Start a revolution if you want…

This post concerns a “conversation” that has been happening within the church for a while called variously emerging church, missional church, emergent and maybe some others. I have been involved in it for a number of years and therefore feel passionate about these issues. If this seems too esoteric and tangential to a theology of food please feel free to skip this post.

Third, I bet you’re not disappointed with Shane Claiborne. That’s because, to this point, Shane has made the very noble decision to live a chaste life, and he has committed his whole self to an irresistible revolution. Meanwhile, most of the founders of emergent are raising children and paying mortgages and coaching YMCA t-ball. Martin Luther King didn’t coach t-ball; neither did Ghandi. Start a revolution if you want, but that’s not a price that I’m willing to pay.

The above is part of Tony Jones’ response to a growing chorus of voices saying they are disappointed with Emergent Village. Just to be clear this is about the organization, not the amorphous movement some call “emerging church” which cannot be attributed to Tony (or anyone else really). Tony has many good and important points to make in response to his critics. In fact, I agree with pretty much everything else he says. However, this paragraph made my jaw hit the floor.

After reading through the comments, it seems that the main issue people have with this comparison to Shane and his book is that it makes them feel guilty and not everyone is called to his radical lifestyle. I have previously taken on this issue in my post Relocation and Reorientation. I don’t think Shane or others in the new monastic movement would claim that all faithful Christians must follow their example. However, I will reiterate that the witness of those living out radical lifestyles (families too by the way) in following Christ both 1) criticizes the complacency and cultural accommodation of the rest of the church and 2) invites us into new ways of being the church in the world.

Far from creating a singular model, these radicals both inspire and challenge us where we are to live out our faith in more radical and subversive ways. Some commenters pointed out that they shouldn’t feel guilty for their lifestyles. I agree that what we do where we are at matters more than what someone says we should be doing.

However, my missions professor was fond of pointing out that “when everything is missions, nothing is missions.” The call to follow Jesus is a radical one and it should question our consumptive lifestyles and the way we allow the culture to organize our lives (including mortgages and T-ball). You can follow Jesus anywhere, but following Jesus means something particular. It does not condone our lifestyles or our culture. It calls us to a new way of being and living that is an alternative vision for the world. This includes a better balance between family and ministry, but it does not mean less radical.

If mortgages and T-ball are really what’s holding us back from embodying the kingdom, then those things need to be sacrificed. We must be willing to pay that price at least.

Too try and tie it back into the purpose of this blog, many young people and families are willing to trade their suburban lives for the farm life. Some have said that we will need 50 million new farmers to create a local/regional food system in North America. We will need people to buy that food and do other things. So, not everyone will become farmers, but many many more must if we are to move forward. The same could be said of the church. Many more will need to live out radical lives like Shane and others to bring the church into balance.

What can the rest of us do where we are to support those with such a call? What can we do to incorporate more radical practices into our lives where we’re at?

Transforming the Body

“We are transforming the body of the world into our bodies and minds.” Michael Pollan The Omnivore’s Dilemma

“God is not a vending machine” (seen on a church sign in Lampasas, TX)

I saw/heard both of these quotes on a trip a while back and they’ve been hanging out in my brain since then. Pollan has perhaps given us the most succinct of eucharistic theologies in this little statement, and the church sign unpacks it through a cultural phenomenon in relation to our food.

In the process of eating, we take in the body of the world, the dirt, water, air and sun contributing to grow plants, some of which are eaten by animals. In turn we consume the plants and animals to nourish our bodies. We are at the top of the food chain so the cycle ends with us. There is no one to benefit from our consumption. Because we are at the top it is our natural obligation to give back in order to keep the thing going.

The Eucharist is a sacred ritual in which we take the body and blood of Christ into ourselves in order that we might be transformed into his likeness. The form that this ritual takes is a meal of bread and wine. These are the products of grain and fruit (Notice that the Eucharist is vegetarian. Probably only for practical reasons, but nonetheless, interesting). The consumption of Christ is also a consumption of the body of the world. The incarnation seems to insure this. Consuming the body and blood connects us to the earth and each other. How could we make this sacred ritual mean this again?

One way, I think, is to use real bread and real wine. While I would never limit the Spirit to a particular form of Eucharist, I do think that the act of making bread and wine, or whatever the elements are, connects us to the ritual and its meaning in a powerful way. If we use wafers or hermetically sealed cups, then we should include in our prayer all of the lives and materials that it took to produce that convenient meal.

The idea of the all-in-one hermetically sealed communion package brings us to the idea that “God is not a vending machine.” The necessity of this sign indicates that some people treat God as a vending machine, a deity who dispenses blessing and spiritual wisdom on command. Doesn’t it also signify a connection between our consumer lifestyles and our notion of God. Could it be that the way we live our lives impacts our theology? The reduction of communion to a consumer activity in which the elements of the ritual are essentially expendable indicates something about our understanding of the God behind this ritual.

If we understood what we did both when we eat and when we commune, we would think twice about many of the ways we partake of meals and the Lord’s Supper.

Already questions and objections are entering my mind, but I want to let you voice them. What are your thoughts? Should Eucharist be SOLE (Sustainable Organic Local Ethical)? What about contextualization? What is appropriate for communion in various cultures including ours? Where do you draw lines?

The Slow Church Movement

If there isn’t a movement yet there should be. Real Live Preacher has an excellent post on High Calling Blogs on Slow Church. Watch out! This may be the new “missional.” Move over emerging/ent here comes “slow church.” Well… they said they were coming. They’ll be here any minute. They’re just a little… slow.

This is an idea whose time has come. Just as the Slow Food movement stands against the homogenization and domination of our food by corporate interests, slow church might just be the antidote we need to the gospel of consumerism. Here’s a taste from RLP’s post:

We tend to attract wounded, introverted sorts who need to sit in the woods for a while. Maybe for 2 or 3 years. The average time it takes to get a project completed at Covenant Baptist Church is three years.

You can find high-achieving churches on almost every street corner these days. And God bless those churches too, because there are a lot of things that need to be done in our world. But there also should be slow churches, churches where you can stop and catch your breath.

If you are thinking we don’t get anything done, nothing could be further from the truth. We do things. We just do them slowly. With time as no burden or constraint, we find we can do a lot with our bare hands.

So you see, things get done here. But they are slow things. They are things with natural patinas that can only grow with time. Things are settled into the ground and beautiful.

I want to be settled into the ground and beautiful too.

Mission in a Consumer Culture

Jonny Baker recently posted about an upcoming event called mission in consumer culture on “Thursday 11 June in Oxford exploring mission in a consumer culture with pete ward and then [Jonny Baker] and cathy ross responding.” I read Pete Ward’s Liquid Church a long time ago and have struggled ever since with his suggestion that we contextualize the gospel to a consumer culture. Here are the questions they are considering:

How should Mission relate to a consumer culture?

Some like to argue that the Christian faith as an ‘alternative way’ in an alien market driven world. So the Church is a community of those who resist the prevailing consumerist trend.

But is this the only possible approach? Is it possible that Mission in the West requires us to seek to express or contextualise faith in consumer culture?

This half day will explore the possibilities and limitations of Mission as contextualisation in a consumer culture.

Thoughts on any of these? I would love to hear how this goes and what the results of the conversation are.

You Have Heard It Said

Whoever destroys anything that could be useful to others breaks the law of bal tashchit, “Do not waste.”

Babylonian Talmud, Kodashim 32a (second or third century)

The thing that struck me in the quote was the definition of waste, “destroying anything that could be useful to others.” We tend to think of waste primarily as what we put in the trash and what fills our landfills. This definition, however, makes waste relational. In fact thinking about waste relationally makes it much more difficult to do so. If I have to think about how what I am doing impacts others it becomes much more difficult to act harmfully.

The converse is also true. What makes it so easy for us to waste so much is that we choose not to think about it relationally. Consumption is a linear progression from producers to consumers to landfills. The only problem is where to put all the garbage. We know that much of our electronic waste ends up dumped in Africa where poor people sift through it for valuable materials while being exposed to toxic chemicals. Your gadgets don’t just disappear when they become obsolete.

This seems to be one of the things consumerism deadens us to. We are not attached to our things because we’re always obsessed with the newest gadgets. We don’t seem concerned or aware with where the old obsolete gadgets go. It is as if we believe they simply disappear into some old Apple ][ heaven somewhere (or maybe Windows hell…I digress). But they don’t disappear. They go somewhere and they affect someone else for good or bad.

Rather than just thinking about where our waste goes and who it affects, this quote also reminds us that living in community with others, knowing our neighbors, means that more of our “stuff” can find a home where it is needed or can be shared. We can also reduce the amount of things we “need” if we hold more in common with our brothers and sisters. How many lawn mowers would one neighborhood need if they were shared. Less than one (or two) per household I’m sure.

The kingdom of God is other-centered. My guess is that garbage men and sanitation engineers will have to find new jobs in the city of God.

This is an ongoing series exploring Teachings on Creation Through the Ages. Quotes are taken from the article of that name in The Green Bible.