Lent is a season of spiritual pilgrimage, discovery, identity, enlightenment. The proposed lectionary text for this coming Sunday is the story of Nicodemus. Found in John 3:1-17, it tells of an encounter at night when one who is looking for the light of God comes clandestinely to find Jesus. In a conversation looking for illumination and truth, he receives an answer that is both paradoxical and ironic. To know God and live for God one has to be born again, or born from on-high. It’s a double entendre in the language, a word play, which hints at the mystery of being reborn through resurrection.
Faith is not about following or joining a club, but about a new identity. It’s both new and old, a continuing and a perfecting of who and how we are in the world. One of the challenges though is seeing, claiming, or moving into that new identity while living in the same world. This week my thought is to present the life stories of some who’ve found their identity by being born again, or born from on high, by faith in Christ. Not as a comparison, or goal to aspire to, but as stories that can illumine and nurture our own.
Shane Clairborne is a late 30 something American follower of Jesus who is quite well known these days. He is an activist and author who is a leading figure in the New Monasticism movement (which is a movement of trying to reframe and live out the teachings of Jesus through communal living tweaked to our 21st century context). Shane is one of the founding members of The Simple Way, one such community, located in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
He, among many others, has been a recent force for making radical statements about the teachings of Jesus – by actually doing them: committing to the poor, challenging our established political and economic powers, naming idolatry hidden in our culture, loving the Church so that it might become more of what she is called to be in the world.
How do you struggle to live out what Jesus taught, said and did? How do you – how do we (as a community) need to be more courageously creative to live what we believe both in and out of the church?
Here are some relevant excerpts of his writings:
We do need to be born again, since Jesus said that to a guy named Nicodemus. But if you tell me I have to be born again to enter the Kingdom of God, I can tell you that you have to sell everything you have and give it to the poor, because Jesus said that to one guy, too. But I guess that’s why God invented highlighters, so we can highlight the parts we like and ignore the rest. (The Irresistible Revolution)
The history of the church has been largely a history of “believers” refusing to believe in the way of the crucified Nazarene and instead giving in to the very temptations he resisted–power, relevancy, spectacle. (Jesus for President)
This is what Jesus had in mind: folks coming together, forming close-knit communities and meeting each other’s needs– no kings, no major welfare systems, no presidents necessary. His is a theology and practice for the people of God, not a set of suggestions for empire. (Jesus for President)
Liturgy and worship were never meant to be confined to the cathedrals and sanctuaries. Liturgy at its best can be performed like a circus or theater – making the Gospel visible as a witness to the world around us. (The Irresistible Revolution)
Only Jesus would be crazy enough to suggest that if you want to become the greatest, you should become the least. Only Jesus would declare God’s blessing on the po0r rather than on the rich and would insist that it’s not enough to just love your friends. I just began to wonder if anybody still believed Jesus meant those things he said. (The Irresistible Revolution)
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 the 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 living out of 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.
The more I get to know Jesus, the more trouble he seems to get me into.
Links for learning more, or engaging his example both as an individual and participant in the community of faith.
The Simple Way Community