The Margins

In the midst of everything else going on this week, our little Mercy woke up crying and convulsing in pain last night. It didn’t take long to realize that whatever bug she has had the last two weeks had evolved into an ear infection, and so she and her daddy made the middle of the night trip to the ER which in L.A. is no small thing. It is always a gamble which hospital to try: do you want the five hour wait or the ten…? We are scheduled to fly to Denver early Friday morning and I am worried for how this may affect her, though her pediatrician feels like we should be able to go ahead with the trip.

I am weary from the weight of this week. Today I broke a mug, burned up a spoon, and cooked the meat I was trying to defrost for dinner. Add to that the blue crayon that is now all over the carpet in my dining room, Aaron’s decision to soak his entire body in Simple Green, and the ants who have invaded the bathroom now, and the result was not the greatest of days. Meanwhile my friends who I love are suffering, and, as Mercy said so eloquently the other day: “My heart is hurting and making me want to cry.”

I am reminded of Pastor Henry’s exhortation to us on our wedding day about struggling. And I am reminded that we are not promised a life free from chaos, disruption, and pain. And yet when those things come, how betrayed I can feel. I confess that I can too quickly feel entitled to the pleasant, the happy, the secure. And while our life is rich with so many of those things, the shadowy days come and it is then that my faith and patience and capacity for love and generosity are tested. It is easy to give in times of comfort and stability. It is much more difficult to give from a place of scarcity or exhaustion. These are the “dipstick moments” when our hearts are revealed for what they are.

Today I sat in the hospital with loved ones as they experienced a very deep loss, and my heart is heavy with the sadness and shock that accompanies it. Today is that day where relationships, people, and opportunities suddenly feel more urgent and precious in light of how truly fleeting life can be.

I have been struck recently by the different ways that children are viewed in the life of the church. This past Sunday, I was late getting my crew to our weekly worship service and so we entered after the singing had already begun. I have more babies than arms now and I was unprepared for Aaron’s decision to rush the stage, and physically unable to stop him from doing so. And so there he stood, at the front of the congregation, arms wrapped tightly around his Daddy’s legs. A friend who was serving as an usher hurried up front for me and peeled him away from his dad, and carried him back to where I stood holding Elijah. The moment his feet touched the floor he was off again, and this time another friend who was running sound grabbed him for me.

Doug could not have cared less, and in fact motioned to me that it was okay for him to be there. Doug has always felt strongly that children should be heard and seen during the church’s weekly offering, but as I noticed heads turning and looking back at me, I sensed that not everyone shared his enthusiasm for that particular demonstration. So I passed Elijah off to Lauren and carried my boy out of the auditorium and back to the nursery where his cousin and Auntie warmly welcomed him.

As our congregation grows and as more babies are added to our number (the Haub’s have been especially faithful in this particular method of church growth), the challenge to care for them and their needs has grown as well: How do we incorporate them fully into our church’s life? How do we call forth not only parents who disciple but also a community who shares this sober calling? How do we value them, not for the sake of what they can contribute but simply as a result of who they are?

I think I have decided that the set-up crew and the nursery workers share a similar place in church life: highly necessary and typically undervalued. There is prestige, for example, in leading a small group or preaching or leading worship. I can say that in our context, the only members of our preaching or worship-leading teams that set foot in the nursery to volunteer are those who are parents of a kid who is there. And there is language around serving children on Sundays that speaks of that act of service as “missing out” on the worship, or even as being something that certain people should be freed from doing.

In church-planting, there can also be an emphasis on connecting with families, and the children that may be reached through a bible club or youth program can often be seen as the means to that end. I can think of a few examples where effectively ministering to a group of children was not deemed “successful” unless their parents started attending church. In other words, kids are not a worthy enough pursuit in and of themselves.

Obviously as a mother of three small ones, my perspective bends much more toward the gift these kids are to the body, and the ways we are called to be faithful to them and how we may be missing out on how God would use them to bless us corporately. But I am guilty as well of being “the preacher who needs to be freed from nursery duty”, married to “the worship leader who needs to be freed from nursery duty.” Even our use of that word, “duty”, reveals much. We don’t say: “I’m on preaching duty today.” Or “I’m on small-group leading duty this week.” It’s the word used to describe washing the dishes or cleaning the bathroom or walking the dog.

I remember in my exegetical class on the book of Matthew at Fuller hearing Dr. Beaton describe the scandal of Jesus’ repeated emphasis on the centrality of the weakest and least valuable ones within his kingdom. And we all nod and smile when we hear those words in scripture. But do those words describe the value we place on children? Do we really embrace that kind of ethos where the least are great? Do our worship services honestly reflect that theology?

When we were in Portland over Christmas, I learned that one of the elders at our former church, a gifted preacher and teacher and lawyer by profession, had committed his leadership and gifts to leading the church’s Sunday School. One of the brightest minds of the congregation, and one of the most trusted leaders, had decided that the most important thing he could do for the sake of the body was to feed the littlest sheep. I caught myself even having the reaction: what? really? is that honestly the best place for his gifts? And as I considered his choice, I realized how powerfully he was modeling to me the kind of leadership that Jesus was calling forth in his disciples as he talked to them about a kingdom that is not of this world.

I am convinced that the time has come for Christians to develop an exit strategy from the public schools. Some parents made this decision long ago. The Christian school and home school movements are among the most significant cultural developments of the last thirty years. Other parents are not there yet. In any event, an exit strategy should be in place.

Al Mohler, president of The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in his latest book, Culture Shift: Engaging Current Issues with Timeless Truth. (Via Out of Ur)

Mercy has a new curiosity surrounding death. She has brought it up more frequently lately, and I have found myself talking to her about death and resurrection and heaven. I just read an interesting interview with N.T. Wright (and have been following this same discussion on Scot McKnight’s blog as he is currently reviewing Wright’s book, Surprised by Hope) where he shares a bit about Christian beliefs surrounding heaven.

In discussing the sources of our misconceptions about heaven in the interview, Wright says this:

It has, originally, to do with the translation of Jewish ideas into Greek. The New Testament is deeply, deeply Jewish, and the Jews had for some time been intuiting a final, physical resurrection. They believed that the world of space and time and matter is messed up, but remains basically good, and God will eventually sort it out and put it right again. Belief in that goodness is absolutely essential to Christianity, both theologically and morally. But Greek-speaking Christians influenced by Plato saw our cosmos as shabby and misshapen and full of lies, and the idea was not to make it right, but to escape it and leave behind our material bodies. The church at its best has always come back toward the Hebrew view, but there have been times when the Greek view was very influential.

And in discussing why our beliefs about this matter now, he states:

If people think “my physical body doesn’t matter very much,” then who cares what I do with it? And if people think that our world, our cosmos, doesn’t matter much, who cares what we do with that? Much of “traditional” Christianity gives the impression that God has these rather arbitrary rules about how you have to behave, and if you disobey them you go to hell, rather than to heaven. What the New Testament really says is God wants you to be a renewed human being helping him to renew his creation, and his resurrection was the opening bell. And when he returns to fulfil the plan, you won’t be going up there to him, he’ll be coming down here.

I realized that I have defaulted to the more “mythical” way of talking about these things with my daughter, though perhaps that is not all bad for now. At least she no longer thinks that when people die they go to be with our good friend, Kevin (and why does that make Mommy so sad?), which is progress. But I also realized in general how muddled and undeveloped our “life-after-death” theology can really be. Regardless, I’m pretty sure I want to get my hands on Wright’s book.

So my hopes for a spiritual start to the Lenten season have been derailed by a total ant onslaught inside our apartment this morning. Living in an old house, we have numerous cracks in our walls and ceiling, and there is one such crack (where we experienced terrible flooding a few weeks ago) through which an entire colony of ants are now streaming. And I don’t get it: the more Simple Green (our weapon of choice) I spray, the more ants come pouring through. Wouldn’t you want to escape the poisonous, murdering substance and run the other way?

I am so disjointed and annoyed and a little high from Simple Green fumes that I have to laugh at last night’s post declaring my noble spiritual intentions for the days to come. And it is not gang warfare or vandalism or some injustice in my community that has deflated me: it’s the ant crawling on my keyboard.

One of the legacies of some of our cultural trends concerning where and how we live has been decreased proximity and contact with actual human need. Whether it is the pain of neighbors, fleshed out secretly behind manicured lawns or security gates, or the pain of strangers in neighborhoods we can simply choose to avoid, it has become a matter of choice for many whether or not they will encounter the woundedness of others. I think often of the story of the rich man who persisted in disregarding the drastic neediness of one ever in his line of vision. How much greater is the judgment for those of us who can construct life where Lazarus is never even allowed near our gates.

Every day I choose whether to acknowledge the pain I encounter here in my community. Like the homeless man, garbage bag full of random possessions, clutching a stereo and a pair of shoes, who passed by on our way home from the park. Or the white-tank-top youth, riding his souped up bike up and down the streets adjacent to the park while we were there, stopping occasionally at certain cars. Or the two women, hardly dressed, walking quickly and talking loudly past my house. And while I may not be making the choice to live physically far from the kinds of needs that plague my community, how I respond to them reveals the geography of my spirit on any given day. And there are enough days when my flesh wins and I do not choose proximity: I deny them the status of neighbor.

My friend, Tyler Watson, has shared some thoughts on what it means to follow the God who “has told you, O mortal, what is good; and what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?” He closes his reflection with a quotation from William Booth, the founder of the Salvation Army.

While women weep, as they do now, I’ll fight; while little children go hungry, as they do now, I’ll fight; while men go to prison, in and out, in and out, as they do now, I’ll fight; while there is a drunkard left, while there is a poor lost girl upon the streets, while there remains one dark soul without the light of God, I’ll fight—I’ll fight to the very end!

And another friend (whom I had the wonderful pleasure of meeting this past week) offered this perspective:

A friend of mine has this wonderful quote by poet Adam Zagajewski on her facebook profile page: ”Try to praise the mutilated world.” In all our Utopian fantasies, we find the cure, solve the problem, escape the pain. Praising the mutilated world is so much more invigorating. It connects us to God and others in ways no revolution can. There is hubris in our revolutions. We’re frequently shaking our fist at God for the way things are, when in truth, it is only infrequently that he shares his genius. When he does, we rejoice. When he hordes it, we pray and give thanks and worship. This is why I have come to love the weekly Eucharist. It’s the creaturely thing to do. It is praising the mutilated world by partaking of its crucified and risen king. Let others have their revolutions; I’ll take Jesus.

Will Willimon had some interesting things to say about human need in the brief hour I spent in his classroom last week. He claimed that what masquerades as need for people in most of our churches today is nothing more than desires elevated to needs that ultimately come to be understood as rights or entitlements. And as clergy (I love the way he says ‘clergy’) we are so worked up trying to meet a bunch of “needs” that he suggested will be endless for, in his words, “I am a bottomless pit of desires…” To illustrate his point, he described the kinds of things we pray for and pointed out how far we have come from the petitions given to us in the Lord’s prayer. He said there are few places where what the church is busy doing is actually tending to real human needs, not simply inflated desires.

As I mentioned yesterday, I am committing to participate in Scot McKnight’s Jesus Creed challenge during Lent. And tonight I am praying that as I recite those words about loving my neighbor over and over in the weeks to come, my flesh will die a bit and my heart will be circumcised in some new ways. My brother-in-law, one of the founding members of our church, moved into this community more than fifteen years ago because he realized that, as a student at USC, he did not love his neighbor, and he believed that Jesus really had the words of eternal life. As we enter this time of Lent, I need to remember anew that the kingdom I seek is no stranger to Lazarus and at the center of its reign sits a mutilated One.

I am not just praying for my own conversion tonight. I am praying tonight for my community to be given some new life as well: I would like to see some dry bones dancing…

I came across this invitiation at a good friend’s blog this morning:

I am asking my blog’s readers to consider a challenge for Lent. No, it is not giving up anything. Instead, it helps move Lent into 40 days of living out the gospel: I am asking you to begin and end each day of Lent (beginning Wednesday) by reciting the Jesus Creed. And, whenever it comes to mind throughout the day, I am asking you to recite it again. In your evening recitation of the Jesus Creed, we are asking you to give some moments of recollection to confess any sins against the Jesus Creed throughout the day.

Here it is:

Hear O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is One.
Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength.
The second is this: Love your neighbor as yourself.
There is no commandment greater than these.

What we are discovering — in tune with the wisdom of ancient Israel’s recitation of Shema and the early church’s recitation of the Jesus Creed and the Lord’s Prayer — is that this sacred rhythm works love of God and love of others into the bones and sinews of each day. Who will take this challenge?

I am going to join Scot and his many readers in this practice during the season of Lent, and I invite others to as well.

“Church becomes a defense against falling into the arms of the living God.”

Will Willimon in a lecture at Fuller Seminary