Pursuing our Prophets

When I was in college, I hung around with a Push The Envelope, Seek Justice, Screw The Man kind of crowd. Adults told us that we couldn’t change the world, but we believed differently. We arranged boycotts, “Buy Nothing Day” campaigns, and guerilla gardening. Scores of us taught overseas or worked in orphanages, hung out with the poor on downtown streets, and wrote letters to our MPs. It was not uncommon to wear only used clothing, to live together in large numbers, and to frequent dumpsters for day-old groceries (fondly known as “dumpster diving”). True, we were no draft dodgers, but we considered ourselves pretty radical in our little corner of the Christian College world.

Some would say that at 18 and 21 we were radical for the sake of sheer differentiation, a normal cutting of the purse strings at best. But I still believe that the reason for our social rebellion was a bit simpler than that. The reason for our insistent differentiation could be summed up in just one word: Jesus. We believed that Jesus was a homeless revolutionary, loving his neighbours to the point of death and calling his followers to do the same. If everyone loved the world the way Jesus did, we were convinced, the world would be a different place.

This kind of loving was not just about being kind to individuals, though it was also that. Loving our neighbours as ourselves took on a more corporate feel as we tried to love our neighbours economically and globally. 

How can I love my neighbour by the way I buy groceries? The place I bank? My choices of clothing, transportation, and entertainment? Granted, our response to these questions tended to be unduly simplistic in an increasingly complex global economy. But each one was wrestled with, argued over, and considered of value to how we lived our faith.

Yet as the years after graduation multiplied, increasing numbers my radical Christian friends found that their convictions around loving their neighbours did not line up with the way they’d experienced the Church. The gap between what they understood to be the values of Jesus and the values of the human institution slowly grew, until, eventually, they seemed like two things entirely. With both sadness and understanding, I watched most of these friends leave, first the Church, then the faith, and finally, theism altogether.

Some people assume that my now-atheist friends abandoned their Christian values when they abandoned the Church. But, in most cases, this simply is not true. They left the Church, not because they were leery of commitment or sacrifice, but because that is what they were looking for. Starry-eyed and idealistic, we Christian college students looked to the Church to mentor and grow us into great lovers-of-the-world who would give our very lives to the people Jesus loved. We longed for a faith that transformed economic systems, materialistic values, and individualist careers.

But what these friends of mine found in the Church only mirrored what they despised in the culture. They found there an inward-looking, survival-seeking institution unwilling to take the kind of risks they felt were required to walk in the footsteps of Jesus.

Of course, it is a decade later and all of us realize that life is just not that simple. Humans are the same everywhere, at once both saint and sinner, both healed and hurting. Walking in the steps of Jesus looks differently in every context and takes the sweat and tears of a lifetime. It is never as simple as choosing to bank with a credit union.

I have chosen to live from within the institution and my friends have chosen to life from without. Yet I often think of their frustration with the institution I now inhabit and wonder what might have been different. Richard Rohr, Roman Catholic teacher and mystic, warns that the Church has long suffered from “too much priesthood and almost no room for prophets.” The result, he explains, is “a very imbalanced religion.”

As I begin my journey into this very priesthood, I am simultaneously aware of the increasing need for the prophetic among us. Our prophets are those who continually hold up a mirror from within our communities, calling us again and again to our true vocation as children of the Holy One. Israel's prophets were the ones who spoke the word of God to the people; the men and women, lay and ordained, who served as guides through the wilderness.

Let us not forget, of course, that Israel also had a history of casting aside, scorning, and even stoning her prophets. Life on the edges of the Church is not an easy place to spend life. But, increasingly, more and more of God's people are being called to dwell in that space, the spot where the Church's gifts and the world's hunger collide.

As we too enter a time of wilderness in the Church, when our future is unclear and the way forward in an ever-changing cultural context is unsure, it seems that now more than ever we need the voices of our prophets. They are singers, poets, and musicians; artists, support-workers and carpenters. Rarely are they theologians, pastors, or teachers (though of course they sometimes are). Our prophets are the ones quietly whispering along the edges of the Church, calling us home to a new way of living in the world.

Rohr continues: “the church, strange as it seems, has always been a bit uncomfortable with saints and mystics; it is content to just have people 'in the pews'”. My hope is that, as the old way of  being God's children in the world passes away and a new way emerges before us, we will hold onto that discomfort like a good dose of medicine. We will no longer be content to "just have people in the pews" but be more concerned with seeing the kingdom born among us. We need our prophets. It's an exciting time to be Church. 

Jesus Meets the Stranger- a sermon on Luke 16 for All Saints Church

   Imagine yourself sitting in church on a Sunday evening at 5:00. Beside you sits an aging drag queen; on the other side is a woman who appears to be a prostitute. You discreetly cover your nose a little to block the smell of the man sitting in the pew in front of you, a man who appears to be homeless and not taken a bath in years. You’re visiting the House for All Sinners and Saints in Denver, Colorado, a quirky Lutheran church plant that’s only five years old. You look up and notice that the pastor is a tough looking woman covered in tattoos. Her language is remarkably crude and a little blunt for a pastor and you remember hearing that she’s a woman with a past: a recovering alcoholic and drug addict. To the side are several small children playing by themselves and making rather a lot of noise; their parents are nowhere in sight. You shift a little in your seat, trying not to appear too uncomfortable.
     You stand to chant a cappella with the rest of the congregation and then sit down as pastor Nadia moves to the front to preach. She turns to Luke 16 and tells you a parable about a manager who’s accused of wasting his master’s resources. You’re pretty sure you’ve heard this one before; the parable is about a wicked and dishonest manager who is fired for being irresponsible or stealing, you’re not sure which. Oh, but hold on a second: Nadia’s telling the story a bit differently. The manager, she tells the congregation, is getting himself in trouble because he’s being too kind and generous with the debtors. He doesn’t really care how much they owe the master because he knows they can never repay it.
     The master in the story ends up firing the manager because rumours are going around that the manager isn’t very reliable. The manager loses everything. But on his way out the door, he ends up reconciling the master and the debtors by reducing the debts. The manager knew that the debtors could never pay all that they owed on their own; they needed him to reduce it even though it ended up getting him fired. Perhaps the manager was just dishonest enough, just enough like the common people who owed his master money, that he could actually understand them.
     As you sit listening to the story, it occurs to you that the manager she’s describing is an awful lot like Nadia herself. People say she’s too much like the people she serves; too many tattoos, too much compromise, too much time spent singing with her parishioners in the local bar. They say that Nadia condones sin by welcoming people like addicts, con artists, and transgender people into her worship service. The manager suffered for being unjust, and Nadia has also suffered from people in the church that think she should clean up her act a bit and run a cleaner, purer kind of church.
     And then it occurs to you: this is exactly what Jesus was like. Jesus hung around with homeless deserve to be welcomed at all. He drove the religious leaders were going crazy because he hung out in bars and was a bit too vulgar and got tattoos. Well, ok, he didn’t have tattoos. But he hung around with people on the edges of society and he did break a lot of rules. Without sinning, of course, he became like the people he wanted to welcome, making a lot of sacrifices in the process. I imagine that some days it was a lot of fun; but other days it was downright exhausting. Sometimes he probably just wanted to go hang out in the temple with the other rabbis and talk theology. But that’s not what he came for. He came to welcome those who the rest of the church didn’t have time or space for: the foster kids, the transgender teenagers, and the refugees. He wasn’t fired for it, the way the shrewd manager was, though; he was killed instead. It was a pretty hefty price he paid to reconcile the debtors with the master.
guys and prostitutes and drag queens. He welcomed people that didn’t
     Nadia looks out at the congregation and for a second she catches your eye. The parable of the shrewd manager, she tells you, is ultimately one of radical, undeserved grace. It is about learning to speak the people’s language so that you can make space for them. After the parable finishes in Luke 16, Jesus points out that “the children of this age are more wise in dealing with their own generation than are the children of light.” If we want to welcome the stranger into this place, she tells the congregation, we need to learn to speak their language. Sure, they might not be clean, respectable people deserving of this time and space; but then again, neither are we!
     I’ve been reading the story of House for All Sinners and Saints this week in Pastrix, Nadia’s new book. And as I read the parable of the shrewd manager at the same time, I thought about the ways in which we, here on the corner of Osborne and Broadway, have learned to speak the language of the people Christ welcomes: inviting a Sudanese congregation and mission church to share this space; opening our doors to Agape Table, hosting events that bring together people of different backgrounds to share their gifts and learn from one another, like the Feel the Heat concert coming up next month. And then I also wondered how we might find new ways to speak their language of our neighbours. How can we make space for them? Who are the poor debtors in our neighbourhood who don’t deserve to be welcomed by Jesus but who are welcomed anyway, just for being God’s precious creation?
     And I realized that you’ve already begun exploring that question by beginning conversations about reaching out to new Canadians, to youth, and to children in West Broadway. Dietrich is excited to talk about starting a children’s music camp. Yanna is interested in how we can develop a children’s liturgy. Cynthia is committed to caring for students. Edmund is talking about having dialogues with other faith groups in the neighbourhood. What I’ve been doing over the last few weeks is getting to know this neighbourhood as well as I can in order to discern what God is calling us to in this time and place. What’s already here? What’s missing? What would a Saturday children’s church look like for the people of West Broadway?
     In two weeks, I’m planning to give you a report about what I’ve been discovering and I’ll invite you into a conversation about how God might be calling us to speak the language of our neighbourhood and offer welcome to whoever the “debtors” might be that God brings to our doorstep. How can we facilitate hospitality and reconciliation to them as Jesus does?
     In our reading from Timothy today we were reminded that no matter what our particular gifts and callings might be, we are all called to the ministry of prayer. So I invite you to join me in prayer over the next couple weeks as we discern how God is calling us to create new space for people in our neighbourhood. It might be a difficult journey and it will always involve sacrifice, but Jesus welcomes everyone to come in, cancel their debts, and join him at his table. It’s a pretty preposterous idea that makes a lot of people unhappy, but it’s also the most beautiful, the joyful, and the most life-giving thing in the world.

Welcoming All as Christ

It’s orientation week at the university, when new students are pouring over the sidewalks and across the quad, wearing their favourite outfits and looking either ecstatic or terrified. I imagine that we are a large monastery like the ones in the European Middle Ages, and the professed monks and nuns are all wearing yellow shirts, pointing the eager new novices in the direction of their profession classes. Some are completely sure of their vocation, having mapped out a solid eight year plan, while others are only here as postulants, not sure if university life is really for them.

As I point a young man in the direction of the engineering building, I think about my own vocation in this place. Tonight I’m getting a new tattoo which reads, “Welcome All as Christ,” a line from the Rule of St. Benedict. Although Benedict’s monastic rule seems harsh to modern readers, during the seventh century he was considered unusually kind and sensitive, teaching that every person should be welcomed into the community in the same way that Jesus would be. A striking feature of the Benedictine way of life was the insistence that all members of the community, including the very young, the lower class, and the uneducated, were to be included in group discussion and treated with respect.

When someone asks about my new tattoo, I explain that it means that we should look for God in everyone. That’s something almost anyone can understand. The implications of such an idea are much more difficult to wrap our minds around, however. University life, very often, does not teach us to look for God in everyone. We are taught to compete for grades, for fashion, for friends, and for jobs. This week already I have seen too many young women flaunting their bodies and young men being bullied because someone in their life has been unable to see Jesus in him or her.

Receiving a person as Christ is not simply a matter of “tolerance” or “human rights”; it goes far beyond such legal claims. When I see Jesus in the eyes of another, I welcome him warmly into my home; I sit with her when she’s crying; I go out of my way to treat her like she matters. Because if she matters to God, she matters to me. In St. Benedict's day, the people who were hardest to welcome were obvious: beggars, lepers, foreigners. I see many of these people on campus today too. What does it mean to look for the face of Jesus in them?

The problem, of course, is that despite my best intentions I am particularly bad at keeping Benedict’s rule of welcome. I am liable to see only a broken, sinful person sitting in front of me and not the face of Jesus. So as you and I launch into our respective vocations at the university this year, we do well to remember that it is only Jesus that is really able to see the image of God in everyone. Yet as we apprentice with Jesus this year, we will slowly learn to welcome the way he does. J

 

On Tattoos and Vocation

          I had just turned 20 and I’d been debating between two tattoos for months. Should my first tattoo be the word “justice,” my greatest goal and passion, or should it be God’s sacred Hebrew name? Quite unexpectedly, my tattoo conundrum was forcing me to do some serious thinking about what was most important to me and why. One night as I sat praying in my dorm room I reminded God that the only reason justice was so important to me was that I served a God of justice who called me to reflect that image. My God was the God of the oppressed, a God of action, not of passive religious reflection. “In fact,” I remember thinking to myself, “you really kind of need me. Your pursuit of justice in the world isn’t going very well at the moment.”

What happened next is a moment I will never forget. God did not seem angry or annoyed with me over my youthful arrogance, but just as a mentor might gently answer an over-confident teenager, God asked, “Is it your justice that you’ve committed yourself to, or is it mine?” I was taken aback by the question. Such a possibility had never occurred to me before. Could it be that God’s plan for the world was different from mine? Was my elaborate plan for eradicating poverty in my lifetime not only statistically impossible but also a symptom of prideful distrust in what God was up to? Did I really believe God was enough for the world?

As I continued to ponder these questions, I decided to get both tattoos and experiment with the idea that God might actually be enough. Enough for me, enough for the poor, enough for the world. I asked questions about the implications of the crucifixion for community development and what the resurrection meant for my country’s exorbitant wealth. I started taking seminary classes and debated over what it meant to give God all of my life, including my desire to serve.

The journey that ensued took me to a mission, a slum, a convent, a community house, and finally- to a bishop’s office. From there I learned about “the ordination of baptism,” the idea that in our baptisms we are recruited into God’s service to represent and honour God in a particular way, depending on our gifts and abilities. This is what we call “vocation,” said the bishop, and my particular vocation would combine both my tattoos perfectly: I would finish seminary and become a priest.

The next part of this journey has begun with the deaconate, a kind of service which grounds all others because it includes a solemn vow to “be Jesus” to the least of these: the poor, the sick, the elderly, and the young. A deacon is supposed to portray for others, priests, laity, and even bishops, what being Jesus to the world looks like. As you might guess, I am in no way equipped to take on such a role. Yet I feel greater confidence to jump into this now than I did seven years ago, because I have no incredible plan for changing the world now; I only have Jesus. And that, my friends, is enough.