Advent Aspect

When I was growing up, I did not know about Advent.  It had been swept away centuries before in the iconoclastic fury of the late reformation, bundled together with an inchoate bundle of artifacts and traditions under the category "Popery."  Any so-called Protestant still willing to hold on to such things fell into the class of "false churches," most notably because they continued the practice of infant baptism.

As a seminarian in my younger twenties, Advent came as a breath of fresh air.  It was a way of getting ready for Christmas that departed from the cultural liturgy of Santa praise, affluenzic consumption, and trumped up cheeriness.  It gave us more ways to be drawn back to the scriptures and the stories.  We learned that it was a time of waiting, a pre-celebratory season, a time to remember the difference between certitude and hope.  There were centuries in which tropes of Messianic promise took form in polyphonic harmony and dissonance (thanks Barry Harvey for this language).  The bluesmen and blueswomen that were prophets played and replayed these riffs as improvisational jazz (Jon Michael Spencer, Cornel West, and many others here).  It was music and language for meditation and imagination of God's presence and plan.

During the thirty or so years since that time, many Advents have come and gone.  In the intensity of graduate school, new jobs, and grading papers, the shine wore off for me and I just wanted to get the season over with.  Moments of interruption, when the Spirit would break into the monotony and stress would sometimes remind me what a gift the season of Advent could be.  Of course, other parents will remember with me, that in those years when Everly was pregnant with our three children, Advent took on a certain aspect, a recognition of the struggle of Mary who had fled her hometown embarrassed yet hoping for the word of Gabriel to be fulfilled.  And in the subsequent years when our three little infant children had their first Christmas, the wonderment of an infant child full of promise and blessing brought another aspect to Advent.

In this fifty-fourth Advent of my time in this world, there is a new aspect.  We have been doing lots of waiting this year.  We wait for the report on medical imaging scans.  We wait for the drugs to trickle into Everly's bloodstream.  We wait for the symptoms to start after each treatment.  We wait for the symptoms to subside again.  We wait to hear what the next step will be.  And we wait for a possible respite from this harsh mercy known as chemotherapy.  Shadows lurk in our going out and coming in.

Everly's work as an educator, a leader, and a world-changer has been intense, with long hours.  Now she waits to feel good enough to put in a couple of hours of activity during the day.  She waits for doctors and pharmacies to return her calls.  She waits for me to have the focus and drive to be her partner in all she is facing.  Whatever the future holds, she waits with confidence that she can share it with her loved ones.  Her siblings, her parents, our children, my parents, my sister and brother-in-law--we all stay close, treasuring the gift she is for each one of us.

Some of the triumphal theology of Americanism has eroded:  good riddance.  The idea that everything will always be the same as it has been sank into the sea.  It makes a little more existential sense why someone would ask, "How can we sing the songs of Zion now that all this has happened?"

So it is a good time to start anew in the Broadway household.  It is a good time to remember the stories of others who longed for redemption's song.  And it is a good time to remember that after waiting, the Word became flesh and moved in next door.

Remembering the Incarnational Vocation

Rev. Noel Castellanos, the executive of the Christian Community Development Association, recently sent a note that I thought worth sharing here.  In our time of economic crisis, we may be inclined to turn selfward, whether as families, individuals, or churches.  We see so many challenges and fear we cannot do anything but survive. 

But turning in on ourselves is the opposite of what to do in this crisis.  We have to continue to realize that God's calling to us, all the way back to the calling of Abraham, is a calling to be a blessing to others.  God blesses us, that we may bless others.  The incarnation reveals the superabundant love of God, shared among the three persons of the Trinity, turning outward toward blessing all humanity.  As followers of Jesus, we get to join him in that incarnational work.  Thanks, Noel, for the words here.

This past Sunday during my church's prayer time, a long-time member stood up to give a testimony before his church family that after two hard, long years, he had finally found a new job. Not just a job, but the perfect job, provided by God. This encouraging testimony came after "Coach" Wayne Gordon's Biblical teaching from the book of Job, which reminded us that bad things often happen to good people.

I am reminded that our core ministry is to live with and among men and women who know this lesson all too well. Violence, unemployment, kids struggling in bad schools, and overall difficult lives are not the exception, but the norm in our most of our neighborhoods, even for those who love God are serving Him diligently.

While sitting in a White House briefing tasked with developing the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, I caught myself reflecting on my friend's two-year struggle to find a job. It struck me that families are vulnerable to making bad financial decisions and falling victim to fraud when faced with these kinds of employment challenges. With so many of our families struggling, it is easy to feel overwhelmed!

As we approach Lent, let us take the time to re-examine our commitment to follow the God who left the comfort of heaven to enter the hurt and pain of our sin-filled world. Moreover, let us root our lives and our neighborhood work in a deep, daily walk with Christ. Let us be empowered to be agents of hope and justice wherever we see someone’s God-given dignity compromised.

Some leaders from the MetroIAF were at this meeting with Noel, Jim Wallis, and others.  Our national organizing work on the economy is one part of the bigger picture.  But Noel reminds us that nothing short of blending our lives into the lives of the world will move us toward the calling to let God's will be done on earth as it is in heaven.

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.