Messiah of the misfits, marginalized, & minjung

Jesus of the People, by Janet McKenzie,
1999,  http://www.janetmckenzie.com/

When I was in college I did what I thought were some pretty intense Bible studies with my campus fellowship. After two weeks in seminary, maaaybe those Bible studies don’t seem quite as intense as they seemed when I was a sophomore at dear Bucknell, tucked away in the central Pennsylvania hills. But hey, times change. The Bible study that InterVarsity pushed hardest was a semester-long class on the first half of the Gospel of Mark. I did that with some of my closest friends, somehow interpreting Jesus’ cross-country trips as a pirate in a Winnebago. Studying the Bible does weird things to you, I guess. But while I can’t say that any of my classes for credit struck me and challenged me the way Mark study did. In fact, I enjoyed that study so much that I spent the week after classes ended that year studying the second half of Mark. That, too, was an amazing experience where I saw God’s Spirit whip around the room and inspire us to raise $5,000 to make sure one of my best friends could go back to school the next semester. It was awesome.

But looking back, there was something that could have been better about those Bible studies. See, we finished Mark 1, as we called the first-half Bible study, with the first half of today’s Gospel reading. I’m sure that ending the semester that way was intentional. Peter declares that Jesus is the Messiah, so after a semester of studying an account about Jesus, who do we say Jesus is? (Hint: we do have a preferred answer.)

The problem is that I don’t think the story should be cut up that way because Peter only gives an incomplete answer. Peter answers Jesus question, “Who do you say that I am?” with “You are the Messiah,” so let’s dig into what exactly that means. Messiah, or the Greek title Christ, means “anointed one”, and there actually several people in the Old Testament were “anointed ones”, usually with monarchic and militarist implications. During the 1^st century Palestine under Roman occupation, a lot of folks were looking for such a messiah. You know, someone who would take names and kick arse.

So maybe when someone answers with Peter’s words to Jesus’ question, we should then ask, whose Messiah?

 Moving forward in the story, Jesus does start to define what kind of messiah he’ll be—one who will suffer, be rejected by the political bosses, die along the way, but then rise again after three days, so don’t worry. So hold up, where’s the glory to that? Peter says something along those lines, with maybe some fisherman’s preferred speech, and probably reminds Jesus what a messiah actually does. Except Jesus doesn’t need that. Jesus immediately tells Peter whose messiah that is—namely Satan’s.

Btw (pronounced bee-tee-dubs for short), that’s the second time Satan shows up in Mark’s Gospel. The first time was Jesus temptation in the wilderness. Connection, anyone?

So if Jesus’ way of doing Messiah isn’t about kicking Gentile oppressors’ arse and plates heaped with steaming glory, it must be something less appealing. Or at least at first. But take a look at who Jesus talks to. It’s not the apostles; it’s the crowd. In Greek the word is “ochlos”.  Korean liberation theologian Ahn Byung-Mu noted that this word is found throughout Mark’s Gospel referring to crowds, but especially when Jesus is curing sick and unclean people and generally caring for the folks that the Pharisees marginalized with their interpretation of Jewish law. For Korean liberation theologians, these folks are represented by the minjung, a marginalized group in that country, and their theology is named after them.

So whose Messiah is Jesus? Well, it kinda sounds like the misfits, marginalized, and left-behind folks’ Messiah, the ochlos’ Messiah. And when Jesus talks about suffering and how his followers must also suffer, maybe it’s because those folks are already suffering. I’m Methodist, and I love me some John Wesley, but I’ve really connected with Martin Luther’s concept of the theology of the cross. Jesus Christ, the Messiah, chose the path of the poor, the desperate, even the criminal, and he suffered like they suffer. Like they continue to suffer. And when Jesus warns against being ashamed of the Messiah, I must believe that Jesus is also warning against being ashamed the ochlos, the poor, desperate masses that so want to free of their situation.

However, there is a second reason why Jesus tells the crowd that his followers must expect suffering, specifically from persecution. See, Jesus had this practice of not only hanging out with the ochlos, but he also brought them into the center of the stage with him. Unclean women take precedence over the child of a local political boss. Lame folks distract from the sabbath laws. And Jesus parties with the loan shark whom he just called into his inner circle. Being with the ochlos is fine and good with the ruling class as long as the invisible curtains of caste remains, but when Jesus tear through that curtain…well, he ends up suffering, rejected by the ruling class, and eventually executed.

And Jesus calls us, his followers, to do the same.

I am truly proud and humbled that I am in a place that takes solidarity with the ochlos seriously. I like to call First Trinity the Church of the Misfits and Dissidents, and it is really unique. Last week at Hildegard Rastutin’s beautiful funeral we talked about how and why she loved this place. It’s so open and welcoming. Open enough that even why I had a conversation with Hildegard about religion, her response was lending me her copy of the Book of Mormon, because, you know, it’s important to learn about other people’s traditions. Yes, this is the Church of the Misfits and Dissidents, and it’s great.

However, let’s take our solidarity with the ochlos of Bridgeport and Chicago even further. Let’s follow in Jesus example and tear down that invisible sheet between our ruling class and our ochlos. It’s a wall made of numbers, and it separates revenue and expenses on the ledger. It’s a wall that separates the sick from needed health care, unemployed workers from jobs, students from a good education, neighbors from a 31^st Street bus. Dear friends, tearing down that wall is as much the work of the Messiah as clothing the naked for a day. And it is what will bring us up close and personal with the persecution of the Messiah.

So I ask you the same question my campus minister asked my class at the end of my grand study of Mark: who do you think Jesus is? But if you answer like Peter, “the Messiah,” be ready for me to ask a follow-up question: whose Messiah is this Jesus? I pray that you, as part of the ochlos, the minjung, this group of despised, misfit, and marginalized folks, answer “This Jesus is my Messiah.”

Upstream or downstream: a reflection from a kayak

The central Pennsylvania sky had cleared, and the sun was shining over the green ridges into the river. I paddled my kayak towards the western shore of the Susquehanna with my sister a few yards behind me. Herons and egrets took off as we approached them, and the nearby train tracks rumbled with coal-laden cars dieseling their way south. I had forgotten how beautiful this country is and how much it is a part of me.

I think it’s easy to forget our connection with the land when one lives in a large metropolitan area. I know that’s been true for me after living two years on the South Side of Chicago. The experience of going to sleep with the sound of crickets and frogs around hardly compares with the voices, car horns, and sirens that are the normal city night’s soundtrack.

My three days in central Pennsylvania were part of a longer vacation that was otherwise urban. I had started with a conference in Arlington, Virginia where we celebrated over 60 years of young adults in mission in the United Methodist Church. Next I moved to Philadelphia where several friends and family members have settled, and where soft pretzels lie down with the steak sandwiches (come, Lord Jesus). Then central PA, and now Pittsburgh, where I sip yerba mate with my cousin in the shadow of Pitt’s Cathedral of Learning (don’t judge).

However, the question that seems to keep surfacing is one about the future. I begin seminary at Chicago Theological Seminary in September, and I can’t even imagine what kind of adventures wait for me there. But the question is less about seminary and more about where God is calling me in ministry. I’m talking about geographical location. John Wesley famously declared that “the world is my parish” in response to mounting pressure for him to take his father’s place at the rectory in Epworth, England, but every vocation occurs in a geographical and cultural context.

I have recently seen the stark contract between two contexts that I have called home. One is urban Chicago, a wildly diverse and dynamic setting, a setting which has been my home for the last two years and will be my home for the next three years as well. People come and go like a Lake Michigan breeze. The other area is central Pennsylvania, where rolling mountain ridges seem to stand guard against sudden, unexpected changes, and generation after generation maintain traditions that run deeper than any social media thread.

I’ve met people who have left central Pennsylvania and never plan to come back, and I’ve met others who did indeed return after a time of personal growth. I can see how my experience in community organizing and interfaith work could easily fit in one conference, but I also see room for growth in the other. I’ve gone to two United Methodist annual conferences in two years, I’ve seen two very different styles for ecclesiastic culture, but now both of those conferences are welcoming new leadership in the episcopacy. Where does that leave me?

I make some connections with my short foray into kayaking in the shallow Susquehanna waters. I had tried so hard to make my way upstream, but I found that I couldn’t pass a set of rapids no matter how hard I tried. However, by going downstream just a bit, I managed to continue upstream by starting up the Juniata River, which joins the Susquehanna at my hometown. God has called me to address root problems that plague our varied communities, and my experiences in Chicago have given me tools to fight those problems. However, I don’t need to always fight my way upstream through rapids that push me backwards and might even overturn me if I’m not careful. God is making a path for me that may require to me go downstream before I start to address root problems further upstream. How far downstream will I need to go, and where might that other river take me? I don’t know, but I have faith that God will provide a way to the source of life that will quench the thirst of a dry land. I just need to keep the nose of my kayak straight and paddle hard.

The confluence of the Susquehanna and Juniata rivers at Duncannon, Pennsylvania.

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.