What does it mean to follow Jesus in America?

What does it mean to pledge allegiance to the Prince of Peace who instructed you to love your enemies when nearly half of the federal budget of your country - the biggest budget in the world - is spent on bombs and missiles and guns (delivered, all too often, in God’s name)? What does it mean to pledge allegiance to the One who spoke all life into being, who formed you fearfully and wonderfully in the innermost parts, in a society in which one million babies are murdered every year? What does it mean to pledge allegiance to the God of Jubilee when the economy of your country is dependent on human greed, and the chasm between the rich and the poor grows wider and wider with each passing moment? What does it mean to pledge allegiance to our homeless Middle Eastern king, who came preaching good news to the poor, when you live in one of the wealthiest, most church-saturated parts of the world and there are at any given moment 400 homeless people in your nice little city? When a full 25% of the homeless population of your nation is comprised of those who have sacrificed for your country in the armed forces? When few seem to consider these spiritual issues at the core?

It comes as a shock to some folks that America isn’t mentioned in the Bible (not even in Revelation!). And seeing as empires have risen and fallen throughout history, there’s little reason to expect our fate as a nation to be much different. Oh, but we’re a Christian nation, you say. No, we’re not. We were not a Christian nation when we stole this land from the Native Americans nor when we got rich off the blood, sweat and tears of African slaves. We were not a Christian nation when we forced the descendants of those slaves to sit at the backs of busses and when we herded all the remaining native peoples onto reservations out west. And while we’ve certainly come a long way in leaving our days of genocide, rampant injustice and segregation behind, we’re not a Christian nation today. Nor should that be our primary aim. The total merging of religion and government has never tended to go very well for us humans - unless you consider the abuses of the Roman empire, the Crusades, the Inquisition, and Jihad to be steps in the right direction.

What then? America, while a remarkable experiment, uniquely founded on extraordinary ideas, too often fails to live up to its prolific claims. America is not the world’s last best hope or a city on a hill or the twenty-first century version of first-century Israel or anything of the sort that some of our politicians and outspoken TV preachers would have us believe.

And I know all of this may make me sound ungrateful and unpatriotic. So I should clarify. I am very thankful for the freedom and opportunity we possess as citizens of the United States of America. I am thankful for baseball, Johnny Cash, Dr. Pepper, and all the myriad blessings of being American. I am thankful for the freedom of speech (which I am exercising right now), for the freedom to worship, for the right to vote, for access to education and employment and for the belief that anyone can do anything he or she sets their mind to (assuming, of course, they aren’t a minority or anything… oh snap!).

Of course, it is not lost on me that through the years, people from around the world have flocked here to pursue the American Dream, and they’re still flocking. I meet them every day in my work with newly arrived refugees. I grew up among poor, indigenous folks in the mountains of Guatemala who would have given anything to move to California or New York (the two places in the USA they’d heard of) at the drop of a hat. But as so much of the current anti-immigrant sentiment reveals, many of us in the land of the free are rethinking our long-standing policy of welcoming the world’s poor, tired, huddled masses who are yearning to breathe free. We forget that in two inescapable ways, we are bound up with the very people we reject. All white Americans, if not immigrants themselves, are children of immigrants. And as Christians, as followers of the Way, we acknowledge that this world (not to mention this nation) is not our home. Our true citizenship lies elsewhere. We’re just passing through.

I am thankful that I’m an American, rather than to belong to any other country on the face of the earth. Really. I mean it. But I am not just thankful. I am thankful to God, because as a Christian I believe that every good and perfect gift comes from God, our Father in heaven. I don’t thank my lucky stars, I don’t thank my own hard work, I don’t thank Uncle Sam. I thank God. But I have a hard time thanking God for giving us this land of freedom and liberty and opportunity at the Native Americans’ expense or for giving us this wealth at the expense of African slaves. (Wouldn’t that kind of be like thanking Mom for the cookies she told us we couldn’t eat but we stole from the cookie jar anyway?) I have a hard time singing “God bless America” when the America that God has so richly blessed is asking him to bless us as we bomb them (as they, incidentally, pray their own eerily similar prayers).

It breaks my heart. It especially breaks my heart that people around the world now equate Jesus with American militarism and greed and MTV and Paris Hilton and Rambo and arrogance and individualism and 50 brands of toilet paper. Maybe the United States of America has to declare war on terrorists who threaten and/or succeed in attacking us. Maybe that’s just how things have to be. But when our government is making life a living hell for the few remaining Christians in war-torn regions of the Middle East, you have to at least wonder at it all. Whose side am I on, anyway? To whom or what do I pledge my highest allegiance? By baptizing our nation - by effectively equating Christianity with the United States of America - we have cheapened the cross. Cheapened is too tame of a word. Desecrated? Bad enough that people would respond with hatred of America. Worse still that some would mistake the white, middle-class American Jesus for the real one.

So what does it look like to be faithful to our Lord Jesus as American citizens, particularly now, an election year with our nation at war and the nations raging (as they tend to do)? I can’t say I have the answer. But as in any time and place, to follow Jesus is to love God with every last ounce in you and to love your neighbor as yourself. Those are the non-negotiables. That love for God and for others is to influence every last thing we do, even as we disagree over what to do with war and abortion and gay marriage and the economy and our borders and our schools and environmental degradation and on and on and on. But we know what God requires of us - to do justice, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with him - though if we’re honest, most of the time we haven’t a clue what that actually looks like in daily practice. So we move forward, with trepidation, in prayer. We pledge allegiance, first and foremost, not to a flag or a party or a mortal man, but to the King of Kings, and to his kingdom.

And we hear, faintly perhaps, those hope-filled words: “Behold, I am making all things new!” We cling to those words. And we hope in Jesus. Not in Obama. Not in McCain. Not in America, nor its power, nor its vibrant, entrepreneurial spirit. Not in elephants or asses or any other silly animal. We hope in Jesus.

Before (and long, long after) we pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands, we pledge allegiance to the Kingdom of God, joining all the saints down through the ages, from tribes and tongues and peoples and nations all around the world, together declaring, “Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.”

Just don’t be surprised if in heaven, Jesus chooses to lead us in Aramaic rather than English.

This week I had a small epiphany. Amidst the craziness of trying to keep dozens of refugees alive and happy and under control (with my two coworkers temporarily in Africa and South America, respectively), something set in that I normally don’t experience a whole lot of: stress. Bona fide stress. I’d been coming into work early, leaving work late, and waking up in the middle of the night wondering if so-and-so’s rent had been paid. Increasingly, the thought of my upcoming trip to Costa Rica and then, this fall, returning to school and leaving my job behind began to seem more and more like utopia.

But the wakeup call came when it occurred to me that in this line of work I am pursuing, this vocation I think I am honing in on which will propel me deeper and deeper into the world’s worst rather than protecting me from it, utopian moments are probably going to be few and far between, like cool breezes on a hot, summer day. And it got me to thinking: what is it with us and our insatiable longing for utopia? Utopia, I’ve read, literally means “no place”. Whereas all of life on earth is lived in a specific time and place, we seem to be continually fighting time and seeking to escape to our perfect little “no place”. Maybe that’s why long-time pastor and writer Eugene Peterson says he has found it to be far easier to convince most people of the truth of Jesus than it is to cultivate in them “a sense of place as the exclusive and irreplaceable setting for following Jesus.” Exclusive and irreplaceable?

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the well-known German theologian and pastor, while awaiting execution in prison for his specific actions at a specific time and a specific place, understood this well. He wrote, “I’m still discovering right up to this moment, that it is only by living completely in this world that one learns to have faith…. I mean living unreservedly in life’s duties, problems, successes and failures, experiences and perplexities. In so doing we throw ourselves completely into the arms of God.”

Maybe this longing for utopia is, at root, a longing for heaven. But I can’t shake the inescapable reality that Jesus sent his followers into the world, deep into the world, just as his Father had sent him into it, incarnationally. Seeking to escape the world’s problems is understandable, but it is not the way of Christ. The way of Christ is to enter the dark and broken places with light, with healing, and most of all, with love. Love happens here and now, in the muck and the mire. But unlike the muck and unlike the mire, love never ends.

So I was at the clothing bank this morning, waiting in the fluorescent-lit, plywood-walled hallway as some of our newly arrived refugees filled trash bags with a hodge-podge of hand-me-downs. I had taken along a book to read, as is my custom - this time the brand new miscellany by Frederick Buechner. I found it hard to focus on the book, however - as engaging as Buechner’s writing always is - because down the hallway was a single mother with two children, both of them vying for her attention, both of them picking fights with each other.

“Mommy, he poked me in the eye!” the girl screamed, tears streaking down her face.

“Say you’re sorry,” commanded the mother to her son sternly.

“Sorry,” said the eye-poker with a tone that lacked earnestness.

“Say, ‘I forgive you’.”

“No,” retorted the one with the tear-filled eyes as she walked away, sniffling, arms crossed. “I don’t want to!”

It wasn’t long until the family was called into the office to fill out their forms, but it sure seemed like a long time what with the eye-poking and screaming and relentless rebellion from the son each time his mother told him to sit down and shut up - which occured every ten seconds or so.

Once inside the office, they quieted down, and I was just able to make out a question from the youngest of them, the little girl whose tears had mostly stopped flowing.

“Who’s that in the picture?” I heard her ask.

I knew which picture she was referring to because I had just been in the office a few minutes earlier and had given a moment’s attention to the big picture on the wall of the man with the black beard, the white robe, the compassionate yet piercing eyes.

“It’s Jesus,” responded the mother, her tone having suddenly lost its edge.

“Is that really what he looks like?” asked the son.

“Yes,” the mother said.

“How do they know?”

“Because that’s what the Bible says he looks like.”

The absurdity of the statement hit me, but I couldn’t dwell on it too long because the conversation continued.

“Everyone has their own idea of what Jesus looks like,” offered the woman behind the desk, who with a gold crucifix around her neck and fake red fingernails types clients’ information into the computer day after day, week after week, year after year.

What struck me most about this whole fascinating episode was how the scene went from pandemonium one second to something miraculous that bordered on awe and reverence the next. The pandemonium ended (fleetingly, I must add) and awe and reverence took its place (if but for a moment). What made the difference? It was the face of Jesus.

For a split-second I was tempted to put down the book, walk over to them and tell them who Jesus really is, since I am a Christian and in my stream of the Christian faith we are taught to tell everyone we meet everything we know about Jesus, but then it struck me.

This Jesus in the picture on the plywood wall at the clothing bank, along with the pictures all of us have of Jesus on the walls of our hearts and minds, are all in some way representative of the real Jesus who was born in a cave out back, who grew up stubbing his toes and skinning his knees and wetting the bed, who got thirsty and hungry and tired, who healed the sick and raised the dead and told seemingly everyone with words both veiled and explicit that the Kingdom of God was at hand, who ultimately died on the cross and rose from the dead and ascended where he now sits at the right hand of the Father in Heaven - this Jesus, the real Jesus, the one we have so much yet to learn about, the one we have only begun to get to know, was the Jesus who said, “Come to me, all who are weary and weighed down, and I will give you rest.” And also, “Let the little children come to me.”

This morning at the clothing bank, I knew beyond the shadow of a doubt that the unremorseful eye-poking big brother and the unforgiving eye-poked little sister and the tired and edgy but trying-her-best single mother were the exact sorts of people to whom Jesus was and is saying, “Come to me.” He’s not calling those who have their act together. He’s calling the messes. He’s calling those with no clue what he looks like, just as he’s calling those who think they have him all figured out. And that is really good news for all of us.

“I stood there holding my gun and felt special because I was part of something that took me seriously and I was not running from anyone anymore.”

These are the words of Ishmael Beah from his book A Long Way Gone, in which he tells his story from his days as a child soldier in the army of Sierra Leone, which he was manipulated into joining at the age of twelve. He was later freed from the army, underwent rehabilitation, and eventually found himself in New York City where he was given the chance to speak out against the practice of enlisting brainwashed children to fight wars (a practice that continues today, perhaps most notably in northern Uganda).

As you can imagine, the circumstances that lead to this tragedy are multi-faceted and complex. But this idea of belonging, of not running anymore, is one reason teenagers in American cities join gangs, for one thing. But I think it’s something we all can relate to in one way or another. Most of us, by God’s grace, will never join a gang in order to be part of something that takes us seriously, part of something in which we matter. But that desire is in each of us, and I believe it’s God-given. We’re made to belong. We’re created in the imago Dei, crafted for relationality.

So, as inside out people, we reflect on the church. Do the Ishmael Beahs in our lives (assuming they are in fact in our lives) find the church to be a community worth belonging to, a community that takes them seriously? Is this story we’re telling - the story of Christ and his Kingdom - compelling enough? Why do so many of those looking for belonging, for purpose, need to turn to gangs and militias to find stories they can belong to? Is this story of the Kingdom really Good News for a twelve-year-old brainwashed killing machine? If not, is it really the Good News?

I went to the Barnstormers game(s) the other night and Carl Everett became one of my new favorite baseball players of all time. Here’s more or less how it went down.

I walked in a few minutes late, at the beginning of the second inning, and as the first batter I saw on the opposing team came back to the dugout, I thought to myself, he looks familiar; he looks like Carl Everett. So I looked it up in the game program, and sure enough, he was in fact on the roster. I made this known to the others. Now, Carl was the designated hitter, which means he doesn’t play in the field. During innings when he was not hitting, he’d stroll down to the bullpen to chat with the relief pitchers. This gave us ample opportunity to yell his name at the top of our lungs, being right behind the dugout as we were. We also yelled when he batted. One time he got a double. Then, since his team was the enemy, we all cheered for his teammates to get out.

Anyway, the one time when he was walking we were so persistent in our yelling that he looked into the crowd, and while not seeing us in paricular, gave a two-finger wave/salute in our general direction.

This was like pouring gas on the fire for us.

It was a double-header the other night so between games I walked home to put on a jacket since it got chilly when the sun went down. I also went on Wikipedia and printed out the page about Carl. Good golly, there’s some wild stuff on there, namely his controversial quotes about dinosaurs and the moon and homosexuality, and his tendency to get in fights.

So from then on when he would bat or walk past we would yell and hold up a page from the print-out. I gave Wendy page four, with references and other boring stuff. Sorry Wendy. We also began yelling things about dinosaurs, using the nickname he got in Seattle, “C-Rex.”

Paul had caught a foul ball, so later in the second game we agreed to move a few rows down and take some seats right behind the dugout in hopes of getting Carl’s autograph. Paul had earlier been reprimanded for sitting on the steps down by the field, so props to him for still agreeing to go down towards the field again. As Carl made his way back to the dugout for his final at bat, we got his attention. Paul had to ask for the autograph on the ball first, since it was a slightly more reasonable request than my own, even though Paul is in his mid-twenties and is asking a minor league player for an autograph, which is funny. But Carl agreed to sign Paul’s ball and at this point I moved in and presented him with the Wikipedia print-out.

Me: “Could you sign this too?”
Carl: “A piece of paper?”
Me: “It’s Wikipedia.”
Carl: “You don’t have nothin’ better to do with your time?”

I’m still figuring out how to frame the autographed Wikipedia print-out. As you can see, it’s pretty epic.

I’m currently reading three books. First, Being White, which explores ethnicity and the implications for those of us who, for better or worse (but not by chance), are white North Americans. Second, The Heart of Racial Justice, which as the subtitle suggests, is about “how soul change leads to social change”. Finally, I’m also reading Bury My Heart At Wounded Knee, the heart-breaking account of unspeakable brutality against the Native American peoples at the hands of our European forefathers upon arrival in the New World.

Even as a white guy who has spent a great deal of time in multi-ethnic and multi-cultural settings, and as one with a great deal of interest in - and respect for - those of other cultures, I admit that I easily slip into the mentality that being Caucasian is somehow ethnically neutral.

It’s not.

If you’re reading this and you’re white, have you ever wondered what significance your ethnicity has in the eyes of God? Further, have you ever considered the significance of the picture of heaven we have in the Bible, with a gathering of people from every tribe and tongue and people and nation?

If the story God is telling culminates with people from every culture worshiping Jesus together, as citizens of the same Kingdom, and we’re told this is an immeasurably good thing, what does it mean for us today? If we’re honest, do we really even want anything to do with that sort of Kingdom? If so, how proactive are we in getting to know people from other cultures? How seriously do we take humankind’s tragic (and ongoing) history of racial conflict? Do we ever consider the extent to which racism angers and pains the heart of God? Have we repented of our own (perhaps latent and subtle) racism? What are we doing to humbly, lovingly listen to the stories of those who are different than us, and often, members of minority groups? As much as it depends on us, are we seeking to heal these wounds?

Many white women go tanning because they believe darker skin is beautiful. Meanwhile, women in parts of Asia commonly go to extremes to have their skin lightened, believing as they do that white skin is in fact what’s beautiful. Is it possible that God gave some of us white skin, and he gave dark skin to others, not as some cruel joke, but as a way of demonstrating his own infinite, multi-faceted beauty? Is there such a thing as ethnic stewardship?

Could it be that the redemption and reconciliation of humankind to God and to each other, while certainly far more than skin-deep, also has significant and undeniable epidermal implications?

Two facts and a conclusion.

Fact one: half of the world’s population now live in cities, and the percentage is growing.

Fact two: the story of the Bible begins in a garden, but ends in a city.

Conclusion: cities are really, really important.

In Signs of Emergence, Kester Brewin writes that cities clearly embody “all that is wrong and right with humanity, precisely because it is in cities that engagement with ‘the other’ is unavoidable.”

Engagement with “the other” - whether it is someone from a different ethnic background or political affiliation or religion or sexual orientation or economic standing or musical preference - is rarely comfortable (but of course, engagement with “The Other”, that is, God, isn’t always comfortable either).

We speak of going to the mountains to tune out the noise and hear from God, and there is a place for this. Face to face with God’s magnificent, untouched creation, we’re reminded of his power and creativity, not to mention his existence. But, as Brewin says, “If our only answer to the obvious pain, greed, and ugliness that the city presents to us on a daily basis is to remove ourselves, then there is no hope for improvement.”

Rather than escaping the pollution and crime and overcrowding and yes, even the rap music pounding through your bedroom wall from the apartment next door as you try to sleep - as followers of Christ we must go to the cities, learn to listen for God there, begin to see God there. The Incarnation models for us a “moving in” rather than a “getting away,” and to the extent that we follow Christ, our lives and our families and our churches will be marked by the very same principle.

But most of all, we don’t give up hope; we know how the story ends.

I wrote last time in ancitipation of our FLOWING event, which was scheduled for April 5. We were very excited and were bracing ourselves for all the impending logistical issues when 80-90 people show up on one city block on a Saturday morning to pick up trash. When April 4 came along, however, it had been raining for a few days and we were forced to postpone our trash pick-up. A few folks still headed downtown to help serve breakfast at the mission as scheduled, but the rest of us had to wait a week.

The down side is that only about half of those who had originally signed up were able to make it on the rain date, but those who came had a blast (as you can see in our new Flickr album).

We started in front of the mission at 9am as Stan the Man, on staff at WSRM, gave us the run-down. We then spread out around the mission grounds, to the park out back, and into the surrounding neighborhood. Judging by the smiles on faces you’d have thought everyone was happy to be there, millions of cigarette butts aside (seriously, who knew so many people smoked?!).

Also, money for the t-shirts keeps coming in and we hope to cut a check to the Blood:Water Mission within a week or so. At this point, it looks like we’re at $700 or so, with each dollar literally representing one person in Africa who will now have access to clean water for one whole year. We hope to push that number closer to 1000 before it’s all said and done. [UPDATE: we ended up sending in a check for $900. Thanks to all who participated.]

What we’re banking on here is that as a result of FLOWING some, four or five maybe, have caught a fresh glimpse of Jesus and what he’s up to in this world. Maybe they caught it in the smile of a toothless mission resident who helped us sweep up trash and was really excited to get a FLOWING shirt of his own. Maybe it hit them when they realized that all it took was a couple of hours and ten bucks to make this happen, and they began to consider what else could be possible. I heard someone say she had a great time, and now plans on volunteering at the mission, though she never has before.

Please join us in praying that with our lives, together we would say AMEN to everything God wants to do in our world and in our city.

Check out the Flickr album here.

This Saturday a bunch of us are going to be heading downtown to the Water Street Rescue Mission for FLOWING, a morning of community service - both in the sense that we will be serving the community of Lancaster and in the sense that we will be serving in community with each other. We’re really excited about it.

We plan to spend a few hours serving breakfast to residents at the mission, sorting donations in their warehouse, and spreading out around the mission grounds and into the surrounding neighborhood, picking up trash. If you’re in town Saturday morning, look for a bunch of smiling people with trash bags, wearing black t-shirts with the word FLOWING in yellowish/greenish neon across the front. Better yet, join us.

We made the t-shirts not because it seems to be some unwritten rule that you need to have shirts for Christian events, but we’re doing it as a way of intentionally rounding out the day. As we serve the community right here we don’t want to forget about those on the other side of the world, so we decided to include a shirt in the deal, with all the proceeds going to provide clean water to people in Africa through the terrific work of Blood:Water Mission. As we spread the word about this idea a couple of weeks ago, much to our delight someone surprised us by graciously offering to cover the cost of production so the entire ten dollars for each shirt will go to BWM. A one dollar donation to BWM is enough to provide one African with clean water for one whole year, and the World Health Organization estimates that 80% of disease in the world is attributed to lack of access to clean drinking water, so this is a really strategic way to be involved.

So let’s put this in perspective: we’re serving for a few hours together on a Saturday morning and we’re all pitching in ten bucks. At noon, several blocks of southeast Lancaster will hopefully be a little bit cleaner. Through the money we raise, close to one thousand Africans will have access to clean water for a year. And all of us who participate will have devoted a few hours to serving others, which really has a way of helping us grow in our walk with Christ.

But let’s be honest. By Monday morning, there will once again be trash on the sidewalks and in the parks (hopefully there will be less, but we won’t take care of the littering problem in a single morning). And yes, we can be excited that hundreds and hundreds of folks in Africa will have access to clean water, but there will still be 1.8 million people who die this year as a result of water-borne disease.

Faced with these truths, I envision a few possible reactions. We can choose to ignore the needs in our city and focus our time and attention elsewhere. We can choose to act as if the lives of millions did not hang in the balance every day. We can choose to pretend that it’s okay to live a comfortable Christian life. Or we can view this day - these few hours and ten dollars - as a catalyst. Having been stretched and shown a little bit of the world we might not have known about before, we can prayerfully consider how God might have specifically equipped each of us to uniquely invest our lives - as people being changed from the inside out - on behalf of the last, the lost, and the least.

If FLOWING ends on Saturday at noon, we have failed. But if what we are seeking to do this Saturday is still being worked out in our lives ten years from now, we might just be onto something.

President Bush recently returned from a whirlwind tour of Africa, where he visited projects that are succeeding, met with presidents and national leaders, and committed once again to US investment in African development.

Once Bush leaves office next year, the dust will slowly settle, and some sort of general consensus will likely begin to form regarding his ‘legacy.’ The equation will be a complex one, considering 9/11 and Iraq and everything else, but any rendering of his legacy will have to factor in Africa if it is to be at all accurate. Bob Geldof, longtime advocate for the poor in Africa, has surprised some by recently saying that Bush has arguably done more for Africa than any other US President. You can read more here or in Geldof’s op-ed in the current issue of TIME. Heck, Brian McLaren has even voiced his praise.

The One Campaign sent representatives with Bush throughout Africa, and reported on the news here. Former Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist’s piece, addressed to our next president, is of particular note as we anticipate heading to the polls this November (and, in states such as Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Texas, in spring primaries still ahead). Not too long ago I linked to ONE’s effort to pressure presidential candidates to go on the record with their plans for fighting poverty and preventable disease. They have now responded. Further, Obama, Clinton, McCain and Huckabee have all responded that, if elected, they will commit to visit Africa during their first term in office. This is good news, but we need to keep reminding (potential) powers that be that our concern with Africa is not peripheral, but will have a real, tangible effect on who we’ll vote for. Let’s not let any candidate off the hook too easily, people.

This is not the end. If anything, it is the starting line. Let’s prioritize the “least of these”, and take help wherever we can find it.