April, 2010 - Julie Clawson

Packaging the Voice of the Other

Posted on April 27, 2010July 11, 2025

After the synchroblog last week and all the discussions surrounding the question of if the emerging church is too white, I’ve had a number of interesting discussions regarding the ways in which the voice of the subjugated other (subaltern) finds a space to be heard. For better or worse, I want to think out loud here and blog through a couple of those discussions that have really been running through my head these past few days.

A topic that I’ve repeatedly returned to this past year or so are the ways we have to contain the voice of the other in a safe and nonthreatening package in order to begin to hear it. In its most negative fashion this involves the essentializing and the trivializing of the other. We reduce other cultures to just the physical artifacts of their culture – their food, their music, their dance, their tourist appeal. Being open to the voice of the other simply becomes being willing to eat a new type of food, watching a film about an African safari, or putting on a cd of “world beat” music. On one hand, I know people who are so closed off to understanding anything outside of themselves that they can’t even accept these essentialized versions of the other. From those who think it is too exotic or weird to try new foods to those who think it is un-American to eat tacos, stepping outside of the known can be difficult for some people. That said it is often far easier to contain different voices in our interpretation of their cultural trappings or in an amusing stereotyped version of themselves than to actually engage.

So I find it interesting that one of the few places in American culture where the non-white male is allowed a central role and non-essentializing voice in the realm of sci-fi and fantasy. I first started think about this awhile back when I read the plea to Pixar to make movies about “non-princess girls and the adventures they go on.” So many of the movies and books targeted to children are about boys and their adventures (with the occasional girl sidekick). If there is a widely popular story of a girl going on an adventure it almost always takes place in a fantasy world. Lucy steps through the wardrobe into Narnia, Alice falls down the rabbit-hole into Wonderland, Dorothy is whisked away in a twister to Oz, Meg travels along the tesseract. Apparently little girls doing strong things like adventures can’t happen in real life, so they must be told in the realm of fantasy. (all those character’s mental stability is questioned when they return to the real world as well). Women having a voice and strength and power is a safe topic if it is contained by fantasy.

This ability to safely present the voice of the other under the guise of fantasy is well known in the world of Star Trek. When the first Enterprise embarked on its five year mission it truly went where no one had gone before by challenging the way race was portrayed in Hollywood. Women and minorities were cast as scientists and officers instead of in stereotypical roles (even as they still made use of stereotypes). The first interracial kiss on television was between Captian Kirk and Lt. Uhura (although to do so they had to pretend Uhura was possessed by a white alien at the moment). Challenging those boundaries through the setting of futureistic outer-space was the safe way the conversation could be handled by the average viewer.

I recall reading an interview with one of my favorite actors, Alexander Siddig, on why he appreciated his role at Dr. Bashir on Star Trek: DS9. He said that for the first and only time in his life he wasn’t cast as “the Arab” instead Star Trek gave him the chance to play a brilliant doctor who just happened to be Arab. Since the series ended (and especially since 9/11) he has only been offered roles of strictly Arab characters – generally as some sort of terrorist. (since the interview he has played the non-race restricted roles of the Angel Gabriel in The Nativity Story and Hermes in Clash of the Titans – once again both roles set in the realm of fantasy and the supernatural). In the “real world” we are only comfortable seeing the Arab man as a terrorist, it is only in fantasy that he can have a voice as a person and not just a racial stereotype.

I am really torn with this “safe packaging” approach to listening to and respecting the voice of the other. It is demeaning and essentializing to say that women or minorities can only have a voice in the most trivial of ways or in futuristic or fantasy realms. But at the same time, presenting visions of the way we want the world to be through story form is the easiest way to get people’s subconscious to change. There is power in story and certain people who might resist respecting someone different from them in real life can suspend disbelief within the confines of the “impossible.” I guess what I am wondering is, can we even say the subaltern has a voice if it only appears within these sorts of safe packaging? Is that a real voice? Should this habit be undermined, or is it the best we have to work with at the moment?

Celebrate Earth Day with Everyday Justice

Posted on April 21, 2010July 11, 2025

Earth Day is turning 40 and what better way to celebrate our commitment to sustainable living than with our everyday actions. Finding doable ways each of can commit to loving God by caring for creation is a significant part of what it means to pursue everyday justice. So in honor Earth Day, Amazon is offering a free download of the Kindle edition of Everyday Justice.

That’s right – a free digital copy of Everyday Justice!

From midnight to midnight on Thursday April 22 (Earth Day) downloading Everyday Justice from Amazon will cost you nada. So there’s no excuse to not find out simple everyday ways that you can care for our world and the people who inhabit it. And I know, not everyone has a Kindle. It doesn’t matter, there are Kindle apps available for Macs, and PCs, and iphones, and BlackBerry’s, and ipads. If you are reading this blog, you most likely own at least one of those. Remember – this is only a 24 hour deal, so seize the opportunity while it’s hot.

So celebrate Earth Day and download your free Kindle copy of Everyday Justice.

What is Emerging?

Posted on April 19, 2010July 11, 2025

About a decade ago I recall as a volunteer youth leader at my church sitting in the leader’s training session one evening. This was the time when the youth pastor and pastor would walk us volunteers through the lesson we were to lead the students through each night. The topic for that week was something about basics of the Christian faith and we were to discuss with the kids what exactly theology was. The correct answer we were supposed to give was something about systematic theology using Wayne Grudem’s system as the best example. Somewhat naively I asked, “so why don’t we want the kids to know about all the other ways people do theology?” I was met with blank stares and was told that systematic theology is the only sort of theology there is. I responded, “but what about the Christians in other cultures who don’t think in the same patterns as Westerners who prefer more narrative approaches to theology?” to which I was told, “that stuff isn’t real theology, systematic theology is all that these students will ever need to know about.”

While I might still have that conversation in various churches these days, I feel that something has begun to shift in the church since that time. Our globalized world has forced a new understanding of how we conceive of our faith to emerge. It is harder to deliberately ignore the diversity of voices speaking into this thing we call Christianity. While some might still proclaim the other to be wrong simply for being other, it is impossible to deny that the other exists. This isn’t about being open minded or being politically correct, it is simply a necessary reaction to the nature of the world we live in. Other theologies, other voices, other ways of reading scripture exist (other always being relative to one’s vantage point). We are too interconnected to ignore them or pretend they don’t matter. They are simply part of the air we breathe as Christians which is becoming increasingly impossible to not acknowledge.

I am reminded of how my exasperated professor dealt with my rather obstinate historical research methods class in college. A few of the students had dismissed his attempts to teach them differing approaches to how people approach historical research as supportive of revisionist history (and therefore evil). They desperately wanted to cling to the notion that the “God Blessed America” version of history they believed was in fact the only true version of history – any attempts to tell the stories from the margins of women or minorities were simply revisionist corruptions. So the professor had us read a study that detailed the various ways the history of Williamsburg has been presented to tourists over time. Depending on what was going on in the world at the time, the historical story as it was told by the reenactors varied tremendously over the years. Each version had an agenda and portrayed American colonialism in a way that shored up that agenda. It was difficult for the students who were insisting that the very hero-centric pro-God version taught under the influence of 1950’s anti-communism was the real history to continue to bang that drum when the evidence of how history is manipulated by the teller was laid out so blatantly before their eyes.

The world has been blatantly thrust in front of our eyes, and even the church can no longer resist this emerging consciousness. What stories get told and whose theology gets privileged can no longer be determined out of ignorance. In our interconnected world, the voices of womanist and feminist theologians, the cries of the liberation and postcolonial theologies, and the narrative understandings of scripture that focus on exile, family, and oppression are accessible to even the average Christian. The church is far bigger than some of us might have once believed, we just had to be forced to open our eyes and see it. While this might seem a tad patronizing to those outside the American church system (I can see them rolling their eyes at our elation of our delayed “discovery” of the other), I for one am grateful for this emerging sensibility in the church (even if it is long overdue). Coming face to face with the diversity in our unity might not imply immediate acceptance or respect or understanding, but it pushes us outside of ourselves. Seeing a slightly clearer picture of the world as it is forces us to acknowledge and often wrestle with what we see.

Call it interconnectedness, or globalization, or simply awareness of our neighbor, the church is emerging or perhaps converging upon itself. What gives me hope when I consider what is emerging in the church is that the conversation pushes us into this converging community. And when we are in community, when we start to actually know our neighbors, is when we can start to live out the call to love our neighbors.

This entry is part of a Synchroblog on “What is Emerging?” in the church today. Here’s a list of other contributions to this conversation. I’ll add more as they are posted – feel free to write your own post and send me the link!

Pam Hogeweide compares the emerging church movement to a game of ping pong.
Sarah-Ji comments that the emerging questions people are asking are far bigger than any defined movement.
Sharon Brown writes about using labels as an excuse.
Peter Walker reflects on how the emerging church conversation helped him recognize his power and privlege as a white male.
Dave Huth posts a on new ways to talk about religion.
Kathy Escobar finds hope in seeing a spirit of love in action emerging in the church.
Nadia Bolz-Weber reflects on the the beautiful things she sees emerging in her church community.
Chad Holtz writes on our Our Emerging Jewishness.
Julie Kennedy describes her organic entry into the emerging church and reflects on moving forward with a new public face.
Dave Brown comments on the emerging church and swarm theory.
Danielle Shroyer reflects on what is emerging in the church.
Brian Merritt offers his pros and cons of the emerging church.
Julie Clawson is grateful for emerging globalized Christianity.
Susan Philips points out that emergence happens as G-d redeems our shattered realities.
Mike Clawson reflects on the non-western voices that brought him to the emerging conversation.
Jake Bouma suggest that what is emerging is a collapse into simplicity.
Liz Dyer believes a chastened epistemology is a valuable characteristic emerging out of the church today.
Rachel Held Evans writes on what is changing in the church.
Tia Lynn Lecorchick describes the emerging movement as a wood between worlds (from The Magician’s Nephew).
Amy Moffitt shares her journey towards a theology of humility.
Travis Mamone comments on the need for the emerging church to rely on the word of God.
Sa Say reflects on the the prick of doubt.
David Henson lists what he sees as what is emerging in the church.
Angela Harms writes in in defense of emergent.
Wendy Gritter asks how we can listening to the voices from the margins.
Bruce Epperly comments on the largeness of spirit of emerging spirituality.
Linda Jamentz reflects on listening to the voices from the margins in church.
Lisa Bain Carlton hopes that our emerging conversation can respond humbly to our moment in time.
Christine Sine asks how far are we willing to be transformed.
Lori Allen Wilson reflects on what is emerging in the younger generations.
Cynthia Norris Clack sees love emerging in the church.
Bob Fisher lists the values emerging in his faith community
Mihee Kim-Kort writes of the conversions and conversations she sees around her.
Ann Catherine Pittman believes that what is emerging in the church is inclusivity.
Matthew Gallion describes how emergence is spread thin across the whole church.
Phil Snider offers guarded praise of emergent.

Faith Journeys and Testimonies

Posted on April 14, 2010July 11, 2025

I was filling out an application recently and was asked to write a short statement on my “personal faith pilgrimage.” I grew up in the Christian world, and so have had to write out my testimony dozens of times. But this wasn’t asking for my testimony, but for the story of my faith pilgrimage. On one hand it might be easy to assume that they are one and the same, but the difference in terminology between “faith pilgrimage” and “testimony” intrigued me and got me thinking about how even how the question gets asked influences how our story gets told. I realized that not just my story itself, but how I tell my faith story has changed over the years.

Out of sheer curiosity, I went through the archives on my computer and read through testimonies I had written in the past. These were my faith stories as I had written them to apply to Wheaton College Grad School, to work at a Baptist church, and to serve as a church-planter (and no, I will not be posting them here). Each of these focused on two main events in my life – when at the age of three I prayed to ask Jesus to come into my heart and my decision at age 12 to “make my faith my own.” Other themes – feeling the need to tell others about Jesus and the rollercoaster emotions of feeling close to Jesus – supported these two primary events. That decision of where I was going when I died and my choice to stay in the church were what I knew those reading my story wanted to hear – they were what I believed to be the most important moments in my faith history.

But these days I find it uncomfortable to be asked to tell of the moment I became a Christian. I don’t believe that some magical transaction occurred on Oct. 17, 1981 as I sat on my dad’s lap and repeated a few words after him. Before that moment I had believed like any child in what I had been told about Jesus, saying that prayer was simply part of my formative journey as a believer. Similarly, I no longer talk about my faith in terms of certainty regarding where I will go when I die. I was recently told that a local church in its membership interviews asks the question “if you died tonight how certain are you of where you will go?” The response they are looking for to allow people to continue in the membership process is “100% certain I will go to heaven.” Those that reply otherwise are unknowingly streamed into a Christianity 101 class instead of the membership class. My response to this (even ignoring the whole question of if we go to heaven or if as the Bible says are resurrected to the new earth) is to ask what is the role of faith if certainty is what is required. These terms of “moments of decision” and “certainty” are no longer part of my lexicon as I tell my faith story.

These days my testimony is less an argument written to prove to others that I have jumped through the right hoops it takes to be a Christian, and more of a travel narrative of my faith pilgrimage. My story has changed, my narrative style has changed, and even what I call it has changed. I know I have not arrived at anything, I value faith far more than certainty, and what I believe is no more important than how I live out that belief. My story encompasses those changes and embraces my questions and doubts as simply being an authentic part of my journey as opposed to evidence that could be used against me in determining if I am in or out. I am still on this journey, even as I tell of its twists and turns. What I learn along the way and terrain I am traversing at the moment as I follow Jesus matter just as much as any particular moment along the way. My story has become more of an epic adventure as opposed to a persuasive essay.

Sojourners Response

Posted on April 11, 2010July 11, 2025

Here’s is my response to Soong-Chan Rah’s and Jason Mach’s article in the May issue of Sojourner’s Magazine. This response was first posted at the God’s Politics’s blog.

A truth that I’ve repeatedly been reminded of this past year is the utter inappropriateness of basing one’s identity on the belittling of others. What it means to be a man of integrity cannot be defined through the mocking of Asian culture. What it means to be a Real Man cannot be defined through the debasement of women. And what it means to be a real 21st Century Christian cannot be defined through the dismissal of the entire Western church.

So I am having a hard time with Soong-Chan Rah’s and Jason Mach’s article on the emerging church, even as I believe they are addressing a vital issue. Let me say upfront that racial reconciliation needs to happen in the American church, and that to be healthy the church must start listening to all of its diverse members. I have no quarrel with that message in the article, I just don’t understand why Emergent must be the sacrificial lamb in this conversation. After reading Rah’s chapter on the emerging church in his book, The Next Evangelicalism, I, with others, wondered at the caricature he presented of the emerging conversation. In order to support his thesis that the white western captivity of the church must come to an end, he presented a picture of the emerging church as a bunch of trendy looking white guys who deliberately exclude racial minorities. A portrayal that resembles no part of the emerging world I have ever seen. I know he was repeatedly called out on this very issue, so I had hoped that in this article there would be a bit more journalistic integrity. But once again, we have the same skewed stereotype of emergents (even as the article exclusively quotes women and racially diverse emerging leaders who are seemingly counterexamples to its thesis). This inaccurate portrayal thus functions as a straw man that can easily be attacked and dismissed as standing in the way of a more global and diverse emerging Christianity.

The article asserts – “In truth, the term “emerging church” should encompass the broader movement and development of a new face of Christianity, one that is diverse and multi-ethnic in both its global and local expressions. It should not be presented as a movement or conversation that is keyed on white middle- to upper-class suburbanites. … If the label of the emerging church is to have a future, then the term needs to be reclaimed and disassociated from the specific brand of Emergent, and applied much more broadly to the church around the world”

Here’s the thing, every emergent and emerging Christian I know would agree with most of that statement. We know this is about a broader, global movement and have no delusions that white suburbanites are its center or future. And almost all of us agree that we need to intentionally listen to and learn from a wide diversity of voices within the church. We are part of the same team, working towards the same goals. Of course, Emergent is not perfect or above critique. Of course, it isn’t the sum of the emerging conversation. No one ever said it was. Emergent serves to network and resource the emerging conversation, doing its imperfect best to make this shared vision a reality. So why throw us under the bus and say we need to be kicked out of the conversation?

The thing is, I get where the small kernel of truth in their stereotypes came from. Over the past 15-20 years, the church has been attempting to make sense of the shift worldwide to a globalized, post-colonial, post-modern culture. Although this shift manifests differently around the world, we are all too interconnected to not be affected in some way. Early on in the contemporary Evangelical church these shifts were seen as simply a generational phenomenon prompting discussion on how to make church relevant to young people. Many churches jumped on the bandwagon of how to do trendy church, and yes, publishers attempted to capitalize on it as well. Since the money in the evangelical world in America historically supports charismatic white men, they became the poster children of the conversation. But as the conversation matured, others realized that what was emerging in the world was far more significant than generational trends, and so started to ask questions about how the church is held captive to culture and modern philosophies. Dialogues across diverse Christian traditions helped begin to heal wounds caused by racial and denominational divisions. These new relationships blurred boundaries both in and out of the church, making it impossible to quantify the number of churches participating in the conversation.

These emerging conversations and relationships brought renewed faith to some, but frightened or didn’t go far enough for others. Many of those (including publishers) who were simply riding the waves of cultural trends jumped ship and moved on to the “next big thing” (New Calvinism anyone?). This rejection of what was emerging worldwide was often rooted in a rejection of the very outside perspectives and theologies now beginning to be heard from women, racial minorities, and Queer believers. The reality is that the conversation is diverse (imperfectly so, but diverse nonetheless), and to dismiss it as being all about hip white males is hurtful to the rest of us contributing to the conversation who don’t fit that stereotype. Pretending we are invisible simply perpetuates the myth that we don’t exist at all. Sure, it is still a daily struggle be heard in a world that often clings to the vestiges of patriarchy, racism, and bigotry, but our voices are still there (even if marketplace Christianity isn’t throwing money our way).

I am Emergent and I don’t fit their stereotype. I am about the most un-hip person in the world. I might be white and youngish, but I am also physically handicapped and female. I am not one of the pretty people, I have no sense of style, I don’t listen to cool bands, my hair is a disaster, I am awkward, introverted, and a total bookworm. In most emerging communities I have participated in, I am generally one of the youngest people there. My friends are culturally, racially, generationally and theologically diverse and are (mostly) as uncool and imperfect misfits as myself (sorry guys, you know I love you, but it’s true). But we care about what God is doing in the world. We care about justice, we care about racial reconciliation, we care about making sure we listen to previously marginalized voices (and we continue to fight for them when they are not heard). Some of my friends have never heard of the term “emerging church” and some of us volunteer our time to help support this conversation through the network of Emergent Village. We have a lot to learn and a long way to go. I know that none of us desire to cling onto power for the sake of white western culture, but we also feel no need to utterly reject and condemn that entire culture. Healing and emergence in the church will never take place through the silencing of voices we don’t like or the caricaturing of those we don’t understand. There are wounds dealt to persons of color, to queers, and to women that the church universal must work to heal. But if we share the same dream of healing those wounds, why can’t we stop fighting amongst ourselves and figure out this emerging thing together?

Militias, the Church, and Christians

Posted on April 6, 2010July 11, 2025

I’ve been told that I am obviously not a Christian because I watch movies. Because I believe women can be pastors. Because I don’t take Mass in a Catholic church. Because I’ve read Brian McLaren and N.T. Wright. Because I voted for Obama. Because I am not a Calvinist. I’ve had friends who have been told that they are obviously not Christians because they have tattoos, because they are Gay, and because they don’t go to church every Sunday.

Given the fine tradition in the church of adding such litmus tests to the Gospel, I found it fascinating to hear from diverse sources last week that the Hutaree militia (a self-described Christian group) obviously could not be Christian. I find the group disgusting and disturbed, but the question of if they are Christians haunted me. I understand the tendency to get defensive and want to distance ourselves from groups like this. No Christian wants people like these to define us to the world. But at the same time I’m hesitant to proclaim from on high that they obviously aren’t Christian.

These were people who had a literalistic dogma based faith. They believed their faith rested on their belief in and confession of a certain list of doctrines, especially Dispensational views of the end times. They believed in the literal interpretation of scripture. They believed that their lives should be committed to moral living and opposed to sin. As they state on their website, “We, the Hutaree, are prepared to defend all those who belong to Christ and save those who aren’t. We will still spread the word, and fight to keep it, up to the time of the great coming.” To that end they hated the government, especially our current government, and decided that violence was the best way to uphold their moral convictions. Sure, I think they are messed up, but my issue is, if I say that they are not Christians, then I have to say the same regarding other so-called Christians who believed in similar ways (like anyone who participated in the religiously violent American Revolution or English Civil War). In fact, if this group isn’t Christian, then most American Christians today can be written off as “obviously not Christian.”

On one hand, I don’t think following Jesus really has much to do at all with affirming a set doctrine, a literal interpretation of scripture, a public confession of Jesus, a life of culturally defined morality, and church sanctioned violence. But that is the message that you will hear in countless churches on any given Sunday. Seriously, how far removed are armed guards in churches and pro-military rallies in churches from the ideals of this militia? They all use violence to impose their worldview upon others. Which Jesus explicitly forbid his followers to do. Jarred McKenna at the God’s Politics’ blog affirms the dichotomy of Jesus and violence when he refers to the association of the term “Christian” with “militia” as shameful, and wonders how Christianity ever came to be associated with something so anti-Jesus. The Hutaree group may have promoted a somewhat culturally taboo form of that violence, but other Christians will defend the “God-ordained” need for and their right to violence regularly. I truly don’t see much of Jesus in this civil religion of most U.S. churches today, but even so, I am uneasy saying they just aren’t real Christians.

But it’s a tough call. If a Christian is a person who follows Christ, I assume that implies that person follows the disciplines Jesus demands of his followers. Jesus himself tells us the only people who are his true followers are those who when “I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me.” (Matt 25). And in Isaiah (1 and 58) we even read that God detests our worship gatherings, ignores our acts of piety, wearies of our songs and rituals, and turns his head from our prayers unless we are seeking justice, treating our workers rightly, giving shelter to the immigrant and homeless, and helping the oppressed. By these biblical standards I think I could count on one hand the number of people I know who can actually be called Christian. In fact many Christians I know actively work against things like helping immigrants, providing healthcare to the sick, and making sure all people have food to eat (or they are advised to run away from churches that do such things).

As Brian McLaren points out in reference to this militia incident, a faith that promotes violence and ignores Jesus misses the point. Jesus instead “provides us a living alternative to the confining [violent] narrative in which our world and our religions live, move, and have their being too much of the time” Too many of our churches have succumbed to the siren calls of this world – replacing following Jesus with sets of doctrines, cultural rules, nationalism, and sanctified violence. This militia group simply took that proclivity to its natural end. That sort of religion has nothing to do with being a Christ-follower. But at the same time, as McLaren points out, Jesus looks at those who do violence (to others and to him) and says “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing” (Luke 23:34).

So I can only be left with grace. When even the most pietistic and committed “Christians” don’t actually look like Christ-followers, it seems like all we can really have is grace. Grace is bigger than our pointing fingers. And it extends far beyond out trivial additions to the Gospel. For if there is no grace for this messed-up system we call the church, then God help us all.

Making a Difference

Posted on April 5, 2010July 11, 2025

Do you ever wonder what difference acts of justice really make. “Why bother changing my light bulbs to CFLs?” “Can buying fair trade really help farmers?” “Do my consumer choices really matter?” In other words, how big of an impact can one person really have?

I address these questions (and then point out why I think those questions miss the point) in a new post I have up at RELEVANT Magazine’s Reject Apathy Site. So if you’ve ever wondered about what sort of impact you can really have, I suggest you check out my post and then share your thoughts!

Follow Jesus

Posted on April 2, 2010July 11, 2025

And so we come to the Friday called good. The day we are asked to celebrate the day God died. What strikes me today is the ordinariness of this day. Even on a day of heightened sensibility, life still moves on. The crucifixion seems far away, the events powerful and yet removed. It reminds me of these lines from W.H. Auden’s poem Horae Canonica in which he tells the events of Good Friday hour by hour –

The wind has dropped and we have lost our public.
The faceless many who always
Collect when any world is to be wrecked,
Blown up, burnt down, cracked open,
Felled, sawn in two, hacked through, torn apart,
Have all melted away: not one
Of these who in the shade of walls and trees
Lie sprawled now, calmly sleeping,
Harmless as sheep, can remember why
He shouted or what about
So loudly in the sunshine this morning;
All if challenged would reply
-’It was a monster with one red eye,
A crowd that saw him die, not I.-
The hangman has gone to wash, the soldiers to eat;
We are left alone with our feat.

Today I should be in mourning, marking the death of God’s son, repenting of my complicity in the act. But life moves on around me nonetheless. I will drink my morning coffee, I will fix dinner tonight, I will take my children to the park. Good Friday will have to be remembered in the ordinariness of everyday life.

But isn’t that as it should be? That the death of Christ should influence and change everything? That enacting the ritual of the everyday should be imbued with the significance of Christ? That there is something different about changing the diapers, cutting the grass, or doing the dishes because of this death?

At first glance, those habits seem so ordinary as to be meaningless. In the shadow of cosmic redemption dramas, our daily actions seem so pointless and boring. Yet at the same time in light of the call that cosmic drama gave to each of us, those actions now take on new meaning. They become part of the drama, a way of identifying with the story. Acts of remembrance and service and hope.

Nothing is ordinary anymore. The world was wrecked and rebuilt, and even if we can’t always remember why, we walk in that changed world that is now charged with significance. And we call it good.

This week I will be cross-posting the reflections I wrote for Journey’s IFC’s blog relating the events of Holy Week to our church’s value statements. Some of these have appeared in different forms here at onehandclapping in the past. Image – “The Crucifixion – Haiti”

Safe Community

Posted on April 1, 2010July 11, 2025

I can just picture the scene here. On Thursday, the disciples arrive in the Upper Room they have rented for the Passover and immediately they start positioning for the best seats (or reclining pillows as it were). In this tradition the most prominent and important people sat near the host. And here are the disciples just arrived and already debating about who would sit where.

In case one wonders where they were getting their delusions of grandeur, consider that they had just returned from an itinerate preaching tour. In general they had been welcomed and accepted. And as they started performing miracles and doing healings they developed a certain form of popularity. People liked them, they were rock stars.

They wanted to be liked, wanted to draw crowds and develop followings. They had some idea that they were in Jerusalem with Jesus because something big was about to happen – something important that dealt with the kingdom – and they were excited. And here they were having an exclusive holiday meal with their leader and they start bickering about who is considered the greatest.

I have to assume that Jesus got a bit frustrated at this point. All week he had been talking about giving up power and lifting up the oppressed and now they start bickering about who is the greatest. Talk about missing the point. So he says to them – “The kings of the Gentiles lord it over them; and those who exercise authority over them call themselves Benefactors. But you are not to be like that. Instead, the greatest among you should be like the youngest, and the one who rules like the one who serves. For who is greater, the one who is at the table or the one who serves? Is it not the one who is at the table? But I am among you as one who serves.”

Jesus as always turns things upside-down. Unlike most pep talks that focus on winning and showing how superior you are to everyone else, Jesus encourages them to serve. He tells them not to be like those who seek power and lord it over others. To not gather a following that idolizes them. But instead tells them if they are in positions of power they should be using it to serve others – to be a community that cares for each other. Jesus then models that community by breaking bread with them and by performing the lowest form of service – that of washing his disciples’ feet. Even he – the leader they follow is not establishing a kingdom to rule over but creating an ethos of love and service.

This act of communion, of serving one other, should remind us of the sort of community we should be – one that turns the hierarchies of this world upside-down and values service and love more than power and prestige.