Who said anything about safe?

Apparently, everybody’s read this book but me. I’ve finally read through some of it, reminding me of the very things I was thinking and asking four years ago when I was struggling, questioning and seeking what life would look like outside of my parental unit’s decisions for my life. (you know, supposedly being “edumacated”…)

I remember people asking me what I’d do after college, and the only way I would respond was to live a life of community, simplicity, discipleship, and service. I was looking into a few discipleship programs to follow my four years of college… but those years didn’t quite turn out the way I expected it to (it never does, does it?)

So here are excerpts out of Shane Claiborne’s book that I never realized I was preaching to others…why life in the real world or the way of life as I knew it just did not make sense to me AT ALL, why I was so burnt out, reminded how love is the only answer, etc:

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One day we received a box of donations from one of the wealthy congregations. Written in marker on the cardboard box were the words, “For the homeless.” Excited, I opened it up, only to find the entire box filled with microwave popcorn. My first instinct was to laugh. We barely had electricity, much less a microwave, and popcorn wasn’t on the top of the needs list. My second instinct was to cry because of how far the church had become removed from the poor.

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I began to discover “the greater things.” It was not just miracles. I started to see that the miracles were an expression not so much of Jesus’ mighty power as of his love.

In fact, the power of miraculous spectacle was the temptation he faced in the desert- to turn stones to bread or to fling himself from the temple. But what has lasting significance were not the miracles themselves but Jesus’ love.

Jesus raised his friend Lazarus from the dead, and a few years later, Lazarus died again. Jesus healed the sick, but they eventually caught some other disease. He fed the thousands, and the next day they were hungry again. But we remember his love.

…I know miracles are real, story after story comes to mind. But beyond the miracles, what has lasting significance is love. We can do all sorts of miracles, but if we have not love, it is nothing.

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I had been doing a Bible study whose central premise was that rather than waiting around for God’s special plan for your life, you should just go find where God is at work and join in.

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Someday, perhaps we can even say those words that Ruth said to Naomi after years of partnership:

“Where you go I will go, and where you stay I will stay. Your people will be my people and your God my God. Where you die I will die, and there I will be buried.” (Ruth 1:16-17)

And that’s when things get messy. When people begin moving beyond charity and toward justice and solidarity with the poor and oppressed, as Jesus did, they get in trouble. Once we are actually friends with folks in struggle, we start to ask why people are poor, which is never as popular as giving to charity.

One of my friends has a shirt marked with the words of late Catholic bishop Dom Helder Camara:

“When I fed the hungry, they called me a saint. When I asked why people are hungry, they called me a communist.”

Charity wins awards and applause, but joining the poor gets you killed. People do not get crucified for charity. People are crucified for living out a love that disrupts the social order, that calls forth a new world. People are not crucified for helping poor people. People are crucified for joining them.

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Sometimes people call those of us in our community radical. As I said before, if by radical we mean “root,” I think it is precisely the right word for what we are trying to do - get down to the roots of what it means to be Christian disciples. Most of the time, though, I think that if what we are doing seems radical, then that says more about the apathy of Western Christianity than about the true nature of our discipleship. And this is why “radical” has to be coupled with “ordinary.” Our way of life was typical in the days of the early Jesus movement.

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Honestly, the way of life we have chose often seems more natural than the alternative. The alternative- moving out and living in the suburbs - seems terribly sacrificial (or painfully empty). What must it be like not to have block parties or not to actually know the people around us?

There are times when I have been very frustrated with wealthy folks for hoarding their stuff. But now I know enough rich folks to know the loneliness that is all too familiar to many of them. I read a study comparing the health of a society with its economics, and one of the things it revealed is that wealthy countries like ours have the highest rates of depression, suicide, and loneliness.

We are the richest and most miserable people in the world. I feel sorry that so many of us have settled for a lonely world of independence and riches when we could all experience the fullness of life in community and interdependence.

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If our lives are easy, we must be doing something wrong. Mother Teresa also used to say,

“Following Jesus is simple, but not easy. Love until it hurts, and then love more.”

Dorothy Day of the Catholic worker movement understood this well. She said,

“Love is a harsh and dreadful thing to ask of us, but it is the only answer.”

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One of the best things communities like ours do is carve out a space for people to discern and redefine their vocations. Vocation comes from the same root as voice, denoting the hearing of a divine call. Beyond knowing that God has a purpose for our lives, most of us (especially non-Catholics) spend little energy seeking out vocation, especially in light of how the needs and sufferings of our neighbors might inform how we use our gifts for divine purposes.

There are plenty of people who are miserable in their jobs, for they have not listened to God’s call. And I would add there are many Christians who are not fulfilled in their spiritual lives because they have no sense of their gifts or purpose, and they just run to the mission field to save souls rather than transform lives and communities using their gifts and those of the people they live among. Both lead to emptiness and burnout.

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We have never really considered ourselves missionaries to the poor. Jesus was not simply a missionary to the poor. He was poor. Jesus was crucified not for helping poor people but for joining them. That is the Jesus we follow.

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A pastor who has been a long time supporter and friend of the Simple Way said,

“I used to think you all were missionaries bringing the gospel to your neighborhood, but now I see that it is in your neighborhood that you have learned the gospel, and that you are actually missionaries to the church.”