May 25

Dandelions… and other symbols of resurrection

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-Denver USA, Calendar of Faith: Easter, Personal Reflection, Uncategorized, • The City of Joy

For those who don’t follow the church calendar it’s easy to overlook that we remain in the season of Easter or what is known to some as Eastertide. So, the theme of resurrection rolls on until Pentecost Sunday 50 days after Easter. And it’s this season of the year that can serve as a powerful reminder for those who are captivated and called by resurrection to point out that through Jesus everything on the planet is groaning in one great act of giving birth as it is being renovated, reborn, and realigned.

 This past week at Access we practiced our identity as resurrection people as we hosted what is referred to as a “Moment of Blessing.” Recently one of our friends from the street community was found deceased on the bank of a nearby river. All that I remember of her is that she was a jittery, quick moving, and highly intelligent young woman of about 30 years of age.

 The early church recognized their role as resurrection people and would find the deceased on the margins of the empire and offer a dignified memorial and honorable burial. So, it seemed fitting that we gather outside of the coffee house with those who knew her best and read aloud the 23rd Psalm and the Beatitudes, sing a couple songs and allow her friends to express how they felt about their significant loss.

 It was an awkward and beautiful moment that allowed everyone in attendance whether we knew her or not to acknowledge her life and death as a child of God. We claimed that what was tragically taken by heroin and violence will one day be restored to whole life.

 It’s in a moment like this that I’m reminded that resurrection people see all things through the unique and mysterious lenses of resurrection.

 This is what Paul was so crazy about in his epistles especially in 1 Corinthians 15

It’s resurrection, resurrection, always resurrection, that undergirds what I do and say, the way I live. If there’s no resurrection, “We eat, we drink, the next day we die,” and that’s all there is to it. But don’t fool yourselves. (The Message)

Think dandelions…

Dandelion2

 As kids we used to love the fluffy remains of the seed heads. We’d pick one, hold it up to our mouth and be momentarily mesmerized to see how our breath scattered the little parachute-like particles through the air. Then we’d drop the stem to the ground having fully enjoyed it for it was. This was a resurrection moment.


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May 9

Life After King: Many a Priest but Nary a Prophet

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-Camden USA, Bible and Theology, Children and youth, Empowerment, Justice and Peacemaking, Leadership, Life in the City, Political Action, Race and ethnicity, Social Issues, Spiritual Formation, Uncategorized, • Born from Below, • Image is Everything
Shout! A full-throated shout! Hold nothing back—a trumpet-blast shout! Tell my people what’s wrong with their lives…(Isaiah 58:1)
When was the last time you went to church and enjoyed a sermon or choral selection or even a responsive reading that addressed the plight of the poor or lent hope to the world’s oppressed? When was the last time your minister encouraged you to live in a way that provided release, relief and comfort to the least, last and lost? Which “open prison doors and set the captives free” messages come from your pulpit? I’m not talking about the ecclesiastical tendency to hyper-spiritualize such concepts and morph them into issues of middleclass individualism and materialism. I’m not talking about the Jaguar driving pastor I met in Baltimore whose approach was to “get em saved” and then all their social issues will work themselves out. And I am not talking about taming the scriptural texts pertaining to the poor with the stock copout “People can have money and still be spiritually poor.” Yeah that might be true, but that’s not what Jesus is saying to our age of 1.8 billion people living in abject poverty when he said, “Blessed are the Poor” (Luke 6:20 vs Matthew 5:3). It is clearly not what his mother Mary is saying when she proclaims the works of the true father of her son, “Those who had no food he made full of good things; the men of wealth he sent away with nothing in their hands…” (Luke 1:53).
When I took up the cross, I recognized its meaning….  The cross is something that you bear, and ultimately that you die on… And that’s the way I’ve decided to go.                          
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. May 22, 1967, Penn Community Center, Frogmore, South Carolina
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. forsook the promises of material prosperity inherent with becoming pastor of an important African American Baptist Church. With his oratory prowess and theological depth, he could have easily surpassed the Eddie Longs, TD Jakes, Joyce Myers and Fred Prices in popularity and prosperity. While the aforementioned chose the path of palatial mansions, private aircraft and luxury vehicles, King instead chose the prophetic path of the cross. In his own words, he proclaimed that he couldn’t worry about such things; he only wanted to do God’s will (I’ve Been Over the Mountain Speech). 
 
Unfortunately this prophetic course has been steadily reversed since the time of King’s death. It has sadly been replaced with the theology of material abundance, which has left storehouses of morality, ethics, righteousness and justice practically empty. Somehow issues such as the new American slavery (also known as the prison system), the crises in education, health and housing among people of color and poor whites, the persecution and prosecution of certain southern hemisphere brown aliens, and the continued neo-colonial/neo-liberal destruction of the African continent and its people cannot hold court in the face is the issues of already overly blessed middle-class and affluent Christians, who instead of crying out for Sudan, cry out from their late model German and Japanese luxury sedans, for more blessings and increased territory.