‘Before God and with God we live without God.’
‘the most important things in life are human relationships’ ‘We can be Christians today in only two ways, through prayer and in doing justice among human beings. All Christian thinking, talking, and organizing must be born anew, out of that prayer and action.’—Dietrich Bonhoeffer So now what? 125 days away, 25 different dwelling places, over 25,000 miles of travel, $35,000 of Lilly money spent, for what? How has this changed us? Most importantly, what word has God whispered in our ears? I will let Kathie speak for herself, although she did point out that at the very least this proves that the two of us can actually get along pretty well together! We have believed recklessly and behaved playfully- and still plan on staying married! We started with the apostle John, a Roman prisoner, in Asia Minor and concluded with Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a Berlin prisoner, in Europe. One pursued by Caesar, the other by Hitler. The two separated by nearly 2 millennia, but each in their own unique context following the living Jesus. As I was concluding my sabbatical this summer, sitting on Eugene Peterson’s porch overlooking the pristine waters of Flathead Lake in Montana, the news from the firestorm in Ferguson surfaced. It hit me with a chill, cutting into me like the ‘Hawk’ from a Chicago winter. We would need courage to reenter these headwinds. Courage is required to go where our suffering God is: 2 B there 4 others. But what I was learning was this: when we (ie. John, Bonhoeffer) are there, we R there 4 God. It is our ‘participation in the sufferings of God in the world’, not some moral athleticism, that makes us Christians. (D. Bonhoeffer) Courage demands one’s core, one’s heart (root word in ‘courage’), everything that is truly alive and pertinent to God. To bring courage is to bring all that is BEST and most ALIVE of our deepest self and OFFER it to ‘others.’ John & Bonhoeffer offered up their BEST: words of life and lives for obedience. Both were there for God by being there for ‘others.’ Courage requires repentance. We are compelled to abandon our propensity to privatize our piety. Bonhoeffer calls this privatization an ‘unconscious Christianity’ that frankly becomes irrelevant to anything outside two hours on Sunday and saying a quick ‘grace’ before a few meals the rest of the week. God grieves for the world, not just the chosen frozen, or those behaving themselves, or a few charity cases. A private piety keeps one risk adverse. It numbs down our faith. It is more concerned with determining where ‘one stands’ (as if our faith ever stands still) on homosexuality, or if one is ‘red’ or ‘blue’, or ‘green’ enough before it is willing to even listen to another. It obsesses more on being right than forgiven. Dangerously well-intended, it mistakenly turns God ‘on His head’ by insisting first on an abstract ‘correctness’ while putting His passion (suffering) for relating-ship in the rear. It takes the static square peg of piety and forces it into a living triangle - the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost! The two are not congruent! Courage comes before piety. It takes more courage to engage in reconciling and restoring messed up relationships (ie. the brokenness represented in the Robin Williams & Michael Browns of this world), than to be running around trying to force our God into society (whether by self-righteously displaying the 10 commandments on billboards and church doors or by zealously keeping mosques out of our neighborhoods.) It takes courage to live one’s life with one leg limping in darkness and the other walking in light. Pure choices are seldom an option, not in Bonhoeffer’s ‘world come of age,’ nor in today’s polarized populous. Courage tells the truth. Quite frankly as difficult as it is to enter into the Robin Williams story, it is easier than moving into Ferguson’s story. Fatigue is Ferguson’s closest companion. The sledge hammer of race has hit us too hard, for too long. We have become weary watching these reruns. I know I am supposed to say this. After all, I and my family have lived and worked in Lawndale for the past 37 years, and being a minority in a majority African-American community- I’d better say it! The sobering reality is there are hundreds of Ferguson’s in our country and I and my family live in one of them. Places where smoke is smoldering and simmering just below a disguising placid surface, covering a dysfunctional underclass that is sweltering and suffocating, lying in wait for the right spark to ignite another inferno. Fergusons, will continue to embarrass this great country because to put it quite simply- ‘America, we have a race problem.’ A significant mass of people have been left behind and they disproportionately originate from the darker hue. They carry a history of oppression, some intentional other unintentional, by and in systems that whites as well as some blacks benefit (witness the drug driven prison- industrial- complex mushrooming in our nation.) Yes, despite advances, this country still does have a race problem. I say this because this is my reality. It is no different than my saying 40 years ago that our society had a ‘handicap accessibility and attitude problem’ when I lived with my sister Elizabeth who was confined lifelong to a wheel chair. She was part of my world. She and her friends were ‘the others’ I encountered. Courage, which forced our society to change its priorities, was needed to speak the truth then as it is now. I also am tired of the reruns. Fatigue is my closest friend. Part of me just wants to ‘keep on traveling’ (as our guru Rick Steves likes to say.) Why return? For one, this prodigal spent all Sugar-Daddy Lilly’s inheritance. But more importantly, Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s writing and life encourage me to go back. Bonhoeffer did not have to return to Germany in the 1930’s. In fact he could very easily have stayed near Chicago or New York and taught his time out until it was safe to return. He belonged to the privileged in society. Why intentionally expose oneself to suffering that could and did eventually cost him his life. Yet he went back. For what? What difference would he really make? Did he really think he was going to save the German race? He was throwing away his life- quite literally! But his mission was clear- 2 B there 4 others. 2 B there 4 others is really God’s mission, Dietrich was only a privileged participant. The privileged part is that he realized he was not alone. On the contrary, God himself was there, because when we (he) R there 4 others, we are there 4 God. Lord, we need you to EN-COURAGE us. To whom much has been given, much is required! And I (we) have been given SO MUCH!
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'the neighbor who is within reach in any given situation.’ -Dietrich
Bonhoeffer In Montana we live on‘A-Hole Hill.’ For six summers we have heard stories about how a particular person had ‘P.Od’ (forgive the mountain vernacular) enough people to earn him the right to name the mountain. As a consequence of this behavior he was unwelcome to any more ‘Happy Hours’- ( aka-BBQ’s, or just making some mountain memories) on his hill’s namesake. ‘Jim, what are we doing here?’ My response to Kath’s question for the last 125 days has been the same: to believe recklessly and behave playfully! Now with the sabbatical concluding in Montana, just as it had started in Turkey, it was time to live this out again. Divisions today are not difficult to uncover. There are Palestinians and Israelis, police and unarmed pedestrians in Ferguson, Obama lovers and Tea Party zealots. Then there are a few dozen deer, some howling wolves, and a handful of humans living on a remote mountain in Montana. All of the above need to heed Rodney King’s challenge: ‘Can’t we all just get along?’ But since Rodney King’s voice is not a particularly popular billboard in Northwest Montana, we decided food was still the king. We were there for such a time as this- to cultivate some hospitality and magical mountain moments. And yes, I decided to invite the ‘uninvited.’ On the sly, of course, surprise fireworks are always more spectacular! Pastors for the most part are conflict adverse, yet I felt I owed it to him as to where he stood on the hill- besides I was out of there in 3 days! So I climbed the mountain. I informed him that he had indeed ‘P-Od’ people on the hill. ‘Who?’ He was clueless. (A common condition for these types- many require radical repentance!) Without specifying I asked him to trust my pastoral instincts. To my surprise, he did and he came. There were no‘rocket’s red glare’ over the Montana skies that evening. Neither was there a‘Kumbaya’ moment on the Wolff’s patio. Only rave reviews for ‘bringing us all together.’ Hosting a hospitality moment on a mountain is nothing compared to the arduous climb necessary to achieve justice and reconciliation between peoples carrying centuries of hostility. The blood of humans, not hamburgers, has been shed and healing does not come without a high price. We are a fragile family that fractures frequently and requires forgiveness. As Eugene Peterson reminds us, ‘there are more than enough dirt, devils, and demons to destroy us all.’ Bonhoeffer is difficult to understand (the truest point I have made thus far!) But if I read him even half correctly, he is simply saying this: God is experienced in the encounter of Jesus Christ. He is THEE OTHER (incarnation, cross, resurrection) who ‘is only for others.’ Jesus is not discovered by escaping humanity- (nor by obsessing on some salacious pornographic end-time-tale). No, he is found by engaging ‘God in human form.’ Jesus is as near as ‘the neighbor who is within reach in any given situation.’ He is ‘on YOUR MOUNTAIN.’ That is the place to begin to discover who‘the others’ are. |