I really like Rob Bell's books - I think he's a great communicator, he's honest, he's challenging and he's scholarly. If you haven't read anything by him before I would definitely recommend him. I've read "Velvet Elvis - Repainting the Christian Faith" and am currently reading "Drops Like Stars: A Few Thoughts on Creativity and Suffering".
In this book he focuses on "empire", charting the whole history of Israel in relation to both the empires they came up against and the empire they became; and how this corrupted what God had originally intended through the covenant; the consequences and the legacy of that; and the current application of "empire" as it relates to the church. His approach is scholarly - his books usually bring a great deal of the historical and cultural background into play giving a much clearer understanding of context and place, and I always get some insight which I never noticed before. All good. His books however are very very accessible - not a daunting read at all. I found it all really interesting but this book also packs a punch and the chapter entitled "Swollen-Bellied Black Babies" really challenges and brings the whole issue to a head. I'm going to quote from it, although I'm a bit afraid that it might diminish the impact of what he says - because he builds his picture and constructs his challenge in a really great way then socks it to you;
"Imagine the average youth group in the average church on the average Sunday. Imagine visiting this youth group and having the pastor say to you "I just can't get my kids interested in Jesus. Do you have any suggestions?"
How do you respond?
To begin with the church has a youth group. This is a brand new idea in church history. A luxury. All the babies and older folks and the men and the women and widows and students aren't in the one room, but they've gone to separate rooms?
And there are resources for this? People and organisational structures and a budget? Let's imagine that in this case, this pastor, this youth pastor, is paid a salary for his or her work. A church with enough resources to pay someone to oversee the students. Once again, this is brand new, almost unheard of in most of the rest of the churches in the world, and in church history, a brand new invention.
This salary can be paid and this building can be built because people in the congregation have surplus. They have fed themselves and their children and bought clothes and houses, and now, after these expenses, there is still money available. And this money is given in an act of generosity to the church, which disperses it to various places, among them the bank account of the pastor.
In many, if not most of the churches in the world, immediate needs simply don't allow for such luxuries - too many people are hungry, too many don't have a roof, too many are sick - and so any surplus is spent immediately on the basic needs staring them in the face, people dying here, right now, today.
But this particular church is blessed, and we should be clear about this - it is blessing, it is good. It is fortunate that this particular church doesn't have those issues. This church has enough resources to hire a pastor who had the resources to get training to gather these students in the student room to teach them about the way of Jesus. Many Christians around the world would simply stand in awe of that kind of blessing.
And the students in this church, these are good kids. They are from families who just want to see their kids become good Christians.
Imagine just how much is available to them. They have more at their fingertips than any generation in the history of the world - more information, more entertainment, more ideas, more ways to kill time, more options.
Many of them own more than one pair of shoes.
There are even some among them who have eaten at least one meal every day of their lives.
So we are talking about a minuscule minority of kids in the world
At the exit off the highway near their church is a Best Buy and a Chilli's and a Circuit City and a McDonald's and a Wal-Mart and Bed, Bath and Beyond much like the other towns in their state and in their country. The music they listen to is distributed by one of 5 major corporations, which also own the movie studios that create the movies they watch, which are also connected to the corporations that create the food they eat and the commercials they watch, which also have significant ties to the clothes they wear and the cell phones they own and the ring tones on their cell phones.....
So each week they gather to hear a talk from the pastor.
The pastor tells them about the Jesus revolution.
About Jesus resisting the system.
About the blood of the cross.
About many Christians getting arrested.
About Jesus having dinner with prostitutes and tax collectors.
About people sharing their possessions.
About Jesus telling a man to sell everything.
About the uniqueness of their story in the larger story of redemption.
How do children of the empire understand the Saviour who was killed by an empire?
How does a 12 year old who has never had hunger pangs that lasted more than an hour understand a story about a 12 year old providing fish and bread for thousands of chronically hungry people?
How do kids who are surrounded by more abundance than in any other generation in the history of humanity take seriously a Messiah who said "I have been anointed to preach good news to the poor?"
How do they fathom that half the world is too poor to feed it's kids when their church just spent 2 years raising money to build an addition to their building?
They gather, they sing, they hear a talk from the pastor, and then they get back in the car with their parents and they go home; the garage door opens up, the car goes in, and the garage door goes down.
This is the revolution?
This is what Jesus had in mind?
And so the youth pastor turns to you and says, again, " I just can't get my students engaged with Jesus. Do you have any suggestions?"
What do you say?
How do you respond?
Your only hope, of course, would be to remind him or her that there is blood on the doorposts of the universe"
He goes onto talk about the Passover and the Eucharist
"What if Jesus ...was talking about our actually enacting what the ritual is all about over and over, again and again, year after year? What if the "do this" he primarily meant wasn't the ritual he was leading his disciples through at that moment. What if the "do this" was his whole way of life?...the "do this"part is our lives. Opening ourselves up to the mystery of resurrection, open for the liberation of others, allowing our bodies to be broken and our blood poured out, discovering our Eucharist. Listening. And going.
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