I am so very close! The end is near! I can just about taste it! In a mere 14 days I have to turn in all of my ordination paperwork, from the ordination questions found in The United Methodist Book of Discipline (2000, for the true Methodist geeks out there) to two sermons, a Bible study and all sorts of other "fun" things.
Tonight I was finishing a paper that answered the following question:
"What is your understanding of (a) the Kingdom of God, (b) the Resurrection, (c) Eternal Life?" In the process of answering part b of that question I found myself continually coming back to the line "pratice resurrection" from Wendell Berry's poem: Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front. This is the poem in it's entierty:
MANIFESTO: THE MAD FARMER LIBERATION FRONT
by Wendell Berry
Love the quick profit, the annual raise, vacation with pay.
Want more of everything made.
Be afraid to know you neighbors and to die.
And you will have a window in your head.
Not even your future will be a mystery any more.
Your mind will be punched in a card and shut away in a little drawer.
When they want you to buy something they will call you.
When they want you to die for profit they will let you know.
So, friends, every day do something that won't compute.
Love the Lord. Love the world. Work for nothing.
Take all that you have and be poor.
Love someone who does not deserve it.
Denounce the government and embrace the flag.
Hope to live in that free republic for which it stands.
Give you approval to all you cannot understand.
Praise ignorance,
for what man has not encountered he has not destroyed.
Ask the questions that have no answers.
Invest in the millennium.
Plant sequoias.
Say that your main crop is the forest that you did not plant,
that you will not live to harvest.
Say that the leaves are harvested when they have rotted into the mold.
Call that profit. Prophesy such returns.
Put your faith in the two inches of humus that will build under the trees
every thousand years.
Listen to carrion--put your ear close,
and hear the faint chattering of the songs that are to come.
Expect the end of the world.
Laugh. Laughter is immeasurable.
Be joyful though you have considered all the facts.
So long as women do not go cheap for power,
please women more than men.
Ask yourself: Will this satisfy a woman satisfied to bear a child?
Will this disturb the sleep of a woman near to giving birth?
Go with your love to the fields.
Lie easy in the shade. Rest your head in her lap.
Swear allegiance to what is nighest your thoughts.
As soon as the generals and politicos can predict the motions
of your mind, lose it.
Leave it as a sign to mark the false trail, the way you didn't go.
Be like the fox who makes more tracks than necessary,
some in the wrong direction.
Practice resurrection.
Copyright Wendell Berry
AWESOME, ISN'T IT!
I first came across the last line of the poem in Shane Claiborne's The Irresistible Revolution: living as an ordinary radical (Zondervan, 2006) and then, a week later, I encountered the quote again in Living the Resurrection: The Risen Christ in Everyday Life (NAVPRESS, 2006) by Eugene Peterson. Perhaps we have a literary "Holy Spirit encounter" going here!
How can you not totally dig that last line: "practice resurrection"? Is that not part of the calling of the Christian? I am so struck by how we help folks to practice resurrection at Travis Park. To see life emerge from what is dead is truly miraculous!
Two weeks ago I had a meeting scheduled with one of my mentors who works in a very affluent suburban church in Plano. (In an effort of full disclosure I served there for two and a half years while in undergrad and in seminary and met many wonderful folks there.) I was only in the church for a 10 minutes before a giant wave of sadness began to cover me. There was a large whole there, something was radically incomplete. A few moments later it occured to me what I was missing: the poor. Not only where they not there it was fairley clear that they would not be welcome there. I began to wonder if this was still Jesus' church...Would he recognize it as a place filled with his followers? Would he want to be there? Could he find the folks he tended to hang with there on any given Sunday? Did I find Jesus there? I have to admit, the answer to all of those questions was a no. I don't mean to condemn them, the church is huge and reaches literally thousands of people each week. My time there was mostly good and I have friends from that church that I still keep up with to this day. They are good Christians (in the isolated upper middle class to wealthy kind of way).
These thoughts lead me to ask the following questions:
1. Will the mainline church die in the next 100 years?
2. Does it deserve to die?
Here's what I have in way of answers:
1. I don't think it will die in my lifetime but much beyond that, I'm not sure.
2. Some churches do!
I believe that the body of Christ is the church and that the body cannot be killed. I believe that Jesus loved the church and died for what was to come. I believe that I have a responsibility to do the same. So in that respect, I think the Church will be just fine.
It's the mainline demoninations that worry me.
I speak only as a United Methodist who loves his church and most of it's history. I think Methodism has many wonderful things to offer the world that world needs to hear (could be why I'm a Methodist!) but I am concerned that many of our churches have become so inwardly focused that we have lost our true mission: to make disciples for Jesus Christ. I can't speak for that on a national level but I look at many of our larger churches (having served in two of them) and I don't know that we are truly preaching the gospel.
I could go on and on about this but I can't solve the problem tonight (nor is it ultimately up to me to solve!).
All I can say is that lately, I have been wondering about what it might look like to practice resurrection in the mainline churches. I have just started Diana Butler-Basse's new book Christianity for the Rest of Us and am hopefuly to find a good, encouraging word in it!
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