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Name: Matt
Gender: Male
Interests: Music (mewithoutyou, pedro the lion, cursive, thrice, etc.), Sports, Reading....Trying to figure out how to contribute to the Kingdom of God
Expertise: Not yet
Industry: Non-Profit; Affordable Housing
Message: message me
Member Since:
9/7/2006
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The
recent controversy over Rev. Jeremiah Wright has initiated a new
conversation about race in America. It has done so by making clear to
white America what almost every black American knows—that 40 years
after the civil rights movement, there are still two Americas. More
pointedly for Christians, it is manifestly evident that we have two
churches. After the integration of schools, the military, and the
workplace, the church remains the single most segregated institution in
America.
Across this divide, black Christians necessarily maintain a double
consciousness, knowing how to talk to their white brothers and sisters
while also keeping alive the distinctive language of the black church.
White Christians, however, are taken aback when they hear the "angry"
tone and anti-American sentiments of prophetic black preaching. It is
hard for us to believe that such rhetoric could be called Christian.
Like any pastor, Rev. Wright has been wrong. (I do not, for example,
think it is prophetic to say that whites created the HIV virus.) But we
would do well to remember that the same pastor who Barack Obama has
distanced himself from also gave him the phrase "the audacity of hope."
While it has made for a good book title, its origin in the prophetic
tradition of black preaching points us to the peculiar nature of
Christian hope.
Apocalyptic hope is one of the distinctive marks of black preaching.
We pay lip service to this tradition in our annual Martin Luther King
Day services, but we are tempted to water it down. We overlook the fact
that Martin Luther King, Jr. spent the last year of his life
criticizing America's role in the Vietnam War. It is almost never
mentioned that on April 4, 1968, just hours before he was assassinated,
King phoned Ebeneezer Baptist Church to say that his sermon title for
the next Sunday would be "Why America May Go to Hell."
Black anger is not now nor has it ever been absent from prophetic
black preaching. Like Jeremiah Wright after him, Martin King preached
to a church that knew firsthand the extent of injustice in this nation.
Many things have changed in forty years, not the least of which is the
fact that a black man is seriously contending for the presidency of the
United States. But the black church knows that the wealth disparity
between blacks and whites has not changed since 1965. Black Christians
in America know that nearly one half of their sons will not finish high
school and a third of them will go to prison. Divorced from our black
brothers and sisters, most white Christians do not know this reality.
But if we learn to tell the truth about race, what can Christian
hope look like? It cannot be the hope of false prophets who say,
"'peace, peace' when there is no peace," pretending that blacks and
whites do not continue to suffer from a racial wound. But neither can
our hope be entirely satisfied with progressive politics that calls us
to move forward by getting along. Apocalyptic hope is audacious enough
to admit that the problem is deep in all of us and the only solution is
a love that comes from beyond us.
In the civil rights movement, no one was angrier about the plight of
black people in this country than James Baldwin. His gift with words
only served to sharpen his criticism and make his attack on white power
more pointed. Yet, it was James Baldwin who wrote in a letter to his
nephew, "the really terrible thing, old buddy, is that you must accept
[white people] … for these innocent people have no other hope. They
are, in effect, still trapped in a history which they do not
understand."
One great gift of the black church that has been largely overlooked
in the case of Rev. Wright is the tradition's ability to hold together
apocalyptic criticism with radical love. This is the double miracle of
the black church: that after hearing the gospel from their oppressors,
black people found liberation in Christ and then loved the so-called
Christians who had been their enemies. If the Enlightenment reduced our
confidence in a God who performs miracles, the story of the black
church alone should be enough to restore it.
What we need to heal the racial wound in America is nothing less
than a miracle. Barack Obama cannot fix us, and thank God, he is honest
enough to admit it. We Christians would do well to take a cue from his
frankness and remember that judgment begins with the house of God. We
should have the audacity to hope that racial divisions could be
transgressed within the church so that the world might know another way
is possible.
Such hope may seem apocalyptic from where we stand, but the
resurrection of Jesus is a reminder that the end of all things has
already interrupted history. On this side of Easter, we're invited to
live a way that wouldn't make sense if miracles don't happen. | | |
| Some beautiful poetry about G-d:
"Beloved,
Last Time,
When you walked through the city
So beautiful and so naked,
You left a thousand women crazy
And impossible to live with.
You left a thousand married men
Confused about their gender.
Children ran from their classrooms,
And teachers were glad you came.
And the sun tried to break out
Of its royal cage in the sky
And at last, and at last,
Lay its Ancient Love at Your feet."
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| Tonight I attended a lecture by Walter Brueggemann, author of The Prophetic Imagination, one of the most challenging, unnerving and beautiful books I have read. His interpretation of the biblical texts as an alternative social reality to those that dominate our world is deeply provocative and stirs in me thoughts and feelings I don't fully know how to articulate. Through the lens that he provides, the Bible becomes a beautiful narrative of God's unrivaled power in the world in which we live, and when I think about what His kingdom looks like I am inspired and humbled. Walter spoke in a fervent style that at times made you think this was the first time he was telling this message of subversive hope and resistant peace. Of course, it is far from the first time he has spoken on this topic, but his way of relating to the audience revealed a deep drive of inner vision and purpose that all good prophets speak from.
It is from this deep reservoir of focused purpose that I want to live out my life. I want to commune with God in a way that provides a context for what I feel called to do. At the present moment this is counseling, and the lecture inspired me to make some time to reflect on what prophetically imaginative counseling practice would look like. I briefly mentioned this to Walter after his lecture and he was kind enough to listen. (Unfortunately, sometimes those brief exchanges with "celebrities" simply become opportunities to try and sound smart, and this is a trap I try to avoid since I'm privy to fall in.) Truly, the message of his book and lecture is deeply moving to me, and I am intrigued by the possibilities for integrating a prophetic, alternative message of God's love and hope to clients who will most often be suffering from the abuses of a world in which we are so often commodified and refused the space to truly grieve the pain we feel.
This commodification makes us less human. If there is something about relationship with God that makes us more human, as I believe, then one of my roles as counselor should be to create a space in which people are free to live out their humanity, and all that goes with that. This may be allowing or even encouraging people to mourn and lament the ways in which they have been abused in their lives. This may also be freeing people to admit the ways in which they have inflicted abuse on others. Through these relationships the counselor humbly accepts the role of priest, hearing confession of deep sins and distributing reminders of God's mercy and forgiveness. This should not turn into a commodified exchange in and of itself, but rather should be a surrogate relationship in which a client is reminded of or introduced to who God is. Not who they have thought him to be, but who He is, in all of His beauty and mystery. The counselor is not God, and should not see himself this way, but rather realizes that the grieving client may not be familiar with the alternative message of God's mercy and forgiveness, and thus, should carefully and lovingly be introduced to a reality that is not characterized by individualism, production or the like.
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| Years of grief and anguish have pushed me back to you.
To your embrace, your loving face and though you soothe me,
The questions remain, "Why, Lord? Why was my heart so hard?
How, Lord? How did I run so far?"
And yet here I am kneeling at your feet, crying like the Prodigal,
"Father, even the swine eat better than me!"
How can I have been so numb to everything you taught?
But Lord, you've brought me so much more than I deserve.
In extravagance you have birthed me anew and so I'm yours.
My life no longer mine to own, I am your son and Your kingdom is my home.
You have giv'n me the royal robe, adorned with love, adorned with hope.
How precious my repentance, how blessed Your forgiveness.
How splendid life with you is to me.
And so, though undeserving I may be,
In You, my Lord, my God, I am free.
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| "We are willing to worship a God only if God makes us safe. Thus you get
the silly question, How does a good God let bad things happen to good
people?....Have you read the Psalms lately?
We're seeing a much more complex God than that question gives credit
for." - Stanley Hauerwas
As Frederick Buechner has put it: “In
the last analysis, you cannot pontificate but only point. A Christian
is one who points at Christ and says, ‘I can’t prove a thing, but
there’s something about his eyes and his voice. There’s something about
the way he carries his head, his hands. The way he carries his cross.
The way he carries me.”
“Are you not thirsty?” said the Lion.
“I’m dying of thirst,” said Jill.
“Then drink,” said the Lion.
“May I—could I – would you mind going away while I do?” said Jill.
The Lion answered
this only with a look and a very low growl….The delicious rippling
noise of the stream was driving her nearly frantic.
“Will you promise not to – do anything to me, if I do come?” said Jill.
“I make no promise,” said the Lion.
Jill was so thirsty now that, without noticing it, she had come a step nearer.
“Do you eat girls?” she said.
“I have swallowed
up girls and boys, women and men, kings and emperors, cities and
realms,” said the Lion. It didn’t say this as if it were boasting, nor
as if it were sorry, nor as if it were angry. It just said it.
“I daren’t come and drink,” said Jill.
“Then you will die of thirst,” said the Lion.
“Oh dear,” said Jill, coming another step nearer. “I suppose I must go and look for another stream then.”
“There is no other stream,” said the Lion.
"That’s Lent.
That’s what’s happens when we give up our our delightful distractions
and hand ourselves over to the wild and dangerous God revealed in Jesus
Christ. It’s incredibly scary. It hurts – almost exactly – like hell.
And there is no other stream." http://ekklesiaproject.org/content/view/283/1/
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