So how does the belief that the Church is an always approximation of God’s Kingdom, or at best, a “key actor” in the drama of God’s salvation for the world affect which Church we belong to?
For starters, we can flesh out what God’s Kingdom should be up to, and then observe how well the churches we attend create ways to express God’s Kingdom. For me, God’s Kingdom begins with a great deal of localism and ends with everyday life lived in community. I applaud public works and acts of charity, but I don’t think that it is enough to simply give time and resources to the widows and orphans of our society, simply for the fact that they have very real and awkward, most definitely painful gifts to give to me. The poor do not exist so I can assuage the guilt I feel whenever I squander my paycheck and therefore throw some money their way. They exist because life is not fair. We must learn how to love the poor, to know the poor as something more than an ambiguous “the poor”, we must know the poor as the people on our streets. We must learn how to live with the poor and learn how to break bread together and share the all too private information concerning our salaries and jobs, and therefore indebt ourselves one to another. I don’t think that I participate in God’s Kingdom if I don’t have everyday relations with the poor and oppressed. God’s Kingdom is more about loving the poor instead of hating poverty. So what church embodies such a community with the poor?
We live a few blocks away from the crown jewel of Denver’s park system, Washington Park. It is an absolutely gorgeous and stunning huge sprawl of land in the middle of the city. We have the occasion to walk the park most nights, and we can’t help but feel as if it is the best part of the city. It is not in a gated community, but I can safely say that the area around it has become gentrified. A 1500 square foot bungalow in the area easily goes for $650,000 dollars. As much as I want to live in the serenity, whether real or imagined, of the park, I know that the poor do not live there. The churches in the area do good work, but I get the feeling that they contribute, most decently, to the surrounding community, which happens to be families in need of their pet’s being blessed more than anything. Sure there is struggle and strife within this community, there are terrible lives and sadness, but there seems to me to be an absence of the gift of the poor. The temptation to use the church as a community to round out an already happy life is too great there. As much as I am committed to the prospect that Church must be done within one’s immediate surroundings, this place just doesn’t seem to have all the right pieces to do church.
I am challenged by this. I don’t want to commute to church. I don’t want our church to be something we get to “go into” instead of “be a part of” if that makes any sense. As long as the church is missing the vital community of the poor, I fear that it is destined to quibble about worship style and convenience instead of dealing with the real meat of Christian life lived in community. Perhaps churches should subsidize housing in aim of a quota of impoverished or something like that. I don’t know. Maybe I’m not looking hard enough for the poor around me. Or maybe I’m unwilling to move, commute, or subsidize, but all I know is that I need to live and receive the gifts of the poor as much as they need to live and receive the gifts that I can give. The search continues.
6 comments:
As one who has a deep reverence for Life Aquatic, allow me to pose another analogy. I think the jaguar shark is better suited to the Kingdom of God, and church would better be viewed as the dinky yellow submarine that seeks it out. In the grand scheme of it all the church (submarine) and its leaders (Bill Murray) will in the end be left wondering "if it even remembers us" as we are confronted with our own frailty and mortality in the face of ineffable beauty. This reality that unfortunately we can only describe as a "Kingdom" (pathetic metaphor indeed), being where the Spirit works, is far beyond our gatherings, and we are immensely fortunate just to behold it; let alone participate. Anyway, that's my take.
Personally I find modern society to be far too vast, and much too anonymous, to allow any person or congregation of people to really get things right. I think our only option is to prioritize the potentialities that our lives are, and move towards living those out. I find that this will inevitably leave our legacies muddled. Even the holiest of us that reflect the light so well, cast dark shadows where others fail to look. I do find that open community works well to minimize this though, at least where group-think and culture don't blind us collectively.
We keep patching up the holes and attempting to learn how to steer the thing better, hoping to find that reality that is much bigger than our community.
I think you're absolutely right about the church's relation to "the poor". (I almost feel patronizing saying it like that, kind of the way my grandfather says "the gays" or "the Mexicans".) "God’s Kingdom is more about loving the poor instead of hating poverty." I've been thinking a lot lately about what our relationship to the political arena should be, and I'm quite certain that if we look at the world through to dominant a secular political lens it will lead to us merely hating poverty and not loving the poor. It's hard for us to hold our palms against the wounds of the world when all we do is get angry when we watch Bush give a press conference. It's more important to authentically live in that space where we will be affected--and problematized--by the suffering of others.
And I think Joe is right, it's hard to find the church that does it all. But you can still have your commitments, which means that at some point you have to discriminate against some goods in favor of others. And I think finding a church that genuinely embodies Jesus' love for those who society leaves out is one of those priorities most of us let slide down the list, because it usually translates into a less comfortable church experience.
May God speed you in the rest of your hunt.
Thanks for the comments. Joe, I think your analogy is much better and most certainly more mysterious and beautiful than mine. I appreciate the insight.
Nic, so if can agree that the "awkward" church experience is what we are after, how can we translate that into a commitment to a church body? I'm realizing things about church through my thoughts and observations, but how do we get from the point of intellectual assent to living it out? Basically I'm just asking you to keep me accountable. Talk is cheap, not worthless, and I don't want it to assuage my need for church.
I for one go to church to help and be helped. I go to church to share the fire within me and hope that it will give others the spark that they need. You all know the analogy: one log on fire will quickly burn out, but many logs on fire will feed each other. Synergy is another way to explain it. All seem somewhat sufficient.
So, if I go to church to help others and to have them help me what kind of a community would I need? I don't know if there is a right answer to the question.
But I do know this much, I don't think righteousness has much to do with wealth, or the lack thereof. I think some wealthy people are very righteous and some poor people are very wicked. And clearly the opposite exists also. There is a small amount of correlation I believe, but no causation.
So I think the quite gentrified people in your area need to have that fire shared with them also. Not only is there no causation between wealth and righteousness but I also think there is not much correlation between age and righteousness. People do seem to have more of that inner peace in them as they get older, but there are many older people who don't.
So as much as I also like to be in a congregation that represents many people in society, I also don't, in a way, reverse discriminate and think that the old don't need any help. The sincere labors of a servant of Christ are needed among all people. The need appears more pressing with certain groups in society, but it is perceived, not real, I believe.
Also, if there is no poor in God's Kingdom, then the seeming object of your efforts, the poor, will automatically be served by God's justice in the next life. So, in a way, when we strive to eliminate poverty and other similar travesties, we are somewhat only mitigating a temporary issue. In contrast, if we focus on trying to help heal people's souls (acknowledging the Lord is the one who does it, we are merely tools to help him) then we are truly doing something eternal.
Not to say that the temporal and eternal don't intermingle at times, but I think you get the point. Also, I probably should have asked if this blog was open to the public for commenting. I just wanted to add my .02$. I find myself sometimes focusing on the downtrodden financially so much at times that I realize I am healing pocket books when the soul should be my focus. Again, there is overlap, but I just want to make sure that my efforts are producing the most fruit that they can, to help others and myself try to become more like Christ.
Surely the best way to accomplish this is in our local community. But I find pocket books can be helped in many ways, but hearts can be mended, it seems, only by interacting with people and touching their hearts. This must be done in a community. How to serve both communities best (because although poverty is temporal and limited to this life, it obviously is something that still needs our best efforts) is the crux of the issue. The answer can be quite elusive at times.
Matt, thanks for your comment. Since you raise such important issues, I decided to make our next post in part a response to your comment. And you didn't have to ask permission to add your .02$; we appreciate your input and look forward to hearing from you again.
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