Palpable Absence

These are challenging days for the Broadways and Esteses.  We are still tender from the losses of our beloved Everly and Herbie, and we will be for the foreseeable future.  Today what stands out to me is a palpable absence.

It is the absence that is filling all available space.  It is not so much that I am thinking about specific things that Everly said or did, nor that I am seeing her in my imagination. All of that is true, but what seems to press most on me is the lack of the one who for so long was always in the midst of my life.

It struck me last weekend when I was attending a professional conference in Pennsylvania.  I have attended these meetings at this time for almost two decades.  On a few occasions, Everly and children have joined me for the early summer getaway.  Usually, I have gone on my own to be with friends.  We would call our wives or husbands during the evenings to catch up.  If I were giving a paper, I would report on how it went and whether I believed I was making significant scholarly progress.  I would tell her about various friends at the meeting, and she would fill me in on job, home, and the kids.

Thus my attendance at the CTS/NABPR meeting in late May and early June was a regular rhythm of our lives.  Though usually not together during those days, it was a time for mutual investment in my career progress, for thinking ahead into the summer plans for our kids, and for a period of years, a season of planning and sharing family time around our kids' high school graduations.  It was a time, even though apart, that we were in the work together.

That must be why on Saturday afternoon I began to be overwhelmed by waves of grief.  As I thought about how Everly would have enjoyed the weather and the beautiful scenery of Latrobe, PA, and the Lincoln Highway that took me there, her absence overwhelmed me.  I had driven alone from Durham to Latrobe, and it was a pleasant trip.  But car travel was often some of our most important conversation time.  Everly enjoyed sleeping in the car, but she also enjoyed working things out, figuring out problems, making plans, and generally talking through whatever was on our agenda.  I was feeling the absence in the car and at the many sights and stops we would have shared.

That night I turned on the iTunes playlist that I had made on our anniversary, May 24, 2013.  Everly never actually heard too much of it.  She was not much for listening to other people's music, or for much variety of music at all.  But I had put together the songs believing she would like them tolerably, and in the last weeks of her life I played this music often for my own help and comfort.  One of my friends came by my room to find me lying in the bed, listening to music, and sobbing.  He was at a loss, wanting to provide support if appropriate, but not sure how to respond.  I told him I was doing what Kate Campbell says in a song, "fading to blue."  I made as much sense of my mood as I could for him, and let him off the hook of needing to help me get through it.

Again, it was a palpable absence.  She and I would not share a traveler's room again.  We would not take scenic drives.  We would not enjoy the beauty of a new place.  The next day, I would drive home alone, and she would not be there when I got there.  It's the absence, above all, that weighed on me.

Today was another day of absence.  I have been looking at houses in Durham for the past few weeks.  I am relocating back to North Carolina, and I want to make this move a good match for my convictions about where to live in relation to my church and ministry.  It is my effort to respond to the first "R" of John Perkins's "Three Rs:"  relocation.  Perkins came to believe that the only way that church people can play a role in transforming their communities is to relocate to the neighborhoods where they feel called to minister.  In one way, it is a reaction against the dominant pattern of "commuter churches" which functions within a consumer model of "church shopping."  It elevates the neighborliness of being in walking distance of one another, of making friends of those around us.  In another way, it is the response to Jesus' incarnation, to go to the people where they are and live among them.  There are many implications for class and race that you should be able to imagine.

I had identified three neighborhoods in which to search.  Rather than go into detail about them and raise all kinds of questions about why I did or did not end up in a specific place, let me simply characterize them generally.  One neighborhood already has in it a number of friends who share similar views about relocation.  That would be a place to become part of existing structures and practices of community life, a very attractive possibility.  Another neighborhood has some churches involved in community organizing, as well as several which would likely be willing and even eager to join the broad based organizing efforts with the right kind of relationships and leadership to pull them into the fray.  Another neighborhood is near the church I have been attending, as a "commuter member," for almost twenty years.  It would mean putting my body and energy into sharing life with the neighbors who are in close proximity to the place our church meets.

All of these neighborhoods are outside of the main popular areas of town.  That means housing prices are somewhat or even significantly lower than the "aspirational" neighborhoods.  That is a good thing, since my income is much lower now than when Everly was our major breadwinner.  Combining the money from selling our Demerius Street house in 2012, savings, and insurance money, I am hoping to keep a purchased house as affordable as possible.  Yet, having lived in a very small house for 25 years, I do wish for a bit more space to spread out.  I also want plenty of room for my kids to come and stay a while as needed over the next few years.  Finally, I want to be able to be hospitable to neighbors and other folks God will send my way.

So today I was taking a third look at what seems to be the most promising house to come along.  No house has been perfect.  These are not perfect house neighborhoods.  Most houses are old.  The ones that are renovated to match the trends of the times start to be priced out of my range.  The ones that have not been renovated much at all often look like nightmares of slow, even interminable repairs.  Many are too small, too deteriorated, or too oddly arranged.  Buried oil tanks, water leaks, poor drainage, and shifting foundations crop up everywhere.  This house I was looking at had big promise:  priced low for its size, all new inside renovations which are done well, new HVAC, all new bathrooms, a big yard, nice porches, including an upstairs porch.  I know I could be pretty comfortable in the house.  Another small one not very far away lacks any "extra" room for me to spread out, and it also is not within the walking distance criterion that I want to stick by.

So on the third look, I can't help but see the things that undermine the house's promise.  There are some old structural concrete items that need to go, a dead tree in the yard, and branches from another tree too close to the house.  There are questions that will require an inspector to search around in the crawl space, which I have not yet tried to do.  A few details of the renovations are consistently left undone.  I'm uncertain about many things.  I need to talk it through.  My good friends Nancy Bumgardner and Joanne Jennings have been kind enough to go with me on separate occasions to look at this house.  They each have different and good insights into how to look at and evaluate it.  My realtor thinks it will be possible to have certain work done as part of the purchase contract.

But the absence is palpable.  There is one that I trust, one whom I want to please.  She understands the strengths in how I think and also recognizes my blind spots.  She is not here to talk this through.  So I go on trying to think on my own.  I can see multiple points of view, strengths and weaknesses, promises and potential dangers.  The yard is so big, and I'm not a lover of yard work.  The house has idiosyncrasies.  Will I get sick of them, or will they just become normal to me?  Can I make the space work as a place of hospitality for neighbors and for my family when they come to visit?

I would love above all to be able to sit and dream together about this or some other house and what we think about the life we could live in it.  We did that in Austin about a year ago, and we were actually in the midst of buying a house just twelve months ago.  It would have been the home for our last years.  We were trying to be near a certain church and in a certain neighborhood.  We felt pretty good about our options.  We were making room for all our kids to be comfortable visiting with us.  But the change in her cancer led us to back out of that contract.

Here I am a year later about to start the same process.  I wish I could sit and chat, share a drive, and ease into the comfort of knowing that the two of us are ready to face the challenges of a new home together.  I won't get that this time around.  And wherever I end up, there will be an empty side of the bed, empty closet space, and a big room with an even bigger palpable absence.  Yes, there is a constant and abiding presence of Everly in and with me all the time.  But that presence exists in and alongside her absence.

Would You Know Something Good If You Saw It?

This sermon was first preached at Mt. Level Missionary Baptist Church on March 30, 2014.

Lectionary Gospel Text:  John 9:1-41

Today I want to reflect with you on a question raised by this story.  The question is, “Would you know something good if you saw it?  Would you recognize good news if you heard it?”  On this fourth Sunday of Lent, we continue in our journey of self-examination, of repentance, of seeking to turn in the path of following Jesus.  We have a story from the time of Jesus’ ministry that was filled with conflicts.  It is a story of how people were not ready to receive what Jesus brought to them.  It is their story and our story too.  Would you know something good if you saw it?  Would I?  Would I recognize the good news if I heard it?  Would you?

What a crazy, mixed up story this is!  People are looking at one another, whom they have known for a long time, trying to figure out if they recognize each other.  People are asking the same people the same questions over and over.  It’s almost as mixed up as the famous Abbott and Costello routine about “Who’s on first?”  Yes, he is.  Who is?  The first baseman.  That’s who I’m asking about.  That’s who it is?  What?  He’s on second base? etc., etc., etc.  These people could not stop asking questions long enough to think and figure out what was going on.  Religious people, the teachers and preachers, were arguing with one another about whether what they were seeing can really be happening.  They were arguing about their doctrines and ignoring what they saw and heard right there in the streets of Jerusalem.  Some people were afraid to say what they thought.  One man in the middle of it all was flabbergasted at how everyone was acting toward him.

When you and I look at this story, we tend to be drawn to a key aspect of it.  A man who had been born blind received his sight because of Jesus.  We might even tend to ignore the rest of all these goings on.  On the other hand, if something like this happened in our neighborhoods, there would probably be a commotion.  People would wonder how it happened.  And if we understand the situation in which this story occurs, maybe we can also get the picture of why all the arguing came about.

John’s gospel is full of stories of what happened when Jesus was in Jerusalem.  Unlike the other three gospels, which tell Jesus’ story in a familiar and similar way about his ministry that is focused in Galilee, this fourth gospel is different.  It has mostly stories the others do not include.  And at this point in the middle of the gospel of John, Jesus has been in Jerusalem long enough to have become a major topic of conversation and controversy in the city. 

If you look back through several chapters, you will see how some people, especially the religious and political leaders, are trying to do battle with him.  They want to discredit him, prove him wrong.  They want to try to show him up in front of the crowds.  But every time they try, Jesus comes out looking great in the eyes of the people.  His popularity grows.  He outsmarts them, makes them look foolish, makes them look selfish and greedy and arrogant.  He shows he understands God and theology better than they do.  He keeps urging people to care about one another and not so much about who is in charge or who tries to appear perfect before the law.  Jesus is winning the battle of public opinion, and his opponents are becoming his enemies.  They get madder with each encounter. 

If you look at the chapters which follow, it continues to intensify.  Eventually, he has to leave the city and go to the outlying villages.  He knows that he is in danger.  He recognizes that people are plotting to kill him.  Seeing it coming, he is trying to make the most of his last days.  He is designing a plan to bring the crisis to a head in a way that will make it clear what God was doing through him.  So when his disciples ask him an important theological question, he offers an multilayered answer in hopes they will come to see better who he is and what God sent him to do.

They ask him a question that comes from what we might call pop theology or the folk tradition.  They see a man who has been blind from birth.  They wonder aloud to him about why the man is blind.  They assume it is a punishment from God, either upon him or upon his parents for sin.  How they would think a man born blind could have sinned before birth and been punished, I have no idea.  But I suspect their puzzlement had to do with fairness or justice.  If it was because of his parents’ sin, why would God bring the punishment on their child?  So in order to try to make it seem more fair, they tried to imagine that it was the man’s own sin.

It’s a strange question as we analyze it.  But it’s not so far from the pop theology and folk religion of our own time.  We see something happen to someone in our community or neighborhood, and we imagine that God did it to the person because of some sin they have committed.  We tell ourselves that people who get sick or don’t get well must be being punished by God.  Or we say they did not have enough faith, another way of calling them sinners.  We act like it’s a simple cause and effect rule, an input-output machine.  Do something bad, God gets you.  Be good, God blesses you. 

Well how is it, then, that people who risked the savings and retirement funds, the mortgages and jobs of millions and billions of people in the world, lost all that money and put people out of their homes and jobs—these very same people got bonuses and raises and continue to be the richest people in the world?  Did all those people who lost their jobs get punished for their sins, but the crooks who caused the companies to fail and the economy to go into recession get blessed for being good?  Of course not.  All we have to do is read the book of Job carefully to see that this kind of thinking is bad theology.  Evil that occurs in the world is not by God’s design or cause.  It’s not a simple input and output.  Sometimes the unrighteous and evil prosper.  We see that way too often.

So Jesus first answers them by saying that they have it all wrong.  The man is not born blind as punishment on anyone.  Sometimes blindness or other hardships or disabilities happen in the process of fetal development.  Children are born with challenges.  Yet we also find that people with challenges can flourish.  Those who cannot see may find as much joy in life as those who can see.  The many variations in human gifts and abilities allow many variations in the form of a joyful life.  I would not belittle the hardships that people may face who find their abilities significantly different from most people.  But we don’t make sense of their struggles by trying to blame them or their families and tell them God is punishing them.

Then Jesus goes into a deeper theological truth.  He begins to talk about the specific meaning of his coming into the world.  He tells the disciples that he has a unique task and a limited time to accomplish it.  As we have already mentioned, this story appears in the Gospel of John.  This is one of four writings in our New Testament that we call “Gospels.”  The Gospels are the writings that tell us the story of Jesus.  They convey to us what he did, why he did it, and what it all means.  And if we remember our Sunday school training well, we remember that the word “gospel” means “good news.”  They are stories of good news.

It is an interesting time in churches and in theological studies to be thinking about this word gospel.  What does Gospel mean?  What constitutes “good news?”  When I was growing up, we were trained to “share the gospel.”  The people who came up with this training believed that gospel was about individuals getting right with God, and that was all that it was.  It could be fit into a small paper tract, a leaflet smaller than my hand.  So if people could read that tract and learn that their sins could be forgiven, and if they would ask for that forgiveness from Jesus, who made it possible, then they could be right with God.  Well of course that training was true, as far as it went.  Jesus did make it possible for us to be forgiven.  We do need to be right with God.  And many of us find ourselves longing for forgiveness, under a weight of sin.  Thanks be to God for the forgiveness of sins we receive because of Jesus Christ!

But the reason I needed more than that training offered is that when we read our Bibles and find the word gospel, there is a lot more going on than this message of inward peace through forgiveness.  The Gospel is grander, deeper, richer, and all around “gooder” news that touches everything about our lives and about the history of the world.  One New Testament scholar has referred to that version of the gospel as the “soterian” gospel.  He’s showing off his knowledge of New Testament Greek by using the Greek word “soter,” which means savior.  This is a version of the gospel that is narrowly focused on sin and forgiveness as an individual’s problem.  I got sin, you got sin, all God’s children got sin.  One by one, this soterian gospel says, we get right with God.  And God is satisfied with individuals being sorry for sin and asking for forgiveness. 

When John Perkins was converted in evangelical churches in Southern California, he began to participate in this kind of sharing of the gospel.  But the longer he ministered, the more he realized that the message of the gospel was bigger than just a simple sinner’s prayer.  It was for the whole person.  Not just the heart, the gospel was for the mind, the body, the entire life.  And it was not just for a person, it was for social life, for communities.  He became the great advocate for a wholistic view of the gospel.  Jesus brought us the whole gospel for the whole person and the whole community.

This scholar I mentioned, Scot McKnight, is an evangelical himself.  He is not denying this soterian message is an element of the gospel.  But in his thick book, The King Jesus Gospel, he says that this aspect of the gospel is a reduction, a minimizing, of a much richer meaning of the word.  The Good News is the whole story of what Jesus did, from coming into the world, living and loving, teaching and preaching, challenging the powers and lifting up the lowly, and finally being executed for his words and deeds.  God raised him from the dead and vindicated all that he had done.  What does McKnight say that Jesus had done?  Jesus had come to bring an end to the exile.  He had come to restore God’s promises.  He had come to fulfill the true purpose of God’s calling of Israel.  He was the announcer of the Kingdom of God, and he was even the Kingdom of God in himself.  That story, that life, that person, those words and actions, all of that is the Good News.  It’s not just about me, myself, and I, all alone, getting right with God.  It’s about all of us, all of the world, being called together by God to be a new kind of people, a loving, caring, forgiving, reconciling, sharing, righteous, humble, peaceable people.

If we think about it, whenever Jesus taught us about asking for forgiveness, he also had another thing he liked to say.  He said, “Forgive, and you will be forgiven.”  Asking forgiveness from God for myself, if that is all I do, starts to look a bit selfish, especially if I cannot be changed by Jesus to become a forgiving person.  Jesus says not to expect to be forgiven if we don’t become forgivers.  The good news definitely includes your forgiveness and my forgiveness from God.  But it also includes that we don’t have to keep holding grudges and counting demerits and merits toward others.  We can be free to forgive, and that is the kind of person Jesus wants to turn us into.

So Jesus explains to the disciples that neither the parents’ sins nor this man’s sins caused the blindness.  But now that they have seen this man on this glorious day, it is an opportunity for Jesus to show the man, his family, the neighbors, the disciples, and anyone who wants to see it, that Jesus came to bring the light of God into the world.  He is restoring Israel to the purpose to which they were originally called.  He is turning things around and upside down.  As long as they have not killed him yet, he has some more light to shine.

Maybe some of you already have been thinking about a theological matter that I have puzzled over concerning the good news.  Quite a few years ago, I first talked publicly about this matter at a Wednesday night Bible study here at Mt. Level.  I’ve been thinking about it off and on ever since.  I recently gave a presentation to a group of baptist professors in Atlanta about it.  That matter I continue to think about is much like the one that Scot McKnight has been thinking about.  But it may be even more specific than his discussion of the gospel.  I keep wondering about this word gospel in a specific context: when Jesus himself says the word “gospel” or “good news,” there are some very specific things he means by it.  Now I’m not going to go into a boring lecture about all the different times Jesus says the word gospel.  Actually, it might not be boring at all for those of us who love the Bible.  But I’m not going to do that today.  Today I want to point out one central, very important time when Jesus says the word “good news.”

It was recorded in Luke chapter 4.  He was preaching in the synagogue in Nazareth.  He was announcing to the people there why he had become a preacher and teacher, and what God had sent him to do.  He quoted from the prophet Isaiah.  He quoted texts about the restoration of Israel, the fulfillment of God’s promises and purposes.  And he said he came to bring good news to poor people.  That’s right, he specifically singled out poor people.  And to drive the point home, he named all kinds of people who are poor and need some good news:  oppressed, imprisoned, and yes, blind people.  When we meet blind people in the New Testament, they are usually beggars.  To be blind meant that it was hard to learn a skill and earn a living.  To be blind meant that folk religion and pop theology made you out to be a sinner.  Lots of people were not very friendly to the blind.  And that’s exactly what we found out in this story from John 9.  This man born blind was a beggar.  He is one of the ones Jesus announced that he came to give good news.

What is that good news?  If it is the news of the Jubilee and the Sabbath year, it is that the poor don’t have to stay poor.  It is that the beggars can get a fresh start.  It is that slaves can be free again and debtors can have their debts forgiven.  It is the good news that among God’s people, there must be no need among us.  For anyone who is in need, God has a provision—the open hand of those who can share from God’s bountiful blessings.  That is good news.

But if you are among the rich and powerful, it might not seem to be good news immediately.  You might resent the idea that you should part with some of your wealth so that others can eat.  You might not like the idea that your second or third home could be a home for the people who have been set out and homeless because of the loss of income or foreclosure.  You might not think it’s to your advantage for the blind to no longer be viewed a sinners who caused their own hardship.  Since you aren’t blind, and you have some money, you have been claiming that God is blessing you for being righteous.  Now this rogue preacher says the good news is this man does not have to be poor, and he will shed some light in this moment of time by giving the blind man sight.

And now we get to the serious issue that causes this text to turn into a circus.  The issue is that when some people hear or see good news, they don’t recognize it.  They don’t understand it.  They call good, evil, and evil, good. 

As we noted earlier, some of the people seem confused at first.  They probably never really got to know the blind man.  He was just there all the time, begging.  They hardly looked at him.  He probably looked down at the ground or off in the distance.  So they did not recognize his face very well.  They kept talking to one another about him, as if he were not there himself.  They asked one another whether he was the same beggar who hung around the neighborhood.  Some were sure he was, others not.  He kept telling them, “Hello!  I’m right here!  Yes, I’m the same guy.  I was blind.  I was a beggar.  Jesus made me able to see.  I am that man.”

As if they had not been rude enough already, some went off to find the preachers, I mean the deacons, I mean the Pharisees.  They brought them in to offer an expert opinion.  So they started quizzing the man and the witnesses.  But before long, they were back to their usual ways, arguing with one another, trying to prove who was the most clever in understanding theology and the scriptures.  One is focused on the Sabbath laws, a favorite topic of theological dispute.  Another is trying to understand how such a transformation as ending blindness could occur at all, unless it was from God.  They can’t get it settled among themselves.  So they keep quizzing the man, almost as if he were on trial.  They want to quiz Jesus, although many have already decided that Jesus is a no good liar, a blasphemer, a sinner of the worst kind.  Of course Jesus could not have done this because he is such a sorry sinner.

They ask the formerly blind man questions, but they really don’t listen to his opinion.  They are sure they are the ones who know it all.  They get everyone upset.  Then they call for the man’s parents to be brought.  They get them so worried that they won’t even offer an opinion.  They are afraid they are going to get in trouble.  The man who got his eyesight gets so flabbergasted that he starts being sarcastic with the Pharisees.  He asks why they want to hear the same thing again.  He asks if they are trying to become Jesus’ disciples.

That made the Pharisees blow their tops.  Now they could be united.  They had a common enemy.  Jesus and anyone who might seem to like Jesus.  They accuse the formerly blind man of being Jesus’ disciple.  They brag that they are disciples of Moses.  They follow the law.  They don’t know what foolishness Jesus is up to, and they want nothing to do with him.

After all this outburst, the formerly blind man lays it on the line.  He says, “Man, I thought you guys were supposed to know something about God.  Listen to the junk y’all are saying.  Something amazing happened here.  I’ve been blind from birth.  But Jesus came along and made a way for me to see.  Now I can see.  How else could something like that happen except from God?  And you so-called teachers of God’s ways can’t even see the good that God is doing.  This is good news, folks.  Why can’t you hear and understand that?”

They can’t take his uppity words.  They try to cut him down to size.  They start preaching that folk religion.  They say he is a sinner, or else he would not have been blind.  They are not blind, so they must not be sinners.  Lord, they are full of themselves.  They are full of pride and self-satisfaction.  They can’t stand this kind of talk, so they chase the poor man away.  Once he was gone, they stood there shaking their heads.  Can you believe that guy?  Acting like he knows more about God than we do?  We are the ones who know how things are done.  We are the ones who can teach and live right.  Who does he think he is?

I suspect the man who ran off was shaking his head, too.  The so-called wise and religious ones sure came across ignorant that day.  Right before their eyes, a great thing had happened.  He figured most people would be overjoyed to get to see such a thing in their lifetime.  But these jerks just wanted to make it another reason to fight and argue and try to prove their superiority. 

What a blessing that Jesus was still nearby.  He got a report on what had happened, so he went looking for the man.  He found him and encouraged him.  He made sure the formerly blind man understood that he, Jesus, was sent from God.  And he put the crazy events into the right context.  He told the formerly blind man about why God sent him into the world.  He says that by bringing good news, he also brings judgment.  For people who refuse to receive the good news, the message becomes a judgment.  And it turns out that the ones who thought they could see are the ones who are really blind.  The Pharisees got mad all over again, but Jesus says they are bringing this judgment on themselves.  He has brought good news.  Why can’t they see it?  Open your eyes.  You have all the opportunities of studying God’s word.  Look. Listen.  There’s good news.  Receive it.  God has a way for us that is justice, its mercy, its walking humbly with God.  That’s what God requires.  That’s what God asks.  That’s what God made us for.  It’s good news for all of us.  The blind man sees it.  The poor can hear it.  You religious, law studying people, you privileged people—you all can hear it too.

The summary of all the law is to Love God with all that you are, and to love your neighbor.  Love this man.  Love that he can see.  Love that God makes a way for all of us to have what we need.  Love that God forgives, and that God can make us into forgiving people.  Love the grace that personal sin in your life can be forgiven, and that God can break down the walls and structures of sin that oppress and impoverish and imprison our sisters and brother.  God knows our needs and our struggles, our failures and our troubles.  God comes to find us where we are, and God brings good news.  Wherever we are, God has good news for us.  

 For those of us who are sick, the good news is that Jesus is the Great Physician.  For those who feel marked and stained by the crowd they are running with, the good news is that Jesus can sanctify us to God.  For those who feel the weight of sin, the good news is that Jesus forgives the sinner.  For those who are alone, the good news is that Jesus is a friend.  For those who feel abandoned, the good news is that Jesus embraces us and makes us part of the family.  For those who are in neighborhoods where trouble abounds, the good news is that Jesus came to restore streets to live in.  Wherever we are and whatever our condition, Jesus is bringing us good news.  Thanks be to God for this good news.  Let us hear and receive it, all of it, leaving none of it out.  Jesus saves us from our failures, our oppressive ways, our sins, our blindness, our lostness.  Thanks be to God.  Thanks for good news.  Thanks for Jesus’ coming to bring it to us.  Amen and amen.

Evangelism and Evangelicalism

I read an interesting post on the "Call and Response" blog from the Faith and Leadership program at Duke Divinity School. Louis Weeks wrote about the accessibility and usefulness of the term Evangelical among Presbyterians and mainstream Protestants. He took note of what he sees a changes in the way that many Protestants view the word.

To some extent, he is describing a certain blurriness of the previously demarcated border between more conservative and more liberal Protestants, Presbyterians in particular. I agree that this concept is in flux among Protestants (and among some of a new generation of Catholics, too), so I offered my own thoughts on the way that Baptists (should I say baptists?) have use and understood the terms evangelism and evangelicalism during my lifetime. Here is what I had to say.

Growing up among Baptists, there was ambivalence about the term evangelical because it implied certain views of church and state which depart from the free church tradition. They liked the term evangelistic, however, and pressed us all to learn to tell our testimony and the plan of salvation whenever the grace of God presented the opportunity.

Yet in both uses of the term, one describing a verbal witness seeking a verbal response (evangelism) and the other describing adherence to a version of Reformed confession with a biblicist or fundamentalist flavor, seem to me to be theological misdirections.

What is evangelism? We all know to answer that it is sharing the good news. The next question which arises must be, "What is the good news?" I would offer that like much of modern North American theology, the concept of evangelism has been domesticated and perverted by modern Western culture.

As John Perkins noticed in the 60s and 70s, most churches he encountered had a very narrow view of "the gospel." One thing that was certain in the dominant streams of theology, especially among many evangelicals, was that the gospel was NOT about the social conditions of human existence. Jim Crow and widespread poverty were something else, perhaps related to missions, but not to the gospel. The "real" work of the church was the gospel of personal forgiveness and eternal life.

This is only a piece of the gospel. Perkins says we must bear the whole gospel to the whole person and the whole community. To see this holistic picture, I recommend looking to the Gospels to see what Jesus was talking about when he used the word "euangelion." Luke 4 is one of the key examples: good news for the poor, liberty for the oppressed, a path to wholeness for the marginalized lame, blind, and vulnerable, and a troubling challenge to the injustices of the day. This kind of good news makes clear that God is at work for the good of humanity whom God loves, in this life and the next.

We need to recover these words for the church, but we need a richer, biblical understanding of them or recovering them will merely perpetuate the shortcomings of the domesticated, malformed churches of the age of the modern nation-state.

John Perkins has been saying lately that "we have over-evangelized the world too lightly." He is remarking on the contrast between the reported religiosity of the U. S. in comparison with the lack of fruit in the form of compassion, justice, and reconciliation. He is pointing out that the so-called evangelistic fervor of modern churches has asked less and less of the convert. A mere momentary statement of desire to know God becomes enough to be deemed "saved" or "Christian." He challenges evangelical and evangelistic churches to review the Great Commission, which says to go and make disciples through teaching and training in the ways of Jesus. What we have is Christian Lite, Church Lite, Jesus Lite.

A professor from another institution took me aside after my workshop at the Christian Community Development Association on Thursday. The workshop title was "On-the-Ground Theology: Seminaries Learning from Faithful Practices," and I was reporting on some parts of my research on exemplary churches and church-related organizations. This professor wanted to talk more about what I had said about how these churches understand the term "gospel." He said that he and another professor from his institution had discussed this same topic after hearing some speakers earlier in the program. If they were to accept what they were hearing at CCDA, and if they were to hope to teach it at their school, they would have to spend some time redefining "gospel" among their constituencies. He was right. Christian Community Development is not merely a set of techniques and programs. It's a theological renewal movement.

I have found myself over a number of years experimenting with ways to articulate this very issue. Gospel has been watered down so much in the U. S. churches that it often has little resemblance to the ways that it was used in stories told about Jesus and in his recorded sayings. It's almost a homeopathic gospel--like a solution so diluted that no more molecules of the active ingredient remain. Often, it seems the gospel comes down to following a four-step syllogism and repeating a prayer composed by someone else. That is considered by many the essence of bearing good news. The assumed result is an invisible transaction in a hidden place within a person.

The CCDA movement has been committed to sharing the whole gospel for the whole person and the whole community. They resist the temptation to boil down and dilute the gospel. They look to the word when it is spoken by Jesus (Luke 4:16-21), and find it to be inseparably linked with liberation of the poor and oppressed. John Perkins talks about how God finds us at our point of deepest need and brings good news to us. Those needs can take many forms, including physical needs, economic issues, and longings for justice. They also recognize that the redemptive work of Christ includes the establishment of loving community according to the pattern of God's intention for creation. Community itself is good news. That was Jesus' way of describing how people would know which group were his followers--because of the love they have for one another (John 13:34-35).

Why would we have settled for anything less than the full richness of the whole gospel? The beauty of the good news is far greater than many of us have ever heard in church. It's time we swear off Gospel Lite.

Today I am taking a second look at the concept of relocation, a primary missiological principle from the work of John Perkins and the Christian Community Development Association. I am asking two students to respond to this mission practice by reflecting on two books they have read. The first, With Justice For All, by John Perkins, addresses the principle of relocation after about twenty years of ministry in Mendenhall and Jackson, MS. The second, To Live in Peace, by Mark R. Gornik, also addresses the principle after fifteen years of ministry in Baltimore, MD. Gornik, having been influenced by Perkins, began his ministry four years after the Perkins book was published. So between them, they represent about forty years of experience and discussion on the idea of relocation.

They are different people with very different backgrounds, including the region of the country, the historical economics and demographics of their locations, their skin colors, their opportunities and accomplishments in formal education, and much more. In both cases, they have moved into neighborhoods where they were outsiders and become part of organizing and community building for change.

What are the barriers to relocation? What difference does it make that Gornik is white, moving into a mostly black neighborhood? What difference does it make that the Perkins family was middle class, moving into a poor neighborhood? Finally, why do these ministry practitioners believe that relocation is so important?

The first principle of Christian Community Development is Relocation. There is some talk among leaders in the CCDA about renaming it "incarnational ministry." The original term, coined by John Perkins, is the scandalous claim that our calling is not irrelevant to our street address, to our geographical location. The latter term gives more traditional theological language to the principle, but lacks its specificity.

As a principle of incarnational ministry, relocation insists that a calling to serve people is a calling to live among them. The Gospel of John says that the Word Made Flesh dwelt ("tabernacled," pitched a tent) among us. I like to say it this way: the Word became flesh and moved in next door. Jesus came to all the world, but he did so in one place, among one people. Lacking his own home, perhaps we should say that the Word became flesh and slept on a pallette in our spare room.

Why is relocation important? It is not merely an answer to WWJD. It is also built on sociological observation. It has to do with race and class analysis. It has to do with our social psychology. We tend to act on things that directly affect us. If there is a pothole in the street near your driveway, you are the one who is most likely to raise some noise to try to get it fixed. If there are dozens of potholes in another neighborhood where you do not live and where you never drive, it is very unlikely that you will even be aware of them. You are almost guaranteed not to become an activist over those potholes. Our residence affects what problems drive us to act.

This sort of analysis provides a lens through which to observe the mission habits of churches. A church full of middle-class people in a middle-class neighborhood may have some pangs of conscience about the plight of the poor. A predominately white congregation may be troubled by the situation of black people in their city. In both cases, a church may organize for missions by planning a clean-up day at a low-income housing project. They may hold a joint worship with a church "in the hood" and provide some financial support to the congregation. They may bring food boxes into the remote poor neighborhood at Thanksgiving, using a list of families received from a social service agency. All of these actions show a response to real needs which can be traced to an understanding of the love of God poured out to all people.

The structural and systemic issues which perpetuate racial division, poverty, and the nexus of race and class, are complex and difficult to face. Part of the problem is geographical. If I live in a middle-classs neighborhood, I don't have to deal with the kinds of problems that affect the lives of the poor. If I have to face a drug problem in my neighborhood, it is likely as a parent or spouse trying to help someone overcome an addiction. In the poor neighborhood, they have to deal with an underground drug economy which sometimes entails violent forms of competition. They may deal with addictions, often of parents who cannot hold a job because their addictions have spun in a downward spiral of personal, familial, and economic degradation. They do not have access to expensive recovery programs. Others are trying to pick up the pieces of what to do about the children or their criminal activity to support their habits. All the while, the middle-class drug abusers are perpetuating the drug economy when they buy their drugs in the poor neighborhood. The residents of that neighborhood keep having to deal with their children's temptations to become drug dealers, the only people they see who have money.

Drugs may be a problem in both neighborhoods, but they do not affect both neighborhoods in the same way. In the middle class neighborhood, I am likely to see the problems of drugs very differently, and if I get active about it, I am very unlikely to address the systemic and structural issues. I probably want to jail the drug dealers and keep my kids from associating with kids in the poor neighborhoods. I want to keep my distance from a problem in another neighborhood.

If I am a pastor of a church but I don't live in the neighborhood where the church's building stands and where the church meetings occur, then I am mostly a visitor to the neighborhood. I may spend many hours in the building, working in an office, having meetings with others who drive to the church from across town to attend meetings, and strategizing about the church's work. At key times of the week, I lead and participate in large gatherings for worship, study, and fellowship, and after two or three hours I lock up and go home. If I think about the neighborhood, it may be focused on how the adjoining properties could become part of a larger church plant, or about how the look of the neighborhood buildings and people might make people nervous about attending the church.

If I am listening to the call of Jesus, my priority for ministry is to proclaim good news to the poor. If I look at the life of Jesus, then I see him ministering among the poor and outcast. I see him taking sides with the poor in public disputes with the Pharisees, Sadducees, and Herodians. I see him ministering to the marginalized, the sick, widows, the blind, the lame, lepers, and others whose life circumstances push them into poverty. If I am going to follow Jesus, I ought to be following him into ministry in this direction.

Perkins has argued that if I live where my church and ministry are, I have a more complete understanding of how that ministry should unfold. The problems and needs of that neighborhood become my problems and needs. If there is a crime problem, it is my crime problem, motivating me to work with the neighbors on finding solutions. If there is a police problem, it is my police problem. If there is a racial profiling problem, my friends and I are affected by the racial profiling. If there are problems finding jobs, my neighbors are the ones looking for the jobs. If there is a problem with transporatation, youth activities, schools, health care, distance to grocery stores or pharmacies, or anything else, it becomes my problem. Latin American theologians called this sharing the life of the poor. The poor's problems should become my problem.

This principle of Relocation has been the most controversial and most difficult of John Perkins's teachings. I have often heard him asked about it, and he does not want to back down on its importance. On the other hand, I have heard him talk to people who have asked about what relocation means for them and give varied advice about the specific ways they might live this principle.

The New Monasticism movement has discussed this principle in a couple of ways: relocation to the abandoned places of empire, and the importance of geographical proximity for community. The priority of serving among those who are abandoned and thrown away by the systems and structures of society is an inescapable calling for those who seek a gospel-based discipleship. The calling to community is greatly undermined by our scattered church memberships who commute to see each other for an hour a week. Reading blogs is no substitute for flesh and blood communication.

There are eight principles of the Christian Community Development Association. I will continue to post on these principles as a way to work through some of my musings about the relationship of this movement to the theological winds which have turned the windmill of my research and writing.

I Have Heard of Your Faithfulness and Your Love, part 2
(This sermon was delivered at Mt. Level Missionary Baptist Church on August 20, 2006)

(continued from a previous post on Thursday, August, 24)

The Holy Spirit and faithful churches. I had heard of John and Vera Mae Perkins and Voice of Calvary Ministries. I had heard of Habitat for Humanity and the Christian Community Health Association. I had heard of Allen Temple Baptist Church in Oakland, California, St. Paul Community Baptist Church in Brooklyn, New York, West Angeles Church of God in Christ in Los Angeles, California, Lawndale Community Church in Chicago, Illinois, and Windsor Village United Methodist Church in Houston, Texas. I had heard of the simple way community in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and the Open Door Community in Atlanta, Georgia. In each case what I had heard of was their faithfulness to the Lord Jesus and their love for all the saints. And I wanted to learn from them and try to use my training to understand how the Holy Spirit was irrupting in all these places to remind the church in the United States of who it is we are following and what it is God is calling us to do and be.

Paul talks about this kind of irruption of the Holy Spirit in verse 17, saying that he prays that God will give the Ephesian churches “a spirit of wisdom and revelation” as they come to know this powerful Triune God. What had God been up to in the metropolitan area of Ephesus at the time that Paul wrote the letter? God’s own Spirit had been revealing to these churches the very heart and mind of God, the wisdom that transforms Christians and churches to become more Godlike, more Christlike, more Spirit-filled and Spirit-led. How can we know God unless God’s Spirit reveals God to us?

Thanks be to God, that we are not left alone to make our own way and try to find out what life is all about. I don’t mean we aren’t required to work at it and study to show ourselves approved, learning through our work and prayer. But all that effort would be fruitless in the face of a holy and almighty God if God did not first come to us. So Paul is praying that their faithfulness will result in an ever-deepening tutorial by the Holy Spirit.

Seeing with enlightened eyes of the heart, not just the eyes of scientific observation. What would result from that ongoing growth in wisdom, that ongoing revelation of God’s care for the world? Verse 18 says that it will be an enlightening of the eyes of their hearts. They will see not just with the scientific observer’s eyes trying to gather information, but also with enlightened eyes of the heart. Still, they will need to see with those scientific eyes, too, so they will not be deceived by the lies of the principalities and powers.

Most every time the powers make an attack on the rest of us, they make a public relations announcement to explain why what they are doing is really good for us. The world’s largest corporation announced this week that they would put a cap on salaries, in fulfillment of an internal memo earlier this year that predicted that their workers were going to start costing them more money for salaries and benefits now that many workers are staying with their jobs for longer periods, earning raises and increased benefits. But the company announced it by saying that they were doing this to help their workers advance to higher-level jobs. They said salary caps would be an incentive to apply for higher levels of supervisory or management positions.

Now you and I may be gullible sometimes, but we are not stupid. So the longer we spend thinking about this rationale, the more it does not make sense. No wonder the workers are not happy about it. The company has lots and lots of workers at the lower levels. Then there are far fewer jobs at the higher levels. It’s like a pyramid. So the workers see that they will either have to settle for fixed wages eventually or be the one out of five or one out of ten or one out of 100 that gets promoted to a higher level job. The other four, or nine, or ninety-nine, will be stuck. If they want higher wages, they’ll have to find a job somewhere else. And that makes the company happy, because they would much rather hire new low-wage employees to replace the ones who are making better wages and earning better benefits.

So we need to see with the eyes of the scientific observer, to uncover the lies of the powers and see what is being done to the people God loves. That last part of it is also why the scientific observer’s eyes are not enough. We also have to see with the eyes of our hearts enlightened by the heart of God who loves all creation.

You and I have driven through or walked by neighborhoods where houses are run down and mostly boarded up. Most of the time people see those neighborhoods as blights, as wastelands, as places where unknown and dangerous things might be going on. If any of you have been in North Philadelphia, in Kensington Heights, for instance, you would have seen an extreme version of that kind of neighborhood. North and South Lawndale in Chicago also has been that kind of neighborhood. Wayne Gordon, the pastor of Lawndale Community Church in Chicago, says that at two times in the history of those neighborhoods, their population reached half a million. But by the 1970s, Lawndale had declined from 500,000 to 100,000 residents. That means there were a lot of boarded up businesses and houses and apartment buildings and churches.

If you haven’t seen that sort of place, maybe you can imagine it. I saw it this year in Lawndale, in the Austin neighborhood of Chicago, in Camden, New Jersey, and in Brooklyn, New York. In North Philadelphia there are boarded up, dilapidated, crumbling houses for block after block, mile after mile. Some places have vast stretches of bulldozed lots with a scattering of run-down houses still inhabited by the poor. Other blocks seem completely deserted.
Sister Margaret McKenna saw North Philadelphia with a different set of eyes. She saw run down houses which were the last resort of desperate people. She saw boarded up houses where crack addicts hid and practiced their deadly rituals of self-destruction. So she convinced her Medical Missionary Sisters to buy a small house on a corner for under $10,000 in the late 1980s, and she began to make friends with the addicts. She met a Black Baptist pastor who was working with recovering addicts and joined forces with him to create a plan to help recovering addicts pool their resources to live in community.

The people in this recovery community participate in Bible study, in community service, in life skills training, in sharing their economic resources and housing, in job training, in support groups, in training about alternatives to violence, and they live together as a close-knit neighborhood ought to live. The public lie about North Philadelphia is that it is a lost cause, needs to be bulldozed, is full of criminals, and ought to be redeveloped by speculators who think they can buy it cheap and sell it for a huge profit to professionals. But seeing the truth behind the lies let Sister Margaret and her partners see that the abandoned places and the abandoned people are God’s places and God’s people. She saw Jesus in the homeless addicts, and helped them have a place to stay. The community is called New Jerusalem Laura, a collection of houses and neighbors devoted to seeking and following God. We have to see with enlightened eyes of the heart, and then we have to be faithful.

Not being blinded by eyes of fear. We also can’t just see with the eyes of fear. Fear will blind us to the truth. Fear is the absence of hope, the absence of faith, and the barrier to faithfulness. We live in a time when politicians and business leaders and managers or supervisors are constantly playing on our fears. We have orange alerts and heightened security measures. We can’t trust people with a water bottle or a tube of toothpaste. We hear that pink slips are coming. Advertisements aimed to shake us up tell we need a security system on our cars and our houses. We have to change our passwords on our ATM cards so that people in a far away country will not empty our bank accounts. We have to delete unexpected emails to make sure someone we can’t see or don’t know is not taking over our home or work computers. Fear shuts us up. It makes us stand back. It closes us in.

But Paul says to let the Spirit open the eyes of your heart, transforming them through the wisdom of knowing God. A young preacher who grew up in the Ninth Ward of New Orleans ended up in Brooklyn, New York, and in a pastorate that other ministers told him would be a career-ending job. He pressed on because he felt the call of God, and didn’t let the fear of a ruined career drive his decisions. As he got to know his parishioners, he found that many had left or were not attending because they were afraid to be out in their own neighborhood to go to church. They were afraid to wait for the bus. They were afraid to walk into city parks. They were afraid to drive down city streets. There was no police protection. The neighborhood was under the control of drug dealers and organized crime. They were seeing their world through the eyes of fear, and they had good reason to do so.

Rather than just hand it over to the powers of neglect and harm, Johnny Ray Youngblood and his congregation began to plan for recovering their neighborhood. They confronted drug dealers and criminals. They bought property and got the drug houses and prostitution houses out of their neighborhood. They joined with other churches in an organization like Durham CAN and confronted city hall about police protection, city services, and affordable housing. And before long, the fog of fear was lifting in the sphere of influence of St. Paul Community Baptist Church. They saw through the eyes of the heart, led by the Spirit, and they responded with faithfulness to the Lord Jesus Christ. We need to see through the eyes of the heart and not the eyes of fear. We need to see through eyes enlightened by the Spirit of God, and we need to respond with faithfulness.

I could tell similar stories about Dr. J. Alfred Smith, Sr., and the Allen Temple Baptist Church in Oakland, or about the Circle Rock Church in Chicago, or about the Windsor Village United Methodist Church in Houston. I heard of their faithfulness. They have been made wise by the Spirit who revealed to them the heart of God.

Getting beyond eyes of selfishness. There is another way of seeing that will keep us from doing what God wants us to do. We live in a culture dedicated to looking through the eyes of selfishness. With these eyes, we see people’s problems and say to ourselves, “That’s not my problem.” The world of marketing tempts these eyes by saying, “When was the last time you did something for just you?” Or they say, “You deserve a break today,” even though they said the same thing on that commercial yesterday.

We get so wrapped up in what someone said that hurt our feelings that we sit and mope and don’t even think about what we could be doing for someone with real problems. It reminds me of a poster I saw many years ago that said, “A refugee would love to have your problems.” Don’t you think people in Southern Lebanon might like to have your problems? Wouldn’t people in Darfur love to have your problems? Wouldn’t people sleeping on Durham’s streets tonight love to have my problems?

In San Francisco, California, I visited Grace Fellowship Community Church and the ministry partner they founded, Grace Urban Ministries. They are a Presbyterian congregation in the urban core of San Francisco. Founded in 1983 out of a mother church in Chinatown, they first began to minister in a suburban part of San Francisco. Their church included many Chinese Americans as well as some European Americans, ministering in one of the most culturally and ethnically diverse cities in the United States. Of course, Chinese Americans could be justified in pulling back from European Americans because of the history of mistreatment of Chinese workers in the U. S. But rather than self-centered eyes, they were looking through enlightened eyes of the heart and willing to seek reconciliation.

This church could have done like so many other churches in this country do. It could have settled into suburban life and waited to relocate if the community changed. But a decade after their founding, instead of moving away from the poor, Grace Fellowship Community Church relocated into the midst of the city where the needs of the poor were at their door.
Even after moving to a poorer neighborhood, they could have hired a few people to do the work and just showed up for preaching. We don’t know anyone who just shows up for preaching, now, do we? But instead they made a strong covenant of accountability to be involved in weekly Bible study, worship, and ministry. When Grace Fellowship has a churchwide retreat to pray and plan and cast a vision, over 90% of their members attend. They have as many at weekday Bible study as they have on Sunday for worship. Seeing with enlightened eyes of the heart, not with self-centered eyes, lets them demonstrate faithfulness as a real people of God with love for all the saints. We need to see with those kinds of eyes, and be faithful.

Hope and power when churches are faithful. Paul says in the next verse that enlightened eyes will see hope. It’s so easy for us to come to church and shout and get a charge, or even to quietly meditate in worship and gain strength, but then we leave to face the world with resignation that nothing is ever going to be different. We can cry out that we believe in God, but then say there is no point in trying to change the system.

Well I’m here today to say that our faith in God must be matched by our faithfulness in God. I have seen in this past year the amazing results of faithfulness. Prisoners are leaving their past of trouble and failure to become community leaders. Addicts are making themselves accountable to others and leaving behind their addictions. Doctors are turning down the big salaries they could have to serve at moderate wages in church-based community clinics. Blacks and whites and Latinos and Asians are putting aside their differences to worship together, to minister together, to recognize one another’s beauty and blessedness in the eyes of God. Faithfulness to the Lord Jesus Christ changes things. Seeing those changes is the seedbed of our hope.

Paul goes on in verse 19 to point out that we who are faithful can find out about the “immeasurable greatness” of God’s power. That power raised Jesus from the dead and seated him on the throne as Lord of heaven and earth. That power helped a few farming preachers and laypeople in Americus, Georgia, come up with a plan to use Christian moral practices to bring an end to poverty housing. That power led a church in Dallas to respond so quickly and effectively to Hurricane Katrina that the city of Dallas came to that Baptist church for guidance on how to set up their Katrina relief program. That power helped a rag-tag group of everyday folks in North Philadelphia to confront city government and the powers of the official church, even to the point of going to jail. They won a victory to keep housing for thirty homeless families. And that power of God led the judge to release them from jail because a young man explained to him that they were standing up for the homeless because Jesus was himself a homeless man.

And Paul says that the power of God has given Jesus authority above every rule and authority and power and dominion, above every name in this age and the age to come. Yes, in the age to come, and yes, in this age. God’s power is greater than the U. S. President and Congress, greater than city hall or the county commission. God’s power is greater than big oil companies and multinational textile firms. God’s power is greater than Google and Microsoft and AOL. God’s power is greater than MTV and BET and Disney and Time-Warner. God’s power is greater than crack or methamphetamines or white lightning. God’s power is greater than the pornography industry, the banking industry, or the fashion industry.

All of those pretenders for power are under Christ’s feet. Ephesians says all this is put under Christ’s feet, making him the head over all things. He is the top of the heap, the one where the buck stops, the Supreme Leader.

Yet we have to be careful about carrying on about Jesus’ being the boss, because we read in the Gospels how he leads. He’s not like earthly, worldly leaders. He leads with love. He leads with service. He leads with faithfulness. That is the kind of supervisor I want. That is the one I want making decisions that will affect my life.

And Paul says there is a reason Christ has been made the head of all things. It was not just to have a title. It was not to throw his weight around and show everyone he is in charge. Verse 22 says he was put over all things “for the church.” God’s power over all other powers is for the church. We can’t be just sitting around saying, “God, go fix it up for me.” God has given us this power. Are our eyes enlightened? Can we see what God wants us to do? Do we have wisdom taught by the Holy Spirit? If so, then faithfulness is what we must show. Faithfulness to the Lord Jesus Christ and love toward all the saints—that is what Paul had heard about. And now he is saying keep on that path, knowing that God’s almighty power has been given through Christ for the church.

If that is not clear enough, the final verse brings it home. The church is the body of Christ. We are Christ in the world. Our faithfulness must show Christ to the world. Our love must be Christ’s love for the world. Our view of the people must be Christ’s view of the people. Our care for the addict, the homeless, the heartbroken, the oppressed, the poor, must be Christ’s care for them, as he told us when he said the Spirit of the Lord is upon me and has anointed me to preach good news to the poor, to proclaim release to the captives, recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the Jubilee year of the Lord. We are Christ’s body. Not just a thinking mind, but a working body. We can’t settle for hearing some preaching and then taking that for all we are supposed to do. We have to be the body of Christ moving in the world, shaking things up, caring for people, making changes. It can be done because all power is in him. Paul says the church, the body of Christ, has the fullness of him who fills all in all. We are the bearers, the carriers, the hands and feet and mouths and strong backs of what Jesus is doing. Do we know it? Do we believe it? Are we going to be faithful to it?

Amen.

I Have Heard of Your Faithfulness and Your Love, part 1
(This sermon was delivered at Mt. Level Missionary Baptist Church on August 20, 2006)

It is a blessing to be here today. I always feel the weight of my task when I step into this pulpit and remember who is usually standing here, and I remember how you have welcomed me into this family as one of your own.

Over the past year, some of you have probably wondered at times where I have been. You have seen Everly and my children, but you don’t see much of me. Well I have not been “sleeping in” on Sundays. And I have not started a new career as an itinerant firebrand preacher, hopping from church to church. I have been being a professor, traveling to do research.

Many of you heard that I had received grant funding and was allowed to take a sabbatical for the 2005-2006 academic year. My approach to research involved selecting a diverse sample of churches and church-related ministries which were doing an exemplary job of being involved in their communities, neighborhoods, towns, or cities, and even some working on a national and international scale, bringing transformation through their service.

The idea for this research began to grow back in the year 2000 when I started reading about the Voice of Calvary Church in Jackson, MS, about its ministries, and its leaders, in particular a couple named John and Vera Mae Perkins. So this year I have been visiting church and ministry leaders across the country, interviewing them about their work, how they understand the Bible and theology, and how they teach others to see the work of the church as they see it.

It has been an enriching year, filled with both the frustrations of trying to learn to work with the budget and finance systems of the university as well as the joys of conversing with people whose lives and work are often inspiring. Yesterday I started back to teaching after a year of doing other things. Now I must try to make the most of what I have learned, bringing it into my classroom teaching. It also means I will not be gone as often on weekends, since I’m teaching three courses every Saturday.

I’ve been telling you about this just now for a couple of reasons. The first one is that I wanted you to know that I have not been just skipping out or drifting away from Mt. Level. The second reason is that this passage speaks to the reasons for my research. In verse 15, the apostle says to the church people in and around Ephesus, “I have heard of your faithfulness to the Lord Jesus and your love toward all the saints.” Well, that is how I went about contacting people to interview last year. I had heard of their faithfulness and love, so I wanted to know how they came to be such beacons of the gospel. And I say thanks to the Wabash Center in Indiana, who sent me the funds to travel, and to Shaw University, who let me have the time to do it.

In this letter to the Ephesians, Paul has been hearing some news about their churches, and it prompted him to write about some things on his mind. He has heard of their faithfulness to Jesus.

Digression on faithfulness. Some of you may be looking at your Bibles and saying to yourselves, “My translation says ‘faith in the Lord Jesus,’ but he keeps saying ‘faithfulness.’ I wonder what translation he is using.” I’ll have to admit that I am using the Broadway Non-Standard Version. And it is a non-standard version because there are some problems in going from Greek to English that are only recently being noticed and acknowledged by scholars, theologians, and church leaders.

The word “faith” had a richer range of meanings in late middle English of the era of King James’s translation committee of the early 1600s. We can still find the residue of this richness in the language of contracts and agreements. We talk about a “good faith agreement.” That would be an agreement that we can count on someone to stand by. A good faith agreement means not only that each party trusts the other one to carry through on the agreement. It also means that each party has pledged to be faithful, to show fidelity, to the other party. It is a pledge of faithfulness.

When there is a negotiation going on in law or contracts, all parties of the negotiation are expected to be saying what they mean and meaning what they say. That is called bargaining “in good faith.” When someone seems to be pretending or “posing” in a negotiation, things break down. They are said to be negotiating “in bad faith.” Good faith negotiation is a promise to be faithful. Bad faith negotiation means people are being untrustworthy, leading to unfaithfulness.

Our everyday use of the word “faith” has really lost that kind of understanding. It’s a long story to explain why, but in my study it is related to the corruption of moral convictions in a culture which praised the God of Jesus Christ while enslaving God’s children from Africa, the Americas, Asia, and wherever else they could be found. It involved praising the virtues of freedom while enslaving and abusing the bodies of millions. By my reading of the news about working conditions in factories that bring us our shirts, shoes, pants, dresses, computers, toys, auto parts, and more, it still has not ended. But I’m not going to develop that idea today.

What I’m trying to explain is that there have been some changes in language in the modern era, the historical period Cornel West has at times called the era of European World Domination. Those changes reflect a conceptual separation of the mind from the body as if the mind is higher and greater, almost disconnected from the body. In the culture of the modern Western world, sometimes called modernity, we claim to respect human rights and the dignity of the person at the same time that we calculate people’s value in terms of dollars.

Companies use language as a pretense of dignifying their workers, calling minimum-wage employees “associates,” “partners,” and “team members” when they are by all appearances common laborers who have little or no job security who could easily be laid off when jobs are shipped overseas to sweatshops. But again, I can’t go down that path today. The mental gift of an elevated title is supposed to make them stop thinking about the bills they can’t pay and the illness for which they can’t afford to get treatment. The mind is given priority over the body in this kind of language. People are pushed to try to think themselves out of the real conditions in which their bodies exist and suffer.

So what does that have to do with translating “faith” and “faithfulness?” The word “faith” has more and more come to mean, in our use of it, something we do with our minds, but not necessarily with our whole selves, with our bodies, too. We say the word “believe,” which comes from a medieval word for making a mutual commitment to serve and protect one another, but for us it means mostly a thought that we have about someone or something. “I believe,” for us, means, “I think it powerfully or with strong feeling.” But it usually stays a mental act for us. “Faith,” in our way of talking, is about something inward, not about what we do.

Now I know I’m stating this strongly to make my point, but if you look at what most church people say and do in relation to the words “faith” and “believe,” which are the ways English Bibles usually translate the Greek noun pistis or the Greek verb pisteuo, then I think you will see what I mean. “Faith,” for people in our modern culture, is something we do in our heads or our hearts and not with our legs, hands, wallets, or possessions.

So the Broadway Non-Standard Version of the Bible is my experiment with substituting one less common English translation of a Greek word for the more common one. It is an attempt to practice thinking in a way that makes note of a difference between modern English and ancient Greek or even Hebrew. Our English language has two different nouns, “faith” and “faithfulness,” and two different verbs, “believe” and “be faithful.” One Greek word or one Hebrew word encompasses the meaning of both--just one noun says both, and just one verb says both. So I’m trying to awaken myself, and others, to what is missing when we read these English translations. So if it says “faith,” I’m going to try substituting “faithful.” If it says “believe,” I’m going to try substituting “be faithful.”

One additional reason for using the word faithful here in Ephesians chapter 1 has to do with reading the whole passage in context. We can’t just lift a few words or a verse out of the Bible and assume it will stand alone and convey its truest sense. If we look to the very first verse of the letter to the Ephesians, the translators of the King James Version and other more recent versions refer to the “saints that are in Ephesus and the faithful in Christ Jesus.” Now it does not mean that just because faithful shows up in one verse I have to change to it in another verse. But it does give some indication that the faithfulness of the people in the churches around and in Ephesus is what Paul is talking about as he starts this letter.

That was a long digression, but it is key to understanding the rest of what I want to say. Paul had heard some things. Here many years later, I’m not the same as the great Apostle, but I had also heard some things. God has blessed me with the opportunity to go investigate what I have heard and to learn from it.

[I'll post the rest of this sermon tomorrow.]