Why Holding on too Tightly Is a Bad Idea

 

Why Holding on too Tightly Is a Bad Idea | [D]mergent.

The Inherent Anarchism of Christianity

Richard Beck does a nice job in his article, Christian Anarchism and Atheism, setting down the inherently tenuous nature between Christians and the Nation-States in which they find themselves as “resident aliens.”  We have, as Stanley Hauerwas and John Howard Yoder have continually reminded us, no necessary investment in propping up Caesar as a gateway to relevance.

The responsibility of those who follow Jesus is to live faithfully by embodying justice in our lives and relationships–which always carries with it the potential (and sometimes the necessity) of getting crossways with the powers and principalities.

Hope no one ever told you this was going to be easy.

On Having Something to Say

I find it very easy to feel as if I have nothing of value left to say.  I’ve been writing and preaching and talking about all manner of things—religious and otherwise—for (what seems to me, at least) so long now.  Whenever I open my mouth or put pen to paper, I want to say something intelligent, important.  Perhaps even more than that, and I am almost embarrassed to say it, I would like to produce something original.  That is to say, I would like to say or write something that is unique to me, something that no one has ever said or written before.  Why do I have this great need to be original?  Pride, I suppose.  We all want to leave our mark on the world, to leave something to prove, not only that we were here, but that our existence made a difference, that it meant something more than the amount of Doritos we consumed or the total hours we spent sitting in front of The Biggest Loser.

Ministers are just as prone to that sort of preoccupation as everyone else—maybe more, because most ministers enter the ministry as a way of being involved in matters substantive (perhaps even eternal), as a way of being God’s agent in bringing about transformation, as a way of making a difference.  Most of the time, though, ministers—like everybody else must content themselves with the mundane, peripheral things of life (i.e., what we shall eat, what we shall drink, what we shall wear, etc.).  It’s easy to believe, after having seen the same faces week in and week out, that what happens in church makes little difference at all in people’s lives.  The everydayness of it lulls us into thinking that the words we say, the songs we sing, the baptisms we perform, the Eucharist over which we preside, has so little power or relevance in our age.

We’re wrong, of course.  As Annie Dillard writes in her book, Teaching a Stone to Talk:

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 evoke?  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.

Anyone with any sense knows that what we do as a church, the rituals we practice, the words we use have in them (due to their proximate relationship to God) the power to heal the sick and raise the dead.  It is no empty thing to say to a person during communion: “The Body of Christ, the Bread of Heaven.  The Blood of Christ, the Cup of Salvation.”  People have died for uttering words like that, and, just as importantly, the dead have been raised with words like that.  And if things like that aren’t intelligent or important enough to distinguish us, not original enough to help us make our mark—nothing is.

Why Healthcare Is a Christian Issue

The author of Luke tells us in chapter six that Jesus went up to a mountain to pray—that he prayed all night to God. That’s a pretty long time to spend in prayer. Must have been important. The very first thing he does as soon as he finishes praying is call all his disciples together and choose twelve from among them to be apostles, that is, those who will be sent out on his behalf. Those twelve are going to be the foundation upon which the church is built once Jesus is gone, which makes it understandable why Jesus would have struggled all night over whom to call. So, when Jesus finally addresses the twelve who’ve been chosen, we expect that he will say something important. His first address to them after he calls them will be the vision speech, the one where he lays out what’s at the heart of the ministry he has in mind, the ministry for which twelve of them have just been called. Luke tells us that while all the disciples are still gathered around him, Jesus begins to clarify the principles of this new endeavor, which are only highlighted by this latest major personnel move. What’s at the center? What does Jesus indicate will animate his ministry, and therefore, the ministry of his followers? What’s the first thing out of his mouth when laying out the grand plan?

“Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God. Blessed are you who are hungry now, for you will be filled. Blessed are you who weep now, for you will laugh . . . But woe to you who are rich, for you have received your consolation. Woe to you who are full now, for you will be hungry. Woe to you who are laughing now, for you will mourn and weep”(Luke 6:20b-21, 24-25).

Now, I want to say right off that I’m not happy about this. By just about any accounting done on a macro level, I’m pretty sure to be lumped in with the latter rather than the former. When the truth is told, though I sometimes struggle to make ends meet, the ends I have to make meet are quite a bit nicer than most of the rest of the world, and the means with which I have at my disposal to meet those ends would surely evoke envy among all but those in the highest percentiles when it comes to the world’s wealth. So, my ox is being gored too as Jesus trots out the core values for the new business model. Unlike most successful ventures, Jesus has the powerful in his sights as the problem and not the solution.
Taking that into consideration, a story I heard last week about someone I know has sparked my thinking about the relationship between those with power and those without. A young woman I know who had a baby not long ago, in the midst of all the adjustments the family has to make to accommodate a new arrival, received a bill from the insurance company enumerating costs and covered benefits. One of the things that the bill said, much to her surprise (and chagrin), was that the insurance company considered an epidural an elective procedure for a vaginal birth. When I told my wife about the position the insurance company had taken, she said, “Some damn man made that decision!” Over the next few days, almost everyone to whom I told that story said exactly the same thing. One African-American minister from a church on the West Side to whom I relayed the story said, “This talk about the Public Option taking away choice is funny to people in my congregation.”

“Why?” I said.

“Because the only people who’ve ever had any choice about healthcare is rich people. The only healthcare choice poor people have is which emergency room to take your kid to.”

All of which got me to thinking . . .

Although the healthcare system we have now is excellent in many ways, one of its fatal flaws is that powerful people make decisions for others based not on the best interests of the patient, but on the interests of keeping costs low and profits high. That’s just part of it. The rich making decisions about what the poor ought to do because they’ve committed the unpardonable sin of poverty, white folks making decisions for everyone about nearly everything down to which drinking fountain black folks could use, men making decisions for women about everything down to what women should be able to endure in childbirth,  straight folks telling gay and lesbians what marriage is and who qualifies are only symptomatic of power arrangements that have been in place for as long as anyone can remember. And the church, of course, has often been a major player in underwriting those power arrangements. What struck me was that from the outset Jesus identified inequitable power arrangements (of which, admittedly, many of us have been the beneficiaries) as the problem. He could have started with any number of things at the beginning of his ministry, but he started out with the poor and the powerless.

Those disciples who are called two thousand years later to share in that same ministry probably ought to take note.

The Stuff I Have

“Do not be afraid, little flock, for it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom.  Sell your possessions, and give alms.  Make purses for yourselves that do not wear out, an unfailing treasure in heaven, where no thief comes near and no moth destroys.  For where your treasure is, there you heart will also be” (Luke 12:32-34).

Some years ago my friend Mike received a strange phone call from a tire salesman.  Mike had gone to Doyle’s Tires the week before to buy a tire, and had met this man.  The man didn’t call to sell him tires, however.

He said, “Look, I know this is a shot in the dark and all.  But a couple of us have recently gone together to start a business, and it has become quite lucrative.  This must sound awfully strange to you, but when I saw you in the store last week I could tell you looked like a sharp person and I noticed that you carried yourself well.  So, I was wondering, well, if you’d be interested in pursuing some other avenues of financial stability?”

Mike, upon hearing the man’s question, said, straightforwardly and matter‑of‑factly, “Nope.”

The man said, “Uh, excuse me.”

Mike said, “No, I wouldn’t be interested in pursuing some other avenues of financial success.”

“Did you say, ‘No’?”the man asked, apparently not quite tuned into the tone of the conversation.

“Yes, that’s right, I said ‘No.’”

And the man said, “You mean to tell me you wouldn’t be interested in making more money, securing your future financially?”

“That’s right.  I have absolutely no interest in making more money.”

“Why?”

And Mike said, “Because I’m a Christian.”

“What does that have to do with anything?”

“It has everything to do with everything.  Because as a Christian I think life is about getting rid of the stuff I have, not getting more.  I think it’s about selling what I have and giving it away and ending up with absolutely nothing.  I believe that it’s contrary to the gospel of Jesus Christ to go through life trying to get more and more.  I believe that it’s the devil himself who tries to convince me that the goal and end of my life is to secure my future.  My problems in life don’t stem from the fact that I don’t have enough stuff.  Quite to the contrary, most of my problems stem from the fact that the stuff I have is always in danger of having me, of taking my eyes off of the true source of my life.”

Then Mike said, “Listen, are you a Christian?”

And the man said, “Well, yes.”

“Well, then, let me give you an opportunity to repent of this foolishness, to risk it all by giving up any notion that you can secure one iota of your life, and come back to the gospel.  Let me ask you a question: Would you be interested in pursuing some other avenues of Christian faithfulness by getting rid of the stuff you have, and vowing not pursue the accumulation of more stuff?”

And when he heard this he was shocked and went away grieving for he had many possessions.

Well, Mike didn’t actually say any of that.  What he really said was “No thank you,” and then hung up the phone.  But what if he had said it?  What kind of a church would we have to be to produce someone who could say something like that?  That’s really the question, isn’t it?

Douglass Boulevard Christian Church: Heroes of the Day

From The Daily Conversation

Just Hanging On

“Therefore lift your drooping hands and strengthen your weak knees, and make straight paths for your feet, so that what is lame may not be put out of joint, but rather be healed” (Heb. 12:12-13).

At one point in the church I served some years back, we had a particularly large spate of deaths.  People who had been pillars began to die, and the effect unnerved everyone.  One lady said to me, “Preacher, it looks like this year is going to be one for the books.”

At the time, I wished I knew what to say to that.  Even now I wish I could say that death happens, and that people get sick, and that people suffer, and that that is all a part of life this side of the eschaton.  Actually, what I mean to say is that I wish I could say all of that in a way that would make sense of all the tears.  I wish I could say something that eased the ache in all of our hearts when fear confronts us.  I wish I could say something really pastoral, full of confidence and solace.  I wish . . .

I knew that there were people hurting in our church.  There were people who were afraid of what our church would look like after we had fought our battle of attrition with death, people afraid of what life would look like without our heroes, without the faces we had counted on to pick us up when we had fallen, to soothe us when we mourned, to chastise us when we quit, to teach us when we sought, to lead us when we wandered.

In my personal life, as many of you are aware, it appears as though “this is going to be one for the books.”  With both my father in Hospice and my youngest brother with an advanced form of colo-rectal cancer, things have weighed heavily on my family recently.  I want to thank all of you who have asked about and prayed for the situation my family faces.  I’m grateful for your love and support.  But I’m not the only one facing difficult times.  I know that many of you also have concerns about your loved ones, anxiety about what your future may hold.  Please know that you’re part of a community that longs to walk beside you through uncertain times—even when we don’t have any good answers to give.

Most days, getting out of bed is a habit for us that requires little thought and little motivation.  But when the skies darken and our horizons fade in the night, figuring out how to survive another day, let alone move forward, without the certainty that the familiar human landmarks of our lives will always be with us seems impossible.  Despair comes easy.

And yet, somehow God calls us forward.  Like a lover God stands before us, wooing us toward our collective future, asking not that we should forget our pain, but that we should endure in spite of it.  In the face of great pain God neither requires great acts of bravery, nor does God expect it; what God requires and expects of us is faithfulness.  Because in some ironic twist of circumstance, our faithfulness in the face of our fear and grief transforms us into models for those who come behind us.  Then, even though we are scarred, we may be healed.

Sometimes hanging on is the best we can do.  According to our faith, sometimes hanging on is the best there is.  Thanks for helping me hang on.

Obedience as Epistemology

“Do you not know that if you present yourselves to anyone as obedient slaves, you are slaves of the one whom you obey, either of sin, which leads to death, or of obedience, which leads to righteousness?” (Romans 6:16).

“Only he who believes is obedient, and only he who is obedient believes” (Dietrich Bonhoeffer, The Cost of Discipleship).

Epistemology is the study of how we know what we know.  How do we gather information?  Observation?  Genetic encoding?  Testimony?  How do we know that the earth revolves around the sun?  Scientists have observed the earth’s revolution.  How do babies learn how to walk and talk?  They are programmed with the information necessary to begin learning those tasks.  How do we know that Jesus Christ rose from the dead?  Through revelation.  Obviously, we weren’t there on the third day, so we didn’t observe the resurrection.  People aren’t born into the world with the instinctual belief that Jesus, once dead, was raised to life.  We had to be told.  How were we told?  We learned about Jesus’ resurrection through Scripture, through the testimony of our forebears in the faith.  We have been presented with claims about who Jesus was, and we are forced to make decisions based on those claims.

Now, Enlightenment rationality says that, epistemologically, the way to make those decisions is to weigh the evidence of those claims in a reasonable manner.  Did the disciples observe the resurrection?  Were the disciples trustworthy?  How were their claims received by those to whom they were immediately addressed?  The bottom line is: Can you marshal enough rational evidence to support the claim that Jesus was raised?  After weighing the arguments, if you find them to be more true than not, you make a decision to believe.

Much of Christian apologetics (the discipline concerned with the defense of the faith) has as its aim the compilation of rational arguments for everything from the existence of God to a literal seven day creation.  What people need to make better decisions, so the thinking goes, is more information.  And while it is true that often more information gives us better ground upon which to base decisions, it is not true that we could make every decision if only we were given enough information.  It is possible to put off making any decision, because one is holding out for more information.  It is a fallacy to think that is necessary or possible (or even desirable, for that matter) to have all the information one needs to make every decision.

The church has played into this whole Enlightenment epistemology by trying to convince people to believe before they commit.  We seem to think that if we could just find better arguments, we could win the world.  If Bonhoeffer is right, however, it is impossible to believe—even if you have all the evidence in the world—prior to committing yourself.  Bonhoeffer went on to write: “You can only know it and think about it by actually doing it.  You can only learn what obedience is by obeying.  It is no use asking questions; for it is only through obedience that you come to learn the truth.”

How can you be sure Jesus was raised from the dead, or that the Christian life is the goal toward which life is directed?  Until you’re willing to postpone your need to have it all worked out before you commit, you can’t.

Truth in Advertising

“From that time Jesus began to proclaim, ‘Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near’” (Matthew 4:17).

I get all kinds of church newsletters, and a while back I got an interesting one.  It contained an announcement for a pastor’s class, offered “for anyone thinking about joining the church.” The minister wrote: “This class is open to anyone considering baptism and a deeper commitment to the Church and our Lord.  We will meet each week through Easter, and discuss the life of faith and the history of the Church.  There will be assignments to read and people to talk to.”

I was impressed.  Frankly, I think this minister had the right idea about the sorts of things people ought to know if they are going to be baptized and join the church.  In fact, I was pleased to note that this particular minister thought that unbaptized adults ought to know anything prior to being baptized; discipleship is a long, hard road, and people ought to know what they are getting into before they “take the plunge”–as it were.

Where I ran into some problems was the next sentence, again speaking about the assignments: “They will not be hard” (emphasis in the original).  Everything that the minister had been trying to say about the fact that Christianity takes time to understand, about the sacrifice it takes to become a Christian, it seems to me, is washed away by that little line: They will not be hard.  Now, I think I know what this minister meant, but to say that learning about baptism and joining the church is not hard is to mislead people about what it means truly to be a Christian.  It is, in fact, hard to be a Christian; not much of it has anything to do with not being hard.

But that’s often the way the church works nowadays.  “People are busy,” we reason, “so let’s not put anything extra on them.  If we want them to come to church we have to convince them that what we’re going to ask of them is not hard.”  Let’s be honest, if you’ve ever done any work in the church, if you’ve ever tried to recruit anyone to work in the church, you understand the logic.  The church needs someone to serve in a particular capacity, and you’ve been selected to approach people about serving.  What’s the first thing you say?  If you’re anything like me, the first thing you want to say is, “Don’t worry, what we’re asking you to do will not be hard.  In fact, it won’t take much time or effort at all.”

It makes all kinds of sense to advertise the Christian life as “low-maintenance.”  But if that’s true, then we ought not complain when everybody is too busy to serve in a leadership position, or to teach a Sunday School class, or sing in the choir, or visit shut-ins, or even come to church.  Why should they work?  We promised them that it would not be hard.

But when Jesus met Peter and Andrew and James and John, they were fishing, and what did Jesus say?  “Hey, fellas, I have an interesting proposition for you.  It might be worth your while.  Could I have a moment of your time?  What I’m going to ask of you will not be hard.”  No.  He said, “Follow me and I will make you fish for people.”  And the text says that all four of them dropped what they were doing and followed–dropped their jobs and their families (Matt. 4:22) and followed.

I know the whole deal sounds pretty rigorous, but Jesus isn’t bargaining for a few minutes of our time and chump change.  He wants it all.  He wants us . . . hook, line, and sinker.  And if that is truly the case, the church is going to have to drop phrases like “They will not be hard” from use.

Let’s face it, it will be hard, but it will not be in vain.

The Living God

“It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God” (Heb. 10:31).

“We die and we die and we die, not only physicallyBwithin seven years every cell in our body is renewed—but emotionally and spiritually as change seizes us by the scruff of the neck and drags us forward into another life.  We are not here simply to exist.  We are here in order to become” (Susan Howatch, Absolute Truths).

The writer of Hebrews writes a letter to a community that was apparently on the verge of reconsidering its commitment to Christ.  The author uses an extended argument to demonstrate to the reader that living as a Christian, as painful as it might be because of institutionalized persecution, is superior to their former lives.  Commitment to Jesus surpasses all other attempts at worshiping God.  Apparently, however, the readers of the letter to the Hebrews were having second thoughts, and were beginning to abandon their faith in Christ in favor of their former attachments.

The Hebrews’ writer writes: “How much worse punishment do you think will be deserved by those who have spurned the Son of God, profaned the blood of the covenant by which they were sanctified, and outraged the Spirit of Grace?” (Heb. 10:29).  In effect, the Hebrews= writer says, “You can’t go back.”

Let’s be honest: there are times when each of us wishes our faith didn’t ask as much from us.  We wind up organizing church events for people who don’t come.  We have to get out of bed on our only day off.  We can’t do all the things that television causes to look so appetizing.  Then we start to think that our faith is certainly cumbersome, not allowing us to do all the things we’d like.  And we wonder what life would be like if we didn’t have God telling us what to do all the time, which we guiltily admit to ourselves sounds pretty good.

Prayer starts to come harder.  Reading scripture seems increasingly like a burden we shouldn’t have to endure.  We begin to think of places where we can get a greater return on our hard earned money.  Lies come easier.  We find an unlimited number of excuses for being away from the Lord’s Table.

God, this whole faith thing is costing an awful lot more than I expected.  Can’t we just tone it down some?  No sense being fanatical about it, is there?  I thought faith was supposed to help me fine-tune my self-image.

All of a sudden, we hear the echoes of the Hebrew writer saying, “You can’t turn back.  You can’t return to the security of your former life, because you died and your life is hidden now in Christ.  You must stay the course.  You must grow.”

“But it asks so much of me.”

“We are not here simply to exist.  We are here in order to become.”

“I don’t know if I’ll survive the changes God requires of me.”

“One thing’s for sure: you won’t survive not changing—because not changing is, by definition, death.”

“But, I’m afraid.”

“It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of a living God.”