Enchanted Community

BLOG 2/18/15. THE ENIGMA OF SELECTIVE CHRISTIAN ETHICS

In my last blog I was heralding Pope Francis and his ethical focuses (foci?), especially his teachings on the environment. It is no secret that ethics tends to be something of a no-man’s-land in which folk are looking for irrefutable black and white answers, when there often are none. Each generation faces its own ethical challenges. In David Axelrod’s new book on his life, especially his years in the White House, he makes the point of what an impossibly difficult job is that of the president of the United States. His comment is that by the time anything lands on the president’s desk … it is already a crisis. Things that are not crises are handled routinely by his staff. Daily ethical and political crises at home and abroad are before him.

But this is also true of our Christian lives. We don’t live in some religious-spiritual never-never-land, after all. From its very inception the Christian church has lived with its missionary confrontation with the ethics and moral character of the culture, the ’empire’, in which it is incarnated. One can ‘fall off of the wagon’ in several directions, like: one can seek to isolate oneself from the culture totally—but that is not our calling. Or one can get so immersed in seeking to be an accepted presence within a given culture that one becomes too conformed to it.

Then, too, we can focus all of our zeal on one area of ethics and be seemingly indifferent to other areas that are equally demanding.

So where am I going with this?

Well, for one example, there is a lot of heat generated in some Christian circles over the legality of marriage of GLBT couples, and this is worth some thoughtful discussion. At the same time, it is no secret that perhaps a larger issue that faces a good part of the West, including the United States, is the emergence of a plutocracy, of a new golden age, a dominance of wealth, where there is a disparate accumulation of wealth among the top 1% or 2%, and the stagnation of the middle class and the hopelessness of many in the lower classes to even find work.

Is that a Christian concern? It is interesting that while many in the church have focused on God’s judgment of Sodom as the result of its evident sexual promiscuity, they can, at the same time, quite overlook the word of the prophet Ezekiel: “Behold, this was the guilt of your sister Sodom, she and her daughters had pride, excess of food, and prosperous ease, but did not aid the poor and needy” (Ezekiel 16:49). The prophet does not focus on Sodom’s sexual behavior, … but, rather, on its indifference to the poor and needy. Got it?

And the only entity that Jesus would name as a major competitor to God is: the worship of the false god mammon, i.e., idolatry of riches, avarice, and greed with an accompanying indifference to how it was gained. It was noted in a Texas newspaper those several decades ago, during the Enron scandal, that many of the leading perpetrators of that financial scandal were church members in good standing. That’s not surprising. The Christian church has had a sad history of courting wealthy and influential patrons/members, and never daring to confront them with the huge spiritual danger that their wealth was to themselves, not to mention the consequences on those on whose backs they had made their wealth. It’s not a very popular subject for a pastor (who seeks to be popular) to preach on! Even Jesus’ sobering teaching, saying that whoever is indifferent to the poor, the naked, the sick and imprisoned … is indifferent to Jesus himself, consequently: “Depart from me you wicked …” also gets avoided too often.

It is altogether possible that the Occupy Wall Street movement, of a couple of years ago, had more Christian integrity than the silence of the church in challenging the ethics of wealth.

Like I often say in these blogs, our Christian faith, in its integrity, is a counter-cultural movement, through and through, and embraces that in its basic tenet that requires repentance, i.e., a radical change of mind. It also has compassion on those on the margins. Are we awake?

BLOG 2/15/15. CHRIST THE CONTROVERSIALIST … AND POPE FRANCIS

The late John R. W. Stott of London was a giant in terms of his influence upon my generation. He was a prolific writer, a gentle soul, a profound scholar, and pastor of All Souls Church for decades. But John Stott was not a ‘safe’ expositor of scriptures. He realized how often the teachings of scripture force us to confront areas of darkness that are comfortably accepted by all too much of society, and, alas, too many in the church. One of his significant works is entitled exactly that: Christ the Controversialist. Truth be told, this made a lot of comfortable evangelical folk a bit restive, and was behind his being marginalized in some circles.

Speaking for myself as a veteran pastor, who has lived through several major periods of social and cultural controversy, it is all too easy to remain silent on insistent issues, and then to equivocate about our timidity/cowardice. It is what the apostle had in mind when he wrote to the Christians in Rome that they should not be conformed to the world. Note that he was writing to the Christian community at the heart of the empire, and to a community that was at that time generally illegal. What do you do with that?

Face it: the gospel is radical stuff, it is an invitation to Christ, … but to come to Christ is to become part of a New Creation that is always in missionary confrontation with this present world order. To that end, in these United States it has been common for large and successful church institutions to become comfort zone churches, where the promises of the gospel are exalted, but where one seldom hears the demands of the gospel, and where the demand for repentance is seldom part of the message. The gospel of the Kingdom of God is an offense to the power structures of this age, because it is a message that speaks of God making “all things new” through Jesus Christ.

Which brings me to Pope Francis. I, being a card-carrying Protestant with Puritan blood in my heritage, … am, frankly, fascinated by this guy. He gets the message. And he doesn’t pull his punches. And this past week he waded right into a very controversial area that is dear to my heart: The environment and global warming. My readers have got to understand that there are two pieces of Francis that are critical to understanding him: 1) he is a member of the Jesuit Order, and Jesuits are rigorous and unflinching thinkers and disciplined practitioners of the teachings of Jesus Christ; and 2) he intentionally took the name of Francis of Assisi as his papal designation … and Francis of Assisi was an environmentalist down to his toes. Just read the words of his familiar hymn: All Creatures of Our God and King, and you’ll see what I mean.

In my own Reformed tradition, it was also the teaching of John Calvin that our stewardship of God’s creation is one of the touchstones of our theology. Yet, not only has Francis been outspoken on our complicity in causing global warming, … but he is establishing a new ‘congregation’ (counterpart to the departments represented by the president’s cabinet in our political system) … a congregation on environmental and human ecology. My response? Cheers! (O, but that will jolly well p—off a lot of folk who despise “tree huggers” and deny global warming.)

What is even more fascinating is that he has been invited to address our U. S. Congress, which is inhabited and controlled by many who genuinely oppose the very things that Francis is advocating. What is even more humorous to think about is that this pope doesn’t pull his punches.

The guy is controversial, and he is also well attuned to Biblical teachings about the whole earth/creation being filled with glory of God, … and nobody can fire him!

I love it! I love him. We need his witness. We need his missionary confrontation with the powers of this age. We need his controversial New Creation/Kingdom of God witness.

BLOG 2/11/15. CAN SEAMUS HEANEY TEACH THE CHURCH SOMETHING?

From time to time I mention Seamus Heaney, the much loved Irish poet who died a couple of years ago. I was so impressed that one of the major Irish newspapers described the universal appreciation of him by the Irish people with four words: warmth, humor, courtesy, and caring. What a beautiful combination of adjectives. I think of that often as a writer in the field of the church’s mission—like, what is it that makes the church a contagious and leavening reality within the human community?

I also often say that God doesn’t communicate his unimaginable love for us by sending a ‘religious’ person, or some disembodied theological treatise, or a sterile ‘evangelistic’ invitation. No, he actually sent his Son, … who in turn sends his church to be the very embodiment in flesh and blood of that same love, and grace, and humility, and caring, and sensitivity to the individual needs of every person.

Did you even notice that those who followed Jesus found something so compelling in him, and what he was saying and doing, … were not especially spiritual or religious. They were an interesting disparate assortment of personalities, ages, ordinary working guys—sometimes unlikely—who were not into all of the religion stuff that the temple folk required of Jews by way of observances, if they were to be acceptable.

Jesus didn’t  even launch an evangelistic crusade at the temple, … rather he just began to walk, somewhat hidden, the back roads of Palestine and engage folk in conversation, and … admittedly to make outrageous claims about who he was and what his Father-God had sent him to do, … but then he backed up his words with his life and works and caring for the helpless and poor, the sick and helpless, and the morally questionable folk he encountered. Jesus grew on them the longer they encountered him. He was unbelievably believable and approachable, and authentic, and engaging.

His parables, or stories, which he used to illustrate were laced with humor, but were understandable. He was not put-off by those on the margins, whom the ‘religious’ considered off-limits, like: a Roman centurion, or a Syro-Phoenician mother, or women of questionable morals, and other shady characters. He cared. There was nothing pompous or aloof or religious, or super-spiritual about Jesus, … and yet people were attracted to him.

So I come back to Seamus Heaney: warmth, caring, courtesy and caring. Those of us who profess to be the colonies of God’s New Humanity in Christ could use a good dose of such responses to those we encounter day by day. They are not looking for ‘church activities,’ or some prestigious religious society to join, … but they are looking for those demonstrations of caring, of humor, of warmth, and of sensitivity to their persons. They’re looking for good news, for their heart’s true home.

The church’s contagious growth, its leaven-like growth over two millennia has been a person-to-person communication of God’s love and grace and reconciling work in warm and authentic demonstrations. G. K. Chesterton once noted that those public figures who need to be great are fools, but those who are truly great are mostly those who operate quietly and out of sight.

Often it is the churchy-types, the outspokenly religious, and the ecclesiastical poseurs, and, yes, also the rigidly orthodox … who are so off-putting, and turn the spiritually lost and hungry folk away. It is those who are gentle and humorous and caring and courteous and are the authentic demonstrations of the life and teachings of Jesus on the margins of daily life who attract those who are lost, hungry and thirsty—the motherless children of our acquaintance, whom Jesus came “to seek and to save.”

Amen!

BLOG 2/8/15. OSCAR ROMERO, ST. TELEMACHUS, … AND US

I, for one, have been rejoicing that this present Pope Francis has determined to beatify the martyred Archbishop Oscar Romero of El Salvador. I have been so blessed by Romero’s example. Romero stands in a long line of faithful followers of Christ who recognized and exposed the deeply entrenched forces of darkness—especially those in high places. Archbishop Romero, as a prominent public figure in his Central American country, began his tenure in full support of the status quo in that nation, but then began to see how ultimately it was criminally controlled by forces that were quite oppressive to the rank and file, especially the poor, of that nation, and so began to speak out publicly. The angered right-wing powers, thereupon, had him assassinated by a sniper as he was celebrating the mass in a local chapel. For those of us in the United States, if we are into research, this has connections to the shenanigans of our own State Department which provided support for such right-wing forces in those days of the cold war, when anything a shade left of center was part of the communist threat.

In the fifth century, according to the somewhat shadowy records, there was a similar martyr, a monk, by the name of Telemachus, who on a visit to (maybe) Rome visited the coliseum and was watching the bloody spectacle of gladiators killing each other, all of which was a very popular form of entertainment with the masses. Telemachus was so offended by the carnage, that (as the story is passed down) he jumped down onto field and protested and commanded that it all stop in the name of humanity. The command was given by an official and he was slain on the spot, stabbed and killed. But the emperor was so moved by the monk’s compassion that he commanded that the gladiatorial contests be suspended, and they did end on that day.

Every generation, and every particular neighborhood faces similar decisions. Injustices and human cruelty are present in so many subtle and not-so-subtle forms. Paul concluded his letter to the Ephesians with the warning that God’s people must be careful to put on the whole armor of God because we are ever in a confrontation, he says, not with flesh and blood “but against rulers, against authorities, against cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places” (Ephesians 6:12).

It is ever our proclivity to be conformed to all of the subtle expressions of this darkness in our own location, and to accept the status quo. But we, who are followers of Christ, are always a counter-cultural people because we have been called into God’s New Creation, into God’s New Humanity, which transcends the controlling forces. In my lifetime I have watched this on the larger plane what with civil rights and racial equality, with our nation’s tendency to get involved in tragic military conflicts. More subtle at the moment are economic injustice, and indifference to our stewardship of the environment, for starts. The disparity between the controlling wealthy and those struggling to survive, who are the huge majority, would seem to be one of those. But one can be quietly martyred if one speaks out.

Face it: it is not ever really safe to be a child of the light in the midst of malignant darkness, but we dare not ignore it. We are called to be witnesses and advocates of God’s design just as Oscar Romero, St. Telemachus, and a huge multitude have been over the centuries. We overcome by the word of our testimony, the blood of the Lamb, even if it costs us our lives (Rev. 12:11). Amen!

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BLOG 2/4/15. “THEY DO IT EVERY SUNDAY” – WHY?

“They do it every Sunday,

They’ll be over it on Monday,

It’s only a habit they’ve acquired.”

That little limerick percolates up out of my past from time to time. It was a spoof on so many habitual churchgoers, whose participation seems disconnected from any dynamic sense of calling into the mission of God. It has a companion bit of poetic whimsy also from somewhere in my past:

“The clock on the courthouse stuck twelve,

And the Presbyterian Church on the corner gave up its dead,

Back to the world where they knew how to live.”

If you pursue what may be behind those somewhat snarky bits of verse (verse?), it does raise the question as to whether the church gathering together from Sunday to Sunday has a dynamic purpose in furnishing God’s people for their encounter with their weekly context: the decisions, the persons, the difficult or even impossible dilemmas that so often will confront them as they seek to walk as children of the light. If I can’t relate to what happens on Sunday morning to my calling as one of God’s New Humanity (like maybe on Thursday arfternoon), then that which is called worship may be irrelevant to the mission of God (or maybe: Who needs it?).

I grew up in one of those families, and at that time, when one simply “went to church” on Sunday—that’s what you did. It never crossed my mind as to why we went, and as I grew into adolescence what took place in that Sunday gathering was something of an escape from all of the stuff of the week, so that we could gather with congenial friends, and do our church thing.

When I became a pastor, and began to spend significant time with the folk I had been called to serve in that (often ill-defined) role, I also realized that what we did for those couple of hours on Sunday was to be formative. Now I’ve got sixty years of experience in church leadership behind me, and from time to time am sought out by those who are now my pastors, so that they can process their lives and function with me, and pick my brain on what I have learned.

So, let me assert, right up front: I believe that every baptized person is called to be a minister 24/7 (check out Ephesians 4:11-12) in whatever those other six days may hold. They need to be equipped to be mature in that sense of calling to be children of light whatever that entails for them. What church leadership needs to be keenly focused on is the assurance that when God’s people are together in what we call ‘worship,’ that at least three things take place: 1.) God’s people are encouraged by sharing in praise and adoration of the Triune God with others of God’s people (as well as drinking coffee and sharing life). 2.) God’s people are equipped by engaging profoundly with the Word of God, so that a strong Biblical pulpit/teaching ministry moves them toward more maturity as God’s people in a very real and complex cultural and societal setting, and realistically—not dodging issues. 3.) God’s people are re-evangelized week by week as they share in the bread and wine of the Eucharist, and remember Jesus’ life death and resurrection, and the cost of their vows of discipleship.

They/we need to ‘have our windshields cleaned,’ to be refreshed and given heart for our walk with God in whatever unknowns lie before them. The church should not “give up its dead”—but rather energize and equip them to walk as the sons and daughter of Light, to ‘be Christ’ in all they encounter in the week that follows. Such worship is a huge and necessary blessing. Not purposeless religious habit, but rather our regular re-charging. O, yes!

BLOG 1/28/15. CHRIST, ISLAM, AND ‘MOTHERLESS CHILDREN’

A couple of weeks ago, I posted a blog describing some conversation partners whose spiritual emptiness and agnosticism reminded me of the old spiritual song: “Sometimes I feel like a motherless child … a long way from home.” And, yes, there are those profound questions, often buried deep in our sub-consciousness, that leave a sense of somehow being orphaned in a strange universe, and which cry out for answers and resolution.

A study of comparative religions makes it abundantly clear that folk in their quest for those answers and resolution may be creating their own designer gods, or becoming conformed to the gods of their cultures, … or maybe trying to be their own gods. This reality needs to be before us as we look at the world today. I cannot speak as a knowledgeable person about Islam, but I know enough to know that a large swath of the world in the Middle East and in Indonesia, and now in most nations, Islam is a factor. Islam has certainly been much in the new of late.

Christianity and Islam have common roots through Abraham—Christianity through Isaac and the Jewish people—and Islam through Ishmael into what is now Islam. Here’s a reality to keep in mind: in every human heart there is some kind of longing to know the meaning of life, some center, some guiding line. That is where the ‘motherless child’ longing is explained. Jesus came with the affirmation that he had come from God the Father to seek and to save the ‘motherless children’ of this world, to show his love, to reconcile them to God their Creator, to set them free—yes, to know their human nature fully, and to be in an intimate relationship with God.

Both Christians and the followers of Islam acknowledge that they are a “people of the book,” Christians through the narrative of the Bible, which confess is our authority and our guiding line. Islam, through their prophet Muhammad, likewise acknowledges the Quran as their authority. In broad strokes, there is a significant difference between the teachings of Jesus, and those of Muhammad. Jesus came as the incarnation of the love of God for his rebel creation, to convey his grace, and to offer himself as a sacrifice in order to forgive those were so lost and messed up, and to create them new, and make them his children through unmerited grace.

Muhammad and the teachings of the Quran offer a way to paradise, but it is a religion of law. You are a good Muslim by keeping the religious rules set forth in that book, … but there’s not much grace or forgiveness there. There can also be the criticism of current violence by some of the Islamic sects. All that may be true (we Christians have some ‘dirty linen’ too, alas!). But this unmistakable teaching of Jesus I want to herald here is: that Jesus came teaching us love for our enemies, the doing good to those who despitefully use us and persecute us. We worship Jesus who forgave those who were executing him. But he also taught that “no man comes to the Father but through me.” He came in love saying that he was the door into the forgiving embrace of God the Father, … and that to have seen him is to have seen the Father.

What is fascinating to catch glimpses of, is that there is a growing movement in Islamic cultures, especially the Middle East and in Africa, of those of Islam who have tuned-in to the teachings of the Prophet Isa (Jesus), and to the love and grace and forgiveness of the God who sent his Son Isa. These folk are part of an Islamic culture and are not at all interested in becoming Western Christians, but are forming colonies of those who are responding with faith in the Prophet Isa, and learning and practicing his teachings of love and grace right in the midst of Islamic cultures. (Remember Jesus word: I will build my church … ?)

God so loved the world—all of it, all those ‘motherless children’ whether Muslim, agnostic, Hindu, New Age, … whatever—that he gave his Son, that whosoever believes in him shall no longer be ‘motherless.’ May all in the Christian community get that message.

BLOG 1/25/15. CHRISTIAN FAITH: COMFORT OR OFFENSE?

It is an issue, or a question, that has confronted Christ’s followers, and his church, from its very inception: Is Christ’s gospel a message of comfort, or is it an offense? The answer: it is both. The Christian church keeps devolving itself into safe religious institutions, but the temptation has been there from the beginning to conform itself more to its culture than by being faithful to the teachings of Christ. A recent Facebook communication reported a pastor lamenting that he so often felt they were only producing ‘sophisticated consumers’ rather than faithful disciples.

Our invitations to faith in Christ focus on the promises of Christ’s gospel: love, forgiveness, reconciliation, new life, meaning, hope, and such comforting promises. But it is easy to forget that Jesus also issued warnings to those who would follow him. He promised his hearers that the gospel of the Kingdom of God was not coy about the fact that men would hate us and persecute us, and despitefully use us as we sought to express the righteousness of God. We are taught by the apostle that we shall reign with Christ if we suffer with him. Peter added the word that if we are insulted for the name of Christ, we are blessed, because the Spirit of glory and of God rests upon us (I Peter 4:4).

Jesus always gave his invitations to follow him with the additional qualification that if anyone would follow him, then that person must take up his cross and follow, even forsake every other lord and loyalty, and be willing to lose his/her life. That kind of invitation would not go down to well in our multitude of comfort zone churches, populated by ‘sophisticated consumers.’ But it only fits the larger context of what Jesus came to be and to do in inaugurating his New Creation, his eschatological Kingdom of God. That New Creation, and the New Humanity that is the communal dimension of it, has built in the understanding that we have been delivered out of the dominion of darkness (Satan) and into the dominion of God’s dear Son—the kingdom of Light.

That’s radical stuff. It makes Christ’s people and his church to be always counter-cultural, and controversial. It is an ongoing intellectual and moral struggle to know how to not be conformed to this world, but to be transformed. We are not to make of ourselves those unpleasant, negative religious types that seek to nay-say everything they don’t like. This is never ending in our cultures that are always creating new idols: ethical, political, social, economic, popular, etc. Every different neighborhood, and every new generation produces these in different forms, which require the church to find its way to communicate the love of God to all of those whom Jesus came to seek and to rescue, and who are often so amoral and disreputable and arrogant, … of just “decent godless men.”

Peter reminds the church that we are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation … that we may proclaim his excellencies right in the midst of these irreligious folk so often captives to the passions of folk still living in the darkness. But … he encourages us to conduct ourselves with such grace among those folk that they may see our good deeds and glorify God in due time. He tells them that their New Creation lives should trigger an inquiry from those very folk about what makes us such a different breed.

What we know is that God seems to work most powerfully where the darkness is the greatest, but this can also bring with it a severe reaction and persecution—all kinds of consequences. In the final book of the Bible there is a telling passage that speaks of God’s saints overthrowing the works of the devil by the blood of the Lamb, by the word of their testimony, even if it killed them. To be sure, our calling to Christ, and into his saving embrace and newness, also includes our willingness to be the “sweet aroma of Christ unto God” even when it costs us our careers or our lives. The gospel includes demands as well as promises. But that very calling is what history is all about. To avoid this calling with its ‘offense’ makes us irrelevant to history.

BLOG. 1/21/15. IT’S A PUZZLE OF WHY THE CHURCH EVEN EXISTS!

Did you ever stop and ponder how ridiculous it is that the church even exists? Those two millennia ago, out there on the remote corner of the Roman Empire, in a small-occupied country that was dominated by the religious hierarchy of Judaism, there quietly appeared a modest peasant figure from the margins. Now granted there had been some interesting stories about his birth circumstances, and some knew that his family had been in exile in Egypt for a few years. But then his family settled in as a working family in a small city, where they were known by all of their neighbors. There was in the traditions of Judaism the expectation of some kind of a divine visitation in the form of an especially anointed deliverer from their enemies, … but that expectation had about it some expectation of a dramatic figure with power and grandeur.

But then … this peasant, Jesus, as a mature adult quietly comes onto the scene, and joins his countrymen in responding to the preaching of his cousin, John the Baptizer, who was preaching that they should all shape-up and make ready for the Lord’s visitation. So what does this have to do with Jesus? Well, again, inexplicably, John sees in Jesus the very one about whom he had been preaching, the one whom God had promised, … that he was God’s anointed. This didn’t register with expectations.

But it gets more ridiculous. After spending some interesting forty days in solitude (and evidently in an encounter with another mysterious being who tried to divert him from his mission), Jesus returns to his home synagogue and is asked to read the scriptural lesson for the day, which was from the Prophet Isaiah, and which prophesies about the role of the coming anointed one/messiah/Christ. When Jesus had finished the reading, he handed the scroll back to the leader and announced that he, himself, was the fulfillment of that prophecy. The home folk went ballistic with anger. They knew this kid. He was a local boy. The very idea that he was ‘messiah’ was ridiculous.

Well, if so, it gets even more ridiculous as he begins quietly wandering about preaching to any who would listen the reality of God’s new creation that was now being inaugurated through himself. He called God his Father, and then is audacious enough to say that to have seen him (Jesus) was to have seen the Father, … and that he and the Father were one, that he had come to do the Father’s work. So he preached to whoever would listen, but he also healed the sick, and did lots of other miraculous works that had been predicted by the prophets.

What resulted was that some curious folk began to follow him, and to respond to him. They weren’t especially religious folk. They weren’t even looking for religion. They were a diverse bunch of working folk, probably some were profane and of questionable ethics, and a diverse set of personalities … but they heard something from Jesus that spoke to the deepest needs of their very earthy lives. Along the way he would puzzle them even more by speaking about the necessity of his forthcoming tragic execution, which they couldn’t comprehend. Then even more puzzling was his word that after he was killed, he would rise again. Again, they had no category for all of this, but still he had captivated them.

That is the unlikely, even ridiculous, beginning of what we know as the church. An unlikely teacher and object of their trust, and an unlikely bunch of followers—first twelve, then seventy, and very shortly thousands. Then came persecutions, martyrdoms,  … but global expansion. Why?

Skip down two millennia, and the followers of Jesus are now the largest ‘religious’ community in the world, and growing in huge numbers to this very day in the most unlikely and hostile places, and very much ‘under radar’ even in anti-Christian and oppressive nations. There is a growing movement of Islamic followers of Jesus (Isa in the Quran), and Hindu followers of Jesus. House churches are out of control in their proliferation. Why? There is no human reason why this should be so … unless it is Jesus himself building his church (as he said he would), which church is not conceivable or explainable by merely human means. So, why does this unlikely phenomenon continue to exist and grow out of control? Go figure?

1/18/15. A PROPHET OF HOPE, AND A PRACTITIONER OF RECONCILIATION

Since tomorrow is our national Martin Luther King, Jr. Holiday, I thought I might introduce to some of my readers another incredibly significant civil rights figure who has influenced so many of us. This is not in any way an attempt to diminish the awesome impact that Dr. King has had on our society. King was a child of a very significant clergy family in Atlanta, and a ‘Morehouse (college) Man.’ He had the gift of an eloquent tongue with which he became a huge prophet of hope in a segregated society that many of this present generation cannot even imagine.

I am a white guy and I grew up in this segregated South, and it all seemed so normal to us. It was only when I was ordained into the Presbyterian Church’s pastoral ministry the same summer as the SCOTUS’s ‘Brown-vs-the Board of Education decision (1954), that my eyes began to become opened to the huge injustices that were present. In a sense, Dr. King and I were almost of the same generation, but on different sides of the racial divide. Dr. King was our prophet of hope, and he gave hope to so many.

But forty years ago there emerged into my life another civil rights leader by the name of John M. Perkins, and John Perkins and his wife Vera Mae–she is indispensable to his story–have been much more formative in my life as dear friends, as models, and as practitioners of reconciliation between the races. John, unlike Dr. King, is the child of Mississippi sharecroppers, and (as he describes himself) a “third-grade dropout.” John suffered all of the indignities and deprivations and injustices that racism in Mississippi could provide. His army veteran brother was shot and killed by deputy sheriffs for no apparent reason, so John escaped and fled to Southern California where he became a moderately successful businessman, and raised a family.

But then … John met Jesus Christ. Jesus invaded John’s life, and Jesus became his passion. But John also saw that Jesus came not to condemn but to reconcile, and that same Jesus sent John back to his own people in Mississippi to preach reconciliation, to do economic community development, and to be a transformational force in that very complex racial darkness that was so omnipresent there. When he engaged in voter registration, he was almost beaten to death by the police, … but, amazingly, John was not bitter. He wondered how his white captors could be so angry. But his ministry was to be a practitioner of reconciliation, and he was true to his calling.

Skip down a few years and the State of Mississippi declared a John M. Perkins Day in his honor. He had, in the intervening years, made a large number of disciples who incarnated the same principles: 1) Preach reconciliation; 2) Relocate into the areas of greatest need, live with the folk and learn from them, and develop just communities; and 3) Redistribute resources in the form of shared skills and economic resources. When he had accomplished this in Mississippi he moved back to South-Central Pasadena, California and did the same thing there, and that city declared a John M. Perkins day in his honor. He has honorary doctorates. He has been a guest of the White House. But mostly he is just a marvelous and modest practitioner of what he teaches. He doesn’t yell: “Racism” though he knows it and has experienced it more than most. He is fruitful (gentle but tough) practitioner of reconciliation.

There is a self-effacing humility about John that refuses a lot of self-promotion, but the beneficiaries of his life and teachings and practice have established a foundation in his name, and two major universities have whole schools to teach his reconciling principles. It is worth reading his account in his book: Let Justice Roll Down. There are many other books about him, but that’s a good start. So while we celebrate Dr. King as a prophet of hope, I would like to celebrate another pair of civil rights heroes, John M Perkins, and his wife Vera Mae, as practitioners of reconciliation, who have so modeled for me the love and reconciliation of Jesus Christ.