Over the course of Abbey's Mission Year, she has required curriculum discussions with her team. My friend and I are reading as many of the books as possible because they have been carefully chosen to address issues that our under-resourced communities face: racism, injustice, poverty, subpar educational options, and more.
Welcoming Justice by Charles Marsh and John Perkins grabbed me from the beginning simply with its subtitle, "God's Movement Toward Beloved Community". Community...it's what every dissatisfied Christian I encounter is longing for. It's what God created us to crave. God the Father, Jesus the Son and the Holy Spirit live in community with one another in a way that we cannot even put words to. Thus, it is hard-wired into each and every one of us.
What we wealthier Christians often don't realize is that our impoverished neighbors we condescend to "help" have much to teach us about living in community. One of the first people Abbey encountered in her new Third Ward neighborhood of Houston was a grandmotherly woman who assured her that she would look out for them and they should look out for her.
John Perkins was on the front lines of the 1960s Civil Rights Movement. Reading this book (co-written with Charles Marsh) during the recent outcry coming from places like Ferguson and New York City, helped remind me exactly whom should be at the forefront leading the charge against injustice, inequality and demeaning of our fellow man. "God's movement is the most powerful source of social change in our society." (p. 23)
Marsh reflects on where the Civil Rights Movement went wrong, lost momentum and left unfinished the work it had begun. "Removed from its home in the church, the work of building beloved community withered and died." (p. 25)
"It is unlikely that anyone has ever read Nietzsche's The Antichrist or Derrida's Dissemination and been inspired to open a soup kitchen. ...Still, my research has shown me that only as long as the Civil Rights movement remained anchored in the church--in the energies, convictions and images of the biblical narrative and the worshiping community--did the movement have a vision." (Philip Yancey, Foreword, p. 13)
One of the most profound quotes to me is when Marsh refers to Martin Luther King Jr.'s prophetic vision for the future of America: "King resolved that America's only hope lay in repentance--in a repentance that took the form of willingness to be a servant nation to the poor of the earth. Sadly, King would not live to say much more." (p. 27)
Is it too much to infer that our deeply-rooted issues of reconciliation vs. racism and forgiveness vs. condemnation could be addressed if we would handle more wisely the God-given resources, blessings and abundance that undoubtedly have been given to our nation? Almost 50 years after the assassination of MLK Jr., we have never been farther from becoming "a servant nation to the poor of the earth". In fact, our spending and misallocation of natural and man-made wealth keeps more people in the world bound in the chains of slavery and unfathomable poverty now than when slavery was actually legal in our land.
"Perkins showed that the activist and organizer will only cease to patronize the poor when they live in community with them and approach them in a spirit of compassion and the willingness to serve. "Living involvement," Perkins said, "turns poor people from statistics into our friends." (p. 29)
This is what I see happening as people move outside their comfort and safety zones and serve with Tent Day and allow God to wreck their lives. We begin to smell like the sheep that we desire to lead to the Shepherd, not because they are foul-odoured, but because we begin to recognize the fragrant offering that rises from 'loving our neighbor as we love ourselves.' (see Matthew 22:36-40)
"Patronization is a worry only when outsiders fail to discern the gifts of the poor--their loyalty, fragility, creativity and holiness--and deny the importance of black leadership. When this happens, outsiders are quick to impose their own plans on the poor and slow to see the wisdom in the local story."
Wednesday afternoon I sat across the table from my friend who this week has been immersed in our Homeless Hosting ministry at First Church. As we sipped our hot tea on that very cold afternoon, she told me stories of the men, and I could see how God is growing her. 'I think some of them are angels,' she said. Since the author of Hebrews told us that in showing hospitality to strangers, in this case homeless men, we unknowingly entertain angels...she may be right.
What I do know is that loving on, giving to, and growing with our under-resourced neighbors will draw us closer to seeing those "angels" than in any other place.
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