pastorpoet

Sometimes the scariest thing in the world is change.

Most of us are creatures of habit and there is certainly some level of comfort that we develop in our routines.  Doing things differently or being forced to deal with interruptions or disruptions in our schedule can become frustrating and unsettling.

I wonder, though, if the disruptions and interruptions of life might be the very substance of faith and the foundation of creativity.

What monotony and boredom would ensue if all faded into gray, indistinguishable patterns of repetition?

I’m sure there is a certain beauty in redundancy but what if there were no wrinkles in the plan?

What if the stone dropped in the pond caused no ripples?

What if the blueness of the sky was never broken by a bright white cloud or midnight fractured by the light of the stars?

Perhaps change and transition, interruption and disruption are our opportunities to see differently – to see more – to grow – to imagine – to live beyond the specter of the ordinary in the shadows of the mundane…

I wonder if our patterns and routines – our comfort zones – are no more than comfortably padded manacles tethering us to an average existence somewhere short of truly being…

So… if you run across something odd today, or someone interrupts you while you are working, or when your child gets in the middle of some chore you want to finish, or a friend calls at an inopportune time, give pause… slow down…  see… feel… listen… and be grateful… all these make life beautiful…

…remarks from last Sunday as we concluded our Summer Enrichment Camp…

Today is bittersweet. We concluded our Summer enrichment camp today. And while it remains to be seen what harvest will appear, I am stubbornly hopeful that the All-wise, Eternal, Benevolent, and Merciful Creator will reward the faithfulness of those who lovingly served this Summer.

This is hard work, and you are heroes – champions for our children.

As the camp concludes, I’m more aware now than ever of the tremendous need for programs like the Springboard. The dearth of positive, safe, healthy, and affirming spaces for our beautiful brown babies, leaves me feeling how the Israelites must have felt when they were being harassed by the Philistines and their champion, Goliath.

Our children need heroes.

Our children need champions. Not the sort that run fast, or dunk basketballs – these are fine. But our children need some everyday heroes. Moms and Dads that look into their eyes and remind them that there is goodness and greatness in them – that they are beautiful, smart, and strong! Grandmothers and Grandfathers that will cradle their handsome faces and remind them of their royalty – remind them of where they come from and who they are. Teachers that recognize their potential even when is not yet refined.

Our children need heroes.

Our children need to hear words of chastening but even more than that – they need words that affirm, encourage, and inspire them – our children need the words that will make them fly – words that will make their spirits soar! Our children need an investment of our time, soul, and strength – not just our money! Our children need to be urged to crave knowledge and not just entertainment – to strive to be substantial and not just stylish. Our children need heroes. Our children need to be shown that love is not weak or lame but that it is strong and resilient. Our children need to be taught to love and value themselves so that they can love one another.

Our children need heroes.

Our children need to be taught the mantra of our Ancestors- I am because we are, and because we are, therefore, I am!

Our children need to be taught to cherish their brown bodies, the coils in their hair, the broadness of their noses, and the thickness of their lips! Our children need to be taught that their almond, chocolate, mocha, coffee, midnight, brown, beige, caramel, sun-kissed skins are a blessing and not a curse. The melange of hues, the mystery of our melanin is too a mirror of majesty – a reflection of divinity!

Our children need heroes!

And though it appears that we, like David, are overmatched, ill-equipped, and underprepared- we will persist. With only a sling and a few small stones, we confront the giants of racism and supremacy – and the poverty, violence, self-hatred, and hopelessness that ensues.  We confront the dark towers of misogyny, sexism, and xenophobia that casts shade on the souls for our little ones. We confess our fears, but we will not be paralyzed by them. Our size will not determine our significance. We admit our anxieties, but we will never abandon this great work. We may acknowledge the strength of the adversary, but we will always affirm the power of our Creator!

Our resources, sparse as the may be, are more than enough for the God who specializes in making something- that is all things- out of nothingness

But he, desiring to justify himself, said to Jesus, “And who is my neighbor?”

Luke 10:29

When we think about naming and labeling, recall how God gave Adam the job of naming what He created. That naming was not just a vocabulary challenge but it was an exercise in dominion. In the same way whether we are talking about a doctor diagnosing an ailment or a chemist identifying the elements that make up some compound, that process of naming or classifying determines how a thing is treated or handled. It’s a very powerful exercise and subsequently very dangerous when we begin to direct it at people and people groups.

Who is my neighbor?

The religious man, desiring to justify himself asks, “Who is my neighbor?” That is, ‘Who am I to treat with the regard as I would a neighbor?’  That is, ‘Who is it that I am commanded to love as myself?’ (Lev. 19:18)

“Who is my neighbor?”

The religious man asks in attempt to justify himself. Though seemingly innocuous, this question is a dangerous question of classification that seeks to determine the categories to which we assign people, and subsequently the standards whereby we determine what treatment and behavior is appropriate for and of them. This dangerous question of classification – this labeling – the titles we render, if we are honest about, are not just titles but they are meant in some way or another to define value, honor, or dishonor someone or something.

“Who is my neighbor?”

The history of our nation is marred by the moral failures of both individuals and institutions (Church and State alike) that have not embodied the heart of what it means to neighborly. In much the same way as the lawyer in the text, we (that is the religious establishment) would much rather label people than love them. We would much rather engage in intellectual calisthenics that lead us toward rational disobedience, than to embody the simple message of Christ.

The church in America has largely failed to embrace this message of neighborliness. As a result the world now stumbles at our faulty witness.

Our identity (as Christians – as the Church) is bound to our relationship with God the Father through Christ’s, but it is also inextricably linked to our relationship with our neighbors.  Without dereliction or discrimination, our foremost and most consequential efforts must be in the expression of our love for God through our love for our neighbors.

The identity and witness of the church hinges on how we level and answer this important question “Who is my neighbor?”

Who is my neighbor?

We cannot profess any love for GOD while debasing, degrading, or disregarding the other. We cannot be good neighbors by being passive witnesses to terrible acts of violence (in words and deeds) against those created in His image and likeness.

We are immediately found to be liars and hypocrites who possess a form of godliness but deny its power.

We are as waterless clouds, threatening rain but never yielding a drop.

Our very confessions become curses to us – bearing witness against us before God and man.

Our assemblies, now raucous with shallow and shrill worship, send up sacrifices that are a stench in His nostrils and a sting to the Divine ear.

The fruit of Spirit has withered and died on a branch long pruned and purged from the True Vine while we quibble on…

Who is my neighbor?

Who is worthy of such love?

Who deserves it?

Jesus answers, in the parable… ‘Everyone who needs…’

Black Jesus

Wasn’t nailed to a cross

But he we was hanged

By his neck

From a tree in

Mississippi

He died…

But he rose

In me…

He’s come back

Not as slave

But a soldier

Buffalo…

Wool Traded

For a mane…

No longer a lamb

But a Lion

Setting the stones

For a New Zion –

Where freedom

Is a reality

And Peace is

More than Martin’s Dream

Sagging and syrupy

Or Malcom’s passion

And militancy

Where  justice

Rolls down like

Waters…

Black Jesus

Was not nailed

To a cross

But he died

On the street

Shredded by the bullets

Of the police

He died

But He rose again

In me.

He’s come back

As a warrior

and He will

Die no more

reborn with

Kevlar on His chest

and a titanium core

A vigilant sage

Tempered by rage

Scribing pages

Apocalyptic im-ages

Slaying the pale-rider

The beast, and his wife

Whore, bug-eyed and

Gorged on pestilence and war…

Black Jesus

Wasn’t nailed to a cross

But he we was hanged

By his neck

From a tree in

Mississippi

He died…

didn’t He die?

But he rose

In me.

©A.Mixon

Years ago there was a pretty good movie that came out entitled “The Accidental Tourist.” The movie was about loss, disorientation, anxiety, and above all fear.  The main character, Macon, writes guides for business travelers who would rather not be traveling. The travel guides provide a metaphor as to how the main character attempts to live his life by avoiding risks and unpredictable circumstances. Ultimately, he fails, but the guides he writes serve to recreate ‘home’ and all the comforts and familiarity of ‘home’ for the one using them.

Hmm…

When we travel, it is reasonable that we take a guide with us.  For the less adventurous, a guide especially provides security, comfort and a sense of control in a strange new environment.   A travel guide is a boon for the ‘accidental tourist.’

We depend on our guide to fortify ourselves against the strange language, food, and customs that may upset us. Our itinerary is a masterful work in organization and insurance.  We travel a thousand miles in order that we may feel like we never left home. “Do you speak English?” An affirmative answer relieves us as we go, and now we may relax and enjoy the journey.

Hmm….

When we delve into conversations about race and ethnicity – for some of us it is a dangerous trek into a wild and foreign land.  It is that far country, far removed from the comforts of our insulated little worlds, routines, and experiences. Talking about race, for many, is disorienting.  It is foreign language, it is barbaric; it is unsettling, hostile, and threatening. The water makes our stomachs ache and the heat is unbearable. So our solution is to avoid the journey.  Or if the journey must be taken, than we must take a guide with us that allows us to recreate our ‘home’ – that is our safe places wherever we go.

“Let’s make this place like home for us. Let’s civilize and sanitize this place – so we can be comfortable in these spaces.  Let us go and tell our stories, promote our causes, and dispose our narratives – after all we have such good stories, no? Before you know it, this place will be just like home!”

I hope I didn’t lose you in my prattling on about the ‘accidental tourist. ’ But I do wonder, how many of us are accidentally racist?  How many of us are unsettled and disoriented by what we perceive to be strange and foreign? How many of us, in order to gain control and reorient ourselves, attempt to transform our ‘strange’ environments?  How many of us resist and even scoff at the ‘other” but then appropriate bits of culture for fashion’s sake? How many of us, lean on familiar biases and stereotypes in order to navigate these alien lands?

Colonialism and gentrification are two cousins that often possess a similar desire, with an outdated and destructive guide that is hundreds of years old.

When we lean into learning in different contexts and experiencing different cultures there is always the threat of the unpredictable.  Traveling, much like reading, fundamentally changes us, but only when we really give ourselves to the journey. By yielding ourselves to experience the journey, there is the uncomfortably rewarding  opportunity for growth and expansion in one’s perspective. For the humble and inquisitive, there is a sense of adventure and exhilaration that ensues. For the prideful and less curious, the journey can quickly degenerate into an anxious nightmare.

It’s funny that in our fair city, many good people feel more at ease traveling across the globe to Asia or Africa than they do traveling over the mountain or across the tracks. Sadly, we find common ground in Macy’s, but our sacred places are the most taboo, and most exotic, where boundaries still mustn’t be crossed. Crossing I-65 may as well be crossing the Indian Ocean! And when we do dare to cross the tracks, and venture over-the-mountain, we bear an outdated travel guide.  While it makes us feel safe as ‘accidental tourists,’ the travesty is that we are also accidentally racist.

Accidental racists are as dangerous if not more so than intentional racists.  Cultures are ruined, ecosystems destroyed, peoples are displaced, by well-intended, accidental racists.  More dangerous, I say,  because at least intentional racists are sure of their intentions and clear in their cause – they must at least acknowledge those whom they would denigrate.   Alas, but the accidental racist must never reckon with her conscience or wrestle with the consequence of their ignorance. After all it was just an accident – an unfortunate misstep – clumsy color-blindness- harmless misunderstanding – an mere (albeit dehumanizing) oversight, or just a bad joke.

Cut them some slack, huh? Everybody makes mistakes.  It was an accident.

The unfortunate problem is, however,  that the wounds remain the same.

If I get hit by a car, the damages – the long term effects – the consequences are the same whether it was intentional or accidental.

Over the last week, I’ve received a swift lesson in how things happen in this city. I wrote an open letter to our Mayor and to a prominent church leader in the community and even as I wait to hear.  I must admit that I’ve been up, down, and sideways as to how I feel about what’s happened over the last week.  I didn’t realize how much I appreciated my anonymity.  But I also did not anticipate how careless and thoughtless people become when you challenge the actions of those whom they admire.  There is a strong cult of personality in our city.  So to keep this brief – I’ve been dragged, ridiculed, insulted, berated, belittled, and dismissed by many.  I’ve had my words invoked even when my presence was not welcomed.  But at the same time I’ve been challenged, encouraged, and approached by many who have long wanted to articulate what I expressed this past week.

I’ve lived in Birmingham for twenty years.  I’ve been serving a local church here for 17 of those twenty years.  I admit that I wasn’t really fond of this place when I first got here – I’m from Ohio.  But with two of my three children being born here, and having established some deep roots here – we’ve grown to love this place.  History is literally beneath our feet everywhere we go in this city.  All the quirky little spots that you wouldn’t expect to find here, and the way most people will look you in the eye and speak –even when you don’t know them –  these are a few of the things that have kept us here in Birmingham.  These are the things that make this place beautiful.  These things inspire my love for this place but also incite me to speak the truth to her – I cannot separate the one from the other.

Birmingham is a beautiful place with an ugly problem. 

² And a man lame from birth was being carried, whom they laid daily at the gate of the temple that is called the Beautiful Gate to ask alms of those entering the temple.^[1]

But like the lame man, sitting at the Gate called Beautiful (Acts 3:2), Birmingham is a beautiful place with an ugly problem.  At the geographic center of the Southeast, with a beautiful landscape, and with all her beautiful citizens – Birmingham is a beautiful place with an ugly problem.  Birmingham is divided by major highways.  Our highways may as well be concrete walls.  The socio-economic and racial divides in this city have informed a pathology that insists on politeness and Southern genteelness, while nodding and winking at public policies rooted in a past stained by racist sentiments and policies.  White-flight, and the nastiness that fractured Birmingham into a bunch of municipalities that starve the city center and ruined a school district, uprooted churches, and left entire communities bereft of a viable tax-base – are Birmingham’s ugly problem.

We are in a beautiful place, with an ugly problem.  Crippled by a past we refuse to reckon with – sins that we refuse to confess, difficult conversations we refuse to have, in a beautiful place with an ugly problem.

Lame, we are, because we lynched our past (Jefferson County is one of the bloodiest counties in the state).  We buried convict-leased bodies in coal mines or burned them in Sloss Furnaces. This beautiful place has an ugly problem.

Birmingham, a post-civil war city, is a place where we debate about Confederate statues placed in our public parks by private citizens, while prominent local pastors asks blessings during Confederate Memorial Day celebrations.  A beautiful place.

Birmingham is where communities once abandoned because of white-flight, now grace the pages of Southern Living because of funky new gastro-pubs and micro-breweries that spring up from the fallow ground.  These ‘new’ businesses are flourishing on the forty dirt-cheap acres, left behind decades ago because we couldn’t stomach the idea of living together in the same community.  They are now prime real estate.  We are in a beautiful place with an ugly problem

Birmingham is the beautiful bride with bad breath – the broad-shouldered beau with a broken smile – the brilliant and shining city with a rusty backside.  Birmingham – the buckle of the Bible-belt – the land of big, beautiful churches, too often marred by a bland homogeneity that bans justice for all while beseeching civility.  Birmingham is a place that treats reconciliation as an indulgence that may be purchased with a few coins, Thanksgiving baskets, and Chick-fil-A sandwiches.

Birmingham is a beautiful place with an ugly problem. 

We are lame.  We are crippled. Incapable of elevating ourselves. We are in a beautiful place with an ugly problem.  Lest we hear the Gospel.  Lest we abandon our tendency to anesthetize (allowing ourselves to be bought off) by our terribly low expectations for a few alms (silver and gold, have I none.) –  we will remain in this beautiful place with an ugly problem.

The facile, conscience-soothing efforts we embrace in the name of change will fail unless we delve beyond the surface.  We must confront (look at us) and thus uncover the circumstances that conspired to cause our current condition.   Then we must speak boldly, prophetically, and compassionately to this brokenness, “Walk!”   And then, finally, we can hold hands – then we can help – and only then we may lift our city to a place of prominence that befits her.

^[1] The Holy Bible: English Standard Version. (2016). (Ac 3:2). Wheaton: Standard Bible Society.

prag·ma·tism

/ˈpraɡməˌtizəm/

noun

an approach that assesses the truth of meaning of theories or beliefs in terms of the success of their practical application.

Anybody who knows me, know that I have great respect and admiration for Dietrich Bonhoeffer.  His classic works, Life Together, and the Cost of Discipleship have been and continue to be a great part of my personal spiritual formation.  As with most things that I find inspiring or encouraging, I’ve given away several copies of each to friends and family members who I thought may find similar encouragement.  For several summers at the Zion Spring church, we’ve read Bonhoeffer together.  The outcome has been fruitful.  While difficult to access, initially, with time and discipline, our Wednesday nights were turned into feasts of reflection.  Who knew that Bonhoeffer could have such an impact on a small, black, Baptist church in the middle of the projects in Birmingham, Alabama?!

When Dietrich Bonhoeffer traveled to the United States one of his greatest critiques of American theology was that there was none.  Bonhoeffer suggested that the American church offered Protestantism without reform – a shallow theology more akin to pragmatism than to any real Christianity.  This was his disappointing assessment until he met a black man named Albert Franklin Fisher.  Albert (Frank) was the son of Charles Fisher, the Pastor of the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama. While attending Union Theological Seminary in New York, Bonhoeffer often visited the Abyssinian Baptist Church in Harlem. There, he heard Rev. Dr. Adam Clayton Powell Sr. proclaim the Gospel alongside a poignant prophetic protest of the violence and wickedness bred of the racism that stained America’s national identity.

Bonhoeffer was deeply affected by the spirituality he encountered in the black Church.  Many believe that it was this experience that altered the course of Bonhoeffer’s life and informed much of his activities after he returned to Germany prior to and during the Third Reich.

So then, what’s the problem with pragmatism? It is, after all, an American way of life.

“Git’er done!”

“By any means necessary!”

And the quintessential –

“The ends justify the means.”

The problem is, each of these expressions represent the opposite of what our faith mandates!  While costly and likely unpopular to say so – what we do, why we do, and how we do, is just as important as what we accomplish, when we arrive, or whether or not we win!

²³ Whatever you do, work heartily, as for the Lord and not for men, ²⁴ knowing that from the Lord you will receive the inheritance as your reward. You are serving the Lord Christ. ²⁵ For the wrongdoer will be paid back for the wrong he has done, and there is no partiality. ^[1]

In many ways, the shallowness that has come to define much of American Christianity is a direct result of her unquestioning embrace of pragmatism.  It worked.  It must be right, so let’s keep doing it!  It is this misguidedness that allowed (allows) the American church to be complicit to slavery, genocide, manifest destiny, segregation, imperialism, pre-emptive military strikes, naked aggression and violence!  An economy that demands poverty in the name of progress, a political system polluted by the filthy lucre of corporate interests, careless industry that destroys the environment for profit, a society that mortgages the futures of its children – leaving them to inherit a world that is worse – all these things are the outworking of good old-fashioned American pragmatism.  Baptized and sanctified in pulpits across the country, we declare sentimentally, nostalgically, patriotically – we are rapt by pragmatism!

America, America, God shed His grace on thee… And crown thy good?

Questioning our motives, examining our methods – these logical and decidedly Christian approaches – are jettisoned for an “all money is good money, so long as we get it done, something is better than nothing,” philosophy.  This obscenity is further perpetuated by its greatest proponents who dare invoke the sovereignty of God to justify their means.  That is to say, “God allowed it, so God must have wanted it this way – His will be done, let’s do it again!”

The great shame is that if Bonhoeffer were to visit America today, he would encounter even a greater dearth of spirituality and theology in the American church.

The sometimes slow walk towards freedom that once embodied the ideals of the black church have now become a short cut to prosperity and respectability!  Dignity and substance forsaken are for popularity and style. Significance is measured by size and sheen. Get ready, get ready, get ready!  The pressure of living in the margins that once produced a stalwart and redemptive hopefulness – this hopefulness has been auctioned for the promise of an American dream.  All for the low, low, low cost of our souls…

Friends, I submit to you that our ‘ends” is our ‘means’ – the wrongdoer will be paid back.  Our motives must be pure, our methods informed by the wisdom of God; every action must be filtered through the lens of our love for God and our love for those made in His image and likeness.  Our foundation must be sure, lest the entire house be ruined.

All money is not good money.

The end does not justify the means.

Not by any means necessary.

We live and die by our hows and our whys.  If not for love, then not at all.  Even our salvation, then, is not just a destination – it is a journey!

God have mercy on us for embracing this pragmatism and extolling American mythology – such idolatry.

Have mercy on us all.

^[1] The Holy Bible: English Standard Version. (2016). (Col 3:23–25). Wheaton: Standard Bible Society