There are certain authors I read who approach language with a sense of mystery and awe for its depth of impact on the very elements of our being. While words can never hope to describe God accurately (and indeed believing so is like trying to fit the heavens into one’s head–it will simply explode), God can somehow encompass words to the point where simply uttering them is a profound revelation of the divine. The holy name of Jesus is such an example. The unutterable name of God, YHWH, is another. In one sense, that is what the whole concept of Scripture is about, that words can take on not just more meanings but deeper ones, ones with cosmological significance.

Wendell Berry, Marilynne Robinson, Kathleen Norris, Dostoevsky, and Henry Nouwen are some of the writers that I get that sense from. It’s what I strive for every time I write anything down: to consider how each word could possibly evoke God’s presence for another person reading. Certainly the ideas are important. I wouldn’t be so taken with any of the people I love to read if they didn’t have compelling thoughts. But I read plenty of books that excite me or motivate me to change that don’t leave me feeling like the words themselves were an invocation of the Holy Spirit.

I also read plenty of philosophy of language scholars and in them find a cold and manipulative spirituality, people who understand the potential of words to illuminate meaning in life and choose to juggle them as if they were glass globes, people who mock both the value and fragility of this thing we call language. Words can contain a certain mystery, and to be humble before that mystery is to be prostrate before the Great Mystery, the Word which was and is and is to come.

It is no surprise, then, how the opening lines of the Gospel of St. John are perhaps the most mysterious, wondrous, deeply meaningful, deeply spiritual words in all of human history. “In the beginning,” immediately conjures up histories, stories, Scripture, and a grand sense of origin. We are told the story of creation all over again but from a different perspective. “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God.” As we keep reading, the Word is transformed into Life, Life into light, and then light back into the Word which became flesh among the children of God. The Word became Flesh and the flesh became Word.

All things were made by this Word. Nothing has been made without the Word. Indeed, if we follow this language carefully (and I dare not demean the value of this poetry by calling it mere metaphor), the children of God are also being formed into Words. Together, we are the song of God (a la Aslan in The Magician’s Nephew), we are the essay of God in the true sense of the word “essay;” we are God’s attempt, God’s try. I am captivated by this imagery, this very intimate connection between God’s utterance and our beinghood.

Yet words are not gods, nor are they God. The supremely magnificent paradox, that GK Chesterton’s analogy about getting the heaven’s into one’s head (that I mentioned before) gets at, is that while word is not God, God is Word. It’s important, I feel, to recognize that paradox whenever we “essay” at writing or speaking to another human. We have the capacity to offer a lingering fragrance of the Word or the foul sacrilege of hatred. I do not believe language is ever neutral.

It is important to differentiate between spirituality and theology in this case. Someone could make the case for the importance of theological language or they could develop a theological understanding of language. I am not uninterested in this notion, but when I say spirituality of language, I refer to the potential for encountering and experiencing God de vocabula (my own Latin idiom…).

There are many implications for taking language this seriously (which can be quite fun as well! Ask Peter Maurin, another master word smith), but that is not what I’m after presently. Within a phrase, an essay, a chapter of a book, whether or not it’s Scripture, we can encounter the living God, and we need more authors who both understand that and work harder to allow that to happen more authentically. Bookstores are filled with absolute trash in both content and construct; Christian writers should strive for more because we claim to have the truest Word, the Word whose truth is beyond explaining and imagination and must be experienced.

I want to interject some thoughts that I was struck with tonight at church. It surprised me because while I often “receive a Word” at church, it’s often after some sifting through what the pastor said, or it’s being convicted by the Holy Spirit while praying. Tonight, I felt the necessity of rebuke by both a congregation member and the pastor.

We were talking about Acts, and my housemate Jonathan made a strong emphasis on the fact that Paul was dependent on the hospitality of others. This led to some discussion about the importance of hospitality.

My neighbor, at that point, spoke up and said (paraphrased here), “I know we talked about this a little bit on Sunday, but I just wanted to say that I’ve thought more about it, and I’m sure that it is a sin to not visit the sick. There’s no two ways around it, it’s what the Word says, and I believe it.”

In all my energy to care about the poor, I think up until this year I’d forgotten about the rest of that saying…Jesus says to take care of the sick, to welcome the stranger, clothe the naked, and visit the prisoner. While being at Rutba, I’ve seen the welcome the stranger acted out more concretely than anywhere else, and I feel like I’ve tried to clothe the naked. Here, I’ve also seen the command to visit the imprisoned taken seriously. But tonight, after my neighbor said something, the pastor got up and went on and on about the importance of visiting the sick and showing hospitality.  I was immediately struck with how I’ve not done any visiting of the sick recently.

Obviously, the knee jerk reaction to these commands from Jesus is that we don’t know anyone who is sick, or in prison, etc. But I’ve been doing this “justice” thing for long enough to know the response to that. We’re supposed to know the sick, the poor, etc. We’re supposed to be friends and love people who end up in prison. How can we take care of Jesus if we’ve never met him? I don’t know about everyone at St. Johns, where I go to church, but I know at least the pastor does an amazing job at visiting church members who are in the hospital or sick.

These are the Works of Mercy. I’ve been reading a good bit of Dorothy Day recently, and she is always talking about the central importance of the Works of Mercy. I see how I let my presence at the Rutba House replace some of the call to the works of mercy. I know a couple homeless men, but I haven’t gone out and met them. I welcome the stranger, but I rarely meet the stranger outside of our house.

Maybe this relates to the second bit, about power.

Power, in Christian circles, needs a new definition. The Works of Mercy are powerful. The torture and death on a cross, is powerful. The office of the President of the United States is not powerful. In Christ, power is in weakness. This is of course known, but we still refer to “positions of power” and “powerful governments.” But we are strong when we are weak. For the Christian, there is no power apart from the cross, which is the ultimate sign of weakness (by normal terms).

What I am getting at is the way we think about power. Inefficiency is power. God has always worked through the weakest ways, but those have proven to be the only ways with God. God has the power to heal our brokenness, but we soon learn that our brokenness comes as we are broken, made weaker. We receive our healing in the Works of Mercy, in the powerful clothing of the naked, the visiting of the sick.

I think of this specifically in relationship to the attitude towards government, but really any high sort of position as well. Conservative and Liberal Christians alike look at the government has having a certain kind of power. Each seeks to see that power used for certain ends. That seems to be in conflict with the definition of power that Christ gives us.

Thoughts? Does the government actually have power? If not, how does that affect our purpose? People often say that governments can do things on a scale people cannot (good things (like health care) and bad things (like war). How does our understanding of power affect our participation in these systems?

One of the great pleasures I’ve had since leaving college is getting to know some fantastic people in various parts of the country who are doing really good work to re-build the church like Francis of Assisi. Some of them will never write a book but are quietly living out a radical response to the gospel. Some of these leaders in the church today ought to be given the platform more often, to challenge the rest of us to look beyond just the big name celebrities. It’s unfortunate that many of these leaders who need to be heard are women and people of color. That is why I am so thankful for my friend Joanna Shenk’s first book, Widening the Circle. This volume gives the stage to a chorus of voices rarely heard by most of the church, even those of us in the “Christian community” movement.

Joanna’s day job is connecting the Mennonite Church with Christian communities formed in the Mennonite/Anabaptist tradition who may or may not have any Mennonite blood in them. Widening the Circle (WC) lets the communities she’s encountered speak for themselves in a neat compendium of authors and formats, ranging from interviews to poetry to images.

Indeed, I would say that this is the book’s most gratifying characteristic, that it is not merely one narrative after another, but broken up with interviews with some formidable drum majors of the Christian nonviolence community, including Vincent Harding and Hedy Sawadsky. Jesce Walz has a cool series of poem/prose reflections on her communities, and Dawn Longenecker of Church of the Saviour here in D.C. has an illustrated journey.

As for the content itself, I have really enjoyed reading the stories that brought the various authors to identify with Anabaptist ethics and theology.  That’s the unifying thread in the book, wanderings in and out of traditional Mennonite communities and churches, something that has clearly been going on for several decades. Sometimes we younger generation communities have the impression that we’re doing something new and don’t need to listen to the stories and wisdom of those who came before. I’m often disappointed at the lack of interest in this history among people who claim to have a love for community. The book highlights three “waves” of community, starting post WWII, including stories of Civil Rights era communities, Reba Place in Chicago, Sojourners and Church of the Saviour in D.C., ThirdWay and Missio Dei in Minneapolis, and many more.

One extremely important community included in the book is the Christian Peacemaker Teams. I don’t know if I would have thought about CPT as a community otherwise because it’s make-up is quite different. Yet to put CPT in the same generation and importance as Sojourners Community (both in the “2nd Wave” section) highlights how vibrant and nurturing it has been for so many people.

I’m not Mennonite, but I was taught from birth many of the things that the authors in the book find so appealing about being Mennonite, so I often feel a slight case of denominational-envy that I think at least a few authors in the book express, if not in those words. Meaning, their own denominations seemed to miss out on a crucial part of Jesus’ message and they found a spiritual family in the Mennonite church.

For folks from a more typical Mennonite family (though this book really questions what “typical” Mennonitism really is) Joanna’s bio gives a brief look into her tumultuous journey with her faith family of origin. My one complaint of the book is that Joanna’s bio could have been a full-fledged chapter! Perhaps for space constraints it wasn’t, but I would have enjoyed a more fleshed-out narrative of her own particular story. It comes out in bits and pieces for sure, but her humility in sidestepping the spotlight was unnecessary. I’m not really criticizing the book for this, but think it would have made a great addition.

For many potential readers who might look at the Table of Contents and not recognize many names and thus not be inclined to read it, I strongly urge you to resist that temptation. Widening the Circle was written for that very reason, to exemplify that the circle of who’s in and worth being listened to must be broadened or else we are not truly aware of who we actually are. I appreciate Joanna’s ability to listen well to the voices often pushed to the margins and to not let the leadership of the Christian community movement remain only in the hands of charismatic speakers like Shane Claiborne. Let me say it plainly: these voices must be heard or else we are choosing to remain ignorant of our DNA as Christians, as peacemakers, as participants in God’s kingdom.

This book is an important witness to the rest of the Christian Church in North America. It’s an ironic example of ecumenism, where a denomination is learning to recognize and dialogue with itself. I pray that such an attitude will take hold across denominations, and indeed there are other examples of such possibilities.

One last note for non-Mennonites. It’s true that in some ways this book is a response to murmurings in the Mennonite Church, and therefore may not carry much significance to your own personal history or associations. It may not seem like a big deal to you that the Mennonite Church is recognizing these communities as important parts of the denomination. I would have two responses to that: 1)The Mennonite Church isn’t beginning to recognize just that these communities are important. If that were the case, it would be no different than the Methodists or Episcopalians, or even the Catholics, who (in varying degrees) have also recognized the good work of Christian communities. No, the Mennonite Church, with Joanna Shenk’s help, is recognizing that these communities are the church. That is a crucial difference. It would be akin to the Pope writing an encyclical validating the Catholic Worker movement as the best example of what the Catholic Church could and should be.  Widening the Circle is exemplifying a new perspective on what is the church.

Secondly, these stories about people becoming Mennonite are also, indeed primarily, about devout Christians whose journey to a deeper faith in Christ has moved them to do some rather risky and incredible things. They are normal people who have struggled with their faith in the same ways so many of us have. Why not let them inform your story as well?

I started inviting friends to accompany me, and soon we had a regular production line at 9 am on Saturday mornings with college kids, which is quite the feat. We would take anywhere from 20 to 60 lunches, split up, and chat with whoever was around. Over the years we had some great fun and developed some incredible relationships: we hosted a Thanksgiving dinner in College Park for about 15 of them; we took soup and grilled cheese sandwiches another time on a cold December day and had a little Christmas party; We’d bring a guitar and sing songs and let the folks there play. Those experiences have fundamentally altered my view of the world and of homeless individuals especially. They are why I joined Cornerstone Community, where I lived until just recently, which is an answer to the “What else” question when all the lunches have been handed out.

In building these relationships, I’ve been asked a number of times or have been in conversations about what to do when someone on the street asks for money. Many people living on the street are addicted to drugs or alcohol, and giving them money may just feed their habit, is usually how the discussion goes. What is a Christian to do?

To be honest, until just recently, it had been a few years since I’d really wrestled through this question. But a few weeks ago at church, in the small group I facilitate about “Sabbath Economics,” our small group committed to always giving something when asked, whether it’s money, food, or time and conversation. I feel really good about having that stance–it’s what I’ve tried to do for 6 years now. Jesus says “Give to the one who asks (Matt 5:42, Luke  6:30).”

That’s a tough Scripture passage. Jesus doesn’t make any qualifications, and in fact goes on to encourage the audience to let people risk being taken advantage of. It takes the Hebrew prohibition against usury (collecting interest) a step further–don’t even ask back for what was borrowed. If they return it, so be it, but if not, don’t demand it back. Tough stuff.

But we’re really good at coming up with excuses for not following it. When it comes to giving money to people on the street, it’s the “funding the habit” argument that wins. One formerly homeless resident at Cornerstone, who himself is in recovery, used to say that he always gave to people begging on the street because he used to do it himself and sure, sometimes he’d go spend it on drugs or booze, but sometimes he’d get something to eat. That was a real wake-up for me. But even still, most of us find ways to contextualize it.

In the book of Acts (ch 3), Peter and John face a similar problem. A paralyzed man begging in front of the temple asks them for money. How many time have I had that same experience, walking by churches in D.C. There’s always plenty of room for the homeless on church steps, but rarely any room for them inside the building. But I digress.

I find Peter’s response illuminating. “Silver and gold have I none, but such as I have give I thee,” in the old King James. He then heals the man, who leaps up and praises God.

First, Peter and John have no money. Like Jesus when confronted by the Pharisees about the temple tax, they aren’t prone to carrying much cash. Perhaps it’s because they have given it all to the community (Acts 2 and 4), where it is being used to meet needs.

Second, and most importantly, “Such as I have give I thee.” Peter feels a responsibility to give this man everything that he does have, which in this case is the gift of healing. Peter knows he has even that much to give which, as it turns out, is better than money. I think we, like Peter, have a responsibility to give what we have. We have time, we have the ability to strike up a conversation, to make a new friend. Maybe we don’t carry much cash, but we can buy someone a sandwich with a debit card. And sometimes we do have cash. Not many of us are able to heal someone on the spot, but Peter’s response reveals just how much we do have to give.

What I’m getting at is that we can’t know what anyone will do with whatever we give them, but that doesn’t change what we’re called to do. When we have money, we should gladly and joyfully give. And whether or not we have money, we should see such requests as an invitation for more, for a conversation, for a chance to see God’s kingdom come now in this moment. Peter Maurin, founder of the Catholic Worker movement, has this little story he would tell (I’m paraphrasing): If you want to get from point A to point B and it costs $50 and you only have $25, what do you do? Give away the $25. The $50 will come. We can see opportunities to give money as a chance to trust God more, to not worry about being taken advantage of from time to time. In fact, being taken advantage of occasionally is probably a good thing.

So let us announce the Jubilee, the year of the Lord’s favor, in which we celebrate God’s just economy by giving away all that we own and become the church we dream of.

One of the reasons I am excited to share a bit today is because I love Advent. In the last few years of my life, Advent has really become a special season for me. Like the season of Lent, it is a cyclical reminder to reflect on our lives, to recognize the good and the bad, to repent, and to prepare for Christ. In fact, in its earliest days, the Advent season was the same length as Lent.

There’s something about Advent that really moves me. But it wasn’t until recently that I came to a more tangible sense of what it’s really about. Immediately after I graduated from college, I spent the better part of a year living in Durham in a Christian community. I lived in a small house with a family of 3 (and expecting a 2^nd child) and another single man and we shared money, meals, and life together with 5 others at another house. Being the youngest child in my family, I’d never spent much time around a pregnant woman, and my friend Sarah gave birth just as Advent was beginning. Perhaps some of you can relate: the final few weeks of the pregnancy were filled with a tangible, visceral sense of absolute need to have that baby arrive. The pregnancy had been difficult, the husband had lost his job just two months prior, stress and anxiety were high as we awaited this new baby.

In a quiet moment during morning prayer that year, I had a serious “Aha!” moment, where I connected the pregnancy of Mary with the Advent season. Somehow, Advent is to be our pregnancy, our final four weeks before a new creation springs forth. Maybe Mary Ruth and Brett can understand that a little better now.

Every year, we’re reminded to wait. I imagine, though, that sometimes we ask ourselves, “What are we waiting for?”

Of course, the Sunday School Answer is “Jesus.” Everyone knows “Jesus is the reason for the season,” but I’m not sure we always have an accurate picture of what that even means.

But Isaiah helps us to imagine exactly what it is that we’re waiting for. This passage, written while Israel was an exiled people ruled by a foreign king, sets the tone for how we should approach Advent. Isaiah recognized the darkness surrounding them, the despair, a sense that perhaps they’d been forgotten. We read in Psalms that “By the water of Babylon, we lay down and wept for thee Zion.” But there is hope, he says, for the people walking in darkness have seen a great light. On them, a light has shone.

It is important here to note that Isaiah is addressing a people, a community. Isaiah does not preach that an individual will be shone a light, but that this hope is for the people. God is looking to restore broken communities, communities injured by violence, oppression, injustice, and sin.

Isaiah continues, looking forward to a righteous king who will end oppression and war, whose authority grows over time and whose reign brings about peace for Israel. This king will establish his reign justly and will signal an end to the years of Israel’s bad kings and foreign rulers. Isaiah remembers, fondly, King David, and expects that this king will re-establish the Davidic Monarchy. We must also realize that Isaiah paints David in some rosy colors—it would be difficult to call David a Prince of Peace, if we remember how David committed adultery and then sent the husband of Bathsheba to die on the front lines of battle. It would be like being awarded the Nobel Peace Prize while in the middle of two wars. But Isaiah feels the pain of war and bloodshed and welcomes a day when it will end.

No, Isaiah dreams of a king even more righteous than David. Yet, I believe that Isaiah’s vision is ultimately limited; while inspiring, hopeful, and beautiful, Isaiah still envisions a typical-style monarch who will bring the nations under his rule. This is not to say that Isaiah is wrong, but rather that God has an even still deeper vision, even more beautiful, and even more scandalous. If you remember even further back in the Old Testament in 1 Samuel, when the people ask for a king, God says, “You don’t need a king like other nations; I will be your king.” But the people forsook God, and so Israel has been stuck, thinking inside the box of kings. Isaiah, for all the beauty of his vision, is still thinking inside that box.

But the Incarnation of Jesus at Christmas teaches us to think outside the box of kings and emperors and presidents. Jesus’ birth isn’t a return to the Davidic Monarchy, but the Divine Monarchy, where the throne of God is among people (as Revelation envisions). The kingdom of God breaks in, like a thief, on a cold night in a dark animal cave. The Prince of Peace is born a poor and homeless in the shadow of the Roman Empire. He quickly becomes a refugee, as his unwed teenage mother flees with him to avoid the slaughter of innocents. This king, this kingdom, are anything but typical. And so, Isaiah’s words take on a new meaning in Jesus. Jesus fulfills this prophecy in ways Isaiah could never have imagined, redefining the entire notion of a righteous king and a righteous God.

The kingdom of God is announced by angels, declaring joyfully “PEACE on EARTH,” made possible only by the birth of the true Prince of Peace. But it’s not just what happens that is crucial here, but how it happens: 1)God’s kingdom does not come all at once, as if by takeover from a military, but rather it eeks into the world, little by little 2) we learn that God’s character is most fully revealed in what the world calls weakness: a helpless, vulnerable baby is God Incarnate. I find it so striking that the two most important and poignant images in all of Christian thought are of Jesus the King as a baby in a manger and Jesus the King with a crown of thorns on his head on a Roman cross. The bookends of Jesus’ life are marked by vulnerability and weakness, dismissed so easily by the rest of the world. God’s power is revealed in weakness, God’s glory in humiliation, God’s love in death. Indeed, the Christmas story points us to the depth of God’s love, not only that in that God takes human form, but that this way of being in the world, the way of downward mobility and weakness, of servant leadership, leads to the greatest love:  of one’s enemies, modeled at the cross.

To me, this is what is so beautiful about Scripture and prophecy, that God does far more with Isaiah’s words than he could have thought—that’s what makes it inspired! Without Jesus, Isaiah’s words are just another good campaign speech—hopeful for change, but not any different from what’s come before. Israel has had kings, all of them a concession by God. Jesus comes and says, “no more concessions; I am.”

I would say that most Christmas celebrations don’t wrestle with this side of the story. We like to stay in the comfortable, cozy Jesus found in “Away in a Manger,” which teaches us that God dwells in the sky and that God’s great desire is for us to be taken from this world there. Christmas becomes about family togetherness, the giving of gifts, the enjoying of food. These are not bad things, but the birth of Jesus throws out our definition of family, starting a new family of God. The birth of Jesus is God’s message not that God wants to take us to heaven in the sky, but that God is breaking into the world through the back window and wants to dwell among US. The birth of Jesus declares to the principalities and authorities of this world, “Your reign is over, my kingdom is here.” Do we know that THIS is what we await at Christmas? This is what the world awaits at Christmas, even if it doesn’t know it! All creation is groaning, Paul says, at the birth pangs of what God is about to do. Will we proclaim this, like the angels, the messengers of God, declaring Peace on Earth?

And yet, the truly remarkable feature of the kingdom Jesus preaches, in contrast to typical kingdoms, is that we are called and given the opportunity to take part in it. We get to dream dreams and work with Christ to bring Isaiah’s vision to be. Isaiah gives us the vision, Christ shows us the way to live out God’s kind of power—through weakness. We need God-given imagination, though, to think outside of the boxes our world presents us with. God’s kingdom flips the logic of this world upside down, and to live and act like Jesus, we need to prayer for that kind of creativity.

But I worry that our imagination, our vision, is limited by our context. Like Isaiah, will we stay in the box of kings and presidents? I worry that our definition of the Prince of Peace is more like David, imagining a President who can use military might to crush evil with violence instead of realizing we have a savior who took the violence of his enemies upon himself. Will we become the peacemakers who display the scandalous enemy-love of God in Christ Jesus?

If we will, there will be consequences. So we must ask ourselves, “Where does God call us to preach this good news of peace on earth and love for our enemies?” As the church universal, will we say “no” to war and violence, done often in the name and blessing of our God? Will we cry out in the wilderness, as drones are used to kill our brothers and sisters all over the world?

As Peace Fellowship Church, will we live out our name? Will we be peace in this neighborhood, in this part of the city? Will we teach this nonviolent love to others? Will we be a witness to the transforming way of servant leadership and what the world calls weakness? Will we trust God and take risks in this area? Isaiah dreams of a restored community, a community of Shalom; do we share that dream and are we willing to take part? Broken communities are often stuck in cycles that cannot be disrupted with the sam old answers. I work for a community arts program that offers the arts to families who wouldn’t be able to afford it other wise, and part of my reason for being a part of that organization is because I believe the arts can be God’s way of teaching people to think creatively about the problems of their own community, to learn new answers to old questions. How can Peace be an agent of transformation in the imagination of this community?

And as individuals, will we practice enemy-love? Will we get in the way of violence, physical, verbal, emotional, violence in our world? At our workplaces, in our families? Will we speak the peace and love of Jesus to each other, daring to receive insult without returning? Will we let Christ’s love begin with us and flow outward to the world?

I mentioned consequences. We live in a violent world, in which we are called to live gently. But the world will not always like it—living out this love means coming into conflict with the reigning kingdoms—cultural, governmental, corporate, military—who may respond with the only way they know: violence. In World War I, on Christmas Eve, enemy troops at various places in the war decided to put and end to their fighting, even for just one night. The movie Joyeux Noel tells a story based on this Christmas Eve Truce, of how French, Scottish, and German soldiers put down their guns to share Christmas together and then were unable to kill each other afterward. It is a hopeful, touching story that offers a glimpse into what the Incarnation teaches us that Isaiah is all about. These weren’t activists or preachers, these were ordinary men who upon having an encounter with the Prince of Peace, could not help but give in and love their enemies. But not everyone was thrilled about the “fraternizing” that happens in this story, when a priest says Mass and then the troops exchange gifts and music and play games together.

See the video in the post below.

With the sobering reality of how scandalous God’s love is, I invite you to wait in urgent expectation for the coming of the Prince of Peace. Amen.

One of my favorite concepts in Christianity is sacrament. I guess it’s more than simply a concept, but I don’t know what else you’d call it. Reality, perhaps? What a brilliant notion, that we experience God through certain mundane elements, like bread or water, in a special way in a special moment. Various traditions look at sacraments differently but well pretty much agree (as NT Wright talks about in Surprised By Hope) that something happens when we take communion or are baptist; somehow, God’s kingdom collides with the earthly in a tangible reality. Sacrament is more than symbolic, but not (in my opinion) changed in essence. Rather, the essence is made whole and becomes a real, living exhibition of New Creation. I also like the idea that this kissing of heaven and earth requires a certain amount preparation to receive, that not every single piece of bread is communion bread until it is blessed and broken and Jesus’ life and death remembered.

I’m a fan of recognizing more sacraments. I’ve written a bit about why I think hospitality is another sacrament–the practice of welcoming the stranger as Christ over and over allows Jesus to take up residence and transforms a house or a community into a touchstone for the new creation.

Yet another sacrament, I think, is the sacrament of kindness, or just plain being genuinely nice. This needs some explanation.

Conservatives and liberals are both convinced they’ve got it all right. Yet, as Richard Rohr and Shane Claiborne are prone to say, both sides can have all the right answers and still be downright mean. Having the right answers (supposedly) doesn’t necessarily fill anyone with holy compassion and gentleness, and in fact is often the inspiration for meanness and derisiveness towards others.

But on the flip side, sometimes I meet people who are so nice that afterwards I’m quite convinced I’ve met Jesus. Sometimes it’s strangers other times it’s people I know, but I’ve found myself smiling and feeling such joy after that kind of experience; I know that Jesus was unusually present in that person.

I can’t help but wonder if niceness is a sacrament too, a kissing point of heaven and earth. Not fake niceness, not just politeness, but an intangible quality where another person displays that they value you in the present moment. I’m quite sure there’s a blessedness in it, that just as the bread is broken and shared so too is niceness to be shared in remembrance of Christ. Afterwards we are left chewing on what just happened, trying to embody what we’ve just experienced. Such a profound sense of kindness is rare, and while it uses the mundane, it is distinguishable from other experiences.

There’s point to this, besides just the fact that niceness makes us all feel better and even helps us experience God. Holy anger from time to time is necessary and understandable, but I get so fed up with mean Christians. Part of the point of the sacraments is that we taste a bit of the new creation and are hopefully converted again to be more like Jesus, turning and turning toward the cross. We become just a little bit more like the new creation we long for when we partake in the sacraments: a bit more restored, a bit more reborn, a bit more capable of transforming the world around us. Yet we become so wrapped up in having the right answers that we cannot participate in the sacrament of kindness because our hearts are not prepared, we’ve not been blessed and broken. We must be the ones who offer this sacrament to one another and to the world.

A royal priesthood indeed.

Highs:

*Welcoming: I am grateful for the organizers who tried hard to make it a place where anyone felt welcome. I’m not saying this happened perfectly, but I could feel just how much effort went in to trying to make it a reality. I’m glad that there were both “conservative” and “liberal” speakers who were able to come under the common desire and interest in justice, spirituality, and the arts. I’m not interested in a solely (self-labeled)liberal Christian gathering and I’m not interested in a solely (self-labeled) conservative Christian gathering, and while some people might have said Wild Goose was liberal, you didn’t have to hang around too long to realize that it was not a homogeneous group of speakers or attendees. It will be difficult to get non-white people to camp out for 4 days; that’s just a reality. While I hope for more black and Latino folk to be there next year, I know that’s going to be an ongoing challenge.

*Age Diversity: I was really pleased with the diverse ages present at the festival. I love PAPA Fest when it happens, but it appeals mostly to people ages 30 and below, partly because it’s a bit rougher going in terms of facilities (camping on a farm instead of the woods), and amenities (have to cook all your food, can’t buy “comfort” food). I’m really glad that not just the presenters, but many of the participants were much older, 40′s, 50′s, 60′s, and beyond. It helped me to enjoy the dialogue and gain some wisdom.

*The location was great: convenient from D.C., but also had plenty of trees for camping in the shade. It was possible to stay out of direct sunlight for almost every stage. That’s a big plus for drawing in more reluctant campers.

*John Dear: Wow. Far and away the most compelling and enjoyable presentation of the weekend for me. I’m familiar with his work and have met him once in New Mexico but had never heard him give a talk. It was like being with Jean Vanier; clearly John Dear was not just talking about non-violence but has done a lot of the personal inner work of nonviolence. He simply communicated both the difficulty and the necessity of workers for true peace. I may write a further post simply about this talk from the notes I took.

*Reconnecting: Wild Goose was a great chance to re-connect and catch up with friends like Richard Rohr, Brian McLaren, Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove, Shane Claiborne, Dee Dee Risher, some of whom, especially Richard and Jonathan, have been wonderful mentors of mine. There were many more friends who it was so nice to just sit with.

*Music: Most of the music was fantastic, with the Psalters leading the way and David Bazan and Denison Witmer close behind. The final night I spent listening to dear friends singing their own songs at our campsite.

Other highs include Soong Chan Rah’s talk on racial dynamics in the church, morning prayer each day with new friends using Common Prayer, and tons of time outdoors in conversation.

Lows:

*Attendee Participation Opportunities: I’m not sure exactly if I misunderstood a blog post somewhere, but I was under the impression that there would be some sort of open-mic style session for attendees to perform or share in some way.  I was surprised and disappointed to find that with all the different stages and time slots, not a single hour was dedicated to that. I would have loved both to perform and to meet and hear other performers, to collaborate. I’m sure there were tons of us there, and a venue for the not-so-famous should have happened. That would have helped the festival feel more grass roots and given some of us a way to share.

*Hidden Costs, Logistics: I met a lot of people who didn’t come to Wild Goose because of the cost. There were certainly ways to lower the cost, like volunteering, but after attending, I discovered that there were quite a few hidden costs that the organizers should have communicated better. For one, while the ticket price was around $120 (if you bought if a month or so early), there was also a “tent camping” fee, not built in to the cost of the ticket. The tent fee was also not originally listed on the EventBrite page, and there were no instructions given about it. It turned out only each tent needed to purchase the camping permit, but I’m sure there were people who thought they each had to have one (if they bought online). Also, parking was $10 for the weekend, another cost not mentioned until you arrived. The cost of the programs was on the website, but it bothered me that wasn’t included in the price of the ticket. All in all, if you were coming alone or didn’t know if you’d have others to share a tent/car with, instead of paying $120 for a ticket, the true cost was about $145, which is a significant difference. Those costs should be explicit in the future or built in to the ticket price.

*Scheduling issues: Three schedule issues I noticed: 1) Some of the (few) people of color who spoke were at odd time slots, like 10 pm, and in bad locations (the Geodesic dome was the worst) and not featured on the main stage. The main stage, ironically, was the most uncomfortable for watching because it was in direct sunlight, but it was also the most accessible and the most visible. Important conversations about race should have been on this stage, led by people of color. 2) Some gaps in the schedule would have been nice, around lunch and dinner time, to allow people to relax, nap, find friends without feeling like they’re missing something. 3) All amplified music/noise should have been turned off by midnight. On Saturday night, there was loud music playing until 1:30 in the morning, making it difficult for people with children to sleep, as well as the sorts of more subdued conversations that happen at that hour. It was really frustrating to have to compete with a loud band after midnight every single night.

Huh?

Michelle Shocked: Some people raved about her, but I thought she was just so weird and mean. She came on stage with a prima donna attitude about not having a back up band, yelled at the sound guys while in song, and then took up this “You should know who I am” attitude. My friends and I left after not even 2 songs.

Sound issues: I know doing sound can be a tough job, but it was really strange each night how much difficulty the sound guys had getting things to work out. I felt bad for them–I wonder if there’s anything that could have been done to make that easier on them and the musicians.

Overall:

In another post, I may make some comments in regards to some of the critiques that some folks have made about the festival, but these were my more “surface” level reactions to the festival. I think WGF’s strength lies in its potential to have people from a wide spectrum of beliefs and races. But if the organizers are not careful, the festival will become a “liberal” Christian gathering, by which I mean a gathering where there is no attempt at bridging the great divides in our church, a self-congratulatory gathering that is satisfied with polarization and rejection of more “conservative” believers. There is clearly a long way to go for WGF to meet its potential, but this year was a good start on that road, I believe.

Here are the others blogging about this currently:

• Anna Snoeyenbos – Wild Goose Festival – A Spirit of Life Revival
• Lee Smith - Goose Bumps: Opportunities Everywhere for Offense. A Fair and Objective Review
• Ryan Hines – 30 Years Later – “Controversy” at Wild Goose
• Karyn Wiseman – Flying With the Goose
• Kyla Cofer – I went to the Wild Goose Fest and came back in love
• Brian Gerald Murphy – Born Again (Again) at Wild Goose
• Chris Lenshyn – Chasing the Wild Goose
• Cherie at Renaissance Garden – Wild Goose Return
• Deborah Wise – Wild Goose Chasing
• Custodianseed – “every day they eat boiled goose”
• Will Norman – Back from the Wild Goose Fest
• Martin at Exiles in NY – Greenbelt and the Wild Goose
• Kerri at Practicing Contemplative – Waterfowl in My Life
• Allison Leigh Lilley – Chasing the Wild Goose and Catching the Wild Goose: Thanks and First Thoughts and A Pagan Goes To The Wild Goose – Part One
• Abbie Waters – Jessica: A Fable
• Steve Knight – Why Wild Goose Festival Was So Magical
• Tammy Carter – Visual Acuity and Flying
• Michelle Thorburg Hammond – I heart Jay Bakker and Peter Rollins
• Matthew Bolz-Weber – Remembering Wild Goose
• Paul Fromberg – Celebrating Interdependence Day
• David Zimmerman – Wild Goose Festival: A Recap
• Unfinished Symphony – Wild Goose Reflections – Part 1, Wild Goose Reflections – Part 2 Making Art Collages, Wild Goose Reflections – Part 3 Photoblogging, and Wild Goose Reflections – Part 4 The Good, The Bad and The Ugly
• Dan Brennan – U2, the Wild Goose, and Deep Freedom
• Mike Croghan – The Wild Goose is Not Safe
• John Martinez – The Table
• Callid Keefe-Perry – Gatekeeping the Goose
• Eric Elnes – The Inaugural Wild Goose Festival: Recovering Something Lost
• Shay Kearns – The Power of a T-Shirt, Apologizing to Over the Rhine, and Public vs. Private (Part One)
• Glen Reteif – Duck Duck Goose
• Peterson Toscano – I’ve Been Goosed, What I Carried Into Wild Goose, and What I Blurted Out at Wild Goose
• Seth Donovan – About More than “The Gays”
• Exiles in New York – Greenbelt and the Wild Goose
• Tammy Carter – Visual Acuity and Flying
• TSmith – What I’ll Take From Wild Goose
• Dale Lature – Wild Goose Reflection
• Steve Hayes – Wild Goose Chase?
• Minnow – Grace Response
• Christine Sine – Encounters With A Thin Space
• Jeremy Myers – Giving Up the Wild Goose Chase
• Robert – Thoughts On the Inaugural Wild Goose
• Anna Woofenden – Slippery Slope Reflections
• Wendy McCaig – Loosing The Goose
• Joey Wahoo – Into The Wild
• Rachel Swan – goosed
• Patricia Burlison – I Called Life
• Jason Hess – While At the Goose
• The Bec Cranford – Wild Goose
• Anthony Ehrhardt – Chasing The Wild Goose on Independence Day
• Joel DeVyldere – So Lost at Last-(In the Woods)
• MK Anderson – Listening To The Wild Goose
• Jamie Arpin-Ricci – Wild Goose Fest
• Unfinished Symphony – #5 – The Last Post … for a while

One term I take exception to is the word “volunteer.” I don’t mean the verb so much as the noun, though the verb obviously carries with it similar connotations. In multiple churches I’ve been a part of, the Sunday School teachers, the youth leaders, the choir, and basically any other unpaid roles in the church are referred to as “volunteers.” By most standards, this makes sense–people performing duties or jobs that in other places are paid positions are, in this case, not being paid. On the surface, this is a reasonable description of most of the jobs in the church.

I see a few problems with this, the most fundamental being that the word automatically creates a distinction and, like it or not, a hierarchy that places the paid staff above the rest of the congregation. Volunteers willingly do the work that is only made possible by the hard work of the staff, and in some cases the hope is to “move up the ladder” into a paid position. That’s the model of a non-profit, anyway. At my job at Sitar Arts Center, staff do a lot of work to make it possible for our volunteers to have students to teach. Volunteers are necessary and vital to what we do, and Sitar could not exist without them, but the work of the staff is what creates the programs and other avenues for volunteers to plug into. Or think of the Americorps or Peace Corps volunteers. They do hard work, but the goal is eventually to get paid well for the work they do.

But a church is not a non-profit organization. The life of the church is not about pastors and staff creating opportunities for the rest of the congregation to volunteer for but is about a community where the members offer and use their gifts for the good of the church and God’s kingdom. The pastor is not the executive director and the leadership his/her board of directors. Rather, pastor, elder, teacher, musician, deacon, usher; these are roles in the church, no one more important than the other, all parts of the body needed to foster healthy disciples and loving congregations. Most churches regard the pastor, the music director, the associate pastor, etc. as positions, like a non-profit. Instead of a top-down model, the church (in my head) is more like a group of gathered people in a large circle, each person equally essential, each person having a different role. This is not to dismiss or underplay the importance of the pastor–pastors do have a unique and vital role in the congregation, a role that in most cases it makes sense to pay–but in the end, it’s still just another role that helps the community flourish.

Furthermore, regarding congregants as “volunteers” makes it seem like spending one’s time, energy, and abilities for the good of the community is an uncommon and unexpected “over-and-above” behavior, like the lawyer who works 70 hours a week but somehow makes time every Saturday to volunteer at the local animal shelter. In the church, being willing to use your gifts, and have others help you discern and nurture your gifts, is a necessary and fundamental aspect of learning the way of Jesus and participating  in his kingdom. Churches should be fostering environments where parishioners feel comfortable and encouraged to share their gifts and visions knowing that they will be met with support and healthy encouragement from the pastor and other members of the community, even if these gifts don’t have an already-made slot that they can be fit into. Churches that shut down the gifts of their members or make the logistics of using those gifts cumbersome and unappealing will inevitably be faced with a Sunday-morning-only crowd which has no real desire to participate.

Church of the Saviour has modeled this extremely well. Its many churches, all different and unique in model and in mission, have embodied the importance of nurturing a person’s call. Recognizing that the church is called to go out, rather than be so concerned with getting people into the doors of the sanctuary, its fundamental values of commitment and mission have allowed people to discern their God-given calling in community, with others praying and sharing the journey, and as a result dozens of beautiful ministries have flourished in one small part of the world. The point is not that these ministries have been overwhelmingly successful (which some have and some haven’t) but that people were given the space to discern their gift and calling in the world because their community recognized that they could not say “no” to God’s “yes.”

I emphasize the importance of allowing gifts to flourish because I think that is a better perspective with which to regard a community of believers rather than the “volunteer” model. Leave that to the non-profits. It serves their needs and goals well. But the church doesn’t need more volunteers, it needs people who have a stake in the community because that’s where their lives are grounded and given the nourishment, challenge, and freedom required to grow.

I do not volunteer at any church–I try to use my gifts to serve others and serve God, which, quite frankly, looks a lot better on my resume.

Volunteers we are not; members of a living body, a community, we are.

It is so easy to mock the pending doomsday prophets, but we are terrible Christians if we don’t feel a profound sense of sadness for these creatures made in God’s image. The whole situation feels ridiculous, but to the people who are truly hoping for God to rescue them on Saturday, this is not a simple matter; we are talking about people’s core beliefs about who God is and how God acts in the world, beliefs that will be ruptured, not raptured, come Saturday. Friends familiar with the emerging church movement should recognize that this is (on a smaller scale) what has happened to many an evangelical over the last two decades; ruptured belief is why the church is losing both numbers and relevance.This is no laughing matter.

The mockery I observe in all of this is fraught with contradiction. While most Christians would decry Harold Camping’s exact predictions that seem to be in direct contradiction to Jesus’ words, I would propose that those same Christians hold an eschatology that is not a far cry from Camping’s. What is being mocked and dismissed is not Camping’s belief in “the rapture” but rather his profound stubbornness in declaring a date on which it will happen. I don’t think many people who call themselves Christian could articulate why the Rapture is bad theology (in which case I would direct them here). Left Behind should be left behind. It should be the mission of every pastor to re-direct its flock toward healthier readings of apocalyptic texts, which means they need to be exposed to the helpful, pastoral books on the subject like Eugene Peterson’s Reversed Thunder, or the link above to Michael Gorman’s new book, Reading Revelation Responsibly.

Family Radio has declared that salvation is no longer found in the church because God has left the church (read more reflection on that dangerous thinking here). That is not getting talked about as much, but again, I think many of the mockers aren’t far from a similar theology, even if it’s more subconscious. When you get down to it, popular theology says that all that really matters is if you believe in a few certain things. Church is a good thing to learn how to live as God wants you to, but ultimately only the whipped topping–you get to worship with other believers once you’re in, but church participation is not a pre-req for getting into heaven (to claim otherwise puts you dangerously close to Catholic theology, and everyone knows the Catholics are not getting raptured, whether it’s on May 21st 2011 or May 21st 3011).

Family Radio is popular theology taken just beyond the realm of tolerable, and I really do mean just beyond. If there was no exact date, Camping would be considered just another perspective in the reeking pile of cow manure eschatology (the esteemed Tim LaHaye condemns him for naming a day, though he himself thinks the rapture is near since “many signs of our times certainly indicate so”–you can read his captivating response to Camping here).The church must be better about articulating and living a more faithful way. And honestly, I don’t think hosting rapture parties in spite is the best first step towards that. Many so-called “progressive” Christians are taking the theological high road but the moral low road here, and since those two roads are actually one, they’re sunk.  I say this not to be harsh but to hold a mirror up; bad eschatology and bad ecclesiology are dangerous, joining in the crowd of mockers is equally so (I wonder which hurt Jesus more, the crowd of familiar faces or the whip of the unknown Roman soldier).The point here is that we are no better than these folks, we just secretly (or maybe not so secretly?) enjoy being able to join the majority for once in making fun of people who call themselves true Christians.

The appropriate Christian response is not to condemn or mock the followers of this skewed religion, but to live an articulation of God’s current and impending restoration of all that was declared good. We can declare in word and deed that we are not hoping for a rapture to deliver us to some distant world while leaving the rest behind, but for an in-breaking of God’s space into ours, that we may be enraptured by God’s presence amid this place. This is the dream of Scripture so beautifully breathed by God. Its haunting truth can make us quake in awe, not terror, of a God who invites us to join in by being joined to the church, Christ’s body on earth. May the purifying fire reign down and rain down on us through a fascination with the mystery of Christ’s death and resurrection, a fire that consumes what is evil and broken and leaves us cleansed vessels. May our lives be a burning bush, animated by this fire yet not destroyed, illuminating a dark world.