Wrestling with Doubt at Penuel

Lutte de Jacob avec l'Ange by 
Eugène Delacroix 

When I was growing up, I liked to be the one with all the right answers. I remember some of my classmates in elementary school asked me if I was genius, and now I have to wonder what exactly I was saying or how I was saying it that they lumped me in with such an abnormal group of folks. At the time, I depended on my book knowledge and ability to BS to make up for a poor self-perception. It's not easy to be the fat, four-eyed kid in grade school, but at least I had my answers.

I am no longer so overweight, and I usually wear contact lenses instead of glasses these days. I'm also still pretty skilled in BS. After all, what else should a B.A. give you? However, I'm not so sure about the answers thing any more. I still take pride in having a lot of knowledge in a variety of areas, but I'm a lot more comfortable with responding, "I don't know" to questions.

That includes questions about my faith.

I am undeniably Christian. I honestly do believe in almost all the points of the Nicene Creed, though at some points I might want to qualify my beliefs a bit. I even believe in the physically impossible things, like the immaculate conception and the bodily resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth. As I believe in an omnipotent deity, it's not difficult for me to believe that God could or would suspend the laws of physics to make a really good point.

However, the really tough questions, the ones about suffering, the existence of evil, the tightrope walk of Arminian free will, sometimes require an "I don't know". And the confession of uncertainty easily leads to doubt. If I don't know exactly what the origin of evil is, then how can I be sure of the benevolence of the God I worship? Or even her existence?

In the church we have few safe places where we can safely ask those questions. An awful lot of our ecclesial programming involves a confident leader proclaiming "truth! truth!" and the assumed response from the pewed followers is "truth received". And then we sing another song and go our separate ways, our lingering questions trailing after us like shadows before the twilight hour.

I think this tendency to leave hard questions and lingering doubt at the church doors also plays out in the kind  of discussion we do have during Sunday school, Bible study, and other programmed time. Many church-goers avoid controversial social issues because we will likely find disagreement, and disagreement violates the "truth proclaimed-truth received" equation.

I was reminded of this when I was in New York City with the newest cohort of young adult missionaries of the United Methodist Church. I was co-facilitating discussion about community organizing and worker justice, and I posed the question, "what has been your experience of justice in your faith context?" Several of the missionaries admitted that their churches never talked about justice. I had to admit back to them that my church had rarely talked about justice when I was growing up.

Of course there are theological reasons why a church may not discuss social justice issues like labor, women's rights, peace, and the environment. That church may follow a theology of glory, recognizing that this world is awful and broken but Jesus Christ will deliver us from evil in the next life. I personally disagree with such an emphasis on glory, siding much more Martin Luther in a theology of the cross, where Jesus Christ is present with us in all the tears and blood and shit that we encounter in our temporal lives.

However, the problem is that we have little space to discuss these important theological differences. Our consumerist culture begs us to continue shopping and watching the Olympics, which is, by the way, brought to you by Ralph Lauren. I think we often try to consume our faith in a similar way, but authentic faith is not to be swallowed whole. Authentic faith comes in the form of an unexpected opponent with whom we wrestle until daybreak, and even then we leave with a hip out of socket, a form that Jacob called "Penuel" because he saw the face of God and survived (Gen. 32:22-32).

I pray that we will create places we may call "Penuel", even if we must leave that place limping. However, if we leave limping in doubt, I have faith that God will carry us even when we are unable to walk.

The Missional Life Beyond Formal Commissioning

"What are you thinking about?", my friend Rachel asked me. "You just look so pensive."

Rachel Keller and me (Joe Hopkins) in New York Harbor,
with the Statue of Liberty to the right.

I was deep in thought, lost in my imagination of what the tens of millions of immigrants must have thought as they moved across New York Harbor to Ellis Island. What did the Statue of Liberty mean to them when they first saw it?

I was on one of the New York Harbor ferries that transport tourists from Manhattan to Ellis Island and Liberty Island. With me were my United Methodist young adult missionary peers, a collection of 10 people from all over the United States who had been sent out for 2-3 years to serve in children's homes, youth centers, homeless service centers, and advocacy organizations (among others). We had converged on New York City to celebrate the completion of our terms and to continue our commitment to justice in the world.

But what would that look like? What does the future ever look like?

In the last two years I had served in the national office of Interfaith Worker Justice, working diligently to help coordinate campaigns, facilitate communication, and make sure the logistical i's and t's were dotted and crossed. IWJ had sent me to Madison, Wisconsin at the high point of union protests in February 2011 and then to Indianapolis in January of this year just before right-to-work legislation passed in the Indiana state house. Outside of the IWJ context, I had developed roots in the near-South Side neighborhood of Bridgeport, getting involved in a little Lutheran church, helping to form a new grassroots power organization, and living the daily chaos that is my housing co-op.

I brought those memories, and many, many others, with me to the US-2 missionary end-terms. And my peers brought their own triumphs, setbacks, pains, and joys with them to share with the rest of us and with the staff of the General Board of Global Ministries.

However, we didn't just come together to share our individual pasts. As young adult missionaries, we learned about the uglier sides of church and society--how people are excluded and oppressed for a large array of reasons. While we mourned the pain of those experiences, we also got righteously pissed off. How can we as a church deny the full humanity of our lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer sisters and brothers? How can we collectively wash our hands clean of the blood that runs in the production and distribution lines of goods we use every day? How can we claim vitality by consolidating power into fewer and fewer hands, leaving all but the already privileged and powerful out in the dark?

We couldn't, wouldn't, and didn't claim such preposterously anti-Christ-like ideas. In response to our collective sharing, we made the compact to continue our mission, though under different auspices. We were leaving our placement sites for grad school, seminary, and the larger workforce, but we would continue to carry our commission with us. We do not need the hands of a bishop to urge us to justice, though we sure do hope that bishops will join us in our missional lives.

A few years ago, I learned from a Dominican priest at the Universidad Católica de Argentina that we can look at our lives as perpetual pilgrimages. David Wildman at Global Ministries would argue that we are all migrants, "undocumented Christians", living in an increasingly hostile world. So we wander, guided by the teachings of Jesus of Nazareth, in the missional life where we cannot return to the ignorance of a materialist, middle-class life.

In the missional life, I live in solidarity with the tens of millions of people who left all they knew to find a new home, beginning at Ellis Island. In the missional life, missio dei connects me to my young adult missionary peers and the global, apostolic and catholic church.

In the missional life, what I call the Red Poppy Fields, I hope to find you there, too.

10 Lessons I Learned from Dad

It may come a day late, but I was hoping that a Father's Day card I wrote four years would somehow reappear in my parents' house in Pennsylvania. My plan was to copy down the text and upload it to this blog.  My ever-suffering mother couldn't find it, which means that  it can't be found. Period.

In any case, when I was wishing my dad a happy Father's Day from 700 miles away, we did come up with a majority of the points from that card. I had written it early on the morning of a Sunday in June 2008, just before I left for my summer internship at a church 30 miles away. I recall that it remained on my folks' refrigerator for a year or two.

10 LESSONS I LEARNED FROM DAD 

10. Anything can be fixed with enough duct tape. 

9. Keep that left arm straight, your head down, and enjoy the walk. 

8. CHECK YOUR DAMN OIL. 

7. It's not so weird to have Enya, the Who, and Jay-Z on the same playlist. 

6. Don't point that muzzle at nobody. 

5. 99% of lawyers give the other 1% a bad name. 

4. Once you've spread few yards of tanbark, you're allowed a few cuss words now and again. 

3. Knowing why the guy need $10 for gas isn't as important as actually giving him $10 for gas. 

2. If your crazy idea didn't work out, then it probably came your own head and not from God. 

1. Remember to treat the janitor the exact same way you treat the bishop.

Thanks, Dad, for all the lessons over the years. I bet you've got some more for me yet to come.

Dinner with Jesus and the CEO

The communion table is the ultimate Christian dinner table.

Wait, is that a can of Red Bull? (Photo by Tom Gaulke)

A few weeks ago I participated in a workshop at the Chicago Temple called “Resetting the Table”. It opened with a theological reflection from a professor at Garrett Evangelical Theological Seminary in which our 21^st century American society was compared to sitting down around a table for dinner. The professor posed 5 questions:

·         Who gets to sit at the table?

·         How are the seats arranged?

·         Do the elements served nourish the body?

·         What bonds are formed around the table?

·         And in whose name is the meal blessed?

Considering that I live in a co-op with seven roommates, these questions have quite direct implications on how I eat my kale and pasta at night.

The other important consideration is that this symposium took place only two weeks before NATO came to Chicago and in the middle of a national effort to get into shareholder meetings of the country’s largest companies. And about a week after the United Methodist Church General Conference.

Generally, I like to like to imagine that people get an equal shot to come to the dinner table; that no one has a more important seat than another; that the meal will help keep me healthy; that I become closer to the folks slurping soup around me; and we bless the meal in the name of God, our Creator and Redeemer. I like to think that generally our democratic systems in government, corporations, and churches run this way, too, though maybe in more secular terms for government and in corporations.

But that’s not the way it often works. Here’s an example.

On May 23 the CME Group, also known as the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, held its shareholders’ meeting at the iconic Chicago Board of Trade building. To give you an idea of how important that is, Forbes Magazine called CME one of "the four companies that control the 140 companies that own everything.”  Corporations are ultimately accountable to the shareholders that own the corporation’s stock, so this was a big deal.

Last year CME Group threatened to leave the state of Illinois unless it received a billion dollars in tax breaks over the next 15 years. Illinois was and is facing record budget deficits, and now the state legislature is looking to cut $1.6 billion dollars of funding for health care for the poorest people in Illinois. Despite this fact, the legislature gave in to the CME’s demands and Illinois residents will pay the ransom for years to come.

That meal is poison for a state with the third-highest home foreclosure rate in the United States. How were the seats around that decision-making table set? In whose name was that meal blessed?

We live in a world where many, many people only have access to the crumbs that fall from the masters’ table. People of color, people without proper immigration documents, people with felony convictions, people who are attracted to the folks of the same sex, perpetually can’t eat at this dinner table. In fact, very few of us can eat at that dinner table.

Stamp on the hand of a friend who entered

the CME Group shareholder meeting. 

(Photo by Joe Hopkins)

Several people I know tried to go to the dinner table at the CME’s shareholder meeting. They had to show that they had shares of stock, and then their hands were stamped to show that they had only one share. When they asked the CEO about how nourishing the elements are for the people of Illinois, they were rebuffed. It was clear in whose name the meal was blessed.

I know that many people are debating the role of public protests this spring. Arab Spring and the Occupy Movement have people talking about it. When is it okay to set up tents in a public park? Is it out of order to keep singing in the middle of General Conference?

Jesus talked a lot about the dinner table, in fact a lot more than he did about homosexuality. And when Jesus talked about the dinner table, he included the despised people who normally would never eat with a CEO or a defense minister. And Jesus even deliberately disobeyed the rules during dinner.

Dear friends, let’s look at our dinner tables. Who gets to eat there? How are the seats arranged? Is the food good to eat? Are we becoming closer together as children of God? Do we take God’s name seriously when we say grace? I think we will find heartbreaking answers to these questions if we answer them honestly.

However, I know that the Spirit of God moves around the dinner table. The doors will burst open, and it won’t even matter what language you speak or what your immigration status is or what crime you were convicted for or who you have sex with. God is so much bigger than all of that.

And when you feel that Spirit whip around in tongues of fire, how will you respond?

Overcoming the American Undercaste

I caught up with the rather ragged band of walkers in front of a McDonalds in the Chicago suburb of Homewood. I learned that the stop was unplanned—the planned rest stop was at a Walmart a mile further south—but kids stopped to use the public bathroom anyway. It was starting to get chilly, so I was glad that I had brought my fleece jacket. Sunset was less than 2 hours away, and it was going to get colder before I left.

One of the marchers receives treatment for
 foot blisters.

The procession had started the previous day, March 30, in the Little Village neighborhood on the southwest side of Chicago. They had garnered some media attention at a press conference where they decried current immigration enforcement practices and demanded that the construction of a new detention center in Crete, Illinois halt. Their procession wouldn’t stop until April 1 at the gates of the construction site, about 30 miles away. I walked with them for only a few hours on Saturday, so I didn’t have the bleeding blisters that I saw on some of the walkers.

It is a difficult but perhaps also a hopeful time for immigrants and their allies. The Obama administration has deported more undocumented immigrants than any other American executive, but opponents still claim that current federal law is soft on illegal immigration. The U.S. Supreme Court recently heard arguments for and against Arizona’s anti-immigrant law, called SB1070, and we should know their decision in June. A little ironically, we have also learned that a majority of babies born in the United States today are non-white, with Latinos coming in second after the white plurality.

I feel that we as a country are coming to a tipping point. With Michelle Alexander’s book, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness, more and more people are becoming aware of enforcement policies that are harming people of color. Public outcry is growing against the privatization of prisons and detention centers, like the one that may still be built in Crete, IL. Awareness of economic disparities is at a generational high due to the continued effects of the Great Recession and the Occupy movement.

Picture drawn by child of a deported immigrant, exhibited at
"Locked Out" conference at University of Illinois-Chicago
on April 5.

In my work with the Interfaith Worker Justice Worker CenterNetwork, worker advocates constantly find that one of workers’ greatest fears is that if they report abuses on the job, they will be fired, deported, and separated from their families. Many employers intentionally hire undocumented workers for the reason that they will not complain when they are paid well below minimum wage, not receive overtime pay, or report injuries that would require workers’ compensation. It is often a business decision that helps the company’s bottom line but keeps workers in a distinct undercaste.

This undercaste is growing in the United States. Not only does it include undocumented immigrants, but African Americans who are targeted by unnecessary drug laws and enforcement are perpetually funneled there as well. Like undocumented immigrants, convicted felons also must endure all sorts of abuses at work because of legal discriminatory employment practices. That is to say, convicted felons will take and keep jobs where they are regularly underpaid and abused because they still have to pay their bills.

How can people who claim to follow the teachings of Jesus Christ, who weekly and sometimes daily confess their dependence on divine grace, support this 21^st century caste system? Is there such a profound disconnect between our pews and the prisons where societal debtors are kept out of view? Are we so deluded in our visions of the American Dream that we fall into the trap of the goats of Matthew 25?

Sisters and brother, we must open our eyes. Look around and you’ll see groups like the walkers who held mass at the gates of the Crete detention center. That group included students, Teamsters, an Episcopal priest, a few anarchists, and members of local congregations. What keeps us from walking with them?

In the words of the prophet Isaiah and as Jesus of Nazareth repeated, this is the year of the Lord’s favor. Let us proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free (Luke 4:18). In the Spirit of the Easter resurrection and the upcoming Pentecost, let us move our deadened feet and open our dumb mouths.

Walkers going south on Halsted Street.

Holy conferencing, Batman!

“I continue to dream and pray about a revival of holiness in our day that moves forth in mission and creates authentic community in which each person can be unleashed through the empowerment of the Spirit to fulfill God's creational intentions.” 
― John Wesley, How To Pray: The Best of John Wesley on Prayer

I often feel that I am out of the loop when it comes to matters United Methodist. Yes, I have been (and continue to be) a member of a United Methodist church since I was confirmed at age 11. Yes, I am a certified candidate for United Methodist ministry. And yes, I am a commissioned young adult missionary of the United Methodist General Board of Global Ministries.

And yet I have had so much trouble understanding the conflicts that have been brewing in the run-up to the 2012 General Conference. I’d like to blame this confusion on how I currently attend a Lutheran church and work for an interfaith organization. I’d like to think that because of the vast amount of time I spend outside of the auspices of United Methodist influence, I am an outsider and so am confused about General Conference.

I don't know how to say this, but it's kind of a big deal.

However, if my logic is that if I am confused about General Conference, I must therefore be an outsider, frankly, I estimate 95% of United Methodists are outsiders. Ouch.

Many other people can talk better about the specific issues that General Conference will consider. I suggest the official United Methodist website for one perspective and the Methodist Federation for Social Action for another. But I want to talk about a concept I’ve been hearing a lot as I educate myself about General Conference.

That is vital congregations.

Many of the dramatic restructuring proposals claim to encourage the growth of vital congregations. The logic is to let local congregations and annual conferences make their own decisions without so much bureaucratic oversight, and congregations will be able to do what they do best. Which is…well, I guess that differs parish to parish. Parishes that are shrinking and disappearing.

Well, shoot.

What makes a vital congregation? How can we possibly measure vitality? It’s the conundrum that large, quasi-federalist churches have struggled with for generations. Speaking as young person from what I’ll call the Millennial generation (I was 11 when we entered the 21^st century), it’s really, really hard to see vitality from the outside. And unlike past generations, when we see ethical and moral rot by people within the church, we have other places to go. My generation is awfully jaded and impatient, and we’re not afraid to leave if we smell a hint of hypocrisy.

However, because of that, when we find authentic community, where people are comfortable enough with themselves and each other that they willingly share their hurt and brokenness, we stay. When we can share our own doubts and suffering at the hands of supposedly Christian people and we get empathy in return, we stay. When we can share our ideas that seem so crazy and out-of-sync with tradition and get the opportunity to try it out, we will definitely stay. I might like it so much that I’ll even take off my cap during service because you asked me nicely.

This is vitality. The congregation not only praises God for how wonderfully she made the earth but also shares in the sharp pains of how we’ve messed that earth up. Vitality isn’t all smiles and confidence; it’s also tears and doubts. Vital congregations make space for that.

So great. How do get there? I argue that while any social change must occur at a grassroots level (i.e. local parishes), that space is shaped and limited by the grass-tops decisions (i.e. General Conference). In order to be truly vital, while congregations do the very, very hard work of self-reflection, they must also look outward for opportunities live out the revelations God gives them through tradition, scripture, reason, and personal experience. This is where agencies like the General Board of Global Ministries, the General Board of Church and Society, the General Board of Higher Education and Ministry, and other general boards and commissions have a very, very important place.

As United Methodists, while we seek authenticity in our communities, we need challenges. In community organizing, we call this agitation. Vital congregations will embrace these challenges, and outsiders will take notice. General Conference will shape how congregations embrace the challenges inside the parish and outside of it.

I pray that my sisters and brother who will be engagin “holy conferencing” next week also embrace these challenges.

At the Foot of the Cross: Our Fleshly Connection

Meanwhile, standing near the cross of Jesus were his mother, and his mother's sister, Mary the wife of Clopas, and Mary Magdalene. When Jesus saw his mother and the disciple whom he loved standing beside her, he said to his mother, "Woman, here is your son." Then he said to the disciple, "Here is your mother." And from that hour the disciple took her into his own home.

- John 19:25-27

"The Crucifixion" by El Greco

At the foot of the cross, Jesus wasn’t alone.

Yes, his dudes and bros, his lieutenants and committeemen, even the rock on whom Jesus would build his church, they all left Jesus. I guess they all figured that the movement couldn’t continue if they’re all dead or in prison. That could be good sense for movement building.

Except we know that not all of Jesus’ followers abandoned him. The people that the text identifies were some of Jesus’ most devoted disciples, the ones who accompanied Jesus even to the foot of the cross.

And Jesus recognized them.

As an organizer, I think what Jesus says to the last folks still with him is amazing. These words make my eyes widen, my mouth hang open, and keeps me in awed silence. For all the militancy and revolution that I like to find in the teachings of Jesus, these last instructions are anything but an action plan.

This isn’t a hyper-masculine climax where the epic hero shouts “FREEEEDOM!” in a voice that thunders through the hills and awakes the clans to bloody glory.

This is a much more nurturing, compassionate interaction. Like a mother to a child. Like a lover to a beloved. It is an intimate whisper, a whisper that draws one’s partner close.

Jesus, in his last teaching to his disciples who accompanied him to the very end, creates a space for life-giving relationship. I hear him invoking the cry of the ancient adam, the “groundling” which God created from the earth, “This at last is bone of my bone, flesh of my flesh,” the isha, my companion, my accompanier.

At the foot of the cross Jesus reminds us, even in the midst of torture, how we should see one another. A son. A mother. A sister. A brother. Born of the flesh wrought by God the Creator, whom we are to love above all else.

At the foot of the cross Jesus reminds us, even in the midst of great injustice, how we should care for one another, sustain one another, love one another.

At the foot of the cross we remember, even in the midst of the blood of Christ which is the blood of our Mother-Father God, we are connected by the labor pains of the second birth.

Let us respond to this final, intimate whisper as did the disciple whom Jesus loved. Let us take one another into our homes and into our lives and into our hearts.

Amen.