If I saw the face of God and Love, would I change?

I was driving home sometime last week, muddling thru how CPE had pushed me that day, thinking about some of the discrimination I hold dear, when the new Tracy Chapman song (see complete lyrics below) came on - and called me out to see the face of God & love:

How bad, how good does it need to get?

How many losses, how much regret?

What chain reaction would cause an effect?

Makes you turn around, makes you try to explain,

Makes you forgive and forget, makes you change?

 
If you knew that you would be alone,

Knowing right, being wrong,

Would you change? Would you change?

I carry with me an invisible package of unearned assets that I can count on cashing in each day – privileges that I have access to because of my anatomy, my gender, my skin color, my sexual orientation, my bank account, even my height. As much as I want to “let in” people who do not have these trinkets of privilege that I received unearned, the reality is that there is never enough letting in or setting aside. Instead, it’s long past time for people like me to stop taking – stop taking the places that people have, stop taking the land people tend, stop taking the voices of indigenous people, stop taking shiny things that seem to be made just for me.

It’s long past time to CHANGE – the type of change that costs, the type of change that hurts and is raw and seems like it is unraveling everything that we stand on, all the privilege we feel we earned and are now entitled to. In the church (emerging and otherwise), I wonder if our calling is to try stretch to another form of discriminate: the process by which two stimuli differing in some aspect are responded to differently. When I step into a group where I am in the minority – I get angry. When I get called out for being insensitive or unaware – I get angry. When I can not play by the roles of buddies helping buddies and business as usual – I get angry. In the midst of all that angry, mixed in with disorientation, mixed in with a feeling of “but look how much I’ve given already” – there, in the middle of that, is the sweet taste of a Kingdom kiss. A taste of the stew that is God’s creation, the mongrel that is the faith that unites us, the prism that provides even more glimpses of the God in whose image we live and move and have our being.

As I fight the anger and hold true to this Kingdom kiss,  I guess I am hoping I can learn to opt for more hospitality and solidarity, particularly when people on all "sides" are so raw and vulnerable.

Let me first mumble or type a bit about hospitality. In my life, there is a passage in Paul's letter that I come back to again and again is 2 Cor 1: 3-7:

 

 3All praise to the God and Father of our Master, Jesus the Messiah! Father of all mercy! God of all healing counsel! 4He comes alongside us when we go through hard times, and before you know it, he brings us alongside someone else who is going through hard times so that we can be there for that person just as God was there for us. 5We have plenty of hard times that come from following the Messiah, but no more so than the good times of his healing comfort--we get a full measure of that, too.

 

 6When we suffer for Jesus, it works out for your healing and salvation. If we are treated well, given a helping hand and encouraging word, that also works to your benefit, spurring you on, face forward, unflinching. Your hard times are also our hard times. 7When we see that you're just as willing to endure the hard times as to enjoy the good times, we know you're going to make it, no doubt about it.

Nouwen, in his wonderful book The Wounded Healer, lays out some insights that have proven quite helpful for me as I yearn towards the hospitality of the Reign of God:

1. Free and friendly space - creating physical, emotional, and spiritual space for the newcomer to join us

2. Stranger becomes a guest - in that atmosphere of hospitality, the stranger is treated like a guest and potential friend

3. Guest protected - hospitality requires that we offer protection or "sanctuary" to the guest

4. Host gives gifts - the host welcomes the guest by providing the best gifts possible

5. Guest gives gifts - in that environment of hospitality, the guest often reciprocates and gives gifts to the host, too

6. Poverty of heart and mind - in order for us as hosts to receive the "gifts" that our guests bring, we need an attitude which Nouwen calls "poverty of heart and mind" - in other words, we have to believe that we don 't know it all and have not experienced it all, but we are receptive to learn from newcomers

7. All guests are important, gifted - in the environment of hospitality, we discover that all guests are important and gifts, even those we might least suspect

8. Acceptance, not hostility - Nouwen reminds us that hospitality is based upon acceptance, not hostility, especially the kinds of subtle hostility which makes fun of newcomers or puts the newcomer into embarrassing situations

Hospitality is the virtue which allows us to break through the narrowness of our own fears and to open our houses to the stranger, with the intuition that salvation comes to us in the form of a tired traveler. Hospitality makes anxious disciples into powerful witnesses, makes suspicious owners into generous givers, and makes closed-minded sectarians into interested recipients of new ideas and insights. But it has become very difficult for us today to fully understand the implications of hospitality. Like the Semitic nomads, we live in a desert with many lonely travelers who are looking for a moment of peace, for a fresh drink and for a sign of encouragement so that they can continue their mysterious search for freedom.

the church, hell most of our lovely country and ginormous planet - we are all that lonely traveler on our mysterious search for freedom. Again, as people living & blogging out loud, we house a shitload (that is a technical term) of people's hunger for solidarity, for affinity with something that smells and sounds and looks a bit more like the Kingdom than the place they sense they are in right. That solidarity - that unity based on common goals, interests, and sympathies among a group's members - can be hard when people seem to be slapping on you all around - whether that slapping is from someone who wrote a scathing book or a church that fired you or a spouse who hit you or a theology that oppresses you.

God, in the body of each other, calls us out to solidarity,  to engage each  person shoulder-to-shoulder with the stranger who has become our savior (can an Episcopalian get away with that ?). We have the chance to make the world just a bit safer, along the lines of Christina Baldwin's excellent "Calling the Circle" which Chris Corrigan pointed to recently:

No group can prove itself "safe" by the definition of one member, it can only prove itself healthy and responsive to the needs of different people over time.

It’s long past time for me to lay my package – my burden – down and reach out my hands to the stranger beside me – stretching for the safety of the Kingdom of God.

 

CHANGE

 
If you knew that you would die today,

If you saw the face of God and Love,

Would you change? Would you change?

 
If you knew that love can break your heart,

When you're down so low you cannot fall,

Would you change? Would you change?

 
How bad, how good does it need to get?

How many losses, how much regret?

What chain reaction would cause an effect?

Makes you turn around, makes you try to explain,

Makes you forgive and forget, makes you change?

 
If you knew that you would be alone,

Knowing right, being wrong,

Would you change? Would you change?

 
If you knew that you would find a truth,

That brings up pain that can't be soothed,

Would you change? Would you change?

 
How bad, how good does it need to get?

How many losses, how much regret?

What chain reaction would cause an effect?

Makes you turn around, makes you try to explain,

Makes you forgive and forget, makes you change?

Makes you change

 
Are you so upright you can't be bent?

If it comes to blows are you sure you won't be crawling?

If not for the good, why risk falling?

 If everything you think you know,

Makes your life unbearable,

Would you change? Would you change?

 
If you'd broken every rule and vow

And hard times come to bring you down,

Would you change? Would you change?

 
If you knew that you would die today,

If you saw the face of God and Love,

Would you change? Would you change?

Would you change? Would you change?

 
If you saw the face of God and Love,

If you saw the face of God and Love,

Would you change? Would you change?

 

© Tracy Chapman

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