Once again I stumbled across a cool piece on the God’s Politics blog hosted by Sojourners, this time by the always provocative and oft prophetic Derek Webb of Caedmon’s Call. I suppose the article, entitled “Following Jesus vs. Social Activism” , doesn’t say anything that I haven’t heard or thought about before, but in it Webb does speak frankly about the ridiculousness of following Jesus. To quote the first sentence and a half of the article, “Claiming to follow Jesus is a ridiculous thing to try and do. He’s a really hard guy to follow…”
Agreed.
Webb goes on to talk about how we are to understand following Jesus when the things that he asks us to do (love the poor, love our enemies, etc.) scandalize the very core of who we naturally are, particularly given the fact that, in his words, we are violent to the core.
Fortunately, he writes, Jesus has given us the key to understanding who he is and what he wants us to do. It’s not obsessing over the finer points of private morality that Christians so often obsess over (although it bears mentioning that we, too often, see private morality and social activism as a zero sum game (wikipedia it if you don’t know what that means…yes, I did just put a parentheses inside of a parentheses), when in fact, biblically, they most certainly are not), but instead the key is that we learn to love God and love our neighbor. It’s that, um, simple. Thus, in Webb’s words, the work of following Jesus is loving and caring for those whom it is difficult. It is that love that ought to frame and contextualize all of the other commandments we keep.
One aspect of ministry that has grated on me since the beginning is the fact that, when you’re a pastor, you hear about everyone’s junk. Don’t get me wrong, I count it a joy and privilege to be able to counsel people through difficult circumstances and walk with them as they seek healing, but often what I’m referring to doesn’t happen in that context. Sometimes people get convicted about their own behavior and tell me themselves (which I much prefer), but more frequently I get members of our church that come to me out of concern for their friend that has recently started killing kittens or binge drinking or building a nuclear warhead or making not awesome relational decisions (ok, I made up a few of those). When people come to me themselves, that usually indicates some desire to change, and that is a lot easier to deal with. It’s hearing the stuff that people in my church do when they aren’t at church that gets difficult to deal with. Frankly, and this just me being honest, loving in those circumstances is a challenge, and yet I understand that is the love that Jesus is talking about, and that tragically people often don’t think they are going to get from pastors and other church folk. And let me be clear about one thing: it’s not because I think they’re bad people. In fact it’s precisely the opposite. I think they are really good people. I think they are people that God has gifted with tremendous potential, and at times I see that potential beautifully on display. So when I hear about them denying that potential, it breaks my heart. I know they know better , and often the disappointment is crushing. I love being able to care for people people on the soul level…people are never products, or employees, or tokens to fill a role in the church, they are people…but caring for people on the soul level can be extremely painful sometimes.
And it makes me wonder: Have we, as the church, lost the picture of what it means to follow Jesus? Have we lost the picture that Derek Webb (well, and Jesus before him) paints of simply loving God and loving our neighbor? It’s easy to point the finger and blame others, but are there systemic issues that are leading to these sorts of circumstances.
Is that why we, too often, fail to live up to our potential? Is it because we have sought to primarily find our identity is something else other than who God has made us to be? Have we found it in hollow spirituality that centers around a passive hour or two on Sundays? And if so, how do we go about changing the church from simply a community that gets together on Sundays to a community that gets together on Sundays and embraces community throughout the week that is bound by an unconditional love for God and a love for neighbor? The potential for good is that sort of model is mind blowing. Now I’ve deviated quite a ways away from the point of Webb’s article, but I’ll close with a paragraph from it that expresses what we, as Christians, are proclaiming in the world when we enact a love for God and a love for neighbor:
“How do we tell the whole story of the coming reign of God, a new way of being human and relating to God and God’s creation? We put our hands to it. We proclaim a day coming when there will be no more thirst by giving water to the thirsty. We proclaim a day coming where there will be no more disease and death by caring for the lives of those whose bodies are broken. We proclaim a day coming where there will be no more war by preemptively sowing the seeds of peace.”
