Inside This Guys Head

God has a penchant for the dramatic.

Take a look at the prophets. They often stood in public squares and crowded streets and shared God’s message to his people as poet-preachers, storytellers and singers. Other times they enacted God’s word in a kind of “street theater,” performing signs and visions with their bodies, using ordinary objects as props and ordinary places as their stage.

Remember when Isaiah was commanded to walk naked and barefoot for three years to communicate how the king of Assyria will “lead away the Egyptians as captives and the Ethiopians as exiles, both the young and the old, naked and barefoot, with buttocks uncovered, to the shame of Egypt” (Isa. 20:2-4)? Jeremiah was commanded to bury his newly purchased underwear in a rocky place at the Euphrates and return to dig up his now ruined underwear several days later to symbolize the ruined pride of Judah and Jerusalem (Jer. 13). Then there is Ezekiel and his many award worthy performances. One time he ate a scroll (no dipping sauce) to symbolize God’s word being put in his mouth and then bound himself with ropes inside his house to symbolize that he may speak to the people only when God wants him to speak (Ezek. 3). Another time he dramatized the fall of Jerusalem with a multi-day street theatrical performance playing war with bricks and other props followed by many weeks of lying down in the street using other props to communicate God’s word, including his own hair, fecal matter and bread (Ezek. 4-5). Yikes!

You may already know this, but just over one-third of the Bible is poetry. Perhaps God feels it’s necessary to communicate His vision of life to us with language structured differently from ordinary prose. Sometimes it takes language in the form of story, poetry or embodied performance to expand the imagination in order to see new possibilities. 

“Ezekiel Laying Siege to Jerusalem” Artist, Michael Buesking

Dramatic changes in one’s way of life often necessitates a dramatic change one’s a way of thinking. It requires an entirely different imagination. God’s people lacked imagination.

As society grew more committed to empire politics and violence, the Jews traded in story-driven covenant loyalty for data-driven logic weighed down in politically spun facts and sorted out feelings through political logic. They could not imagine a society different from that of the other nations. They could not imagine how commerce could be fair and good for all. They could not imagine equitable economic practices capable of promoting human flourishing. They could not imagine a society without a permanent underclass, where the widow, the poor, the immigrant and the orphan were valued. Israel forgot her own story, a history that speaks of transformation, liberation, healing, and newness, all coming about in the form of miracles wielded by a God who can do the impossible. As a result they failed to keep their imaginations big enough to envision the kind of life Yahweh offered, a life of truth, goodness and beauty culminating in righteousness, mercy and compassion.

God’s people have always had a lack-of-imagination problem. We still do.

Sometimes sermons communicated in ordinary prose or written on parchment are not enough. Sometimes it takes truth expressed in the form of drama, dance, music, poetry, drawing and sculpting to stir our hearts and open our minds to life-affirming possibilities. Throughout history God as the Creator has embodied his truth and goodness through the creative arts in redemptive ways as his form of protest in a society numb to violence and injustice. The creative arts become redemptive arts when they are embraced as a medium by which God can display the beauty of his love and justice in love-less and unjust societies. He did it through his people and for his people, then. I believe he wants to do it now.

This is why I am excited about WCC’s arts initiative and the “Blessed Are the Peacemakers” event this Friday evening.

I know we don’t all agree on how the violence and injustices should be handled, but we can all agree that the violence and injustice must be dealt with. In light of the great tradition of the prophets, is it possible that redemptive art can awaken us to a different imagination? Can creativity, beauty and community investment be the means by which the beauty of Christ is displayed? We need to come together to imagine ways we can put hands and feet to our “prayers and thoughts” so that new possibilities will break open in our nation. We know where the Church’s preachers, teachers and evangelists can be found, but where are the artists, poets and prophets?

Let’s come together and ask the hard questions. Let’s wrestle with potential solutions that are capable of bringing the claims of our faith to bear. Let’s imagine ways we can embody our confession and proclamation through practices of self-giving, faithful presence, and life-affirming creativity.

Holy Saturday is about the in-between–remaining stuck somewhere between the tragedy of Friday and triumph of Sunday. We have a difficult time keeping our minds in the in-between. We are too uncomfortable with the tension. We are desperate for resolution.

But life doesn’t always work that way. There are tensions we can’t resolve and questions we can’t answer. There are tragedies we can’t avoid and times when redemption feels impossible. This is why Holy Saturday is good for us, even this side of resurrection. We are invited to wait. Like the disciples we will face the darkness, sit in despair and feel the desperation. We will feel the weight of the tension, the questions, the tragedies and seemingly irredeemable circumstances.

Then, when we least expect it, the sun rises and Sunday comes.

A poem I wrote on Good Friday of 2016

Born a child in a manger,
Son of Mary and Son of the great I Am,
Outcast as a stranger,
He extended God’s welcome to every child, woman and man.

Be sure to catch the short introductory post here.

After years of study and preparation Jesus comes to the synagogue a baptized man. He takes the scroll, opens it to Isaiah 61 and begins with the words, “The Spirit of the Lord is on me,” Jesus is about to preach like an inspired man:

“because he has anointed me
to proclaim good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners
and recovery of sight for the blind,
to set the oppressed free,
to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”

Isaiah 61 is about Israel’s promised Messiah. Throughout this section of Isaiah there are pictures of this anointed one who will come and faithfully perform God’s will. This anointed one will be the long-expected Messiah, or King, and will give birth to a new society originating from the most unexpected people: the broken-hearted, the poor, the imprisoned, the blind and the oppressed. Once a marginalized and powerless people, they will go forward in the power of the King to do the priestly work of rebuilding the ancient ruins, restoring the former devastations, and renewing the ruined cities and the devastations of many generations (Isa. 61:3-8). A never-ending Covenant will be made between them and God and they will flourish under His reign (Isa. 61:9-11).

Jesus is drawing from a larger picture in Isaiah, and elsewhere in the Hebrew Scriptures, which speaks of God fulfilling His promises to Israel. They will finally live into the vocation of their election and become a light to all the nations (this is consistent with what Luke has already written in chapters 1-3).

A New Society & New Way of Doing Things

“Today,” Jesus says, “this Scripture is fulfilled in your hearing.” In Jesus’ first sermon, He offers not only a vision of His ministry but a vision of a new way of doing things in society ushered in by the new age. God’s grace is for everyone as His kingdom is breaking in. The poor, the captive, the blind, the oppressed–all are welcome to come to the most gracious Host. There is a place for them in God’s life. If that isn’t enough, the Lord’s Jubilee has finally come where the ground is leveled and powers restructured in light of this new age; this new world; this new beginning. Jesus is offering a new vision of a new society for a new age, an age where God’s promised kingdom breaks in to the audience’s world. This is an inspired message from an inspired man with a prophetic imagination.

No wonder Luke tells us that the audience was astonished. The message is shocking. But the crucial part of the text comes next. Jesus senses that His hearers aren’t hearing clearly. As the crowds often do with Jesus, they want to argue, perhaps with proverbs, or better still, ask Him to perform magic tricks.

“22 They were all speaking well of Him and were amazed by the gracious words that came from His mouth, yet they said, ‘Isn’t this Joseph’s son?’
23 Then He said to them, “No doubt you will quote this proverb to Me: ‘Doctor, heal yourself. So all we’ve heard that took place in Capernaum, do here in Your hometown also.’”

It is as if they are say, “If you can heal all people, start by healing the folks in your own backyard!”

God is on the Wrong Side

By way of defense for His prophetic words, Jesus turns their minds to two of the most significant prophets in Israel’s history: Elijah and Elisha. Listen to how Jesus reminds them of Elijah and Elisha’s ministry so you can see what He is subversively saying about his own.

24 He also said, “I assure you: No prophet is accepted in his hometown. 25 But I say to you, there were certainly many widows in Israel in Elijah’s days, when the sky was shut up for three years and six months while a great famine came over all the land. 26 Yet Elijah was not sent to any of them—but to a widow at Zarephath in Sidon. 27 And in the prophet Elisha’s time, there were many in Israel who had serious skin diseases, yet not one of them was healed —only Naaman the Syrian.”

Elijah was sent to help a widow, but not a Jewish one. Elisha, who healed one leper, one who happened to be the commander of the enemy army. Elijah and Elisha helped non-Jewish people–the wrong people. In choosing these two prophets as a response to their arguments not only did Jesus identify himself as a prophet, he was taking up their kind of ministry. By pointing back to Elijah and Elisha Jesus undercuts the dominate powers of His day, those capable of inflicting violence and oppression: ethnic and religious superiority and privilege. This subverts the old familiar way of doing things in society along with it’s delusions of peace and prosperity, and infuriates the hearers–that age is passing away. In the Lord’s jubilee God is rescuing the “wrong” people. Again. No wonder why in verse 29 they wanted to throw Him over the cliff!

So what are the implications today? We will give that some thought in the next post.

Some people much smarter than I like to debate to what degree Luke was interested in addressing the Roman empire in his gospel.¹ I believe the problem with this debate is that for many it focuses only on Luke’s gospel account and excludes the book of Acts. On one hand the clear separation between Luke-Acts is warranted as we do not have any manuscripts in which they appear joined together nor did the early Church leaders treat them as one single volume.² Only until the last few decades have scholars pressed us to attend to what they call, “the literary unity” of both volumes, including stylistic, structural and thematic elements.³ I suggest that it is within the stylistic and thematic elements that we find Luke’s implicit and at times explicit interest in how God’s kingdom pushes against the empire. But it must be said that Luke’s primal aim was not to contrast and compare imperialism with the gospel or the empire with God’s kingdom. For Luke it is the implications of Jesus as King and Lord that create the themes that naturally speak to the reality of living in and between two prevailing governmental and social systems.

I think Luke’s writings can be summarized this way. He tells as one story God’s promises to Israel fulfilled in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus and the birth and spread of the church as witnesses to God’s kingdom. For Luke this re-describes humanity and re-orders all social systems from Jerusalem and beyond, to include all people, Jew and Gentile. Inevitably this narrative will eventually run against the narrative of the Roman empire.

My position is that in the single witness of Luke-Acts, Luke announces what God is doing in Jesus and the church for the sake of the world, and tells the story in such a way that “what happens with Jesus foreshadows the church’s experience and what happens in the church finds meaning as the continuation of Jesus’ story.”⁴ Luke’s Plot Line

Lets revisit the plot line so we can see our text more clearly over the next 3 to 4 posts. Bear with me as this may seem a little heady, but I think it is critical. Luke begins his account by detailing the birth story of Jesus emphasizing that God is bringing to fulfillment the promises He made to Israel (1:1, 45, 55, 73), including the forerunner (John the Baptist) that He promised would prepare the way (1:17, 76). Curiously, Luke moves from bearing witness to God’s providential and redemptive action to intentionally naming Roman emperors and officials (2:1-2; 3:1). Considering that providence is a common first-century belief in an empire’s ideology, Theophilus is reminded that Augustus may have the power to issue decrees but only the God of the Jews (3:23-38) has the power to exercise history affirming, future-changing providence (1:46-51; 2:29-32), even the toppling of thrones (1:52, 71). This is revolutionary!

Luke goes on to specifically connects these events to the house of David (1:32-33, 35, 69) coupled with royal language most likely familiar to Theophilus in order to help him see that the result of this event is the birth of a new King who is Lord.⁵ Of course, this makes sense in light of a holy and infinite God who as Ruler operates in ways far different from other rulers, and does so on His own terms. Finally and most notably, Luke refers to Jesus as King more than Matthew, Mark or John, almost two-hundred times in Luke-Acts and about one-hundred in each. It is as if Luke is systematically and creatively developing Jesus as both King and Lord as the confession of his Gospel. In Luke’s gospel this is the road Theophilus walks along as he makes his way to the steps of the synagogue in Nazareth where Jesus preaches His first sermon in Luke 4:16-30.

But before that, here is a possible takeaway. Luke reminds us that the implications of Jesus as King and Lord will at times naturally put us at odds with the prevailing governmental and social systems that surround us. The values and ethics held sacred in our society will often run contrary to what King Jesus holds sacred. The key is knowing the difference and remaining faithful to our pledge of allegiance to His Lordship.

As we will see in the audience’s response to Jesus’ sermon in Luke 4, this is nothing new. We will listen to his sermon next time. In the meantime, enjoy the footnotes. 😉

1. Dean Pinter, “The Gospel of Luke and the Roman Empire.” Jesus is Lord, Caesar is Not: Evaluating Empire in New Testament Studies, Edited by Scot McKnight and Joseph B. Modica (Downers Grove: IVP Academic, 2013) 101-15. If you want more details on the nature of this footnote drop me a message and I will sent them. I didn’t want to tie down this post with the details of academic scholarship.

2. Luke Timothy Johnson, The Writings of the New Testament: An Interpretation, (London: SCM Press, 1999) 213.

3. Ibid. 214.

4. Ibid. 215

5. Language such as “Son of God,” which was not only a preferred title of Caesars but a title Augustus, son of Julius Caesar, was particularly fond of. “Sovereign Lord” alerts Theophilus to Jesus as “King” and “Lord.”

Friday 3e Restoration Incorporated experienced the joy of celebrating the blessing and opening of two rooms called, Restoration Place. We were joined by pastors, members of many local churches, 3e ministry leaders, and a number of community partners, including Community of Faith Mission, Greater Williamsburg Outreach Mission, Williamsburg Community Chapel-Agape Ministry, United Way Community Resource Center, Colonial Behavioral Health, Colonial Community Corrections, Department for Aging and Rehabilitative Services, James City County Police Department, James City County Department of Social Services, Harrison & Lear, Inc Property Management, Williamsburg Department of Human Services, other friends of 3e, and the most amazing staff at the Pineapple Inn and Housing Center.

Below is the manuscript (unedited) of the speech I gave and offers a description of what these rooms will do and how they will bless the socially displaced coming out of hospitals or into eviction.

Dr. Walter Brueggemann once said, “Compassion constitutes a radical form of criticism, for it announces that the hurt is to be taken seriously, that the hurt is not to be accepted as normal and natural but is an abnormal and unacceptable condition for humanness.”¹

Today signifies a new day for 3e Restoration. Today is a day that 3e begins a new season of compassion inspired truth-telling—truth-telling about what is happening in our own locality concerning people living in homelessness, suffering from mental illness and living with intellectual disabilities. We will take every opportunity to tell the stories of our neighbors living through social displacement in the forms of homelessness, mental illness and intellectual disabilities. And where there are no opportunities we will create them.

Today is also a day that 3e Restoration begins a new season compassion inspired truth-embodiment—further embodying gracious hospitality by moving advocation to implementation to bring about the change our neighbors desperately need so that James City County can live in to the motto it proclaims where all our neighbors can find, “a great place to live, work and play.”

A great place for neighbors like my friend, and I will call him Jack, whose discharge from the hospital meant a ride to the local hotel, paid only for one day. Eleven days earlier, Jack had emergency surgery for an intestinal obstruction. He was critically ill in the intensive care unit. His problems grew worse when he was discharged with a list of community resources that he would have to navigate on his own, despite the fact he could barely find the strength to stand while also knowing that in one more night he would be back on the street. Four days after his hospital discharge he ended up back in the ER and was readmitted to the hospital for a surgical wound infection.²

I could tell you of the neighbors who showed up to our church building with hospital bracelets or in mental health hospital socks—all signs pointing to a discharge with no place to go. I could tell you of the neighbors who experienced evictions from apartments of houses they rent with no places to go. I could tell you of the neighbors who are living through something as critical as cancer and had no where to sleep but their car, but their ‘cases’ got tied up in the system from over technicalities and the nuances of policies. I could go on but I won’t. Instead I will celebrate that in God’s good grace people of faith came together to make what you see happen today. And it is only the beginning.

And just in case I am leaving with you the impression that this is only a challenge to our community, catch this.

A study from 2012 published in the Journal of General Internal Medicine found that 67 percent of homeless patients surveyed spent their first night after hospital discharge at a shelter. Worse, 11 percent spent their first night after discharge on the streets.³

Some might argue that it is not the hospital’s responsibility to solve the social problems of its patients, or that hospitals lack the resources as non-profits needed to address patients’ housing situation at discharge. However, ignoring the issue creates more expensive problems in the future. Yet, as patients living through homelessness leave the hospital, whether medical or mental health, are discharged with no place to go, a revolving door of costly, inefficient and dangerous care is created. They will move from the hospital to the streets or hotel and then back again.

People living through homelessness visit the emergency department and are hospitalized at rates up to 10 times higher than low-income-housed patients. Once in the hospital, homeless patients have longer stays and cost on average $2,500 more per hospitalization than housed patients.

Virginia ranks 31st in the nation in spending on mental health services and invests much lower money to fund community-based resources that help mental health patients safely transition back into society. Across the country, almost 30 percent of the money spent on mental health goes to state-operated hospitals. Community-based services generally get the majority of the remainder. In Virginia, 46 percent of mental health money goes to state hospitals, resulting in little more than half going to transitional services. Consequently for those living through homelessness and social displacement, they are much more likely to have no place to go upon discharge. We’ve seen it and we want to offer a better way.⁴

Discharging our neighbors with little regard to where they will go misses the compassion that originally provoked the creation of our world’s healing institutions. As a means of caring for those who were ill, St. Basil of Caesarea founded the first hospital (AD369). Christian hospitals grew apace, spreading throughout both the East and the West. By the mid-1500s there were 37,000 Benedictine monasteries alone that cared for the sick. There is no doubt that the Greeks and Romans made great contributions to early medicine, but as Albert Jonsen, University of Washington historian of medicine, maintains:

“the second great sweep of medical history begins at the end of the fourth century, with the founding of the first Christian hospital at Caesarea in Cappadocia, and concludes at the end of the fourteenth century, with medicine well ensconced in the universities and in the public life of the emerging nations of Europe.”

Hospitals of all kinds were meant to care for the vulnerable, the suffering and the hurting, one person at a time. They were meant to preserve the dignity and worth of each person, not treat them as cases to be managed. Restoration Place is our very meager attempt to fill a gap.

Today we celebrate two separate rooms have been remodeled and decorated with the comforts and familiarity of a one-room apartment offering a clean, safe, 24/7 emergency shelter. The Restoration Place will offer on-site access to emergency stabilization services. Guests will be provided with an on-site food pantry, as well as meals based on health-related dietary needs when necessary. Home health care services will be coordinated for guests discharged from hospitals.

The Restoration Place is provided for the express purpose of serving as a temporary shelter while staff work toward locating permanent housing and returning guests to holistic-sufficiency.

3e Restoration, Inc works with community partners through formal care coordination agreements to quickly establish medical and behavioral health care, while focusing on permanent housing options. Based upon the assessment, the guests will access the 3e Coaching Network of providers of services such as job training, legal aid, mental and physical health care. These providers include a variety of medical professionals. We will also provide on-site computers so the guests can apply for employment and have access to other possible resources to help them transition into a permanent housing situation and move closer to holistic sufficiency.

3e Restoration, Inc. works to equip, empower, and encourage the local faith community to walk with individuals and families as they transition from homeless to housed and holistic sufficiency. Part of the process is to establish a lasting network of friendship and support long after temporary rental assistance and care management has ended.

We give thanks and praise to the Lord and Lover of all lives, especially the vulnerable. And we thank you for joining us today.

Our Family Room with Bunk Beds for children

A snapshot of some of those in attendance

Enjoying a light lunch together

A picture of the room for families

Just before the Blessing of the rooms.

1. The Prophetic Imagination, p 88.

2. You can read the code concerning discharge policies here. Situations like Jack’s are most often denied, but it is a well reported phenomenon on national levels. Furthermore, 17 years of walking with people living through homelessness in four different localities has taught me better. https://law.lis.virginia.gov/vacode/title32.1/chapter5/section32.1-137.03/

3. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22707359)

4. http://www.richmond.com/news/virginia/government-politics/ready-to-leave-the-mental-hospital-but-nowhere-to-go/article_c4352a4b-9940-5f0e-8fc1-4e4793f3fcd1.html

I hear it on the news,
on the internet,
in the neighborhoods,
in the schools,
and in the city streets.
It is ringing in my my ears,
the groaning is all around us.

The pain.
The cries.
The violence.
The sighs.
The sickness.
The screams.
The fear.
The grief.
The groaning is all around us.

I remember the violence
of a blood stained cross
so many witnesses
believing all was lost
in the neighborhoods,
in the schools,
and in the city streets.

I remember hearing
about an empty grave.
We need witnesses
to help us cling to faith
in the neighborhoods,
in the schools,
and in the city streets.
For some its hard to believe,
that there is a Savior that surrounds us.

His steadfast love.
His grace.
His mercy.
His holy face.
His compassion.
His faithfulness.
His sovereignty.
His holy justice.
There is a Savior that surrounds us.

He will deliver us
even from ourselves.
May His Kingdom come,
His will be done,
on the earth
to make us well.

———
Three of the worst mass shootings our nation has ever seen in the past five months. 18 shootings in our nation’s schools since January 1, 2018. This is my lament. This is my prayer.

May God be with the families who wake up this day with lives unimaginably different from what the experienced the day before yesterday. Lord, grant them peace and have mercy on us.

May we put our hands and feet to our prayers and do what we must to bring about change.