Finding Momentum

I’m wrestling a lot these days with the idea of Jus­tice and what it looks like to be a Christian–and a human–in the midst of it.

This week, the interns and I have been at the Not for Sale Acad­emy receiv­ing train­ing on human traf­fick­ing before we head out to the Philip­pines in April. I’m feel­ing a lot of heav­i­ness, hear­ing sto­ries about peo­ple held cap­tive under another’s power.

A few things I’ve been chew­ing on:

• The per­ver­sion of mas­culin­ity, a fas­ci­na­tion (and inse­cu­rity) with power, con­trol & ego ver­sus the cre­ated Ideal: pro­tec­tive, dis­ci­plined, self-sacrificing, Christlike.
• I’m ner­vous about enter­ing dark­ness; the thought of walk­ing a red-light dis­trict scares me. Can I han­dle it? Also: thoughts on con­tin­ual prayer as we walk through the shad­ows. We need to pray to survive.
• I’m glad I’m going with this group of guys.
• It’s okay to feel pain. I’m won­der­ing if I even want to be iden­ti­fied with this move­ment because of the heav­i­ness sur­round­ing it. I’m real­iz­ing that maybe the pain of the world is what God wants us to feel–to grieve along­side the bro­ken and the pow­er­less and to be sad­dened by the injus­tice in the world.
• On the other side, I’m thank­ful that our God is a God of vengeance and jus­tice. He promises to repay for evil. That is very. com­fort­ing. Hon­estly, I’m not sure how I would deal with the bro­ken­ness with­out an Absolute, a Good framework.
• But hon­estly, I mostly want to turn and go back to life as usual and pre­tend like I haven’t looked into the void.
• “Don’t you see?” (I’m imag­in­ing the voice of Tim Keller here). “Jesus Christ suf­fered the ulti­mate injus­tice so that we can be justified–and so that the world can know Jus­tice.” The Gospel is that the jus­tice that was to be exacted on the mur­derer, the pimp, the politi­cian, the sin­gle mother, the CEO, the check­out clerk and me… was placed on Jesus. Augh. Grace. Bitterness-melting, soul-lifting, hope-restoring Grace.
• This is a sexy move­ment. Call+Response was about rock stars. The t-shirts are fash­ion­able. We talk about entre­pre­neur­ial ven­tures and new busi­ness par­a­digms. Peo­ple I meet are well-put together. But would I still be out here if this were a move­ment to end home­less­ness? How about adop­tion?  I wres­tle with the ques­tion about whether it’s about me want­ing to be iden­ti­fied as a hip, socially-aware Chris­t­ian, or if I’m actu­ally lov­ing peo­ple and mov­ing out from there.

Tonight my small group sim­ply picked up trash around our Lake Mer­ritt neigh­bor­hood. But I was talk­ing with Tam­mie and Justin about how it should be the case that a neigh­bor­hood should be bet­ter off because Chris­tians live there.

It is uncom­fort­able and we are get­ting ner­vous with the onset of dark­ness. We say hello to a woman at a street cor­ner who merely mum­bles back. Lazily, a police heli­copter hov­ers in the skies.

I remem­ber you most for your light-heartedness. I remem­ber I used to play with you Sun­days at Camp­bell and see you laugh­ing, backpedal­ing from one side to another, sink­ing (most) your jumpers. The uptempo cut, a light-footed jumper, pick­ing your way through lane traf­fic, and you’d be crack­ing another joke at Joe’s expense. In between games, you’d sit on the far bleach­ers and talk shop with the other HK dads.

Some­times I catch myself these days think­ing of you; mis­cel­la­neous mem­o­ries of you teach­ing Sun­day school to a crowd of rowdy fifth graders, or how you’d say some­thing affec­tion­ate in a fatherly way to Joe to his embar­rass­ment every time we showed up at your house to hang out. Though I didn’t know you well Mr. Tang, this much is true: things aren’t the same with­out you.

An info­graphic for Free­dom Sun­day at Regen­er­a­tion. Down­load as PDF.

the hope, the hope

Soon comes spring; and chil­dren will sigh in the rhodo­den­dron light. Forty days, the land groaned under the bur­den of frost and dust. I think to myself that were we to drink the ashen cal­en­dar days, we could not bear the sur­prise of heart-sick laugh­ter, the light­ness best expe­ri­enced with oth­ers; a choked-up kind of glee that pounces sud­denly with­out expla­na­tion. Does a bird think to itself, thankgodi’malivethankgodi’malive? I have a sus­pi­cion the chil­dren know; they have watched and waited for the light. Soon we, too, shall awaken.

Tonight, we watched a video in Stephen Min­istry that left me moved and feel­ing heavy at the same time. Dr. Diane Lang­berg spoke a mes­sage about the real­ity of bro­ken­ness and suf­fer­ing in our lives and the need for com­pas­sion­ate Chris­tians to sit with the hurt­ing and min­is­ter with presence.

I’ve been think­ing about human dig­nity, suf­fer­ing, human­ity, real-ness… a lot of swirling thoughts in my head. What does it mean that we live in the suf­fer­ing of the “not-yet” and the real­ity of the “already“ness of the king­dom? I’m headed to the Philip­pines in less than three months prepar­ing myself to face the real­i­ties of the sex trade and… I sense some fear in myself I’m try­ing to stuff away. What if I can’t han­dle the darkness?

Suf­fer­ing has a con­ta­gious qual­ity about it, and that’s why we avoid it. I fear being drawn in to people’s pain. I can eas­ily wear a mask that dis­plays a con­cern about jus­tice with a cap­i­tal J, as if I were noble and proud and com­pas­sion­ate. But between you and me, I fear com­pas­sion. I fear empa­thy and much rather pre­fer self-preservation.

Look­ing back, a lot of my life has been played in a role, idol­iz­ing per­fec­tion, a good out­ward image, wear­ing a mask, and cov­er­ing my weak­nesses. Per­sonal pain, thank God, smashed a lot of my masks and is help­ing me recover from my notions of being lik­able, com­pe­tent, pow­er­ful, attractive.

In Isa­iah 61, we hear about God’s promise to redeem the bro­ken­ness of the world through Jesus and his even­tual com­ing. The Gospel moves to bring “good news to the poor”, “bind up the bro­ken­hearted”, and pro­vide “beauty for ashes.” But embed­ded deeper into the pas­sage is a promise of the “day of vengeance of our God”–that makes us squirm a lit­tle bit. But the more I think about this, I real­ize I am happy that our God is just, fierce, venge­ful, Good. “Our God is capa­ble to redeem suf­fer­ing,” Dr. Lang­berg said. And even more than that, our God him­self suf­fered at the hands of men like me and you.

What do we speak to the unfath­omable hor­rors of a girl who is sold into sex slav­ery, the despair of a woman who is abused by her hus­band, the self-hatred of the boy molested by his uncle, the lone­li­ness of the middle-aged man still feel­ing the rejec­tion of middle-school? We as com­pas­sion­ate humans are called into the strangely attrac­tive, “divine voca­tion of suf­fer­ing.” What does that mean? I want to know.

Thanks for your gen­er­ous dona­tions. We raised $1140 for IJM!

We’re all hold­ing hands on the street. Bear on my left, a stocky, griz­zled Fil­ipino dude wear­ing a hard expres­sion under squint­ing eyes. Pan­cho on my right, a wiry black man with a thin face and a black “OAKLAND” beanie with big, gothic let­ter­ing. Cece is between the men, fin­ish­ing a prayer: “And keep us alllll”–she draws out the word in her Native-American accent–“safe from the Devil!”

Amens all around.

Cece is direct, and I like that about her. She’ll show up at the door and ask for a cou­ple bucks for bus fare, or maybe a hot meal for the evening. No BS about your place burn­ing to the ground, or need­ing travel fare to visit your newly-discovered rel­a­tives in Tuscon.

She reminds me of a bird, her beaked nose giv­ing rise to sleepy eyes encased with gold wire-rimmed glasses. She waves her head about when she speaks, side-to-side like a pigeon’s. You can see it par­tic­u­larly when she’s off on one of her ram­bling episodes, going off about the weather, or about her Christ­mas, or the long bus route to Rich­mond, where she and her son Lam­oine used to live in a shel­ter. Tonight–“I got two kids with me” — I am sur­prised to dis­cover they are a lit­tle older.

Bear and Pan­cho, as far as I can tell, are Cece’s friends, mid-twenties men dressed in black, hands in pock­ets and (I think) look­ing dan­ger­ous. I heat the food and find the three of them are wait­ing on the rail­ing off to the side of our front entrance, where church­go­ers are war­ily exit­ing the evening ser­vice. I drop off the food before Cece, who along with Pan­cho begin rifling through the contents.

Pan­cho slaps my hand in greet­ing and imme­di­ately informs me he used to sleep on the steps out here. “You’ve seen me around.” Come to think about it, he does seem familiar.

“Sheee-yit” Bear exclaims with a smirk, “Can I tell you a story? Some spir­its live out here.”

evening­time, it is bit­terly cold, he wakes to the sen­sa­tion of being lifted and dragged. upward, upward he floats. he is flail­ing, some­one, some­thing has snatched him by the leg and he is now ten, twenty, thirty feet in the air (up by the tower, he ges­tures up over­head). he is let down and on his leg are fin­ger marks, scratches, blood.

“I ain’t sleep­ing here no more.” He stares out into the park­ing lot, a blank expres­sion on his face. Bear has found another place to stay by the McDon­alds on 17th.

“Yeah right, you can believe a lotta things,” Pan­cho exclaims as he digs through a mac­a­roni plate with his fin­gers. “You was just crazy.”

“I believe that,” I tell them. “That stuff hap­pens.” Bear gives me a wor­ried look, which turns to confusion.

Cece inter­jects, “the Devil is REAL. He come to get me in my dreams.”

she is a teenaged girl, though raised in a native amer­i­can church out on 98th ave (her uncle was a priest) she left the Great Spirit to live the wild life, and often­times in her dreams she sees a fig­ure, dark, red eyes, hov­er­ing. it is often hard to breathe and she has to try with all her strength to whis­per the name of jesus, jesus, jesus. these days, the devil is after her nephew who presses a knife into her hands and tells her with a fear­ful smile: “you’ll need it, moms.”

“I believe that too,” I say, and Cece smiles, look­ing around, satisfied.

Pan­cho knocks me on the fore­arm and chuck­les, ges­tur­ing to Bear and Cece. “Lis­ten, I think the Devil ain’t what we see in the movies with the horns and maybe the pitch­fork. He’s dif­fer­ent.” He doesn’t elaborate.

“Yeah, that shit’s real man, I ain’t never com­ing out here again.” Bear interjects.

“The Devil is REAL. He come to me in my DREAMS!” Cece has gone off ram­bling again, her voice whiny and raspy and full of trem­bling fear. Her eyes dart about as her head bobs and her voice shrinks.

“We don’t gotta be afraid when we got God on our side.” Pan­cho finishes.

We talk about Jesus. It’s crazy, like a lit­tle church service.

Pan­cho: “You know, I think Jesus beat the devil by going to the cross we don’t gotta be afraid no more.”

Me: “I think that the name of Jesus is pow­er­ful and even the demons have got to sub­mit to his name. I’ve seen stuff like this happen.”

Bear: “For real?”

Pan­cho: “Oh yeah.”

Cece is still rambling.

Me: “For real. You need to call on Jesus next time that stuff happens.”

Bear: “Lis­ten man, can we have a prayer? I could use a prayer tonight.”

Cece qui­ets down and nods her head.

With­out a word, every­body extends a hand. Bear starts the prayer (“Um I don’t know how to do this man”), Cece fin­ishes us off (“Aaaaa-man!”). And amen.

Ideas I’m toy­ing with:

• There is grace to be human, mess up and be accepted still.
• There is for­give­ness to be extended to humans who mess up.
• There is free­dom to say what’s on your mind and be authentic.
• There is just so much more free­dom in gen­eral than I real­ize. I don’t have to wear a mask.
• Being assertive means at all times, I have the right to choose how I feel and how I act out of that.
• If I mean my no’s, then my yeses mean so much more.
• The Gospel is real. It is pow­er­ful. It is what I/we/this world need(s).

At about 10AM this morn­ing in the mid­dle of Albert’s ser­mon, Mrs. Hu bursts into the sanc­tu­ary and I hear a flurry of hur­ried mur­mur­ing behind me and the flut­ter of a hun­dred heads turn­ing. “Some­one call 911!”

Mrs. Hu, wife of Pas­tor Jack Hu of the Chi­nese con­gre­ga­tion we share our church with, was robbed at knife­point this morn­ing in our park­ing lot. A young man cor­nered her as she was get­ting out of the car and threat­ened her for her purse.

What the hell? Some­one would rob a middle-aged lady on a Sun­day morn­ing in front of our church in broad daylight?

Pas­tor Jack later on that morn­ing greets me warmly as he usu­ally does with a warm, two-handed hand­shake. His hands are soft: a minister’s hands.

“Andrew,” (he addresses me with grand­fa­therly affec­tion), “Oak­land needs Jesus.”

Eigh­teen years ago, Pas­tor Jack is lead­ing a prayer meet­ing in the chapel when a man runs in, grabs him and holds a knife up to his head.

“It’s crazy,” Howard, an old-timer at our church tells me later. “That man robbed every­one in that prayer meet­ing while they knelt on the ground.”

Today, Mrs. Hu’s hands are bleed­ing, and Pas­tor Hu is hold­ing onto mine.

“I don’t have any money, but I have the Gospel,” Pas­tor Jack tells the man with the knife held to his head. I imag­ine that his eyes are bright and his hands are warm, even as they are held against his back.

Eigh­teen years later, Pas­tor Jack’s fam­ily and his aging Mandarin-speaking con­gre­ga­tion are still here in Oak­land, a city they still believe needs Jesus. They are a con­gre­ga­tion that believes in stay­ing rather than flee­ing. They are Chi­nese believ­ers who live out Gospel renewal, leav­ing a gen­er­a­tional legacy that I am proud to call my own.