Be The Church

Yesterday morning I got to lead two songs at Jacob's Well that I really love: "Build Your Kingdom Here" by the Rend Collective Experiment, and "Be The Church" by Stefan Van Voorst (who happens to be the worship leader at Upper Room, my evening church). The theme of the morning was, "does the Church matter?"

After leaving JW I typically drive a couple blocks out of my way so I can pass by a freeway ramp, where there is often someone on the side of the road holding a cardboard sign. In my car's backseat I've a box of "homeless bags" with water and cereal bars and stuff, that I like to hand out. Normally I try to make eye contact and at least say "hi" to the person, acknowledging their humanity, but yesterday there was a car behind me so I felt a bit rushed and that made it a barely-slow-down-drive-by-handoff. The man was super friendly though, and incredibly grateful (reactions run the gamut, I've been surprised to discover), and as I drove off my brain processed seeing the words "7-year-old daughter" on his sign; normally if I see someone has a kid I'll give them two bags, this time though I just didn't register it fast enough.

Feeling badly about this, I thought about going around for another pass. At this moment, three other thoughts coalesced: 1) I realized that literally no more than an hour prior, I'd led 100 or so people in singing songs about being the church, being God's kingdom here and now. 2) running through my head were the words "what would Darrell do?" And 3) a memory from LA a few years ago: my friend Nathan and his then-girlfriend-now-wife Catherine were grabbing coffee, when a homeless man approached us. We declined to help him, but Catherine was ill-at-ease with our response, and so we went to a nearby grocery store and she bought him a sandwich and talked with him. Since that moment I've hoped my future wife will be someone like that, but why wait - I want to be that person already, before I meet her. I said to myself, "all right, let's go do this."

I drove around the block and parked and walked over to the man with a couple more bags in my hand. He was thrilled to get the cereal bars (healthy snacks for his kid), and waters (something to sip on while he's standing out in the sun). Then I asked him his story. In a recent blog post I highlighted this quote from Beggars in Spain, which, evidently, has begun to inform my life in a tangible, non-academic way:

What the strong owe beggars is to ask each one why he is a beggar and act accordingly. Because community is the assumption, not the result. And only by giving non-productiveness the same individuality as excellence, and acting accordingly, does one fulfill the obligation to the beggars in Spain.

Talking with the man, who's name was Matt, it was immediately obvious from his vernacular that he was a well-educated, intelligent guy. He shared with me that he used to be a gourmet chef, raking in $100K+ a year, but lost his job in the wake of medical issues, and now scrapes by working at Super America for $8/hour; that income isn't enough to make ends meet, and so on weekends he stands outside and begs. He and his daughter aren't homeless, they live in an apartment, and she doesn't know they're poor; and though he knows she'll find out eventually, he intends to keep her from knowing for as long as he can. They live on the edge, but with his income from the weekends, they are able to stay afloat.

We talked for a few minutes, and Matt mentioned he was getting (or had just received?) a Cisco networking certification. Hm. I asked him if he'd done much with Linux administration, and though he said "not much", I noted he at least knew the word "Linux", which I saw as promising. I handed him my card asked him to email me, because I know we're hiring an entry level admin at my work. I also qualified: no promises, I'm a nobody, but I can still get his resume into somebody's hands. The man wants to work, so who knows, maybe I can help make that connection.

Most importantly, though, I engaged him in conversation and acknowledged him as human. I didn't give him any money, and he didn't ask me for any. Maybe he'll email me, maybe he won't; God only knows if ever in fact Matt and I will interact again. Though I can't imagine begging on the side of a road in order to pay the bills, my belief is reinforced that for those of us who claim faith in Jesus and how He lived, we also then must own a responsibility to being the Church of Jesus, "Going beyond just words and songs .... Being the first to serve the last .... [and being] A blessing to the world without a need to be the stars."

Years later, a reminder that miracles still happen

In recent months I've shared my story of miraculous healing with a number of friends; time to re-post it for a wider audience. If you're like I used to be, and believe miracles are a thing of the ancient past, or if you don't believe in God at all, I hope you'll read my story anyway; maybe it'll provoke some questions in your journey, maybe it won't, but if nothing else you'll have something to ask me about next time we talk! And if you already think I'm crazy to believe in God, you're going to think I'm even crazier after you finish reading (just warning you).

Growing up in a traditional Lutheran church, I didn't know much about the Holy Spirit, I boxed miracles neatly away into Biblical times, and the last person I expected to show up in church was God, or Jesus. I suspect many Christians are in that same boat. My reality changed dramatically in 2008/9.

For the first part of my story, I defer to my own journals from 2009, when this all went down: My Miracle and Physical and Spiritual Health Update. I know those posts are long, but take a few minutes to read them, please; they capture me in the middle of my turmoil, which is infinitely more powerful than anything I could write now.

Since 2009, I've continued visiting my amazing doctor, Chris Romine, every 6 months or so. I always book the last appointment of the day, allowing for our conversations to last well over an hour; we talk a little bit about my health, and then the rest of the time about God and stuff. Chris is more than just my doctor, he's my friend, a mentor, a role-model. Every encounter, we encourage each other, pray together, and if I may be so presumptuous, help make each other better human beings.

When I retell my story, I now insist that, "I was given a miracle of healing, but my real miracle came after that" - the "real" miracle I think, was God's providence post-symptoms-returning, working my situation so I would be with my AWAKEN family when my symptoms hit, so that we'd be performing at a school doing a "Coins for Crohn's" fundraiser, so that I'd meet Chris, and in the years that followed, allowing me the privilege of sharing my story with friends who, like me before, are spiritual skeptics. I still struggle asking why I was gifted with a temporary healing, when there are so many other people who need miracles, much more desperately than I did, for whom the answer was "no." But even so, never ever again can I pretend that the spiritual reality of the Tanakh, Gospels, and Acts belongs locked away in antiquity.

Beggars in Spain

In first-world America, most people^{[citation needed]} have contemplated at least once what their ideal superpower would be, if superpowers existed. I myself always answered this question with: "[selective] mind-reading." As a single data-point, my coworkers and I frequently (and exhaustedly) have exclaimed "I can't read minds!" Consider how much easier / productive (or even manipulative) conversations with your coworkers, manager, HR, spouse, random dude on the street, everyone, would be if you could tell what they were really thinking.

This year I demoted mind-reading to my superpower slot number 2, superseding it with a new answer: Sleeplessness.

What I'm dreaming about is different than insomnia. What I'm dreaming of is not requiring sleep at all. Such a superpower would give you back 8 hours every single night (one third of your life!!), and also all the time wasted getting ready for bed, waking up in the morning (hitting snooze 3 or 5 times like I do), and suffering from general tiredness throughout the day.

My change-of-heart followed on the tails of reading Beggars in Spain, a 1993 Sci-Fi masterpiece (in my humble opinion) set in near-future America, in which in-vitro gene-modifications make it possible to create children who require no sleep. When I mentioned that to my friend John his first reaction was "no parent would EVER want a baby who doesn't sleep!" and that dynamic does come into play in the book, however it's [mostly] offset because the people who can afford gene-mod therapy, also can afford private overnight tutors for their Sleepless children.

The book is "SciFi," but it's less about the fictional science and more about the fascinating socio-political ramifications: because Sleepless children don't waste half their lives sleeping, they attain early academic success, advancing many classroom grade-levels beyond their physical years, and thus eventually become the top-rated lawyers, doctors, athletes, investors, etc. Unfortunately the human nature for the sleeper-counterparts remains similar to how we are today (fearing what is "different"); the Sleepless are ostracized, banned from competing in the Olympics, targeted by mob violence, over-taxed, and so on. I thought the book painted a fairly realistic picture of how this might go down. It also raises a fascinating dialogue about the famous words, "all men are created equal." All people may be created equal in human rights, but even today it is self-evident that not all people are created equal in abilities. Therefore, what obligations, if any, do those who have more talent and giftings owe toward those who don't? And by natural extension: what obligation, if any, do the rich have to the poor?

The book's title derives from an academic argument about handing out money to a group of beggars in Spain; if you give money to one beggar, but 100 more come to you, where do you draw the line? Is it the beggars' right to demand money from you, because you are able-bodied and able-financially, and they are not? Do productive members of society owe anything to those who are not productive (either from lack of ability, or by choice)? The wikipedia article articulates these questions better than I have.

Halfway through its story the book proposes a most elegant answer, that I absolutely have fallen in love with:

What the strong owe beggars is to ask each one why he is a beggar and act accordingly. Because community is the assumption, not the result. And only by giving non-productiveness the same individuality as excellence, and acting accordingly, does one fulfill the obligation to the beggars in Spain.

And as one last food-for-thought, toward the very end of the novel, was this:

There are no permanent beggars in Spain. Or anywhere else. The beggar you give a dollar to today, might change the world tomorrow. Or become father to the man who will. Or grandfather, or great-grandfather. There is no stable ecology of trade, as I thought once, when I was very young. There is no stable anything, much less stagnant anything given enough time. And no non-productive anything either. Beggars are only gene lines temporarily between communities.

As a man of faith who struggles with "what can I do? What should I do?", these are powerful excerpts.