B
Trinity BFC 2015
Romans
8:12-25
June
4, 2015
Author Dani Shapiro shares about the spiritual practice of
writing,
When writers who are just starting out ask me when it gets
easier, my answer is never. It never gets easier. I don’t want to scare them, so
I rarely say more than that, but the truth is that, if anything, it gets
harder. The writing life isn’t just filled with predictable uncertainties but
with the awareness that we are always starting over again. That everything we
ever write will be flawed. We may have written one book, or many, but all we
know — if we know anything at all — is how to write the book we’re writing. All
novels are failures. Perfection itself would be a failure. All we can hope is
that we will fail better. That we won’t succumb to fear of the unknown. That we
will not fall prey to the easy enchantments of repeating what may have worked
in the past. I try to remember that the job — as well as the plight, and the
unexpected joy — of the artist is to embrace uncertainty, to be sharpened and
honed by it. To be birthed by it. Each time we come to the end of a piece of
work, we have failed as we have leapt — spectacularly, brazenly — into the
unknown.[1]
Shapiro relates the focus of spiritual
practice. It is not in developing personal
perfection, but in a willingness to risk transformation into the unknown, to
step in and start.
In
contrast, on a decided focus on the afterlife, Christian spirituality lost much
of its grit, practical application, and courage for justice. We hear talk of the need to develop an inner
life separate and apart from an outer life of action and advocacy. But that split between inner and outer is a
fiction that can leave us untransformed and disconnected. As the African-American spiritual says,
“There’s a new world coming.
Everything’s going to be turning over.
Where you gonna’ be standing when it comes?”
In
this passage of Scripture from Paul’s letter to the Romans, Paul hops back and
forth between inner and outer, blurring the line until we recognize there is no
line at all. He critiques the
principalities and powers, the systems and the structures, and relates that the
whole system is a system of slavery.
Paul states that people who do not participate in that system, do not
benefit from it, are adopted as God’s children, and inherit a spirituality of
freedom with Christ.
This passage has long been misinterpreted. Long been misinterpreted because a Greek word
has been literally and lazily translated rather than poetically and
symbolically translated. Sin is
translated as acting according to “the flesh.”[2] When all sins are translated as according to “the
flesh” it connotes that our intended separation from God has to do with a need
to transcend our physical body, its natural sensuality and sexuality.
Slavery is an economic and political reality. And Paul hearkens back to foundational Jewish
stories of bondage and slavery to explain what it means to be spiritually
rich. To be spiritually rich is not
based in otherworldly, unembodied practices.
As I have stated many times, the Roman Empire was a system based on
domination, hierarchy, and slavery. Rome
left its conquered peoples disconnected, rootless, and pitted against one
another. A spiritual life that does not
speak to these realities is meaningless.
Sin is then defined as those who are slaves to a system that continues
to grind, destroy, and hold power over one another. As a result, freedom is one of the primary
spiritual values for Paul. Freedom
connotes a person, a people, who are not participants in a system of slavery,
hierarchy, and domination. On an inner,
personal, and practical level, freedom is about choices, practices and values
that are not dictated to us by the wider culture.
As Christians, as the daughters and sons of God, we are
adopted and connected into communities and families that are not defined by
blood, rooted in practices that show us not to be dependent and slaves to
systems that rob the world of life, and moved to transcend labels that keep us
separate from one another.
Today we commissioned missionaries who communicate that
kind of freedom with their willingness to imagine a world transformed. They represent us and interrupt their lives
in the hope that we might collaborate with God to bring about a world that now
suffers with labor pains. There’s a new
world comin’. These missionaries will
return to us to share with us the signs of God’s activity and presence in the
world.
My experience has been that missionary trips like these
affirm the activity and presence of God in the world. Though they might be witnesses to immense
suffering of people in Tanzania or of the earth in California, they will have
strong and unforgettable experiences of the activity and presence of God.
But hear this. Too
often we have been sold a bill of goods in Christianity spirituality which
indicates that there is a hierarchy of being.
Some people know how to do it.
Some do not. Some have a gift for
spirituality. Some do not.
I
say that this is a lie!
People
in Tanzania, the earth along the coast of California have knowledge we need as
well. And our missionaries are tasked
with coming back to share the good news they learn in those places.
We
are born as spiritual beings. As Paul
relates in his passage, the earth too is imbued with spirituality such that it
is throbbing with new life, ready for the waters to burst forth from the womb.
We
are spiritual beings. The truth is that
no work we do on ourselves or in God’s creation is too humble, too unglorious,
too small to join with God in transformation.
We need not be unblemished, perfect, accomplished, or experts. We do not need the perfect path. As Paul tells it, in collaborating with God
to give birth to a new world, we often cannot even begin to see what that would
look like. We need to just begin, enter
into the struggle, to begin to do the little things in the name of unarmed
truth and unconditional love.
God does not need perfect people on a perfect path. God needs walkers.
In
1987, two giants in the work of social transformation came together to have a
dialog about what brings about social transformation. The funding of their conversation was
considered so important that it was sponsored by what used to be the United
Church of Christ Board for Homeland Ministries.[3]
Myles
Horton founded the Highlander Folk School in Grundy County, Tennessee, one of
the poorest Appalachian counties and an area dominated by powerful coal
interests. During the 1 930s, at the time of Highlander's founding, the region was
being swept by industrialization. Myles and Highlander started their programs
with rural workers, who were being displaced from the land and driven into the
textile mills, mines, and factories as part of the "development" of
the rural South.
As I
began to read his work seminary, Paulo Freire became one of my greatest
teachers. Paulo Freire grew up and began
his work in one of the poorest regions of Brazil—the northeast region. The region has been plagued with poverty,
hunger and illiteracy for many years. The
northeast has Brazil's highest birthrate, shortest life expectancy rates,
severest malnutrition, lowest literacy rates, and highest levels of unemployment
and underemployment.
Both
the rural South and northeastern Brazil were dependent upon powerful economic
interests, initially the plantation owners and later the multinationals, and
were characterized by sharp dichotomies between rich and poor, powerful and
powerless.
Not
unlike the historical Jesus, both men began their movements recognizing a
strong need for social transformation.
But where does one start? How
does one begin? The work of each man
relied on making the people who sought liberation the subjects of their own
destiny. This could not be charity work
where liberation was handed over to people.
Both men recognized that real liberation had to happen through popular
participation and probably could not happen through existing institutions. Myles Horton said,
When people criticize
me for not having any respect for existing structures and institutions, I
protest. I say I give institutions and structures and traditions all the
respect that I think they deserve. That's usually mighty little, but there are
things that I do respect. They have to earn that respect. They have to earn it
by serving people. They don't earn it just by age or legality or tradition.
As
an existing structure and institution, we need to ask whether we get by based
on age, legality, or tradition. Is new
birth possible or are we holding on to that age, legality and tradition to
stand in a place where we are forever protecting the old order?
Both
men quickly realized in their work that the questions and concerns they had
were not the questions and the concerns of the people with whom they were
working. For interest and participation,
the people themselves had to work out the particularities of their struggle
with their particular skills and intelligences.
Their relevant questions had to be brought forward. Participation was the key with an
understanding that once they were able to train themselves and the people with
whom they worked not to follow conventional wisdom, a whole other wisdom broke
out as they continued their work in the struggle. But
they all had to enter that struggle together.
They had to start struggling.
They had to start working. They
had to start creating. Just begin. To express this understanding, both men
turned to a poem by Spanish poet Antonio Machado:
Wanderer, your footsteps are
the road, and nothing more;
wanderer, there is no road,
the road is made by walking.
By walking one makes the road,
and upon glancing behind
one sees the path
that never will be trod again.
Wanderer, there is no road—
Only wakes upon the sea.
The road, O wanderer, O
sojourner, O pilgrim, is made by walking.
And,
really, that is the struggle we have in this day and age is it not? Not surprisingly, emerging church leader
Brian McLaren recently wrote a book recognizing the same relevant issues in the
North American church. He titled his
book after Machado’s poem, We Make the
Road by Walking.
Too
often, in the North American Christian Church we get to claim we are Christian
without any form of participation.
Particularly in the mainline church, there are few demands, if any, put
on people who join our company. Once someone assents to our creed they are left
frighteningly alone. Our membership
totals are far higher than the people who show up Sunday morning in
worship. Our nominating committees
struggle to find people who will fill slots on committees and boards. Though our committees and boards may do
herculean tasks, we do not demand anything of them or expect to hear from them
the goals and work they shall do over the coming year. We become a people fighting for ideas in our
community rather than practicing our faith.
Sometimes we not only move to the sidelines but to the judge’s box where
we call ourselves Christian for assenting to similar beliefs, we keep score of
those who are actually doing the work for social transformation to tell them
when we think they have it right or wrong.
The little energy then left in the church is stripped and stolen by an
audience that was supposed to be a congregation. And creation is suffering, groaning under the
weight of a world waiting to be born.
There’s
a new world coming. Everything’s going
to be changing over. Where you gonna be
standing when it comes?
The
path, the new world, is made by our walking.
So as our missionaries get ready to travel to other parts of the world,
I invite all of us to begin as the imperfect Children of God to begin the
walking so that a road may be made and we may be birthed into freedom and away
from slavery, domination, and hierarchy.
In turn, may our spiritual practices collaborate with God to midwife a
new world God now groaning and suffering in labor. We may not know what the road or path looks
like it. No matter. God awaits us. Walkers are needed. Let us make the road. Amen.
[1] Dani Shapiro, Still Writing: The Perils and Pleasures of a Creative
Life (New York: Atlantic Monthly Press, 2013)
[2] sarx is
the Biblical Greek word. This is where
literal translation of the Bible misses the mark. Paul is spending a great deal of his time
talking about a world to come, and the thin veil that exists between this world
and the world to come. So the very
literal translation of this word is the outer covering of the body. It relates to something that is surface
without much depth or, as I stated above, a thin veil. I chose to relate it in the Scripture verse
as the way the present world works or its values. Within context, Paul is clearly making a
reference to the system of slavery, domination, and hierarchy that is the Roman
Empire. He is referencing the stories of
his people in Exodus and Exile to say that the antidote for this slavery and
bondage is “freedom.” We show “freedom”
through our inner life by collaborating with God to not choose or making
priorities that are slavery, domination, and hierarchy. And we show “freedom” through our outer work
to collaborate with God to transform systems and structures. Inner and outer are two sides of one
coin. They cannot be separated. For example, I cannot ask for wholesale
change of sweatshop labor and not be concerned about my individual spiritual
practices that move me to make just and right purchases.
[3] Myles Horton and Paulo Freire, We Make the Road by Walking: Conversations
on Education and Social Change (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1990).
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