Christ is Risen. He is risen indeed!

Jesus calls us friend, knowing we will betray him. If there is an order to salvation, this is it.

“God is love” is a theological statement that is true to the core, but “God is friend,” this is the deeper mystery made real in Jesus. Friendship is salvation. All else is theological pretense and drivel. The Friend that dines with us, and washes our feet, also lays down his life for us. “No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends…I have called you friends” (John 15:13-15).

“You, heart closed up in a chest, open, for the Friend is entering.” Rumi

Hear afresh these words at the meal of Friendship,

On the night that Jesus was betrayed [by his friends from below, and arrested by his other friends from above], he took bread, blessed it, broke it, gave it to his disciples, and said, ‘Take and eat; this is my body, broken for you. Do this in remembrance of me.’ In the same way, after supper, he took the cup, blessed it, and gave it for all to drink, and said, ‘This cup is the blood of the new covenant, shed for you and for all people for the forgiveness of sin. Do this in remembrance of me.’

Dear friends of Jesus, we are forgiven—now—completely! May the great befriending of God break our heart’s wide open.

Christ is Risen. He is risen indeed!

“Start the drumbeat, everything we have said about the Friend is true. The beauty of that peacefulness makes the whole world restless…it is time to dance.” Rumi.

The front yard acts as dinner room and homework lounge after 2pm.  The first and second grade classrooms become dorms after 7pm.  Precious Moments is the most space-efficient school I have visited in Guatemala. There is always something going on; people in the neighborhood know the school and the family running it well because of their enthusiasm, energy and faith. And their marching band.  That was where I met Danilo, playing the drums in addition to running around, coloring, doing his homework and goofing around with the other kids after school. A teenager acting like a young boy. Maybe he was trying to make up for time lost to a hard life.

Martha has a sweet heart and spirit. On a normal day she is a wife, a mom, a cook,  a counselor, a friend, a salesperson, a devoted Christian AND the school director at Precious Moments (that also includes an after-school program and foster home.)   She is also part of the CTM network in Guatemala City.   She has hosted interns, vision trips and local leaders in her ministry, and melted our hearts every time with her incredible life and devotion to the Lord, and the kids in this community in zone 13.

Danilo went to live at Precious Moments after his mom couldn’t provide for him anymore and because of the danger of the zone where they lived.  Martha took him in as her own child and raised him for almost 10 years. His mom stayed in the picture, but Martha and her family became a new concept of “family” for him.

So I went pale when I first read the short message that Danilo had been shot and killed.  I couldn’t believe it.  No way… Not him… Retaliation for something that his cousin did… Refusing to join a gang… The versions of the shooting were confusing and often incomplete, but he had died in front of the school, in the middle of the day in front of friends and family. As hard as it is, this type of death has become a new “normal” for young men that live in hard places.

After a few weeks of mourning and trying to make sense of this tragic loss, our staff suggested the Moment of Blessing Liturgy as part of our commitment to suffer alongside our friends and to join them in the midst of their pain.  I showed up for the reading and a bunch of young kids jumped around me chanting “Miss Liz! Miss Liz!”.  “Uh oh…”  – I thought to myself. “Who is going to stay with the kids while we have the liturgy?”  I was trying to come up with ideas when Martha showed up.  She instructed the kids to make a circle with chairs and seconds later we had 15 kids sitting around and paying attention. These children were going to be our Moment of Blessing participants! Five adults joined shortly after.

I wasn’t sure how to proceed.  The Moment of Blessing talks about death, about tragedy, about justice… words that are hard for adults to process, and even more for kids.  But they paid attention.  They followed the reading with their little fingers.  Their eyes opened wide when I read Danilo’s name on the page.  They started coloring and making hearts and little stars around his name on their copies of the blessing.  Talk about a precious moment.   That was the Moment of Blessing for them – a way of learning and praying in the midst of death.  A little heart by his name, a smiley sheep next to Psalm 23. They remembered a life lived with love and the Scripture reminded them not to fear in the face of the valley of death. The drawing of their brother, their friend, their teacher, connected with words and prayers of hope for a difference in their street, in their neighborhood and their lives.

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yeah, that’s a big word usually associated with life science class & people in the hospital with heart troubles.  if you don’t know what it is, it’s the sac around our heart that protects it.  if a pericardium is too weak, it’s not good for our hearts because it makes it too vulnerable.  if it’s too tough, it’s not good, either, because it chokes off life.

a few months ago my acupuncturist who is part-spiritual-director-part-therapist-part-healer told me i needed to strengthen my pericardium.  she was right when it came to a particularly hard season in an important relationship.  there are times that i give too much of myself, take things too personally and make everything about me, and just don’t have enough heart protection.  at the same time, it’s also easy to swing the other way & harden and protect my heart against pain, suffering, and intimate relationship and hide behind “strong boundaries.”  the reality is that there’s a very fine line when it comes to pericardiums; a healthy pericardium means we can feel pain & engage in the realities of real life but not have it completely devastate us. 

i continue to learn what it means to develop a healthy pericardium as a pastor, mommy, wife, and friend.  it’s an art, not science. it requires faith not formulas.  it requires time & God’s grace & lots and lots of exercise and practice.

and the thing i keep learning is that a healthy pericardium does not protect us from pain.  it’s not supposed to.   it’s purpose is to give us enough protection to not let the pain overtake us & shut us down completely when it gets really, really tough. 

this week, my heart hurts.

like really hurts.

while i was in nashville speaking at outlaw preachers, i got news that one of my dearest refuge friends, an amazing & brave & survivor-of-all-kinds-of-atrocities single mommy had died.  i had broken one of my most basic speaking rules and had my phone with me on the podium because it had a quote on it i wanted to use and was too lazy to write it down.  i saw the missed calls & knew, somewhere deep inside that i can only attribute to the holy spirit, that something terrible had happened.  i knew who the calls were from.  i knew who they loved and cared for at the refuge.  i knew something had happened to jessie.  i just knew.  so when i split everyone up into small groups to process some of the material on safe people, safe communities from down we go i had to make a decision.  do i wait until i wrap up my presentation in a neat & tidy bow and pretend like something bad didn’t happen, or do i listen to the message and open what somehow i knew was going to be a flood of pain?  i knew i couldn’t wait & i listened to the message in the hallway.

it felt like my pericardium burst completely and my heart was going to stop.

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* this post is part of the june synchroblog, which was focused on “what is in our invisible knapsack”–the unearned privilege that many carry and how we can participate in changing deeply grooves systems that are built on it. i wrote this post almost exactly a year ago, previously called white privilege, male privilege, straight privilege, economic privilege, but thought i’d repost it as part of this conversation. other links are at the bottom of this post.  my feeling on the topic is still the same–any  hope for change starts with listening, really listening, to each other.

* * * * *

i will never know what it’s like to be a person of color.  i can only listen and learn from my friends & family who are.

i will never know what it’s like to be gay.  i can only listen and learn from my friends & family who are.

i will likely never know what it’s like to be poor and live in section 8 housing.  i can only listen and learn from my friends & family who are.

but i do know what it’s like to be a female leader in a man’s world.  what it feels like to be excluded. what it feels like see doors open & checks written & support given to men-with-the-connections while i struggle and scrape.  what it’s like to be on the underside of power and how it creates a lot of shame.

and those who are men in similar positions can never know what it’s like.  they can only listen and learn from their friends & family who are women.

white privilege, male privilege, straight privilege, economic privilege are real.

i’ve heard it dismissed sometimes, heard white people talk about “the minorities get all the jobs and get to go to the top of the line now”.  heard men talk about “i don’t know what women are talking about, we ask them to be part but they always say no.“  heard straight people talk about “gay people have more rights now than i do” and economically stable people talk about “if those poor people would just work harder & smarter they wouldn’t have so many problems.”

it’s so easy to talk when we don’t know what it feels like to be another person, to walk in another person’s shoes.

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I travelled to Romania for two weeks recently. Out of all my many remarkable experiences, the most amazing was walking into the home of a stranger and seeing at the kitchen table a young woman eating a bowl of soup. Just sitting there, calmly, spoon in hand, slurping soup! Though my heart was pounding at the sight, I held it together in that moment—saving tears of gratitude for later.

Today is Easter Sunday, so I’m writing in celebration of the resurrection of our Lord. No, a software glitch didn’t mess up the timing of this blog post. In the Eastern liturgical calendar, Easter often falls a week later than in the West. Some years I’ve attended Easter services in both USA and Romania on consecutive weeks. Of course in the Christian tradition, every Sunday commemorates the resurrection—celebrated from the early times as “the Lord’s Day.”

So today is simply an ordinary Easter, especially here in the West where it now falls in that long stretch of the liturgical calendar known as Ordinary Time. I’m reminded of Jesus’s post-resurrection appearances that were evidently quite ordinary in nature, according to Gospel accounts. Often he wasn’t even recognized as anyone notable, even by friends. Outside the tomb, Mary Magdalene took him to be the landscape guy. Emmaus travelers mistook him for a fellow pedestrian. Though he performed many spectacular wonders before his death, afterward he typically shared himself with simple touch, a meal, or tender conversation.

I’m not denying or dismissing the spectacular. As a recreational fisherman, I’d be thrilled with the help Jesus gave the disciples in the boat after the resurrection. And I’d welcome the miracles of the apostles in Acts. But I do have a growing awareness of the addiction we might have to the “amazing.” Some observers have even suggested we ban this word. We watch SportsCenter for the Blake Griffin poster jam, not the Steve Nash pick-and-roll play. (Non-sports fans, please resume reading.)

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This week I’ve been at Mt. Angel Abbey in Oregon, which is a place for work and prayer. Following the rule of St. Benedict (480-547 A.D.) that “all are to be welcomed as Christ,” I have been welcomed into the daily prayerful rhythm of this place as I take a working retreat. The monastery is on a hilltop flanked by giant sequoia trees, overlooking fruit orchards in the Willamette Valley. Most mornings, heavy fog hangs among the trees and buildings. Yesterday it burned off for a view of snow-capped Mt. Hood against the blue sky. Needless to say it’s hardly a rough place to work, and I’m thankful for friends who provided the opportunity.

The primary work of the Benedictine monks at the abbey is prayer. Six times a day, summoned by the loudest bell I have ever heard, they scurry to the abbey church for the liturgy of the hours, which are prayers sung beautifully in unison (Gregorian chant style). Their prayers consist primarily of the psalms and other portions of scripture, as well as theologically-rich ancient hymns. A few are in for a temporary period (simple vows), but most are lifers (solemn vows). Table-talk among visitors inevitably surfaces the question, “what if your son or daughter decided to make a life of this?” I suspect that’s quite a dim possibility for my own kids, but it does make you consider whether “the work of prayer” is something worth devoting an entire human life to.

We applaud people who devote their daily lives to brilliance as violin players or baseball pitchers or countless other pursuits, but prayer? Is the world a better place because a very few hold it in prayer with singular devotion through the hours of each day? Are such lives well-lived?

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Many times over the years, my urban mentors have reminded me that the poor don’t need me. Rather, I need the poor.

I was reminded of this truth rather powerfully last week when none of the gringos (except for me) were able to come to the Spanish speaking bible study that meets at our house, so our group consisted of only myself and four of my undocumented Mexican friends. One of the families (Felipe and Monica) lives five blocks north of us and has been splitting time between Juarez (their home) and Denver. They were in Juarez in April when gunfire between warring drug lords broke out in front of their trailer. Everyone hit the deck and waited for the shooting to stop. When silence finally returned, they walked outside of their home to see five corpses, one of which was that of their 9 year old son. Another woman at the study was Ana, an undocumented mother of three who lives in an apartment a few blocks from us. The fourth person was an undocumented Mexican woman who now lives in Houston but was visiting for a couple weeks.

I started our time by asking how everyone was doing. Felipe and Monica said that it had been an exceptionally hard week, as the waves of grief around the loss of their son had been especially intense. They began to sob. Ana broke into a mini-sermon to remind them that God loves them and that he disciplines those he cares about. She sited both the life of Job and her own. I’ve known Ana for four years, but learned for the first time that her first child had died at 6 months of age. Ana talked about the extreme grief that she has known that comes with the loss of a child, but that for some reason God wants to take some of us home early, which she stated is what he had done with the son of Felipe and Monica. Felipe and Monica continued to weep; Ana continued to preach and comfort. We eventually laid hands on them and prayed. Afterwards, we opened our bibles to James 5:10-11 and moved forward with what we had previously planned to study:

Brothers and sisters, as an example of patience in the face of suffering, take the prophets who spoke in the name of the Lord. As you know, we count as blessed those who have persevered. You have heard of Job’s perseverance and have seen what the Lord finally brought about. The Lord is full of compassion and mercy.

 Felipe and Monica are homeless and – for the moment – living with Monica’s family. They are looking for a low-rent place to stay. As they were leaving they saw a For Rent sign in front of the apartment across the street. I explained that the reason it is for rent is that it was vacated the previous Saturday after an intruder broke into the neighboring house, tied up the man, and attempted to rape the woman. When she resisted, the intruder pistol whipped her and then shot (and missed) as she ran in terror from the house. We don’t have to worry, I explained, because the police ended up shooting and killing the intruder after a high-speed chase through our neighborhood. Ana replied that we don’t have to worry because God loves us and protects us. Felipe said at least this is a safer place than Juarez, which has the highest per capita murder rate in the world, higher even than Mogadishu, Somalia.

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What would you think if a group of women with a scandalous profession blessed your church? What if a group of prostitutes prayed for your Church? Could you imagine these women entering your Church to bring blessing? This doesn’t seem holy, does it? But this was what we saw in our little church, and what gave us a great moment of worship and sanctification.

In November 2009, we started a program in a partnership with Casa Jóven (Youth House, which is our church,) Build a Bridge, and La Estrategia de Transformación (The Strategy of Transformation, the name of CTM in Central America and the Caribbean.) We began a seven week jewelry course for the sex workers from the streets of Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic. These women gathered at the church every Thursday to explore the possibility of taking this handcraft as an alternative micro-business that would allow them to abandon the culture of sexual commerce and to look for a different way forward toward a more worthy job.

Each Thursday was packed with surprises and a lot of stress. We never knew how many women would show up to the workshops. That’s why every time we saw them crossing the church’s threshold, smiles were drawn on our faces. After the class we had the regular Thursday prayer celebration. At the beginning it didn’t seem to work, but we had no alternative so we decided to do it. How could we have these women in the church right before the prayer celebration? I don’t know how, but we did!

Each week after the jewelry class ended some of the women stayed in the Church to pray with the members attending the prayer celebration. One Thursday – an unforgettable Thursday, eight sex workers were waiting for the prayer service to start. The night started with songs and an atmosphere filled with the presence of the Holy Spirit. Loly, my wife, who was leading the worship, paused the service and told those who were there that the microphone was open for whoever wanted to pray for any area or ministry of our church.

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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

We all know that many of the ministries that we live in are lopsided.  Lots of men are lumped together leading stuff and lots of women are lumped together supporting stuff. I believe passionately that it is time to learn how to be together, side by side in loving community, leading communities and ministries together, sharing in life together in deep and meaningful ways, restoring the image of God in each other and through each other.  We need mothers and fathers and sisters and brothers and daughters and sons.

I hope that we as missional leaders and catalysts will deeply consider finding ways to build bridges, restore dignity, and model justice and equality across genders in really tangible and powerful ways. This is so necessary when we are talking about living out the reality of God in the now–of reflecting the kingdom values of equality, love, mercy, justice, healing and hope in a broken and segregated world.  It’s about men and women learning how to be in true community together as equals.

I think that the purpose of community – “the church”– is to have a place, whatever that looks like, to learn to love God and others and to be loved by God and others. Like so many things that matter, I do not think it magically drops out of the sky.  It comes through hard work invested in intimate relationship–whether that is our journey with God or our journey with people–and an openness to the movement of the spirit of God in us and through us.  And these relationships–God and people–are all tangled up together.   Jesus summed up the law–love God, love your neighbors, love yourselves.  That is the essence of the journey.  I also think they are wonderfully interdependent.  I always say “you can’t love God without loving your neighbors, you can’t love your neighbors without loving God, and it’s hard to love either one when we don’t love ourselves.”
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