is the type of God where even those who eventually will become some of His closest followers initially respond to the threat that He is by saying “go away from me, Lord.” You don’t say that to a god who isn’t a threat to your agenda for a nice life, but you might say that to the God Who is a threat to it.
I guess that is why I like the portrayal I have been seeing on “The Good Wife.” These characters see the possibility of another character that they love encountering Jesus as messing everything up and playing around with the present power dynamics. I think they have it right because that’s is exactly what Jesus does.
For me the question comes back to whether Jesus is changing the priorities and values or my life and how I live within my culture. Is He messing with my life by changing my values into the values of His kingdom. Is He doing it in your life? Is Jesus a threat to the status quo of us and our society?
SIDE NOTE – If you are wondering about the above photo it is from “Threat Level Midnight.”
“But the ultimate reason for our hope is not to be found at all in what we want, wish for and wait for; the ultimate reason is that we are wanted and wished for and waited for. What is it that awaits us? Does anything await us at all, or are we alone? Whenever we base our hope on trust in the divine mystery, we feel deep down in our hearts: there is someone who is waiting for you, who is hoping for you, who believes in you. We are waited for as the prodigal son in the parable is waited for by his father. We are accepted and received, as a mother takes her children into her arms and comforts them. God is our last hope because we are God’s first love. We are God’s dream for his world and his image on the earth he loves. God is waiting for his human beings to become truly human. That is why in us, too, there is a longing to be true human beings. God is waiting for human human beings; that is why he suffers from all the inhumanities which we commit personally and politically. God is waiting for his image, his echo, his response in us. That is why he is still patient with us and endures the expanse of ruins in our history of violence and suffering. God isn’t silent. God isn’t dead. God is waiting. To be able to wait is the strongest strength. God is patient with us and puts up with us. God gives us time and gives us future.”
This weekend Pam and I were at the annual Minnesota/Wisconsin Baptist Convention marriage retreat. It is a pretty cool deal that encourages ministerial couples to focus making sure things in their relationship are going well.
Pam has written a great post on why the weekend is important. I just want to say that I am real thankful to be a part of a convention that cares about the relationships of the ministers in the churches connected to it.
SIDE NOTE – if you are wondering about the image associated with this post it is Pam “tearing up” the Nordic ski trails at Green Lake Conference Center (where the retreat is held annually).
