disruptive grace

If I asked you: “what do you want?” – how would you answer? How would I answer?

To get to know someone we will assume we need to know various things , “what do you know?”, “what do you believe?”, “what’s your job?”. We do this to investigate and evaluate people, socially, religiously and morally. But, what if the key question is “what do you want?” James K A Smith elaborates here:

James K.A. Smith – Desiring the Kingdom: Worship, Worldview, and Cultural Formation from Calvin College on Vimeo.

Thanks to my brother Paul for the head up on this (again).

Thanks to my brother, I found this interview with the theologian Stanley Hauerwas. in this video he talks about his upbringing as a bricklayers son, his journey into theology, following Jesus and non-violence, the radical nature of having children, where are we ‘at home’, consumerism, life as gift, Christian-sentimental-”bullshit” [his words] and much more. It’s worth making time for.

I love this statement from IAM:

The world is not as it ought to be. We long for meaningful existence and involvement in our culture – to make our world a better place and to be part of a story greater than ourselves. But too often our reality is a broken and fragmented story in which value and dignity are stripped from humanity.

Art, as a universal language, can begin to address this dehumanization. The world needs artists and visionaries to lead the way in seeing beyond the trivial to the transcendent, bringing synthesis to fragmentation and hope to despair.

What if we got a parable the wrong way round, what if we got the point wrong – what would be the consequences? What we got so used to reading parables starting “the Kingdom of God is like…”, that we start to project that phase on to every parable. What if the parable actually was preceded by a comment like this:

“he [Jesus] went on to tell them a parable, because he was near Jerusalem and the people thought that the kingdom of God was going to appear at once.”

This is from Luke 19 – verse 11. Jesus was on his way to Jerusalem, and hes gathering lots of interest people are getting excited because they are convinced that the Kingdom will come in a cataclysmic way. Already the dead are being raised (Lazarus) and more recently, wealth is being redistributed by the exploiters (Zacchaeus). Jesus has already explained to his disciples that whats coming up won’t be what they expect, in fact he is going to die, but they don’t understand it.

The Zacchaeus passage immediately before verse 11 is pertinent. Zacchaeus is redistributing wealth as his response to Jesus, and living out the justice expressed by the Hebrew prophets of the past. People are excited – surely this is the Kingdom come! In fact his parable is being told in Zacchaeus’ house. Zacchaeus is par of the corrupt system, if he’s bailing out there will be consequences. Jesus tells them a parable – and it has resonances with the 1st century event (documented by the 1st Century historian Josephus) of Herod, “a man of noble birth”, traveling to Rome (“a distant country”) to “have himself appointed king”. Just in case there’s any doubt Herod isn’t a good guy, ad the local Jews didn’t like him and didn’t ‘want this man to be our king.’ … So lets hear the parable:

“A man of noble birth went to a distant country to have himself appointed king and then to return. So he called ten of his servants and gave them ten minas. ‘Put this money to work,’ he said, ‘until I come back.’

“But his subjects hated him and sent a delegation after him to say, ‘We don’t want this man to be our king.’

“He was made king, however, and returned home. Then he sent for the servants to whom he had given the money, in order to find out what they had gained with it.

“The first one came and said, ‘Sir, your mina has earned ten more.’

” ‘Well done, my good servant!’ his master replied. ‘Because you have been trustworthy in a very small matter, take charge of ten cities.’

“The second came and said, ‘Sir, your mina has earned five more.’

“His master answered, ‘You take charge of five cities.’

“Then another servant came and said, ‘Sir, here is your mina; I have kept it laid away in a piece of cloth. I was afraid of you, because you are a hard man. You take out what you did not put in and reap what you did not sow.’

“His master replied, ‘I will judge you by your own words, you wicked servant! You knew, did you, that I am a hard man, taking out what I did not put in, and reaping what I did not sow? Why then didn’t you put my money on deposit, so that when I came back, I could have collected it with interest?’

“Then he said to those standing by, ‘Take his mina away from him and give it to the one who has ten minas.’

” ‘Sir,’ they said, ‘he already has ten!’

“He replied, ‘I tell you that to everyone who has, more will be given, but as for the one who has nothing, even what he has will be taken away. But those enemies of mine who did not want me to be king over them—bring them here and kill them in front of me.”

Here’s some further thoughts:

First, remember the noble man, who wants to be king is Herod (he’s a bad man getting riches and power at others expense)

Second, you don’t make returns like that on money with out some sort of exploitation.

Third, “the cloth” that the last servant uses is, in the original language, a sort of “snot rag”. Could it be that this servant is saying – ‘this is dirty money and dirty work, I’m not having anything to do with it, I won’t play in this system’?

Fourth, what happens to those who won’t play in this harsh unjust economic system? They’ll be killed. Be careful Zacchaeus, you can give away the tax money and that will make you great in terms of the Kingdom of God, but the current ruling powers won’t like it.

Bang!

What if our alternative reading of this parable, popularized in the era of western capitalism – in fact exposes our very un-righteousness?

Ouch!

[note]
N.T.Wrights response is, if this is the case then the story ceases to be a parable, and takes on more of the form of a moral tale. Perhaps, says Wright, Luke does work this way, but we need more work on this. It will be interesting to see how investigation of this text continues.

If you want a provocative talk about justice and here where I got these thoughts from, check out:

Brian Walsh and Sylvia Keesmaat ‘Outside of a Small Circle of Friends’: Jesus and the Justice of God
view Flash video | download MP3 audio | download MP4 video

Paul posted a provocative quote from Dan Siedell this week. It offers a helpful continuation from my last post. The discipline of hidden-ness is important, but not to the extent of mediocrity, hidden-ness may be unseen, but it can still be a life will with love, passion, and compassion (‘to suffer alongside’) . The stories of old (and in fact all great art) stir our souls because they contain, as N.T. Wright puts it, ‘the echos of a Voice’ — echos that whisper of justice, relationship, spirituality, and beauty. Dan Siedell suggests this:

Let me suggest that neither “Christianity” nor “culture” per se make modern society uncomfortable. It is the self-sacrificial and uncompromising pursuit of greatness and quality in these practices, a life singularly devoted to them, which condemns the virtues of contemporary professional and personal life: compromise, mediocrity, and personal comfort that makes modern society uncomfortable.
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Are we now too sophisticated, too enlightened, too iconoclastic to believe in the myths of great art, great culture, even the possibility of a great life devoted to Christ? We’re not humble. We’re cowards.

We need courage in this journey of culture making, just as we need humility, for we are never fully aware of the implications of our actions or our artifacts. What we do may be noticed by thousands, or by only our closest friends. We must continue to have to courage to continue and create. Dan Siedell again:

The production of great culture, great art, cannot be separated from the risk of failure. Most writers, musicians, poets, and artists do not produce great art, great culture, even if they enjoy successful careers. And even those poets, artists, and musicians who have, do not produce it very often. Do we have the courage to fail, to push ourselves to the point of failure, to assume we probably will fail to produce great art, great culture and still try? … Do we have the courage to produce culture that transcends those rules, which perhaps even changes the rules of the game, or render conventions irrelevant?

Herman Melville died convinced that Moby-Dick was a failure. And most of the literary critics of his time agreed with him. As we curry the favor of contemporary critics and book reviewers, bristle at negative reviews or fawn over those who praise us, it would be a useful exercise to read those initial reviews of Moby-Dick.

“Herman Melville died convinced that Moby-Dick was a failure.” – Yet he produced and published and allowed his novel to exist. He died, (I speculate) with perhaps many believing he had “no great thing… only small things with great love.” We must live likewise.

On that line, I stumbled on this prayerful poem attributed to Sir Fancis Drake this morning:

Disturb us, Lord, when
We are too pleased with ourselves,
When our dreams have come true
Because we dreamed too little,
When we arrived safely
Because we sailed too close to the shore.

Disturb us, Lord, when
with the abundance of things we possess
We have lost our thirst
For the waters of life;
Having fallen in love with life,
We have ceased to dream of eternity
And in our efforts to build a new earth,
We have allowed our vision
Of the new Heaven to dim.

Disturb us, Lord, to dare more boldly,
To venture on wilder seas
Where storms will show Your mastery;
Where losing sight of land,
We shall find the stars.

We ask you to push back
The horizons of our hopes;
And to push back the future
In strength, courage, hope, and love.

This we ask in the name of our Captain,
Who is Jesus Christ.

Here’s to dreaming. Here’s to failing. Here’s to being unnoticed. Here’s to continuing anyway. Here’s to hpoe. Here’s to courage. Here’s to love. Here;s to lying in gutters and looking at the stars.*

“Not that I have already obtained all this, or have already been made perfect, but I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me. Brothers, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining towards what is ahead, I press on towards the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenwards in Christ Jesus.” **

* – with thanks to Oscar Wilde.
** – from Philippians 3

Guilt-Ridden Faith from Recycle Your Faith on Vimeo.

I’m going to rip this right off my eldest brother’s site, as I don’t think many people who read this site also read his (although you shoud consider it, he’s cleverer than me and conveyes knowledge in a more humble and gracious manner).

[Quoting Tony Campolo] “Sigmund Freud once commented that the Church socializes its youth to ask only those questions he Church is able to answer. Any questions it cannot adequately handle are made to seem ridiculous. By the time the children come of age, the Church seems to have the answer to all the important questions of life, because the Church has taught them which questions to ask and which questions should not be asked.
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[This] helps us to understand why people who are in the Church think it has all the answers to all the questions and problems that are important, while those outside the Church fell that it has nothing to say about the things that are really important.
…
According to [Paul] Tillich, the place of the Church is not to raise questions, but to attempt to provide answers. the Church should step aside and let the people of the world raise questoins. The Church should be a listening body — sensitive to the deepest concerns of the world’s peoples, intently interested in their problems, struggling to provide solutions to their most troublesome inquiruesm, and endevoring always to serve as their servant. It’s all too easy for the people of the Church to say, “We’ve got all the answers,” without having first inquired as to what the questions might be.” Tony Campolo (from A Reasonable Faith)
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I discovered this video today (from another off the map project). This video describes a similar thinking to what provoked this blog, and how I want to be living in a faith community.

There’s some lovely observations in this video, Jeff describes some categories of ‘church type’ people, and as uncomfortable as we all tend to be about being put in to categories, and as limited as that approach is, I think we can see ourselves and friends in the terms he describes. Personally, I think I could quite easily be ‘church alumni’ – if it wasn’t for the fact that the church (organized-structured-church) I’m part of has plenty of opportunities to practice practical ways of loving those in our city, particularly to those marginalized due to economics and addictions.

I have friends who sit in each of the categories Jeff describes, and all who have found ways to practically love others in the manner of Jesus. So, in many ways these friends are my church* — a faith community — we courage each other in this way of life, we eat together, we care for each other. It is a church that intersects organized church structures, yet it is not fully defined by those structures, it works within those structures and without them. This is the nature of the kingdom, you can’t point to it and say here it is and there it is, for the kingdom is among you… in your midst.

So, let us keep practicing this life of embodying the way of Jesus, and let us encourage one another to do good works, let us keep meeting together in whatever context we can: around the dinner table, at the pub, in the coffee shop, in worship gatherings, over games of poker, and in the street.

A book I’ve been looking forward to for a while ‘Christianity Beyond Belief’ by Todd Hunter has now been released. Todd hunter has been very helpful as I’ve explored thinking and practice as a follower of Jesus for the past few years. I’ve missed opportunities to speak to him personally over that time, but fortunately due to blog’s and mp3’s I’ve benefited from his thoughts and wisdom. Most notably if you can find the talks online of Todd’s presentations of the Kingdom Life with Dallas Willard then do make time to listen to them. Todd has a great way of communicating, with stories examples and drawing on some great sources, so the new book is set to be a winner.

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