The Margins

Thirteen people were murdered this weekend in Los Angeles (the L.A. Times offers details on eleven of the slayings).

We have all noticed an increase in activity lately in our neighborhood: sirens, screaming, the pounding of helicopters that hardly ceases…”Do you know what was going on last night?” is a common question between neighbors.

Meanwhile life goes on and days are spent chasing marbles up and down our driveway, starting swimming lessons, going to birthday parties with neighbors, and welcoming new babies into our church family.

But thirteen people were murdered this weekend.

On a school field trip, band trip, youth group retreat or road trip in college, there was always the need to stop for food. I know that when I was driving my car full of fellow travelers I would look for the sunny yellow golden arches or the Burger King sign. Inevitably we would find them together. Sometimes across the street from each other – usually sharing a parking lot.

I could never figure out why they would do this – split their business in this way. Then a friend suggested to me that their sales actually increased. It was those buses: large buses of school kids with teachers not having to decide only on McDonalds or only on Burger King. If one of the fast-food chains stood independent from another it would often get passed by for those in a cluster that could cater to the individual tastes found in a large group or even among family members sharing a car.

Now it is clear that this phenomenon has had additional effects (to the benefit of the fast-food franchises). The question during the meal now has sufficiently been changed in fast-food nations from “Where should we stop for dinner?” to “Do you want a BigMac or a Whopper?” It is a triumph of the marketing industry that an eight-year old is allowed to run to the KFC while his parents sit down for a Subway and such an arrangement is not questioned.

I contend that actually agreeing on where to have dinner requires much more capacity to relate to others than parking in a lot shared by Subway, Burger King, KFC and McDonalds and sending everyone their own way. Both actions get people fed but what is lost in the process?

It must be admitted that these same trends can be seen in the church (not to mention every other facet of our lives). Trinity Broadcasting Network, the notion of “church shopping,” the standard way we consume in-formation in the church pew while struggling to take seriously a trans-formation of whole communities are a few examples. A professor friend of mine tells the story of a church that bought an old movie mega-plex and then, using only one of the theaters for their service, rented out the rest of the theaters to other churches.

Erika’s family has a small lake cabin that has been handed down from generation to generation. The lake population has grown over the years and while some growth is due to new people coming to the lake a significant portion has been the building of cabins to accommodate the growing families. Now, instead of the grandparents owning a cabin and welcoming in the whole family, each sibling has their own. This solves space issues, usage issues, and ownership issues by simply giving everyone the convenience of having their own autonomous space. But a significant underlying issue is the removal of the need to relate.

What I have admired about Erika’s extended family is that they get together to work through the calendar for the summer. Who’s coming when? How can we make sure all the cousins and siblings get together? What will our food needs be? Who can help where? In doing this they both practice and, as their children age and join the meeting, pass down the ability to relate.

If it is true that being Christ-like is at the least about the way we relate to each other, and society as a whole is quickly removing all encounters that require anything more than depth-less and commercial contact, is it any wonder that the gospel of Jesus Christ is seen as irrelevant?

Michael Budde in The (Magic) Kingdom of God offers us this thought to wrestle with:

“What is at risk is not any particular interpretation of the gospel or the tradition of the church but the capacity to think, imagine, feel, and experience in ways formed by the Christian story.”

In our secular and/or religiously plural society, it can no longer be assumed that the images, practices, and vocabulary of Christianity will come naturally, that they will automatically make sense to the average person. In such a world the intentional and disciplined thinking of the faith–theology–is essential in order to shape, equip, and empower missional communities. In other words, churches living into a missional identity are saying “goodbye” to Christianity as good common sense, available to all without reflection, training, or change in attitude and lifestyle. And they are saying “hello” to theology as the work of the people, affirming that all Christians are to be engaged in the persistent and consistent exploration of the uncommon sense of Christianity.

From Take Time To Be Holy, by Inagrace T. Dietterich and Dale Ziemer

Ed Gilbreath writes an excellent blog, and his post today includes a collection of interesting links I would recommend. One is to an article discussing the gentrification that is happening in my old neighborhood in Portland. Our recent visits to our old neighborhood and church have surprised me by how very much the neighborhood there has changed since we left in 2002.

I realize that the same is true for my old neighborhood in Chicago, and it makes me wonder what the future holds for our little corner of South Central. Already there is a substantial population of “gentrifiers”, and that trend is on the rise both here and in urban centers throughout the nation. Bob Lupton, who has inspired many in our community through his years of ministry in Atlanta, speaks of “reweaving the fabric” of frayed communities by bringing people of resources (read money, education, and power) back into under-resourced communities. In this article, Lupton shares about being confronted with his own identity as a “gentrifier”.

But during prayer and sharing times at our neighborhood church we began to hear prayer requests for housing needs. “Please pray for us – our rents have just doubled.” “Please pray for us – we’ve just gotten an eviction notice.” It wasn’t until Opal, a church member who lived within sight of the church, came in weeping one morning that I first made a disturbing connection. She had just received an eviction notice from the home she had lived in for many years – the city told the landlord to fix it up or board it up and he had decided to board it up until property values made it attractive to sell. For the first time it dawned on me that as my property value was nicely increasing, so was the value of the surrounding affordable homes. As my wealth was accumulating, Opal’s poverty was deepening. It was my investment that was the catalyst for her displacement. I could no longer sit in the circle and pray with integrity. I was the problem!

Driving in Pasadena this morning, I pulled up next to an enormous, shiny black luxury SUV with rims that probably cost double what my car is worth. Living in L.A. for almost six years now, I am so accustomed to car-bling that the vehicle itself was not enough to grab my attention. However, the Fuller Seminary parking sticker on the back was. Remarkable.

And coming home, as I neared my off-ramp on the 10, I swapped lanes with a shiny black Mercedes sporting a custom license plate that read: “DVA4GOD”. Really.

When did luxury cars with ridiculous rims and self-proclaimed “diva”-hood become even remotely compatible with Christ crucified?

When I left my house this morning I realized that my car was on empty so I swung into our neighborhood gas station to fill up. As I was leaving, I saw our friend David approaching and he was not looking very good. I stopped my car and rolled down the window and we talked for a bit. I gave him eleven dollars (what I had in my purse), and I knew that that equivalent of a morning Starbucks run for two would totally change his day.

I like to listen to the old-school mix on the local hip-hop station if I happen to be in the car mid-day. One of the songs played today used the phrase “Viewer discretion advised” in the context of speaking it’s message about life in the hood. Those words kept ringing in my ears as I thought about what it means to live as a disciple of Jesus in our cultural context. Honestly, and I know I do this too, it is just so easy to censor what we don’t want to see or admit or acknowledge around us, especially when doing so would demand a response. And so we create our own safe little play-lists that enable us to pursue “the American dream with a Jesus overlay” (can’t remember where I first heard that phrase) and simply tune out the Davids in our midst.

Doug read to me some staggering statistics the other day about the number of hours and images a typical person receives from the media in a week, and clearly the message spoken through television, movies, advertisements and the like is compelling, perhaps more so than the narrative of God With Us. Which is why we barely turn our heads at the Escalades and status symbols of the week that find their way into the lives and witness of the people of God and make for themselves a comfortable home. And so Lazarus sits, hungry, while we live in excess, and I wonder at the extent of reversal we can anticipate at the end of this life.

Doug came home from work Friday night feeling sick, so he crashed on the futon while I put the three kids to bed. It’s a bit of a circus getting the three into their beds, and that is with two parents. It is much harder to do it when there is only one of us (which makes me all the more grateful that our precious Lauren took the whole brood for the night this weekend!).

I got Elijah settled in his crib in our room and the big kids were in their beds waiting for stories when a helicopter began to circle. It was low to the point of making the house shake, and ever since the take down in our driveway a few months back, I have become more vigilant about knowing where the helicopter is circling. I looked out a few windows and couldn’t see it (usually not a good sign), but finally saw out the back porch that the center of its circle was a block or two away. Having established this, I went back into the kids’ room and did my best to read over the noise.

I finished our books and Mercy asked: “Mommy, lay with me?” I don’t always know when stuff like this unsettles them or makes them feel afraid at all, and often enough they seem pretty oblivious. But I am always careful to be very present and to help them feel secure when there is this kind of noise and chaos going on outside. So I cuddled up with my girl, and she immediately rolled over to one side and requested “rubs”. I rubbed her back, trying to offset the pounding of the helicopter with a counter rhythm of gentle touch.

Suddenly there was a loud voice coming over a loudspeaker of sorts, repeating variations of: “Go inside your houses. Do not come out of your houses. Stay inside.” At this, I hopped out of Mercy’s bed and again did the survey through different windows to establish where the activity was moving. The helicopter’s circle had not moved but now there were cruisers covering different streets around us.

I got back into Mercy’s bed, and this time she asked for an “arm rub”. So I traced patterns on her arm, just the way I always loved “arm scratches” as we called them. Every few minutes, the helicopter would get really, really loud or a bunch of sirens would pass, and my fingers would curl a bit more tightly around my little girl’s arm.

The noise continued as did my rubs, and just as Mercy was getting drowsy and Aaron was finally still in his bed, I heard the loudspeaker again, repeating: “We have you surrounded. Surrender.”

One more time out of her bed, into the hallway, and to the bathroom window where I could better hear and see. Doug had also gotten up by now and clicked on the news to try and see if we could figure out what was going down. Deciding again that the threat was still a block or two away, I made one last stop to the kids room. A few leg rubs later, and my girl was breathing heavily. I did not hurry out of her bed again, but stayed a while beside her sleeping form.

Eventually the sirens faded and the helicopter sped off. I called our friend who lives a block away, and he said that they were okay and that the center of activity had been one block east of their house. Nothing ever did show up on the news, and we still don’t know what all the fuss was about.

Last night the preachers of our church gathered to look at the next section of John’s gospel that we will be preaching from this summer. We read this passage in John 10: “I am the gate. Whoever enters by me will be saved, and will come in and go out and find pasture. The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly.”

We talked about where we see “the thief” at work in our midst, and it was not hard for us to name some of the things that rob life from our community. Gangs. Unemployment. Addiction. Racism.

A chapter earlier, Jesus announces that he is the light of the world and I thought of this verse in Isaiah: “It is too small a thing that you should be my servant to raise up the tribes of Jacob and to restore the fortunes of Israel; I will give you as a light to the nations, that my salvation may reach to the end of the earth.”

I like to imagine God looking down at those places where children play without worry; where families have employment, food, insurance; where church platforms are loaded with every high-end piece of technology and, with the sound of helicopters beating in his ears, declaring: “It is too small a thing…”

Indiana Jones, Hotel Bonaventure, swimming pool, a new dress, Cicada, breakfast with celebs, late check-out, Erika actually pulling off a surprise (and Mercy keeping a secret!), and a friend who can ably manage our three children for a night making all of this possible…

Happy Anniversary to us!!!

This is the main reason why I abhor that phrase, “the race card” — even more than I hate the d-word.

I wish that being Black was something I could just conveniently pull out when it suited me. Because then I wouldn’t have to sweat as much if I get pulled over by deputies in rural Oregon counties. If I could keep the race card in my pocket, and make sure it doesn’t slip out when I’m handing the officer my license and registration, then life would be a lot simpler.

From Jelani Greenidge

The caterpillar to butterfly transformation is a frequently used analogy to describe the conversion/transformation aspect of the Christian faith. Writers and speakers like to use this imagery to spark our imaginations and inspire us as we think about what it means to have new life in Jesus Christ. This imagery speaks of a transition that is one of totality.

In a recent conversation based on writing by D. Gelpi and ML Branson (italics added after initial post) on the “initial” and “ongoing” aspects of conversion, a friend described several different kinds of conversions that he had witnessed in people: affective (the emotions, emotional health, etc), intellectual, moral, socio-political (the move toward corporate ethical solidarity), Christian (responding to God on God’s terms), and church (moving from individualistic and fragmented practices to interdependence in a congregation). He reflected on how these conversions can take place at different times and how there is really no prescribed order for them to occur. For some it was a Christian conversion that prompted a moral conversion. For others it was a moral conversion that prompted a Christian conversion.

I found myself challenged by this notion that we can bring parts of us ‘to the other side’ of our Christian conversion as if our good morality or strong intellect could be brought over unchanged when we made the choice to follow Christ. Is it really possible to say that parts of our lives were Christocentric before Christ was at the center? Perhaps in our churches we have a bunch of Butterpillars and Caterflies running around.

C.S. Lewis writes:

“The Christian way is different: harder, and easier. Christ says ‘Give me All. I don’t want so much of your time and so much of your money and so much of your work: I want You. I have not come to torment your natural self, but to kill it. No half-measures are any good. I don’t want to cut off a branch here and a branch there, I want to have the whole tree down…. Hand over the whole natural self, all the desires which you think innocent as well as the ones you think wicked - the whole outfit. I will give you a new self instead. In fact, I will give you Myself: my own will shall become yours.’”

Mere Christianity

Stomach flu.

Three small children.

Really, really, really not fun.