Claiborne Again

The trouble with being back at work and also having the kind of week that I've had with something on every single night is that you don't get time to blog....!

I finished 'Jesus for President' last week (see post below) and my very first inclination was to reread it - then my next inclination was to suggest to my son that he read it. He is doing Politics at university and he is also a Christian and I thought that it would be a book which would encourage him to think differently about his faith and his view of God. On reflection I think what I wanted was for him to be stirred up by such a radical and potentially life-changing vision of Christ and what Christians are called into. I'm still kind of mulling on it and haven't started to re-read it yet.

The book blew me away and I think I'm still kind of in shock - I thought it would be a tinsy bit challenging about Christian 'lifestyles' or something but it's so much more than that. It sets out to explore God's agenda and Christ's life, death and resurrection politically, economically, socially, nationally, environmentally, spiritually... I was surprised at something so politically radical coming from the States - (Sorry if my surprise surprises you - it's just my experience / understanding that America is ultra conservative - seriously in no-one else's universe would Barak Obama be considered anything other than a social democrat - but socialist - I think not!)

The book is a challenge fundamentally about how we live, what we think is important and what our priorities and focus need to be. I heard Claiborne say in an interview, that growing up in the Bible Belt in America taught him a lot about what to believe but not a lot about how he should behave. It's that sense that you can be a Christian and yet live in a way that's no different to anyone else - Christianity doesn't really effect the fundamentals, but Claiborne is setting out an alternative radical Christian agenda which would, if it was lived, probably have a major impact on the world. It's G K Chesterton's adage that 'Christianity has not been tried and found wanting; it has been found difficult and not tried.'

"It's a shame that a few conservative evangelicals have a monopoly on the word conversion. Some of us shiver at the word. But conversion means to change, to alter, to make something look different than it did before..We need conversion in the best sense of the word - people who are marked by the renewing of their minds and imaginations, who no longer conform to the pattern that is destroying our world. Otherwise we have only believers, not converts. And believers are a dime a dozen nowadays. What the world needs is people who believe so much in another world that they cannot help but enact it..Then we will start to see some true conversions vans that run on veggie oil instead of diesel. Then we will see some converted homes that run on renewable energy, power their laundry machines with stationary bicycles and flush their toilets with dirty sink water. Then tears will be converted to laughter as people make their machine guns into saxophones or police officers use their clubs to play baseball."

I'm reminded of a great piece of liturgy from Abbotsford Church in Clydebank called I Believe

I believe in a Miracle that made stars dance and galaxies pirouette

I believe in a Desire that gave birth to wonder and cast it in a human form

I believe in a Relationship that radiates with life: full life, total life, eternal life

I believe in Creation

I believe in Love

I believe that destruction ends

That a broken creation rebirths

That harvests and land will be shared

I believe in a Promise that, with a baby's cry, pushed himself into the world

I believe in a Truth that crushed sin and celebrates its freedom with new life

I believe in a Reality where love conquers untruth, injustice and death

I believe in Incarnation

I believe in Love

I believe that a man who was meant to die, refused

That a body that was still and broken, danced

That a voice that was silenced, laughed

I believe in a Vision that has noisy cafeterias in churches

and children with muddy feet running through Parliament, turning white papers

into tickertape parades, asylum bills into party invitations and bombs into flower bulbs

I believe in an Artist that paints the world in its true colours

I believe in a Mother that cannot help but respond to her child's cry

I believe in Spirit

I believe in Love

I believe that wall's that are permanent, fall

That racist systems, die

That terrorists in Northern Ireland, talk

I believe

And I believe

In Love

Copyright: R Hamilton 1999

I might very well come back and post more on Shane, because Yes - he has become part of that small but very elite group of people I've given my life to including Brian McLaren and David Crowder (well you just have to). D - if you're reading this - you know what I mean.

At Last!

Well finally the Shane Claiborne book I ordered came - think it had been sold out. Had ordered it a few weeks ago and after that realised that he'd done 3 podcasts with Tony Campolo - he's ex-Eastern University where he'd studied with Tony but I hadn't realised this at the time. Definitely worth checking out either through iTunes or online - check out this link http://www.videorocket.com/TONYCAMPOLO/1667223 - this is the first part of a 3 part interview.

So I'm about half way through the book and think it's very challenging / stimulating - lots of stuff to think about and mull over - just what I like. It gives a different perspective on the gospels understanding them from within the political context of the time. He also overviews the purposes of God from a radical political perspective - God never wanted the Israelites to have kings, he didn't want a temple - he wanted justice for the widow, the fatherless and the stranger, he wanted a peculiar people who would live differently and radically in the midst of other nations and demonstrate the kind of God he is - the God of jubliee where debt was cancelled and property returned, where there was no massive gulf between the rich and poor, where the hungry were fed, the naked clothed, the captive released. A radical Kingdom.

One of the things I've just been reading is about the curtain in the temple being torn from top to bottom at the point that Jesus dies. Shane says

"And when Christ died this curtain [big as a basketball court, as thick as your hand, taking 300 priests to move it] ripped open. We are left with the unmistakeable image that God tore open the temple to set all the sacred things free ...... Jesus offered healing and forgiveness outside the curtain. The holy of holies could not contain God "the wildest being in existence" would not be domesticated. The cross busted God out of the temple and religion, and brings God out into the streets..."

I remember speaking about the Exile many years ago in the church and asking the question - why did the exiles rebuild the temple? It still puzzles me - but perhaps it was for that time when Jesus died and God was able to finally make the statement that the days of the temple were over and he could now get back on the streets through his church. I think the challenge to me and to the church is that we don't try to put God back into the safety of the temple but we allow him, through us, to be walking about in the world doing the thing he always intended to do - establish a radical Kingdom. God is a lot easier to handle when we reduce him to our thoughts and imaginations, our rituals and our small services but he's the "wildest being in existence". Think I'd rather experience him than the god of my imagination.

I saw some T-shirts recently which said - "The church has left the building" - now there is a challenge.

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