Subversive

I like posting when I first wake, whatever the time, because my best ideas seem to come when I’ve had rest, either sleep, or a long walk. But at this point the 3 am posting may come and go, either because I’m too tired now to write then, or because the initial urgency has worn off—I’m not sure. Either way, I write as I can. One thing I want to do is add pieces of something else I’m working on. I guess most of us want to finish a work and hand it over polished and complete, like Athena sprung full-grown and armored, straight out of a split in her father Zeus’ mighty skull (giving him, yes, a splitting headache), but I’m realizing that it’s the blog format that got me writing in the first place, where every day I have to present just one complete idea at a time, a full essay, each post. And although the blog has a theme, which you may or may not have caught by now (I’m not going to analyze anything for you), I don’t have to know quite where it’s going yet. It’s an adventure, this finding out together. The Spanish song says, “You make the path by walking.”

This might help me on my other project, which is supposed to be a simple compilation of a course I give about helping people start a church in a culture where the church has never stepped foot before. I actually have a transcript of the course, sent by my friend

Monica, which should make this task easy. Yet I have not looked at it. Instead, I started writing from memory, which seemed a more interesting task. Yes, it’s still about helping people respond to Jesus in a place where this has never happened purposefully before. But it also seems to be about how human cultures respond when God’s culture shows up.

When Jesus walked around on earth, he insisted that God’s culture had already shown up right among them. He claimed it couldn’t be seen, wasn’t obvious, was like a wind in the trees, but that it made a difference from the inside out and would eventually turn the world upside down.  Jesus was the world’s greatest Subversive. He lasted three years before the government (both governments over him, in fact) shut him down. Well, tried to. We carry the DNA of that divine culture that God promised through Abraham, sketched as from a blueprint through Moses, set to music through David, purged through prophets and exile, and lived out himself, perfectly, through Jesus. Now we are the world’s Subversives, with the Spirit of Revolution coursing through our veins. We are the light of the world, the salt of the earth, the ambassadors of God. We have a job to do.

After Jesus conquered Death, he stood on a mountain and gave us his job. He said, “I’ve won. Not even death can stop me now. So go, and as you go, bring people into the family of God, the culture of God, the kingdom of God, my new kingdom. Bring them in from all the cultures of the earth. Breathe my new community-life into them through baptism, and teach them the family culture. And don’t worry, I’ll be there with you, getting the job done through you, until the very end of time. I WILL NEVER GIVE UP.” (Subversives don’t, you know. Give up. Especially not when they’re GOD.) Then he rose up in the air and disappeared, leaving us all open-mouthed and hungry. Clouds, move away! Let him come back!

So here we are, trying to catch up to this man, this guy, this…god. Trying to love him. Trying to obey him. Trying to know him, to catch the nuances of his words in those texts we have, that he never wrote, but his friends did. Texts that are copies of copies, translations of translations, printings of printings, yet still they move us to the core of our being. Those words. That live and open a window on his soul, and so turn our world upside down.

And we carry our passion for this man everywhere we go. Into grocery store lines, and to the dinner table with our kids, and onto the highway behind crazy drivers, and into the chemo lounge where the tiny lady in front of us is trying to tell us she is having a heart attack. And we fail. We fail. We hide his soul from people with our bumbling. And we forget. And we aim, and we miss, in the loving and forgiving, and being humble, and being unselfish, and being One that would transform our world. People are dying for causes all over the world, and here we are, sitting on the greatest one of them all, and we fail. Sigh.

But… But.

A subversive just doesn’t give up. Especially when the Subversive is God. He’s got this scenario covered. He does! And we pull each other up from the ground, and we coach each other, and it takes all our breath and skill and perseverance to keep going, but He’s put his DNA in us, all of us, put his Spirit of Revolution right in our lungs and pores and brain cells, and…

That’s the story, isn’t it?