Love congregations, love cities, love congregations loving cities, for whom Jesus weeps; pure faded thrift-shop denim robe embroidered, backside Chicago skyline, frontside Spirit's flame: Jubilee, fresh starts, fair chances, forgiving whatever holds back and keeps down, spreading news, speaking to powers, loving in spite of them-and-our selves, skyrocketing numbers, self-determining peoples - O say can we see! From first fifty to nearly two hundred, Uniting Nations? Cities of God? New Jerusalems?
Reputation precedes primal preaching -- That carpenter! We know his family! Who does he think he is fooling? Coming so near as to dwell among us? No matter who knows us or not, where or how we grow up, how little honor paid fledgling prophets, on road with no food, no money, no extra clothing, no place to stay, nothing to offer but who we are and what Word's stuck in our guts?
I, who find myself stranger at home, send you to find home among strangers!
Religiously Protestant, Politically American, creatures of Reformation, Revolution, born to rebelling, resisting gross concentrations of greed with great expectations of grace -- Barfull of bikers in "Wild Ones" asking, What are you rebelling against? Brando responding, What you got? Finishing bathroom and breakfast each day, driving to work, already consuming from twenty-some nations, interdependencing all Creation, extreme social-costing: excluding, excepting, exploiting, extracting, expropriating . . .
Such are "Spiritual Forces of Wickedness," "Evil Powers of This World," up against "Freedom and Power God gives us to resist!" Holy Comforter, yes, but Counsellor, too; Moral -- even Legal? -- Representation confronting with Judges and Kings: "If the people speak, and the king doesn't listen, something is wrong with the king. If the king acts precipitously, and the people do nothing, something is wrong with the people." (Joan Chittister)
"Like lambs in the midst of wolves," declaring, "Peace to this house!"
We have come to be with you because God cares for your life, and because God cares for your life, we also care for you. Period. There would be nothing more -- no invitations to join the Church, no programs to offer for people or their kids, no rummage to give away, no groups to join or meetings to attend, no gimmicks, no concealed motives, no hidden agendas. There would just be the bare announcement of God's love, and the freedom which that love gives people to love each other . . . First of all, the Church must simply be in the world -- for the life of any person, just as it is. (William Stringfellow)
I saw Sam Song, full of cancer, doing that just this week, going from room to room, knocking on many doors, announcing God's love, at the Progressive Care Center in Sparks, where Sam inhabits a room by himself.
Biblical faith "eschatological," inveighing for "endings," "last days," to things as they are, by varying ways and means, to be sure, but living as if "ending" of evident evils were pressingly near --
"We must take our responsible and loving places at table of power . . . Our old revolution against oppression unfairness never concluded. A joyful revolution! If you will put yourself fearlessly into it, keeping always an open mind and a tolerant heart -- for those are the flags of justice and freedom. Yet those lofty banners signify your life now and onward to the last days of your happy, meaningful, and love-filled life." (Granny "D" Haddock)
Including, inviting, context of Declaration, "in Course of Human Events," not merely American ones! "Laws of Nature and of Nature's God," not any one segregate segment thereof! "Opinion of Humankind," all of us, "a Candid World." Everything, everyone, still in Creation, in Evolution, new spaces, new species, surfacing universally all the time, urging us: Nothing more ennobling than "going on to perfection," wildest the dreams against greatest the odds.
Evolutionarily speaking, humans the Rest of Creation, who's left to go on? Related to -- Sabbath Rest! Pentecost Rest! Jubilee Rest! Seventh Day Rest! Seventh Year Rest! Even Seven Times Seven Year Rest! Arising, aroused, to the Rest of God? Breaking all cycles? All built-in oppressions? Rich cycling richer, poor poorer -- debt, plus addiction, plus prison, plus war, plus death.
Jubilee Promise finally, fully, freely enfleshing first time Jesus preaches -- Good News to Poor! Liberty to Oppressed! Embodying in Pentecost, Earliest Church, Acts of Apostles, giving all so none stays in need, solo submitting to symphonic senses of self, symptoms submitting to systems: New Wine, New Wineskins, New Patches, New Garments --
Whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it. TransAmerican Dream!
David's ambiguous kingliness inching toward Jesus? Crucified Savior, "King of the Jews?" Audaciously admixing glories of gore, polyamorus peace? In apotheotic citizenship, embryonic discipleship? "Someone who has a ministry has citizenship with God that may conflict with citizenship in a particular state. There it is! If there is a ministry of the laity, then Church is no longer the same as Empire." (Loren Mead) "Citizens of God?" As well as Disciples of Whomever? Means always leavened by Ends? Witnessing larger, more spacious Hope and Purpose? So problematically inexperienced a nation, promising so impossibly much, growing impatience, the world with us, with divine might, divine right, passing to us -- So many Elijahs, slaughtering slews of rivals? Still biding, still hiding, in end-times, in end-caves? Stuck in ancestral cycles? Dismantling?
Jairus, consummate citizen, named and known, leader of class, nothing to do with Jesus, but for rash desperation, daughter lying near death; woman, defiant disciple, unnamed, unknown, unnoticed, without claim on Jesus at all, but for undieable, undeniable yearning within, fighting through odds against stealing a healing, freezing Jesus, dead to rights in his treasonable tracks . . .
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