Barbara Brown Taylor takes a different and very timely look at the parable of the talents found in Matthew 25:14-30. The full text can be found here but an excerpt is given below the video.

“In Jesus’ day, a talent weighed between 80 and 130 pounds and was worth roughly twenty years’ worth of an ordinary person’s labor. The only people who had that kind of money were the wealthy elite, whose households were the basic economic units of the time. How did they get the money? The usual ways: they engaged in trade, got goods to market, ran import-export businesses, lent money to people at interest—especially land-poor people who often had trouble trying to make ends meet at the end of a long drought, or a catastrophic illness in the family.

Wealthy householders were happy to help out in circumstances like those. There was nothing to it: if you were strapped for cash, you got the best interest rate you could, you put up your land as collateral, and you got busy bringing in the sheaves. By the time you noticed what 60% interest really meant, it was too late. Your land went into foreclosure, and quicker than you
could say, “Leviticus” it was not yours anymore–but that did not always mean you had to leave. You could also stay, as long as you were willing to work for your former lender—and if you could stand to watch your family’s fields re-purposed as olive groves, or vineyards—something more easily monetized, that would appeal to a more upscale market at home and abroad.
(Is anything sounding familiar here?)

Continue Reading…

Earlier this year, celebrated novelist, Anne Rice, created a Facebook update that turned into a media proclamation that caused quite a reaction by my fellow christians. She communicates that she’s still a fan of Jesus but giving up association to christianity.

Another popular and heated newsworthy topic among christians this season is the construction of a Muslim mosque at the former site of the World Trade Center towers.

Both of these issues have elicited a christian response that doesn’t mesh well with the character of Jesus I receive from the gospel story. 

The excessive confidence in determining whether Anne Rice was right or wrong in her decision confuses me. From my study it appears less than 5 times in the gospels that Jesus provides a quick and direct answer to questions. Far more often he tends to respond to questions slowly and creatively by means of parable or paradox. Seldom does he provide a black and white answer like the loudest and most public christian figures seem to today. More often than not Jesus went the route of advocacy and acceptance. Voicing approval or disapproval came later if at all. (See woman at the well, woman caught in adultery, Zacchaeus in the tree, etc.)

Continue Reading…

When I first saw the title of Chimamanda Adichie’s talk, “The Danger of a Single Story,” I confess to assuming this was a cleverly provocative title for a well-worn observation—namely, that stories have power, and even a single story has the power to subvert the status quo in ways that might be ultimately beneficial. I was wrong, and my first mistake was assuming there is anything well-worn about Nigerian novelist Chimamanda Adichie. If you doubt that, follow the advice of my friend who said “you MUST watch this,” and strap yourself in for the considerable force of her analysis.

If you still doubt Adichie, go find a copy of her recent collection of short stories, The Thing Around Your Neck. I was glad to discover one in a Nairobi airport bookstore before boarding a flight recently, and glad a friend had tipped me off to her with this video some time ago. According to Adichie, “single stories” are among the most fundamentally oppressive weapons we humans wield against each other. That is, allowing a single storyline or single reality to define other people. Whether in the form of a conscious, active attempt to maintain our distance and power, or a passively unconscious failure of imagination and empathy, settling for single stories reinforces the “otherness” of others in dehumanizing ways that ultimately result in violence.

Continue Reading…

The Church is where natural enemies gather…

Mark Twain wrote of his famous experiment:   He placed a cat and a dog in a cage and to his amazement they became friends.   Encouraged, he added a rabbit, a fox, a goose, a squirrel and even some doves and a monkey.  They too became friends and lived in peace.

In another cage he confined an Irish catholic.  When he seemed tame enough he added a Scotch Presbyterian.  Next he added a Turk from Constantinople, a Greek as well as an Armenian Christian, a Methodist, a Buddhist, a Brahman and finally a Salvation Army Colonel.

He left both cages for two days.  When he came back he found the animals still at peace.  But in the cage of religious leaders he found “a chaos of gory ends, of turbans and fezzes and plaids and bones and flesh, not a specimen alive.”  Twain concluded that the religious leaders disagreed on a theological detail and carried the matter to a Higher Court.

Here at CTM we have learned (the hard way) that attending to “theological detail” and doctrinal distinctives almost always results in “a chaos of gory ends,” especially when doing grassroots theology in hard places.

Whereas theological detail tends to divide us into “a chaos of gory ends,” honest conversation that is done within the crucible of mission has the potential to unite.  We have found that if we raise missional questions high enough and pose them strong enough – I mean to the point where our neat theological formulas fall helpless before the harsh realities of those we serve, we can actually build a table in which the possibility of unity emerges.

Sometimes desperation is not only the best way forward, it is the only way forward.  I am convinced that the overwhelming impossibilities of those on the margins are the key to unity within the Body of Christ.  It takes only a little humility and all of two minutes to learn that when serving among the least, no single spiritual stream is enough. High-risk communities require the best of all the spiritual streams that the Church has to offer, and then some.  Authentic service among the poor creates room at the table for us all and I do mean ALL.  In this sense, it is the poor who hold the key to our salvation.  Perhaps this is why Jesus said, blessed are the poor for theirs is the Kingdom of God.

(This was first published as a Word from Below email on June 15, 2009. To receive the weekly Word from Below by email, click here.)

Kris Rocke
Serves as director of Center for Transforming Mission
Bumps into Reality by accident, most of the time
Heard God laugh once

It was a long day at the church office, which started with an insurance company refusing to provide coverage for our church building because of its “high-risk” location.  I also had to complete a proposal for our after-school program, play host to a group of seminarians who came to see the ‘hood’, and finish my outline for Sunday’s sermon.  Ten hours later we had secured property and liability insurance, procured additional funding for our after-school program, impressed awe-struck seminarians with two hours of ‘hood’ experience, but there was still no sermon outline for Sunday.  Late for dinner, I started to leave, hoping to find no one on the way to my car.

Five steps away from the exit doors Guapo (the tough one) appeared and got close to my face yelling “I’m gonna f#*@% him up!”  Now in his mid 30’s, Guapo was kicked out of his house by his father, and raised in the streets since the age of 15.  Trying to calm him down, I asked “What’s going on man?”  “I’m gonna f#*@% that m*** f*** b*** up, that’s what’s going on Pastor!” he reiterated.  Over the years, I’ve learned to give room to some heat and listen before dishing out any advice.  That “m*** f*** b***” was Dough-boy, who had disrespected or ‘dissed’ Guapo in front of his boys.  Dough-boy was a father of two, new to the neighborhood, and was toying with bringing his drug clique to the block.  Guapo knew that if he let someone like Dough-boy get away with dissin’ him, he would lose his reputation on the street and end up being dissed by others, considered a coward, or maybe get killed.  Guapo who had literally gotten away with murder before, was waiting for Dough-boy to come out of his house so he could beat him down or shoot him.

Continue Reading…

Editor’s note: This week is the six month anniversary of the devastating January earthquake in Haiti. There will once again be media coverage of what is and what is not happening in Haiti. Here is a viewpoint from Mario Matos, CTM – Estrategia de Transformacion Caribbean Director.

Robert Capon writes, “Shamelessness is the supreme virtue of the Incarnation.”  I think Capon is right.  To cave into the accusing voices of shame is to drain the Gospel of its power.  In a word, God is shameless.

Recently, a friend told me the story of when he used the “f-word” in a religious gathering. (I would spell out the word for clarity but, ironically, most internet search engines have a higher morality than I do and would block it).  He used the “f-word” to ease the shame of someone in the group who accidentally said, “damn,” and felt terrible for doing so.  Can you see the picture?  A guy of questionable moral fiber accidentally said, “damn” at a bible study and felt ashamed for doing so.  My friend, who has sworn maybe twice in his whole life, saw that the man was ashamed and immediately threw out an awkwardly placed, ill-timed, and altogether forced “f-bomb” in hopes of covering the shame of the shamed one.

Alexamenos worships his god.

One of the earliest known depictions of Jesus, is the Alexamanos Graffito, dating from c.200 AD or earlier.  It is an early parody of Christianity.  It was discovered in 1857 in Rome and is now in the Palatine Antiquarian Museum.  This wall carving is much like the graffiti we might find on a bathroom stall today.  It shows a man with an ass’s head being crucified and a youth raising his hand, as if in prayer.
Continue Reading…

The high priest carries the blood of animals into the Most Holy Place as a sin offering, but the bodies are burned outside the camp. And so Jesus also suffered outside the city gate to make the people holy through his own blood. Let us, then, go to him outside the camp, bearing the disgrace he bore. For here we do not have an enduring city, but we are looking for the city that is to come. Hebrews 13:11-14

At the Center for Transforming Mission we use this text from Hebrews in conversations with grassroots leaders located within the street culture to ask meaningful questions about posture and place. The text reveals an invitation from the author that suggests a posture of humility and a place outside of what is known as the camp. We use this text in an attempt to explore parallels that grassroots leaders can identify with in their own stories and to place their endeavors in context. Once amplified, we begin to ask about the location of Jesus and about the camp. It does not take long for these leaders to see from within their context that they themselves, and Jesus, are located outside of the camp. They then quickly identify the camp as the church. This becomes the perfect place for grassroots leaders to hear good news about their posture and place either already present, or yearning to be present in life outside the gates of the camp. I am one of those leaders.

I learned a lot about faith growing up as the son of Mexican pastors who had committed their lives to serving predominately undocumented communities on the streets of Southern California. I learned even more about love when I began rejecting their religion, giving myself to a life of street culture at the early age of nine. Keep those two statements close as I invite you to peer through a small window of my journey back into the street culture of Denver, Colorado and why I am beginning to understand the choices made by many in the Hispanic Church.

Continue Reading…

Oh what a difference a few months and a huge natural disaster can make in the mission of a theological seminary. Roughly a year ago, Mario Matos (Center for Transforming Mission Dominican Republic Director) and I sat around a table in Haiti with the leadership of a prominent seminary who called us into a meeting after a presentation we had been asked to make of the CTM training process for grassroots leaders to about 100 students and Haitian leaders. The seminary campus was surrounded by an ominous wall separating its tranquil learning environment from two expansive urban slums that literally sandwiched the campus on either side.

In an office with the seminary president and the rest of the executive team we learned about considerations of moving the seminary from its current location because of the rising delinquency and violence around them. In reference to our presentation on incarnational mission that we had just concluded, they held up their mission statement that said something about their call to train pastors and Christian leaders for community transformation and stated that if they indeed fled from their current location they would in effect be turning their backs on the very mission they had committed to instill in the students they served. They poignantly asked, “Can you help us learn how to engage and connect with the slums around us that are threatening to choke out our existence here?”

Shortly after that meeting, we received a tour of the beautiful seminary campus and were invited to visit a local pastor by passing into one of the two slums adjacent to the seminary. We entered the slum only after passing through a metal door painted red that was locked and guarded by a security guard.

Continue Reading…

The following article by Joel Van Dyke and Kris Rocke appears as part of The Global Conversation in the April 2010 Christianity Today. Please visit www.christianitytoday.com/globalconversation to read comments from other readers and writers around the globe who respond to Joel and Kris’s article.

The psalmist asks, “How can we sing the songs of the Lord while in a foreign land?” (Ps. 137:4). It’s a beautiful question springing from the heart of a poet struggling creatively to live out in a strange land (Babylon) what he knows to be true in another, more familiar context (Jerusalem). English poet e. e. cummings once wrote that the beautiful answer is always preceded by the more beautiful question, and in this psalm we discover a beautiful question. It has given theological roots to missional communities of grassroots leaders in six countries throughout Latin America (as well as in urban centers in the Caribbean, Kenya, and North America) under the banner of the Center for Transforming Mission (CTM).

We are learning how to read the Bible not to or even for those we serve, but with those we serve—those who have been wrongly labeled the least, last, and lost. Sustaining this approach is the belief that grace is like water: it flows downhill and pools up in the lowest places. We are learning to see God’s grace pooling up in places of extreme poverty and violence.

Continue Reading…