Resurrection and the Spirit.

Jesus' victory over death announces a turning point in the history of creation and God's dealings with humanity... The disciples rejoice in his new presence not only for his sake, but also because a new world is dawning for them in which poverty and death have been vanquished. [Brackley, 196]

Is it too early to think about resurrection?

Maybe. But maybe, in our Lenten disciplines, we need to prepare for resurrection as much as we need to prepare for crucifixion.

I recently heard a story about a Christian activist who had lived through some "troubled times" in history. Someone asked him how he kept going, how he kept living such a rich and faithful life in the face of it all. Without hesitation he said simply: "Because I know the end of the story."

Lent is not Easter, to be sure. And yet we might do well to remember that the path to the cross does not end, finally, with death, but with new life.

How might that clarify and deepen our Lenten journey in these final weeks?

I invite you to reflect with me on this question in these next few days.

Guide us, O God, as we move ever closer to the cross - and beyond. Amen.

Resurrection.

Where do we find hope today?

Part 5 invites readers to examine their experience in the light of Christ's victory over death, which signals the beginning of a new world (chapter 21, coming Monday).

Christ rises in those who live as he did; his Spirit in-spires them to liberating action (chapter 22, coming Tuesday).

The same Spirit enables us to find God in all things, working to bring about a new creation. God's self-gift moves us to respond with grateful love and service (chapter 23, coming Wednesday).

- Dean Brackley's introduction to the section titled "Resurrection" - our theme for the final week of our Lenten series

Blessed Are the Persecuted.

Since we are schooled to think that conflict is bad, we tend to avoid or suppress it. But defending what is right always brings conflict. (Brackley, 186)

Today, in lieu of a reflection, I offer simply this translation of the Beatitudes from Eugene Peterson's paraphrase of the Bible, The Message. It includes the famous line above and its surrounding verses, but put in a way that makes some sense to me - and, I hope, may be helpful as we consider what it means to be "blessed" and "persecuted" at the same time. It's a worthy thing to think about during this week of high conflict in our national politics.

+++

When Jesus saw his ministry drawing huge crowds, he climbed a hillside. Those who were apprenticed to him, the committed, climbed with him. Arriving at a quiet place, he sat down and taught his climbing companions. This is what he said:

"You're blessed when you're at the end of your rope. With less of you there is more of God and his rule.

"You're blessed when you feel you've lost what is most dear to you. Only then can you be embraced by the One most dear to you.

"You're blessed when you're content with just who you are—no more, no less. That's the moment you find yourselves proud owners of everything that can't be bought.

"You're blessed when you've worked up a good appetite for God. He's food and drink in the best meal you'll ever eat.

"You're blessed when you care. At the moment of being 'care-full,' you find yourselves cared for.

"You're blessed when you get your inside world—your mind and heart—put right. Then you can see God in the outside world.

"You're blessed when you can show people how to cooperate instead of compete or fight. That's when you discover who you really are, and your place in God's family.

"You're blessed when your commitment to God provokes persecution. The persecution drives you even deeper into God's kingdom.

Not only that—count yourselves blessed every time people put you down or throw you out or speak lies about you to discredit me. What it means is that the truth is too close for comfort and they are uncomfortable. You can be glad when that happens—give a cheer, even!—for though they don't like it, I do! And all heaven applauds. And know that you are in good company. My prophets and witnesses have always gotten into this kind of trouble."

+++

Ever-present God, help us to remember that you're present in the trouble, too. Amen.

The Solidarity of God.

In the section "Passion and Compassion," Dean Brackley writes:

The strongest obstacle to goodness is not brute force or cinder blocks but hearts that are cold and unmoved. Only a love that draws near in costly solidarity can transform that obstacle. The gospel announces that God has drawn near in just this way. (183)

Jesus... chose to suffer the consequences of sin. Like us, he suffered the legacy of sin, even to death. God did not send him to die in our stead as a scapegoat to placate the divine anger. The New Testament recasts traditional sacrificial language and transforms its meaning. When it says that Jesus died as a sacrifice for sin, that means that in him God has drawn near and joined humanity's procession, shouldering the consequences of our moral failings like the rest of us. (181)

In Jesus on the cross, divinity shines forth. To say that God was in Jesus on the cross should not so much change our idea of Jesus; it should change our idea of God. (184)

How do you think of Jesus on the cross?

Were you raised, like so many of us, on the idea of atonement, of Jesus paying a demanding God the price of our sins with his life?

How do you think about it now?

Brackley offers us one suggestion above. It's not a new one. But it still shakes me every time I encounter it, whether it's from a liberation theologian or a Holocaust survivor.

Maybe the best way to say more about it is with a story. I invite you today to click on over to a post from my other blog, "Adventures Across the Border." It describes one of the most powerful experiences of my life - and a story that describes, I think, part of what Jesus is doing on the cross.

Beyond that, I leave you with a song today. In a perfect world, this would be in our worship hymnal, recommended for Good Friday. Read through the lyrics, then click on the video at the end to hear it.

Bruce Springsteen, "Into the Fire," from The Rising (2002)

The sky was falling and streaked with blood
I heard you calling me then you disappeared into the dust
Up the stairs, into the fire
Up the stairs, into the fire
I need your kiss, but love and duty called you someplace higher
Somewhere up the stairs into the fire

May your strength give us strength
May your faith give us faith
May your hope give us hope
May your love give us love

May your strength give us strength
May your faith give us faith
May your hope give us hope
May your love give us love

You gave your love to see in fields of red and autumn brown
You gave your love to me and lay your young body down
Up the stairs, into the fire
Up the stairs, into the fire
I need you near but love and duty called you someplace higher
Somewhere up the stairs into the fire

May your strength give us strength
May your faith give us faith
May your hope give us hope
May your love give us love

May your strength give us strength
May your faith give us faith
May your hope give us hope
May your love give us love

May your strength give us strength
May your faith give us faith
May your hope give us hope
May your love give us love

It was dark, too dark to see, you held me in the light you gave
You lay your hand on me
Then walked into the darkness of your smoky grave
Somewhere up the stairs into the fire
Somewhere up the stairs into the fire
I need your kiss, but love and duty called you someplace higher
Somewhere up the stairs into the fire

May your strength give us strength
May your faith give us faith
May your hope give us hope
May your love give us love

May your strength give us strength
May your faith give us faith
May your hope give us hope
May your love give us love

May your strength give us strength
May your faith give us faith
May your hope give us hope
May your love give us love

May your strength give us strength
May your faith give us faith
May your hope give us hope
May your love give us love

May your love give us love

The Grace of Compassion.

We do not desire any more pain in the world. We simply want, and need, to share the pain that is there, in order to lighten the load for all of us. We want to be more and more a part of humanity's march, with its suffering, its hope, and its joy.

-Dean Brackley, from The Call to Discernment in Troubled Times (178)

This morning in adult forum we spent some time talking about grace and our experience of it in Holy Communion. None of us were quite sure how to define what we experience in Holy Communion. Most of us were not quite satisfied with "forgiveness" as a sufficient description. For the pastor and the intern, "grace" seemed like a better word, in part simply because it was a "bigger" word, with more space inside of it, capable of including lots of different blessings inside. We left with things more or less unresolved - though I think we did think through some important things together, all the same.

Our Prayer of the Day in worship this morning described addressed God as "God of compassion." That word - "compassion" - might be another word that fits inside grace, especially the grace that happens at Holy Communion.

We usually use "compassion" to mean something like "to care" - as in: She is compassionate; she cares for people.

But it literally means something even more specific. The Latin roots of "com" (with, or to share) and "passion" (an intense emotion, originally referring to suffering) lead us to a meaning that literally means "to suffer together with." To say someone is compassionate means that that person shares others' burdens.

Is this what Christ was doing, on his way to the cross? Is this what he invites us to do? Not to suffer, mind you, but to share in the burdens of others? And is this part of what God is doing to us when God gathers, and especially when God gathers us for the meal of Holy Communion, making us into a community - a body - that exists not just for its own sake but to share the burdens of others, that is, to be com-passionate? Does this happen, as Brackley suggests, so that the load might be lightened for all of us, and that we might be able to share in each other's suffering, hope, and joy?

If so, then Holy Communion - and this holy community - may well be more than we bargained for.

It would be all the more confirmation, I think, of the quote from Annie Dillard that Pastor Carol used in the March newsletter. Annie Dillard writes:

Does any-one have the foggiest idea what sort of power we so blithely invoke? Or, as I suspect, does no one believe a word of it? The churches are children playing on the floor with their chemistry sets, mixing up a batch of TNT to kill a Sunday morning. It is madness to wear ladies' straw hats and velvet hats to church; we should all be wearing crash helmets. Ushers should issue life preservers and signal flares; they should lash us to our pews. For the sleeping god may wake some day and take offense, or the waking god may draw us out to where we can never return. (Teaching a Stone to Talk, Harper & Row, 1982)

Draw us out, O Lord - wherever you might lead. Amen.

The Way of Truth and Life.

[In making wise decisions, we must give] due attention to the three poles of experience: the world around us, our inner life, and the cultural word about the world. That will lead us to conclude that discovering the truth and sound discernment depend, first, on facing reality, especially the reality of the victims; second, on personal transformation and discerning interior movements; and, third, on identifying with a community that can sustain an alternative vision and praxis. (Brackley, 160)

All this week we have been reading the section titled "Discerning and Deciding." In the quote above, Brackley shares what is perhaps the second most important lens of all for thinking through how we discern and decide: The "three poles of experience," or the three legs on which we sit to see the world.

1) "Facing reality, especially the reality of the victims." We see the world through the lens of the cross, as Luther did. This means seeing the world not only through the cross of Jesus but also through the crosses of today's victims.

2) "Personal transformation and discerning interior movements." We are reborn in baptism - a "baptism once begun and ever to be continued," as Luther put it. We are surprised again and again by the boundless creativity of God's Spirit who continues to make and remake us - as individuals and as communities - in the different seasons of our lives. Sometimes we find that we must take time to notice when this is happening within us.

3) "Identifying with a community that can sustain an alternative vision and praxis." So often this one is forgotten! Forgotten by us introverts, yes, and forgotten, too, by religion that is steeped in our culture of rugged individualism - with all the pros and cons that implies. Is this what church is for us?

If so, it can help us with the ongoing "discerning and deciding" in our lives. Listen as Brackley elaborates (167):

We can only escape from [unhealthy hyper-individualism] if we recognize our need for a moral community that can support and challenge us in our search for truth and the right thing to do. Not every community will do for this, only those that draw on a deep tradition of practical wisdom. That is what churches are for. What they should do for us is nourish an experience of transcendence, a shared [experience of reality, especially the reality of the victims], and an alternative vision; and help us sustain that alternative in a hostile environment and communicate it to others. The first Christians faced just this challenge: to conserve and transmit their experience of Jesus and his vision. The Christian church was the answer to that need.

May our churches continue to answer that need in our day.

Three Ways to Make Decisions.

Ignatius clearly gave the... method of consolations and desolations priority over reasoning...

However, soon after his death his interpreters began to react against the so-called alumbrados, or enlightened ones, mainly in Spain, a loosely-defined movement whose participants fancied themselves enlightened by the Holy Spirit. They appealed to immediate experience of God independently of church institutions.

In reaction, early interpreters of Ignatius emphasized the dangers of private revelations. The reaction not only stressed the safeguards of obedience to church authority (as Ignatius himself had), but also the preeminence of reason in discernment.

In this way, contrary to Ignatius's teaching, the rational method for the time of tranquility came to be considered a safer and more secure path than the second-time method based on affective movements. The preference for the way of reason over the way of affect became enshrined in the Jesuits' Official Directory of 1599, which thereafter guided the presentation of the Ignatian Exercises. (Brackley, 151)

In this chapter, Brackley lays out Ignatius' "three ways to make decisions." These "ways" or "times" amount roughly to times of certainty, times of great emotion, and times of careful reasoning. (This is a little oversimplified, but it will do for our purposes - do read Brackley's chapter if you'd like more detail!)

What might surprise us is that Ignatius considered the second time, the time of great emotion - or more precisely the time of consolation / desolation - to be an acceptable time of making decisions.

Let's be clear: Ignatius is also quick to counsel against rash and careless decisions. By allowing emotions to come into the picture, he is not endorsing "hotheaded" decision-making.

Neither, however, is he endorsing decision-making through icily pristine reasoning. Rather, he suggests that sometimes our emotions do mean something important. God is present in our emotions, too, and paying attention to them can help us notice what is life-giving and what is life-draining. I imagine this is true for both individuals and communities of faith.

Some part of me thinks this may not be so surprising for us in 2010. My sense is that in the last several generations we have begun a move beyond the Enlightenment, beyond the idea that reason is our road to personal and social perfection. Reason's child, technology, continues to re-make our world over and over, often with wondrous, life-serving results in the fields of health and communication. But we've also realized, in part from a series of tragic world events, that we need more than what reason can achieve to fully satisfy our lives.

It's no wonder, then, that our theology - which once left emotion out of the picture as soundly as any science lab - has begun to recover a sense of the holiness of what we feel. Sifting through our emotions can be a minefield, to be sure, but pretending that God isn't at all present in them is just as dangerous a game.

What do you think? Does God sometimes work through our emotions? And if so, what does it mean about how we should attend to those emotions?

More Rules for Discernment.

How do we decide about whether to participate in a hospital strike, or how to respond to homelessness, or whether to marry Ben, or to enter religious life or ministry? On what basis? By what criteria? In matters like these, in the wide-open space beyond moral minimums, we follow the Spirit. The Spirit guides by consolation, but not by consolation alone. Nor is consolation infallible. (Brackley, 142)

Do you have rules for making important decisions in your life?

I don't necessarily mean that you have them written down or delineated by subset - I imagine most of us don't. But perhaps, in the course of making decisions through different stages of your life, you've learned certain things, and you've tried to remember them, and you've tried to bring them to bear on the decisions you make today.

And then maybe, much to your chagrin, you've discovered that it doesn't always work.

Sometimes we do our best to think through an important decision, remembering everything we've learned and using all of the available data at hand, and yet: The choice we made still seemed to be the wrong one in the end.

In cases like these, the wisdom Ignatius offers us is this:

God our Creator continues to love us first. Christ continues to walk with us. And the Spirit continues to lead us on, further and further into God's project. We are justified by grace, held in the arms of an unfathomable love, even when we fall short.

And then, once we've re-grounded ourselves in that gospel, we might take another look at our "Rules for Discernment" - the things we've learned over time about what leads to wise decisions. We might pull those things out into the open, and take a look at them again. Maybe we'll notice something we missed the last time.

There's always more to notice, after all, in the holy gifts that are our lives.

Thanks be to God. Amen.

Life in the Spirit.

From Dean Brackley's The Call to Discernment in Troubled Times: New Perspectives on the Transformative Wisdom of Ignatius of Loyola (126):

How much time and income should the Harrises devote to the Coalition against Homelessness? Should Carmen marry Ben? What expressions of affection are appropriate at this stage of their relationship? Should Chris enter seminary or novitiate? Should our group practice civil disobedience to protest the war?

Making wise decisions is the most important skill in life. It requires sizing up situations and determining the best course of action. This is discernment, a hallmark of Ignatian spirituality. Over a lifetime, we learn this art well or poorly. According to Ignatius's Foundation, all our thoughts, words, and actions should be directed toward the single goal of God's Reign. In the best of cases, we struggle all our lives to integrate our complex selves into single-minded service. The Spirit transforms us, resolving inner contradictions and sharpening our moral perception. In the end, beyond techniques and criteria, discernment is a matter of character and sensitivity, of becoming the person we should be.

At our Lenten book discussion group last Thursday, we noted how Lutherans have often struggled with the idea of "discipleship." We Lutherans lift up our great heritage of justification by grace through faith - the good news that we are saved by God and not by our own works. This is truly worth celebrating!

But sometimes we Lutherans get stuck there. It isn't that Lutherans don't live lives of faith active in love: On the contrary, Lutherans often show great care for the neighbor in need. It's just that in our theology we historically haven't spent much time thinking through what comes after forgiveness. We have often been so concerned about getting the order wrong - God loves us first and then we justified to live lives of faith active in love - that we haven't spent much time thinking through what a life of faith active in love might look like. "Discernment?" we might think. "Wise decision-making? Isn't that a 'good work'? If so, it won't save me! Best to leave it alone."

Wise decision-making won't save us, it is true. God alone does that. God alone frees us. As Brackley, our Jesuit companion, writes: "We are forgiven before we clean up our act."

But as my Old Testament professor might say, God loves us, yes, but God still has expectations. We are forgiven, yes, but now that we are forgiven we do actually need to get around to cleaning up our act - and not just cleaning up my personal act, but cleaning up our act as a human race.

And in his chapter "Life in the Spirit," Brackley suggests that this "cleaning up our act" is actually far more - and far more fun - than scrubbing away the dirt of our sinfulness. He suggests that - being filled with God's free and freeing love as we are - our post-justification, post-forgiveness, post-Egypt (to borrow the story of the Israelites) lives are to be lives of creative generosity in sharing God's love with the whole world.

Thanks be to God, we are not left to try and figure out these lives of creative generosity on our own. The Spirit, that third person of our Triune God, guides us by fanning the flame of love in our hearts. Thinking through how we might follow that wild Spirit as it fans the flames to and fro will be the subject of our next few chapters.

Of course, as Brackley point out, in our lives of creative generosity, we will make lots of mistakes. We could let them get us down - but we shouldn't. Listen to how Brackley puts it (128) as he once again echoes Luther's call to "sin boldly":

Infinite needs and demands lead to frustration, guilt trips, Messiah complexes, and crash landings - unless we have internalized the good news that we are forgiven before we clean up our act and that love will someday, somehow, triumph because God is laboring through us and despite us. This good news, this gospel, transforms harsh demands into the sweet yet challenging requirements of love. But though our response will fall short daily, our hope and inner peace are secure thanks to the good news, independent of our performance or measurable success. As Anne Patrick says, we must allow high moral demands 'to play over a ground alto of God's healing and empowering and justice-making love for us all.'

May it ever be so. Amen.

Expanding the Soul.

Today's chapter is just the surprise some of us (myself emphatically included) need to hear.

In "Expanding the Soul," Brackley takes up the notion of an exaggerated humility that binds rather than frees. In fact it is not really humility at all, but fear masquerading as humility, a vice pretending to be a virtue. He writes (110-112):

Many of us clip our own wings, or let others clip them. We remain silent and inactive when bold speech and action are called for. We can end up like T.S. Eliot's Prufrock, measuring out our lives with coffee spoons... Self-doubt prevents many of us from taking up new challenges. We avoid risks for fear of failure...

This drives [us] to anguish and prevents [us] from doing good. While God often inspires good people to undertake bold initiatives, the hypersensitive are subject to paralyzing doubts that keep them from translating their inspirations into action. They spontaneously ask themselves questions like, "Am I really seeking my own glory?" "Will this cause scandal?" "Would it be safer to back off, or at least wait?" "Couldn't x, y, or z go wrong?"

Guilty as charged, your honor.

A different way is needed. And that way, Ignatius suggests is not to throw out the humility of solidarity, but rather to make it a truer humility - a richer and more authentic humility.

Brackley writes (123):

The challenges we confront ought to inspire humility - but the authentic humility that leads to bold, creative action.

A humility that leads not to paralyzing self-doubt but to the bold, creative action of humility-in-practice; a humility that leads not to the hollow belief that is really unbelief but to the bold, creative action that springs from faith in the sure promise of God's project.

Once again, Ignatius does not sound so far from his reforming contemporary, Martin Luther, who wrote:

If you are a preacher of mercy, do not preach an imaginary but the true mercy. If the mercy is true, you must therefore bear the true, not an imaginary sin. God does not save those who are only imaginary sinners. Be a sinner, and let your sins be strong (sin boldly), but let your trust in Christ be stronger, and rejoice in Christ who is the victor over sin, death, and the world. We will commit sins while we are here, for this life is not a place where justice resides. We, however, says Peter (2. Peter 3:13) are looking forward to a new heaven and a new earth where justice will reign.

To "sin boldly" is, I think a characteristic of what Brackley calls the "magnanimous person" (122):

The magnanimous person is, literally, a great-souled individual, an expansive spirit. With appropriate self-esteem and a realistic sense of their talents, great-hearted individuals think big. They refuse to bog down in trivia. Unperturbed by minor grievances, indifferent to the "trinkets" of wealth and status, they are spontaneously generous, even prodigal, the opposite of the stingy, shrunken soul.

Great-hearted communities think this Way, too.

They live a Way of Life that is life abundant, overflowing with expansive spirit, full of boldly creative action, all in the service of God's Project of manna and mercy for all, a Project promised in history and even now breaking into our world. They live the Way of Christ.

And that is something worth living for.

Humility and Solidarity.

Our master was despised; the servant ought not be honored.
The master was poor; the servant ought not be rich.
The master lived by the work of his hands; the servant ought not live off his own rent.
The master walked on foot; the servant ought not ride horseback.
The master surrounded himself with the little ones, the poor, the workers; the servant ought not associate with the great lords.
The master was calumniated; the servant ought not be praised.
The master was poorly dressed, poorly dressed, poorly sheltered; the servant ought not roam about well-dressed, well-fed, and well-established.
The master worked and tired himself; the servant ought not look for repose.
The master wished to appear small; the servant ought not wish to appear great.

- Charles de Foucauld

As Ignatius sees it, our reflections this week have all been preparations for discernment - the practice of making wise decisions, big and small. We contemplate, or think through:

1) God's Project (Reign) for the world, the great banquet where everyone has enough

2) The example of Jesus, through the stories that have been written about him

3) The fact that both of these require Downward Mobility, the freedom to go radically against the flow of way of the world.

Today Ignatius challenges us to not only be free for poverty, but to prefer it - and actually to pray for it, not for its own sake but because it was the way of Christ and it because it is the best soil for resisting the currents that flow against God's Project.

Once again the road Ignatius sets before us is rocky and fraught with danger. Are we to romanticize poverty?

I hope not.

It is true that some are called to make a vow of poverty: many Christian saints - beatified by Rome or not - made vows of poverty in practice in the service of some greater call. Not all of us are called to such radical lives as theirs - though, Ignatius wants to impress upon us, some of us are, and all of us should be ready for such a call, should it come. This is heavy stuff, and not easily digested.

But there is a call I think all of us might consider: the call to humility, and specifically humility-in-practice, which Brackley calls solidarity. He writes (106):

Humility flowers into solidarity, identifying with others to the point of sharing their suffering... This is the logic of love. Our heart goes out to those who suffer - the way Jesus was moved by the leper, the crowds, and the widow of Nain - and we long to join them. Comfort and respectability are good things. But it is preferable to walk with the poor than without them.

I find it especially interesting that we are still in the section called Something Worth Living For. This invitation to radical solidarity is not intended to be gloomy. It is not bad news. It is not the Law. It is the Gospel! It is the good news! God invites us out of self-centered individualism, out of endless striving for accomplishments that never fully satisfy, out of the ways of the dominant culture. God invites us into a world of community with more than enough for all, and with boundaries far beyond those we normally imagine. We are invited to be "downwardly mobile" because that is where the vast expanses of the global community are in the present age.

Good news... but not easy news!

Downward Mobility.

Upward mobility can mean economic security for refugees and their children; and escaping poverty is good. But it can turn into an escape from the poor themselves. Which is it? Which will it be in the long run? (Brackley, p. 92)

This is one of the most exciting chapters in the book - and one of the most challenging to understand.

Brackley uses the term "downward mobility" as a way of challenging the notion of "upward mobility" so celebrated in our culture. It's a provocative phrase, and worth thinking about.

But we should be careful not to be flip about upward mobility. There are reasons, after all, why it has been celebrated in our culture. For the last several generations, parents have hoped for bigger and better things for their children - and America has been a place where these bigger and better things can happen. (One need only note the migrants still risking their lives to cross our borders to see that the possibilities of America are still taken seriously.) Is this so wrong?

It's important to note the core of Brackley's argument. It is not that achievement and accomplishment and financial growth are bad in themselves (they are not, and Brackley mentions how they might serve real purpose). And it isn't even that achievement and accomplishment and financial growth can lead to some kind of individual sin, like pride or greed, though this could happen as well.

Rather, the problem is that as we move "up" we can find ourselves moving away from the people we leave behind. On a global level, this means leaving behind the majority of the world's population - the "Two-Thirds" world who are on the bottom level of the global economic pyramid we've constructed.

So what is the solution Brackley proposes?

The [way] of Christ today is "downward mobility." That means entering the world of the poor, assuming their cause, and to some degree, their condition. (100)

Again, without equivocating or softening Brackley's position, we need to be clear about what he's proposing. Brackley argues that the way of Christ is "downward mobility" but not because there is some inherent good about a downward direction or some inherent good about poverty.

Rather, he argues for movement in this direction because it is the direction toward being in community with the majority of the world's population. He calls this solidarity.

Living in solidarity - which Brackley identifies as a primary aspect of the Way of Christ - leaves plenty for our middle-class tribe to do. Listen to how Brackley puts it:

More than anything else, we need "new human beings" who identify with the poor majority of the planet (sometimes called the Two-Thirds World) - including people in rich countries to who know about trade, finance, and human rights law and can help address the complex causes of misery. (103)

Now here is something worth living for! The gifts that God has given to us, put to work in the service of the global community - in the service of God's project.

I'm privileged to see this happening all around me. St John United is hosting a fundraising brunch for Haiti this Sunday: the congregation's gifts of cooking and creativity in publicity are being put to work in the service of God's project. SJU's Sunday School students are raising money for schools in the Middle East through the Pennies for Peace project - the second time this year that SJU kids have put their talents to work in the service of solidarity with the global community. It's exciting to see God's Reign breaking in, even today, even among us!

What will our next steps be? How will we continue this work that has already begun? How will Christ lead us even further into God's project?

I can't wait to find out.

The Two Standards.

When I was in college, I used to listen to pre-seminary students endlessly debate the "theology of glory" vs. the "theology of the cross." Enough already, I thought. It all seemed like too much religious jargon.

Only later did I begin to discover what could be powerfully relevant about a "theology of the cross," a Lutheran emphasis that insists God meets us not primarily in our accomplishments but rather in our weakness, in our brokenness, in our pain - not in what we have but in what we lack.

Today Ignatius lifts up what Brackley calls "the Two Standards," by which he means something like "the two flags" of armies heading into battle. I'm not sure this kind of language is the most helpful, but the stark division between two options for a way of life may, as Brackley puts it, "throw a bright light over the rocky moral terrain" of our world.

"To be placed with the Son is to be placed where he said he would be found: among the hungry, the naked, the sick, and imprisoned (Matt 25:31-46). It is to opt with the poor. Only in this way will "thy Kingdom come," the Kingdom of life in abundance, new social relations, with no more poverty, hunger, or tears (cf. Luke 6:20-26)."

Ignatius challenges us to think about what this might mean.

Then he goes one step further: He challenges us to actually ask Christ to place us with him: among the hungry, the naked, the sick, and imprisoned - and not in some abstract way, but quite literally.

This is so far from the Call or Invitation of contemporary culture - the call toward wealth and social status - that the idea of "two battle flags" actually starts to make some sense. Are there actually two calls pulling us in two different directions?

I think Luther, shaped as he was by a theology of the cross, might say yes. If it is true that Christ meets us in the crosses and crucifixions of our world - anywhere there is poverty and persecution - then it seems that we must be prepared to head in that direction if we are to continue journeying with Jesus.

So, here's my question for you: Can we begin to practice this idea today?

Maybe there are ways in which we might choose the Way of Christ by living in solidarity with the poor today. Maybe there ways we already do this. Maybe there are ways we might take the next steps along the Way.

Spending some time thinking about what this might look like is the Spiritual Exercise to which Ignatius invites us today.