Moldy Soles

My shoes are rotting...I stole them from the poor. Mold is plaguing my 3 pairs of chacos that are siting outside the door of my house. In an equatorial climate, leather that's not worn doesn't stand a chance against the stuff. Guys, this is radical. I am so absorbed, so steeped in my Western lies of power and comfort that I don't even know what this means. I don't know how to love my neighbor, to know the poor, to be real - but I have been given a new heart (Ezekiel), and I want to know authentic community - globally incarnational. Okay, I'm back in Singapore, very thankful for the retreat- enjoyed meeting and learning from teammates but I was convicted by my lack of discipline to break away from the crowds and run away with my Lord, esp. when He called...incredibly challenged now about direction- spent tonight talking with Craig, the Greenfields' son, who works with Servants. If you can, look at some of the news articles on their website: http://www.servantsasia.org/news, esp. http://www.servantsasia.org/news.asp?number=153. "Downward mobility in an upscale world." How?

Shain Claiborn describes me...

"Not long ago, I sat and talked with some very wealthy Christians about what it means to be the church and to follow Jesus. One business man confided, "I, too, have been thinking about following Christ and what it means. so I had this made." He pulled up his shirt sleeve to reveal a bracelet, engraved with W.W.J.D. (What Would Jesus Do?). It was custom-made of 24 karat gold.

Maybe each of us can relate to this man - both in his earnest desire to follow Jesus and his distorted execution of that desire, so bound up in the materialism of our culture. It is difficult to learn to live the downward mobility of the gospel in this age of wealth. For the most part, those of us who are rich never meet those of us who are poor. Instead, nonprofit organizations serve as brokers between the two in a booming business of poverty management.

I believe that the great tragedy of the church is not that rich Christians do not care about the poor, but that they do not know the poor. Yet if we are called to live the new community for which Christ was crucified, we cannot remain strangers to one another. Jesus demands that we live in a very different way." - from article written by Shane Claiborn 3/2/2006 http://www.servantsasia.org/news.asp?number=153.

Friends, I've spent 24 years in easy wealth, and I've been hardened by pride; I've spent my whole life receiving the lies that I had to be powerful to survive, that I had to be tough and maintain my security in image, that I was entitled to achievement, that my intentions were pure and that I was "right on track" for purposeful living. Most of my life has been Christian education: 4 yrs at Christian high school and 4 yrs at Christian college. I've been surrounded by people who adore me and protect me from criticism........I really have felt genuine love from spiritual friends. My educational training really did teach me good things. But, my sin so often prevents me from integrating the faith I've been given through grace and the radical life I'm called to live with Jesus. I am seeking repentance and direction for the steps ahead. Please pray for the Shepherd to reveal and a heart bent on emptying myself.

Here's what it looked like for Claiborn and a group of his friends...
"About five years ago, I became a part of a community called the simple way, a group of Christians literally born out of the wreckage of the church. Dozens of homeless families and children had moved into St. Edward's, a cavernous, abandoned Catholic church in one of the most struggling neighborhoods of Philadelphia. A small group of us who were students at Eastern College, a suburban Christian school, decided to move in with them as a gesture of solidarity. From that initial step, one miracle followed another as those families mentored us in community, worship, and love. Eventually, we settled in a rowhouse in Kensington, a few blocks from St. Edward's. It is the poorest (but most beautiful!) district in Pennsylvania. There is no place we'd rather call home. Here, we play and dance. We plant gardens. We feed people. We cry. We have a community store. We help kids with homework. We live, and we spend our lives joining folks in poverty as they struggle to end it. Because we know that we cannot end poverty without ending wealth, we also spend time talking with Christian communities about our work and hosting visitors.

Clairborn says, "I believe all our "programs" should have their genesis in true relationship. At our house, we tutor - but we did not start by deciding to do a tutoring program. We simply fell in love with the kids who needed help with their homework. We feed people - but we did not begin with a decision to start a feeding program. We simply fell in love with our neighbors, and they were hungry. - Claiborn article

Brothers and sisters in the US, Philippines, Congo, Belgium, France, Turkey and ends of the earth, I'm convinced that True relationship is the cry of the Spirit, the way of our Savior, the call of the Church today.

More excerpts from Claiborn: If we are to truly be the church, poverty must be a face we recognize as our own kin. Several years ago, I attended a protest against sweatshops where the organizers had not invited the typical rally speakers - lawyers, activists, advocates. Instead, they brought kids from the sweatshops. A child from Indonesia pointed to his face."I got this scar when my master lashed me for not working hard enough. When it bled, he did not want me to stop working or to ruin the cloth, so he took a lighter and burned it shut. I got this scar making stuff for you." I was suddenly consumed with the overwhelming reality of the suffering body of Christ. Jesus now bore not just nail marks and scars from thorns, but a gash down his face. How could I possibly follow Jesus and buy anything from that master?

If we are content with discipleship that ends merely with generosity, we still serve money. Generosity is a beautiful response, but we should not confuse it with love. Generosity is merely what is expected; what is required is to return that which has been stolen. God did not create some of us rich and others of us poor.

Basil the Great, writing in the fourth century, put it this way: "When someone strips a man of his clothes, we call him a thief. And one who might clothe the naked and does not - should not he be given the same name? The bread in your cupboard belongs to the hungry; the coat in your wardrobe belongs to the naked; the shoes you let rot belong to the barefoot; the money in your vaults belongs to the destitute."

Instead of living out this alternative vision, the church has been content to be a broker between the rich and poor. Both those trapped in poverty and those trapped in riches view the church as a distribution center, a place where the poor come to get stuff and the rich come to dump stuff. No radical new community is formed.In this model, both go away satisfied (the rich feel good, the poor get fed) - but neither goes away transformed. They do not join together to discover a new way of living.

Functionally, many nonprofits act as brokers between the rich and the poor. They facilitate the exchange of goods and services, putting plenty of professionals in the middle to guarantee that the rich do not have to face the poor and that power does not shift. Rich and poor are kept in separate worlds. Charity does not feed fundamental change.Brokering poverty also seduces Christians into being gatekeepers to power. Our progressive movements are haunted by the temptation to facilitate power.

Those of us who yearn for the kingdom of God must follow in the steps of Jesus. Jesus was not "in charge" of the poor. He was poor. The message of Christ from the manger to the cross is that the world is conquered through weakness, through leastness, through struggle - not from the top, but from the bottom.The people wanted a mighty Messiah. They got a baby refugee. They wanted a powerful king to take over Rome. They got a wandering homeless man. He could have saved the world with his mighty power, but he did it through his ridiculous love. The power of God lies in the brokenness of Jesus: naked, cursed, spit upon, with birds picking at his flesh as he died the rotten death of a criminal.

The great temptation of the church, and of every believer, is the offer Satan made to Jesus in the desert: to win the world with power. But power will not end poverty. We must discover another way of living.Jesus did not set up a program, but rather modeled a way of living that incarnated the reign of God. That reign did not spread through organizational establishments or structural systems. It spread through touch, through breath, through life. It spread through people who discovered love.

I am haunted by the command of Jesus to love our neighbor as ourselves. I struggle because I sleep in a house while my neighbor sleeps in a cardboard box; I eat twice a day while my neighbor hasn't eaten once. I draw strength from following Jesus in community. I live with people who, if they pass someone with a worse pair of shoes, have taken their shoes off and switched; people who have quietly handed over winter jackets to someone they met on the street without a coat.This is the reckless love of Jesus, which teaches us to see the connections between our wealth and our neighbor's poverty.

The love of Jesus will teach us another way of doing life, a way that will bring God's reign to earth as it is in heaven. The reign of God is not for the future. It is something we live today. Jesus reminds us that it is easy to love people who are just like us: "Even idolators do that" (Matt. 5:47). We are called to love those who hate us. Love those who create poverty, and love those who are trapped in it. See each of them in yourself - the same blood and tears. We are all capable of the same evil, and we have potential for the same good. As one believer said, "In the oppressed I recognize my own face, and in the hands of the oppressor I recognize my own hands." From addicts I learn of my addiction, and from the saints I learn of my holiness.

The God of love and the love of God know no bounds. The unending love of Jesus teaches revolutionaries to love police officers, anarchists to love politicians, vegetarians to love meat-eaters, peacemakers to love soldiers. This is the love that makes us the church. Ultimately, only this radical love of Jesus can end the poverty-wealth dichotomy. When the rich meet the poor, together they will end wealth. When the poor meet the rich, together they will end poverty.

People do not get crucified for charity. People are crucified for living out a love that disrupts the social order, that calls forth a new world. People are not crucified for helping poor people. People are crucified for joining them. [This article by Shane Claiborn appeared in The Other Side, Nov/Dec 2000. and excerpts here were taken from the Servants' website]

"Awake, O sleeper;

and arise from the dead,

and Christ will shine on you."

Ephesians 5:14