It’s a good thing no one turned away Jewish refugees in 1930’s when they desperately needed places to go to get away from the horrors of Nazi Germany.

Or maybe that’s why Israel feels justified in turning away refugees now … because people did it to them.  One might imagine that they would have empathy for the horrors of war and genocide and offer refuge.

But apparently not.

Brother Maynard did a very thorough series last week on the definition of missional. If you missed it, get a cup of coffee (or something), make sure you’ve set aside a goodly chunk of time and read through these articles (One, Two, Three, and Four). I think he totalled up the words at the end of the week to about 13,000. They’re all good, as is usual with Bro. M. And I agreed with most of what he has to say (not that what I think matters a hill of beans, mind you). But there were a couple of references to things like “our Christian heritage” and “Christendom v. post-Christendom,” that got me thinking. Not that I necessarily disagreed, but something about them made me think and ponder … hard. Here are the quotes that got me pondering:

From Sorting Missional Characteristics

Post-Christendom rather than Christian culture.

Culture is assumed to have moved on past any form of “Christian heritage” it might have had, with Christianity holding much less influence” or none at all.

Then …

From Missional Definitions: A Brief Survey

Post-Christendom: we have previously suggested that post-Christendom is more appropriately listed as nuance than as part of either of the two primary missional imperatives. Despite this, it appears fairly prominently in many or most definitions of missional church. Perhaps this is because the incarnational model of church over against an attractional one largely arises out of a response to post-Christendom, as do the very origins of the missional conversation. Having described the meaning and significance of “missional,” it can perhaps be moved to the category of missional nuance as we have discussed, but in assessing the history of the concept, we should properly note that without the realization and desire to develop a response to post-Christendom, it is likely that the reexamination of missiological method which led to the description of a missional approach may well have been deferred for a few more decades at least. I would suggest that this is the probable reason that it features so prominently, more than any other nuance.

I’ve been puzzling this through all weekend now and had some conversations with LightHusband (in my outloud voice, which always helps 😉 ). Here’s what I think I’m trying to say.

Briefly put, I’m beginning to think that this idea that our culture was once a “Christian” culture is a myth. A very dearly held myth that has some large granules of truth, but a myth nonetheless.

Here’s why I think this and why it has bearing on this discussion. For hundreds of years (about 1500 of them) there were three main entities (groups): the church, the state and the general population. Now the church and the state were quite intertwined and inter-related for much of this time. Both had great influence on the general population. Sometimes the church had more, sometimes the state. Arguably one could say that the church held sway for a greater percentage of the time than the state and that is what the Reformation was countering. There were peaks of activity during those years in which great things were done under the banner of Christ (Red Cross comes to mind). However … taken overall, I think the “church” has done some things that have influenced various aspects of our culture and so has the state. But I don’t think that the general population can be considered “Christian” or ever was. I think they went to the local church because it was required of them in the same manner that taxes were required of them and fief payments, etc. But in terms of life/heart changing Jesus-following Christianity, I would argue that the large portion of the general population of the West has never changed it’s stripe from it’s pagan years. That our “Christianity” is but a thin veneer; a social identity or label that the general population has worn.

Historically, most of the general population have considered themselves Christian because of civic/familial obligation, identity, and heritage. Membership in a “Christian church” was a prerequisite for inclusion/advancement in most public and private sectors and was a prerequisite for marriage. It was essentially the basic requirement for inclusion in Western culture. For an excellent study on the effects of living outside the church, or even within the church but outside locally recognized bounds of normal behavior read Entertaining Satan by John Putnam Demos. The result of this was not lives changed by the Gospel of Jesus Christ, but a sense of moral superiority and social inclusion.

The barometer for whether or not one is a “Christian” has not been measured by the Gospel, as we might in other cultures, but by the label that we wear precisely because of our history. I would argue that that very history speaks against us. Mind you, I understand that I’m painting with a very broad brush here. There were pockets of very genuine faith here and there. There were also some episodes of extremely bad behavior on the part of the church. I’m thinking here about the papacy during the 700-1000’s and Medici dynasty, and let’s throw in the Crusades, Gallileo, Copernicus, etc. for good measure.

Simply because while there are many people out there who may wear the label of “Christian” I don’t believe that makes them one, any more than wearing the label of lawyer makes me one. I may have studied some law. I may watch a lot of Law & Order. I may deeply believe that I am a lawyer based on a lot of circumstances in my life. But … I’m still not a lawyer and just telling people that I am doesn’t make me one. What makes me a lawyer? Behaving like one (and passing a Bar exam). What makes someone a Christ-follower? Arguably behaving like one … manifesting the fruits of the spirit, desiring to live out the mission of Jesus, etc.

So. I’ve actually come to believe that parsing out post-Christendom vs. Christendom may be more important to the discussion on missional than it’s been given. I guess what I’m getting at here as I write this all out, is that I think perhaps the assessment of the attractional model of church may be too shallow. In other words, we may not be giving it it’s historical/cultural due in our attempts to change to a missional outlook. Those roots may go deeper than we think and as we attempt to move forward and away from that model, we may trip over them if we’re unaware of them. So while I think the idea of “Christendom” may be a myth … that’s the name we have given it for time immemorial, so … I think it may need to be evaluated more closely for instance, for the reasons that the attractional model of church was the primary model for so long (1700 years +/-). That period of time creates some powerful cultural mores … how will those be overcome? Will we have the patience to do so? What will the markers be?

I count myself among the lucky ones. The lucky few. When I was young, certainly this was not on our agenda. It was not going to be our heritage. This became ours rather later in my life. I’m speaking of our summer home on the lake.

We call it “camp.” This is somewhat of a misnomer. When I speak of camp, as in, “We’re going to camp,” most people think of a camp with bunk houses and mess hall and that sort of thing. Not so much. This is a turn of the last century Victorian summer cottage. There are five bedrooms and we’re right on the waters of Lake Champlain in Vermont. A few 100 feet from our front porch lie the remains of the old concrete dock where the Ticonderoga steam paddlewheeler used to dock. This boat brought people and goods from New York City to the people who summered here. It was quite fashionable back in the day for the wealthy and upper-middle class of the cities to have summer homes on lakes. The men would send their families to those homes for the summer. Often they also sent the wait staff as well. The men would join them for weekends and a week or two of vacation. Hence the necessity of the Ticonderoga and its sister ship the Chateaugay … they ferried men from the end of the railroad that had brought them up from the city to the summer homes on the lake for vacations and weekends, then back to the city at the end of each stay. Women and children stayed for the whole summer. The camps stayed in families for generations, or were given to new families. Each point has it’s own community and character or “feeling.”

It’s interesting being here. There’s a sense of community here that is permeable. Permanent. A sense of permanence that is from another time. We have traditions here that are silly and timeless, but tolerated. The roots here run deep. We come back summer after summer for truncated friendships that last for years.

It’s a funny place too. There is something in the air here. In the photo above, the dock is at the very tip of our point. If you round the point by foot you can’t get very far as the rocks rise high in the air out of the water. But right there, just before the cliffs begin, at the waters edge there is a clear spot. There is a large rock just off the shoreline and across the lake is Split Rock in New York. If you sit very still and quietly you can begin to sense the other world shimmering just over the horizon. You can hear it thrumming in your ears. It is a place where the glass clears briefly. I get the sense sometimes that it is an ancient passage. I wonder if it is because the Abenaki tribe used this spot for their rituals, or did the Abenaki get this sense as well and thus choose the spot?

These camps and our rituals here were established in era when men (humans) gazed into the future triumphantly. It was only a matter of time and trial before the key to utopia was found. The utopian vision of human perfection was fresh, the dream was real and realizable. I wonder sometimes if these little communities were established as a step towards achieving utopia … achieving perfection … at least for a little piece of time. Maybe only during the summer.

It has been a hallmark of the modern era to search for perfection. We have reached for the skies in our buildings, modes of transportation, and even discovery. We have dug down deep into the cellular and molecular level to find medical perfection. Perfect bodies can be sculpted with knives and silicon and other bits. Perfect minds can be created with medication. Perfectly comfortable environments can be created to achieve the desired mood … Do we want people to shop? Create this temperature, this music, that atmosphere. Do we want them to work? Then this temperature, that music, this atmosphere. Whatever we want from people, we have the ability to manufacture the perfect place … utopia. We have even achieved the ability to extend life beyond the time when perhaps it is wise … now we no longer know when death occurs in many cases. Or when it should. We argue over when life begins … and when it ends. May we live forever. Utopia.

I wonder if we’re coming to the beginning of the end of that era. If we are beginning to realize the limits of our human fallibility. The new so-called post-modern era may be the beginning the pendulum swinging back. It is a sea change of how the world works. If we begin to understand that all of life here on earth is not ultimately perfectible, how do we live? That basic assumption has guided western thought for the past 350 years. Search yourself. Think hard about how go about each day and how you think about the future … you will find that your assumptions are that your life is going to slowly but surely get better. We assume that it is a “rule” that each succeeding generation should “do better” than it’s parents. These are utopian ideas at their core. The idea that heaven can be achieved here, without God.

So, as I sit on the porch of this nearly 100 year old cottage, and reflect on the people who built it. I think about them and their dreams. Why they built this place, what they were escaping. Some of the things they were escaping were the same as I … the city heat and stink, cramped space and loud noise. Others are different and yet the same. They came here to get fresh air and so do I. Yet I come here to feel the fresh air, not canned, perfect air. They came here to achieve a little utopia and I come here to escape the modern version. I come here to understand, again, the limits of our human hands and feel, once again, the power of the elements on my skin. And I marvel at how a place from the past can be a bridge to the future. A future that will likely be stripped of utopian thinking, but will be all the more livable because of it.

This month’s SynchroBlog is a series of discussions on Utopian ideas. As is a perfect Utopian concept, we have not mandated the topic on Utopia to be specific to any one concept, or dogma. So please … follow the links to check out what ma peeps’s writ’n ’bout:

Steve Hayes at Notes from the Underground
John Morehead at John Morehead’s Musings
Nudity, Innocence, and Christian Distopia at Phil Wyman’s Square No More
Utopia Today: Living Above Consumerism at Be the Revolution
Nowhere Will Be Here at Igneous Quill
A This-Worldly Faith at Elizaphanian
The Ostrich and the Utopian Myth at Decompressing Faith
Being Content in the Present at One Hand Clapping
Eternity in their Hearts by Tim Abbott
Relationship – The catch-22 of the Internet Utopia at Jeremiah’s Blog
U-topia or My-topia? at On Earth as in Heaven
A SecondLife Utopia at Mike’s Musings
Mrs. Brown and the Kingdom of God at Eternal Echoes

Seen on the newsstand as I walked into a drugstore. Then I realized that the piped in music was the chorus to “Jeremiah was a bullfrog.” The lyrics I heard (“joy to the world, all the boys and girls, singin’ joy to the fishes in the deep blue sea, joy to you and me) as I read the headline:

Soldier from Sharon Killed in Baghdad Blast

and looked at the photo of a bright young man cut down before he began a half a world away.

I’ve never understood this war and I’ve looked at it from many sides now. But the one thing that makes my bones angry, that leaves me with the taste of mara in my mouth is that there are not enough bumperstickers in the world to support our troops. It is not support when their bodies come home in secrecy. It is not support when we cannot get a proper accounting of who has been injured, who has died, and who will never be the same again.

Magnets are cheap. Grieving is hard. But that’s one way to support our troops and their families. I wonder when we’ll get around to doing that? Or will we just keep whistling “joy to the world” in the dark?

So … last Sunday (Jan. 8 ) we began a series on the minor prophets at my church. They are called minor only because they wrote short books. We began our series with a bang of a service where there were 12 prophet stations (with a nod to Grace for the idea) where we all got a taste of each prophet and his message brought to us by a different member of our church.

This immediately past Sunday it was my turn to give the message or “content” (or “non-sermonic exploration” as we irreverently call it). I say “turn,” but I asked for this Sunday, because it was Martin Luther King, Jr.’s birthday and I loved that man and I wanted the chance to give a message on his birthday. I didn’t care what prophet got put on that Sunday. The Design Team (this is the team that I’m a part of that puts together the service each week) gave me … or maybe God gave me … the book of Amos. So I read Amos. And I read Amos again and I loved Amos. Then I read MLK’s speeches again and my universe shifted. Suddenly I knew where his vision of justice came from!! It wasn’t all from Jesus (although certainly he started there). It wasn’t all from Gandhi (although that’s where he got some of his non-violence from). But Martin Luther King, Jr’s vision of justice and mercy and racial harmony came out of the Old Testament and it came from the prophets!! And suddenly I realized that Jesus had been preaching a very old message all along. It was nowhere near as revolutionary as I’d always thought it was. What I mean is that I knew it wasn’t that revolutionary, but now I **knew** it!! Does that make any sense??

Dang! I love it when God grabs your shoulders like that, shakes you up and makes you see things fresh again. So I wanted my peeps to hear it that way too. So I tried to “channel” Amos to grab their attention and get them to hear what God might be crying out about in the world today. So what follows is the “rant” I opened up with to give my church the experience of having a prophet in their midst. If you should stumble through here and don’t know me, please try to understand the context of what you are about to read. Please make sure you’ve read the Book of Amos before you comment here. I am not necessarily advocating all of this.

AMOS:

God roars out of Israel
He shouts from the rooftops of Jersusalem
Fields dry up and mountains crumble when the voice of the Lord roars past …

Hear the voice of the Lord in the Lion’s roar!

1. I’ve told Wal-Mart 3 times and NOW they are on my last nerve! I am just DONE with them – for oppressing the poor, creating shoddy products that are costly and keep the poor under their thumb and forcing people to work on the Sabbath, I will take their owners and lead them away in chains f

2. I’ve told Exxon 3 times and NOW they are on my last nerve! I am just DONE with them – for taking advantage of misery and death to earn more money more money more money; they will die poor and on the streets

3. I’ve told China 3 times and NOW they are on my last nerve! I am just DONE with them – for enslaving her people, abusing them in factories not fit for dogs, for treating them like grain in a threshing machine; I will march her kings to Taiwan and South Korea to live out their days in imprisoned there abused in their minds as they have abused others.

4. I’ve told Sudan 3 times and NOW they are on my last nerve! I am just DONE with them – she deports whole towns; her leaders are greedy for land; they enslave and rape women and children; for this she will burn and see my justice complete.

5. I’ve told Saddleback Church 3 times and NOW they are on my last nerve! I am just DONE with them – spreads apostasy in that abomination of 40 Days of Purpose. So many unwittingly choose death through that, and they gather wealth into their coffers building large fancy temples while the poor starve under their fat noses. I will strike those buildings down unto the foundations.

6. I’ve told Willowcreek Church 3 times and NOW they are on my last nerve! I am just DONE with them – they water down My message and because they try to be all things to all people they have become nothing to everyone. They are an empty shell full to overflowing of dead people who think they are alive. I will scatter them to the four winds in the hope that they may find Me and then find life.

WHY DO YOU LOOK SO SMUG? Do you think you’re any better than these?

I’ve told you three times and now you’re on my last nerve too. I am done with you. What makes you think that working at a homeless ministry one day a month absolves you of your sin?

How many homeless do you walk by on your way to work? Do you know their faces? their names? Do you look the other way?

I said to you, sell everything to follow me … have you done that yet?

What do you do with your time? When do you feed the poor among you? Or do you just sit and bemoan it to each other while feeding your well-fed faces and children? You have time to exercise, but not to clothe those without jackets in winter. You have time to play games, but you don’t have time to work a soup kitchen? Hah! I have time for you now and you will spend time in eternity wishing you had spent your time on the things that are important to Me.

You cows of Fairfax who think you can come here each week to prove your goodness to each other and the world are merely showing me the blackness in your hearts. You do not change … you keep doing the same things and they are NOT the things of My Way. You cannot follow me if you will not pick up your feet and walk.

Yet you run to follow these fancy musicians and slick talkers …their music is filthy trash in my ears.

You just don’t get it, do you? If you cannot have the same priorities in life that I have then you are not about what I am about and I will not know you … I will not call you by name … I will turn my face from you and condemn you to the everlasting pit.

I am talking to you … Y had better hear me now!

LightHusband told me to work myself up into a real lather and get angry. But when push came to shove … I couldn’t do it. I’m a failure as a prophet. A real prophet-weenie. Or prophet-mallow. I looked out at the people (my peeps) and as I railed, they curled up. I got three sentences into the part about them (Israel in the real Amos) and I could go no further. My heart is too soft for the prophet business. So I cut it short, left off a big chunk and finished early, mostly to make my stomach stop hurting. Because I’m a chicken. LightHusband was disappointed. He still is. He’ll have to live with it.

Then we talked all together about Amos and his picture of justice and most importantly what does racial justice look like. We began by looking at the Remember Segregation website. No, we began by listening to a portion of “I Have A Dream.” and then looking at the website. The website is a shocking reminder of how blatant segregation was. A lot of ideas were thrown around. I liked this one … racial justice will include giving hope to each generation that they will grow up and be able to have opportunity. I’ve been thinking about that a lot since Sunday and how we’ve done away with the blatant signs of segregation, but we continue to withhold hope from so many children and parents. We’re not so much closer to that dream of measuring people by the content of their character.

The beauty was that in our lily-white church this one particular Sunday, a man with very dark skin came to partake in the worship of God with us. I gave him the last word in the discussion for no particular reason other than that he raised his hand and we were over time and it seemed like the right thing to do. He reminded us that in the church we are neither Jew nor Greek, neither slave nor free, neither male nor female, but all are one in Christ Jesus called to bring His Kingdom here on earth. It was lovely.