RE-forming Faith

Blogging with Flock

2009-02-06T08:05:00.001-08:00

Just giving 'er a try

That Which Remains

2008-04-01T20:36:00.000-07:00

Tonight we continued our Easter talks (Easter is a season, not many know) by talking about what the Resurrection means for how we understand our commitment to "the good", even when it seems that such a commitment is to no avail.

We looked specifically at 1 Corinthians 15 (among the earliest and most important resurrection texts in the New Testament), and noted several things:

1) Paul thinks Christianity is pointless if it is not connected to the presence of the future redemption of the world in Jesus Christ through his bodily resurrection. That is, Christianity is not about a disembodied "there" up there in the sky that we all go to when we die. It is about the presence of a glorious, renewed future for the good creation that has arrived as a foretaste through Jesus' resurrection and will one day come to its fullness at his coming.

2) Paul sees continuity between this world and the one to come - The Messiah is now "putting all his enemies under his feet."

3) But there is also discontinuity - The world to come, while having continuities with the one that is, will also be qualitatively different.

The state of the cosmos we compared to Jesus pre- and post-resurrection body. Continuities, yes. It was the same body. The disciples recognized it as the Jesus they knew. And yet radical discontinuities. He walked through walls. Apparently no blood and yet he lived. Jesus' flesh resurrected and glorified was indeed his flesh, but different.

We connected this with Paul's talk about Christianity's being "kenos", empty, apart from resurrection. In keeping with our three above points, we noted three things:

1) If you believe this framing story, you'll be very devoted to bringing the kingdom of God to bear on planet earth. Here is what it's all about. If you believe in the framing story of "pop" evangelicalism (God is spirit, spirit is better than physical stuff, physical stuff is bad, praying the prayer gets me a ticket to heaven when God blows up the world, nothing I do matters here since I prayed the prayer, etc), you'll be encouraged to moral apathy when it comes to life here. Here mattering is the beginning of the cultivation of a robust virtue.

2) If the world to come shall be contiguous with this one, then we can commit ourselves wholeheartedly to "the good", knowing that it's part of Jesus' collecting all power to himself right now and "putting all his enemies under his feet." Engaging the powers, working for justice, displaying generosity, hospitality, and truthfulness is part of his disarmament of the powers in the here and now.

3) And if the world to come shall be discontinuous in some measure with this one, then we know that even if the good we commit ourselves to seems to be making no difference whatsoever, it shall not be lost on God, the author and finisher of the good. Such acts are the seeds which though they may die, will be brought to life at the consummation of the ages. So giving $5 to a homeless man or woman, though it may seem "kenos", empty, futile, since it's such a small gesture and does not address the structural or systemic problems that created such a condition, nevertheless shall not be lost on God, who though the good deed may die in this life, will in a sense be resurrected in the age to come.

I am astounded at how motivating this is to commit ourselves to what is good. And I am so deeply saddened at how many Christians have been robbed of the joy of committing themselves to the good because they bought into a different, sub-Christian framing story. It's high time we reclaim Paul's theology of resurrection.

Beauty in Suffering

2008-03-13T18:25:00.000-07:00

2 Corinthians provides an interesting perspective on the meaning of human suffering when framed within the narrative of the gospel ... Two texts in particular:

Chapter 1 - "... who (God) comforts us in all our troubles so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves have received from God ... for just as the sufferings of Christ flow over into our lives, so also through Christ our comfort overflows. If we are distressed, it is for your comfort and salvation, and if we are comforted, it is for your comfort, which produces in you patient endurance of the same sufferings we suffer ... We do not want you to be uninformed, brothers, of the hardships we suffered in the province of Asia. We were under great pressure, far beyond our ability to endure, so that we despaired even of life. Indeed, in our hearts we felt the sentence of death. But this happened that we might not rely on ourselves, but on God, the dead-raiser."

Chapter 4 - "But we have this treasure in jars of clay to show that the all-surpassing power is from God and not from us. We are hard-pressed on every side but not crushed, perplexed but not in despair, persecuted but not abandoned, struck down but not destroyed. Always the death of Jesus we carry around in our bodies so that the life of Jesus may also be revealed. For we who are alive are always being given over to death for Jesus' sake, so that his life may be revealed in our bodies. So then, death is at work in us, but life is at work in you."

Our journey through lament reminded us that before God it is okay, in fact, it is GOOD to acknowledge the full weight of evil. That we are authorized to spell out in full and living color the evil, the injustice, and the hardship of our lives, and to do it before the face of a God who hears, knows, takes into account, and longs to respond with his justice and redemption.

What we come to see as remarkable, then, is the means by which God actually does bring that justice and redemption into the world. I note three things in particular that stand out in the above texts:

1) Suffering seems to allow a sort of emptying effect for the believer - it causes them to let go of everything but God, which brings them to a core of redemptive, missional energy

2) Suffering creates energized communities of grace, peace, comfort, and generosity - in short, justice

3) Suffering is crucial for the spread of the gospel, because the messengers need to reflect the message - God brings his salvation to the world through a crucified, weak, and powerless Messiah, and continues his salvation in the world through communities that act as living witnesses to world-transforming, powerful weakness

I have always been intrigued by (1) and (3), only recently has (2) come into focus for me as a crucial component of God's agenda for drawing the world into his salvation. Brokenness, in a weird way, creates opportunities for the people of God to put God's justice, his shalom, on display, and if the opportunity is seized, there begins a transference of life and grace that simply must be reckoned with.

What do you think?

What role has suffering played in your life?

Have you seen any of (1-3) played out in your life?

Stories of (1-3)?

The Cosmic Wager

2008-03-06T07:14:00.000-08:00

So, Tuesday's discussion on the theology of Job TOTALLY jacked me up ... A profound book to say the least. I didn't want our time together to end ...

Here's a synopsis of the book's outlook:

1. Job is presented as the epitome of godliness in the tradition of Deuteronomy and Psalm 1 ("blameless and upright, a man who fears God and shuns evil")

2. As such, he is the most blessed person in the entire world ("greatest man among all the peoples of the East")

3. God sits in charge of a "heavenly counsel" that apparently the "accuser" (Hebrew - ha-satan - "the satan") is accountable to

4. God points out Job to ha-satan as the epitome of the human race

5. Ha-satan accuses God of having created an inherently flawed system - i.e., his contention is that Job "fears God" only because God rewards him - that he DOES NOT fear God "gratuitously" - in other words, Job doesn't do what is right purely because it is right, and he doesn't love God because loving God is inherently good. He only does it to get stuff.

6. If this were true, the entire arrangement between God and man would be intractably poisoned. God himself would be impugned.

7. God apparently thinks it is NOT the case that Job only fears him to get stuff, so he allows ha-satan to take Job's stuff and his health, to prove his point and exonerate his arrangement.

8. And so the bet is on.

Here's what I find interesting.

1. The suffering of Job apparently is NOT for the sake of "purifying" Job's faith. That is, this is not a test for Job in order to make him a better person. He is "blameless and upright, a man who fears God and shuns evil." It doesn't get better than that ...

2. The suffering of Job is for the sake of vindicating God (stick that in your theological pipe and smoke it)

3. Though it is ha-satan who directly causes the pain of Job, the text is emphatic that when Job attributes the ultimate cause of the suffering to God, he did not sin or speak wrongly of God by charging him with "wrongdoing" or "unsavoriness." He is God, let him do as he pleases. Job, in other words, doesn't blame ha-satan. He looks to God, and maintains his "integrity" by continuing to be devoted to God despite the fact that it is no longer rewarding to him. (We're inching pretty close here to the Psalmist's assertion that God himself is our inheritance)

4. The text passes NO JUDGMENT on the fact that lots of seemingly "innocent" people suffer because of this cosmic wager (Jobs sons and daughters and servants who are killed - heck, let's throw in the cattle too)

5. The moment at which Job errs in the book of Job is when he begins to "justify" himself rather than God. This draws God out of hiding for Job, and Job thus humbled ends where he basically began: "Surely I spoke of things I did not understand." That is, "The suffering sucks. And I want it to be over. And I'll ask God to end it. But when it doesn't end when I want it to end, I'm not going to raise my nose at God to justify myself. I'll only admit that there is MUCH more going on than I can understand. And then I'll worship God who I trust is both good and wise and just, and governs the universe mysteriously according to his goodness, wisdom, and justice."

So much to chew on here ... What do you think?

Loving Lament

2008-02-28T08:40:00.000-08:00

After concluding our three week journey into lament on Tuesday, a journey which eventuated in having an all-church lament service at Peoples Church, I have to say that I'm more impressed than ever at how important this practice is and how detrimental it is to our faith when we lose or under-use the candence of prayer known as lament.

This week, in response to an article on lament I wrote for our church email, a lady wrote:

"I am 36 years old and have been a Christian since the age of 7. I grew up in Tulsa in a preacher's, family, so I know that I am supposed to forgive. And I have forgiven -- and forgiven some more, and then more and more. But in late December, some things happened in my family that deeply disturbed me. And I started to get mad. And then I got angry and then I felt the feeling that no good little Christian should ever feel towards a parent -- hate. And, yet, I knew that, in all of this, I was supposed to forgive again, but how could I forgive when there was no acknowledgement of the sin or repentance for the sins perpetrated on myself and my brother and sister?

God has taken me from one of the lowest places in my life these past couple months to a place where I could do the grieving over my lost childhood and I could actually FEEL the anger and hurt and betrayal and abandonment that I had shoved down for so many years b/c I thought it was the Christian thing to do. Through all of this, I realize that this is the process that forgiveness is taking for me and my personal situation, but I truly believe that unilateral forgiveness is not required of us until sin is acknowledged. For me, the lamenting that I have been doing by feeling these deep emotions is part of my forgiveness process and part of my healing.

I lamented deeply, and did it with a gifted, Christian therapist who recommended a book for me to read through the process entitled: "Don't Forgive Too Soon . . . Extending the Two Hands That Heal"

Specifically it takes the reader through the five stages typically associated with grief, but does it in relation to working through forgiveness. It has prayers at the end too (such as Prayer of Examen, etc.). It's written by Roman Catholic therapists, and specifically addresses so many things I was fighting against w/r/t what the church tells you but with which I wasn't comfortable (you have to forgive no matter what, turn the other cheek, "move on", etc.), and couldn't reconcile in my heart.

Specifically the book talks about moving through the "Anger" stage of forgiveness and says that we honor our own integrity by giving anger and pain a place:

"The GIFT of Anger is that it locates our wound. Lingering anger usually indicates we moved too quickly through the forgiveness process. We believe that in an abusive situation we have no right to forgive until we have honored our anger. Anger at abuse and injustice is an expression of our integrity and our dignity as human beings. We must honor our anger before we forgive because authentic forgiveness comes from the same place of integrity deep within us"."

I thought that said it perfectly ...

After the church-wide lament service last night, Josh Lease and I were talking about how, in a paradoxical way, giving voice to our sense of victimization actually causes us to cease being victims anymore. It's a way, as one author I'm reading stated, "delimiting the experience". In other words, of saying, "Enough is enough!" It's an "expression of our integrity and dignity as human beings."

So much more could be said ... This lament business touches some really important issues

But alas ... "to everything there is an end" ... and to this as well ... One final thought:

Lament is grounded is love. The Psalmists can lament because they believe that God's "hesed", his stated, promised love for Israel, obligates him to hear and respond, that it is the context of their grieving; and they actually lament because they themselves love God and trust him to make good on his promises.

Is it possible that our inability to rage against heaven is tied to the dimness of our love?

How sad ...

Heal our numbness O God.

Journeying Into Lament

2008-02-20T08:05:00.000-08:00

The journey into the lost art and practice of lament continued last night ... and I have to say that I found everyone's comments about their experience last week enlightening, exhilarating, and hilarious all at the same time. I especially enjoyed listening to the commentary of one lady (who shall remain nameless) who said that when she walked in her initial thought was, "Wow, so Andrew's finally gone over the edge."

Oddly enough, that hit me as a bit of validation ... Pushing the envelope is kind of what I live for. I digress ...

As we wrestled with the theological and existential meaning of lament, several important themes emerged, which I'll outline below:

1 - Lament serves as a sort of cleansing for the soul

Many last night expressed something along these lines: "At first I wasn't sure if I would be able to 'get into it', but then all of a sudden my emotions got unlatched ... I cried and cried ... It was pretty painful, but when it was all over, I felt an overwhelming sense of peace."

The word we used is "catharsis" ... It's a Greek word that means "cleansing" and in modern American culture refers to an emotional sort of vomiting that results in a state of calm. Lament surely serves that purpose.

2 - However, in the biblical tradition, lament is never purely catharsis, but rather issues in an earnest petition that God would demonstrate his faithfulness by bringing change.

It is simply too easy in our individualistic, consumerist culture to turn lament into another internal, existential experience that we consume for our own private benefit. Of course, in the absence of a Divine "Other", what else could lament be than this? But in the biblical tradition, lament is always undertaken vis a vis the God to whom Israel is bound by irrevocable promises.

3 - The "horizon" of lament tends to move from the individual/personal horizon to the cosmic and eschatological horizons.

Here we noted Psalm 22, among others, where the Psalmist's complaint turns to petition and then in a courageous declaration that Yahweh's arising will issue in justice for the whole cosmos. This coheres pretty nicely with Romans 8, where Paul speaks of the suffering of the sons of God and then sets it against the backdrop of the "groaning" of all creation, a groaning both the Spirit and the Church share. Lament is a way, so it seems, to get in touch with our groaning as a way of connecting with the wider groanings of both Creation and the Spirit. This groaning, again, is a plea that God will arise, not only for the one groaning, but on behalf of the entire universe which itself is enslaved to corruption.

Part of the problem it seems is that we live in a culture that is so averse to any kind of suffering and so confident that the meaning of life is found in pleasure that whenever we get anywhere close to entering fully into our own grief (which again in the biblical witness is a pathway into the groanings of all creation) we immediately move to medicate ourselves. We do this with food, entertainment, recreation, sex, etc., thinking that in so doing our humanness will be preserved. But it will not. It will, rather, be diminished as our capacity to really "feel" gets dulled through our consumptiveness.

We need to break through our numbness and feel again. Only then will the status quo be shaken.

As I journey into this thing called lament, I am becoming more and more convinced that fasting is a pivotal practice for those that wish to penetrate the numbness and begin to feel again.

Thoughts?

The Lost Art of Lament

2008-02-13T07:18:00.000-08:00

Last night we engaged in an ancient form of prayer and worship called lament. It was an incredible night of exposing our souls to God, and I got the impression that for many, new horizons of possibility for bringing the pain and anguish of their hearts to brutally honest expression were opened up ... We noted especially that lament is a daring theological maneuver, in that it presupposes there actually IS someone who is listening, that that person is not offended by our honest, even abrasive speech towards him, that in fact he invites it, and that our rage does not need to take us outside of him, but can and should actually take place within him.

Not the sort of thing we are used to ... But I tend to think that real redemption is only possible when we dare to journey THROUGH our pain, rather than around it

(This certainly is part of the meaning of the cross)

Thoughts?

The Gospel and Global Slavery

2007-12-10T04:58:00.001-08:00

Last night as a group we went down to the historic Circle Cinema on Admiral and Lewis to view a British documentary on the issue of global slavery. Amnesty International hosted the event, and props to Katarina Haukaas and the Tulsa chapter of Amnesty for putting on a great night.

The film focused specifically on three instances of modern day slavery: cocoa plantations on the Ivory Coast, rug-making looms in northern India, and (to my great surprise) there are even instances of slavery in the U. S. The Department of State estimates that between 15 and 20 thousand individuals are trafficked into the U. S. each year to become slaves.

A "slave" was defined as one who is "Forced to work--through mental or physical threat, owned or controlled by an 'employer', usually through mental or physical abuse or threatened abuse; dehumanized, treated as a commodity or bought and sold as 'property'; physically constrained or has restrictions placed on his/her freedom of movement."

In other words, slavery today is what it always has been--and perhaps worse. Increased population and the pressure of the global market mean that slaves now are easier to come by and simultaneously less valuable. The days of eeking out a marginally decent existence on the plantation of a southern diplomat in the 18th and 19th century are decisively over.

Of particular interest was the role the global economy plays in the issue of slavery. Competition fuels injustice, especially (for instance) in the cocoa industry. With the price of cocoa falling steadily over the past twenty years, plantation owners on the Ivory Coast work strenuously to stay competitive on the market by keeping the total cost of each bag of cocoa produced extremely low. What better way to get an edge than by restraining dozens of unpaid laborers under the threat of violence? Productivity goes up; total costs go down; and farmers stay competitive.

What is most problematic is the prevailing assumption that the market will self-regulate so as to mitigate potential oppression and injustice: Adam Smith's "Invisible Hand." Where that principle may have been true for local economies, it fails to hold for the modern global economy. The baby tiger has grown up, and it's starting to knock stuff over in the living room. Passivity will not do any longer. A self-regulating global economy is a contradiction in terms.

Which means then that the onus clearly is on the consumer to a) support organizations and initiatives that advocate for and implement structures that generate economic justice and b) demand accountability in the marketplace.

So that got me thinking: What does it mean to be a consumer in the way of Jesus? Clearly we cannot avoid being consumers. But is there a way to be a consumer in a way that promotes shalom rather than mitigating it?

And to that end, is it under-defining "simplicity" when we think of it solely in terms of frugality?

Do I (can I) accurately and faithfully embody the message of Jesus with my spending habits? And how?

What do you think?

Go here for more information on the issue.

Jesus Loves the Poor 2: Discipleship

2007-11-14T12:52:00.000-08:00

So last week we began our subseries in Luke called "Jesus Loves the Poor" by looking at the Exodus and discussing how that is decisive for how we understand who God is and who he calls his people to be.

Last night we brought things back to Luke and began to take this whole matter of caring for those who are on the underside of power and relate it to the question of discipleship. What we found was that Luke's vision of discipleship to Jesus has as a crucial and indispensible component sustained generosity towards the poor.

Some examples from Luke might include:

1 - Luke 10:25ff - The Good Samaritan: we come to find that "your neighbor" is anyone who has fallen into trouble that you have the capacity to help. And apparently loving the Lord your God and loving your neighbor in the sense just described are the ways in which Luke's Jesus thinks people orient themselves towards and in fact receive "eternal life" or "the life of the age [to come]" (10:25).

2 - Luke 11:37-41 - "When Jesus had finished speaking, a Pharisee invited him to eat with him; so he went in and reclined at the table. 38But the Pharisee, noticing that Jesus did not first wash before the meal, was surprised.39Then the Lord said to him, "Now then, you Pharisees clean the outside of the cup and dish, but inside you are full of greed and wickedness. 40You foolish people! Did not the one who made the outside make the inside also? 41But give what is inside the dish to the poor, and everything will be clean for you." Whoa. Apparently only one thing will break the back of greed and wickedness, cleansing the soul of the Pharisee: almsgiving.

3 - Luke 14 - Participating in the great eschatological feast of God depends on our making space in our lives for the "poor, the blind, the lame, and the crippled."

We could go on and on. The point is that in the Lukan vision of discipleship to Jesus, there are some things that do not and cannot happen in the human person except by virtue of concrete acts of kindness and generosity done to the poor. And even more than that, there are some things that the human person cannot receive (i.e., "eternal life", ouch!) apart from such magnanimity. Jesus' disciples can't receive the kingdom from him when their hands are clutching worldly possessions.

It's not that he's being unfair or unkind to them. It's that it's an impossibility. He cannot force the kingdom upon those who have no space in their lives for it. And apparently, when it comes to money, possessions ("stuff"), the only way to create space for it is by building consistent, sustained generosity towards the poor (not building programs: though there is a place for that elsewhere in the Scriptures) into the fabric of our lives.

So it would appear that Jesus' disciples need the poor as much as (and I might argue more than) the poor need them. They help us see and experience the reign of God in Christ.

Perhaps this was put best by Mother Theresa when she said, "Only in heaven will we see how much we owe to the poor for helping us to love God better because of them."

Well said, Theresa.

Clothes and Food for the Poor

2007-11-14T12:29:00.001-08:00

Last night at our college and career meeting we continued our "Jesus Loves the Poor" teaching series by examining how giving to the poor figures into Luke's vision of discipleship to Jesus (more on that later). After the teaching, we participated in the Lord's Supper and laid our gifts for the poor at the foot of his Table.

I'm honored to announce that folks donated what appears to be several hundred dollars worth of clothing. In addition (and this blows my mind), we raised $174 to give to John 3:16 Mission to help them purchase turkeys for their yearly Thanksgiving outreach.

Thanks be to God!

John 3:16 Thanksgiving Outreach

2007-11-07T10:20:00.000-08:00

All right, everyone, don't forget that as an expression of what we're learning about God’s concern for the poor, we've decided to team up with John 3:16 Mission’s Thanksgiving outreach to help supply needed families with food and clothing

There are three ways you can help:

1 – Donate Time

On Monday, November 19th, from 12:30-4:30 p.m., a group of us will be going down to John 3:16’s Family and Youth Center to help distribute groceries to needy families. If you want to join, just let us know by emailing me at andrew@peopleschurchtulsa.com.

2 – Donate Clothing

This time of year, John 3:16 is always on the lookout for good, warm fall and winter clothing. So next Tuesday night, November 13th, at our regular College and Career gathering, we’ll be collecting the following used (or new!) clothing items: coats, sweatshirts, long sleeved shirts, pants, winter hats, gloves, and scarves. Make sure they’re in good condition, and let's try to build a huge freaking pile of clothes to put in the center of our worship circle as an expression of our desire to put God's heart for the poor on display!

3 – Donate Money

To help John 3:16 pay for turkeys to distribute, we’ll have a special collection box available next Tuesday night (the 13th) for you to drop your cash donations off in.

Jesus Loves The Poor 1

2007-11-06T22:31:00.001-08:00

So tonight we began a subseries of our Luke series (which may last until 2009; hard to be sure) entitled "Jesus Loves the Poor." We're trying to understand the role that the poor and oppressed play in the ministry and message of Jesus and what that might mean for how we conceive of discipleship to Jesus. We kicked things off with a survey of Exodus, and noted several things:

1 - Exodus marks a new and decisive moment in the history of God. I know that's difficult language for our minds to handle, but the narrative of Exodus outlines it sharply in chapter 6: "1Then the LORD said to Moses, 'Now you will see what I will do to Pharaoh: Because of my mighty hand he will let them go; because of my mighty hand he will drive them out of his country.' 2 God also said to Moses, 'I am the LORD. 3 I appeared to Abraham, to Isaac and to Jacob as God Almighty, but by my name the LORD I did not make myself known to them. 4 I also established my covenant with them to give them the land of Canaan, where they lived as aliens. 5 Moreover, I have heard the groaning of the Israelites, whom the Egyptians are enslaving, and I have remembered my covenant."

Clearly, this marks the inauguration of a completely new history of God. It is a watershed moment of epic proportions. Yahweh rolls out his name at precisely the moment when he defines himself by his pathic concern for the poor and oppressed, and his unrelenting determination to do something about it. This leads to the second point.

2 - The newly inaugurated history of Yahweh is defined by a radical concern for those who suffer under the weight of oppression. Over against the classic Christian teaching on God's impassibility, we have here something altogether different. This is not the God of classic theism. It is Yahweh. And Yahweh resists our categories. Where we once thought the deity was too detached, too remote, too prestigious, too sovereign to be affected by what happens here on planet earth (a stoic god is a safe god, isn't he?), instead we have the passionate, irascible Yahweh who is capable of getting "all worked up" about stuff.

In particular, this god Yahweh gets testy when people get bullied, taken advantage of, and forgotten. We noted several passages in Proverbs that speak to this, and what we found interesting was that: (a) The poor and oppressed belong to Yahweh in a unique sense, and (b) He will take up their side even against his own people. It is not too much to say that Yahweh's people are the poor and oppressed. And if we find this a problematic statement, we ought to give the Sage of Proverbs the third degree and no one else. Those subversive intelligentsia!

What must not be missed, though, is the danger this god Yahweh poses to empires and oppressors. Brueggemann I think was right in "The Prophetic Imagination" when he suggested that compassion is the ultimate social critique. Yahweh's compassion is amounts to "fightin' words" with Pharoah and the self-serving anti-Eden that he has created.

3 - God's choosing of a people is directly connected with his desire to enact his concern for the poor and oppressed in the world. Again, the narrative of chapter 3 is decisive in its description of Moses' calling: "And now the cry of the Israelites has reached me, and I have seen the way the Egyptians are oppressing them. 10 So now, go. I am sending you to Pharaoh to bring my people the Israelites out of Egypt."

It would be difficult to be clearer than that. Yahweh chooses Moses in response to his deep concern for the plight of the oppressed. That is to say, Moses is irrelevant as a character in this theo-drama apart from the plight of the poor. If he fails in this, there is nothing left for him. To enact Yahweh's grand criticism of Pharoah's empire and bring about a new world of liberated possibility for Israel is the sum total of his calling. It's a pass-fail deal. Fail in this; fail in being you.

And lest we think this calling was exclusive to Moses, the compilers of Torah insist that we understand Israel's vocation as a whole as one that is connected to the revelation of the Exodus god, Yahweh. Deuteronomy 10:17-19: "For the LORD your God is God of gods and Lord of lords, the great God, mighty and awesome, who shows no partiality and accepts no bribes. 18 He defends the cause of the fatherless and the widow, and loves the alien, giving him food and clothing. 19 And you are to love those who are aliens, for you yourselves were aliens in Egypt." Israel is an Exodus people living an Exodus ethic because of the Exodus god Yahweh who has called her into being to enact his purposes for the world.

What does this all mean for us? If Exodus is definitional for how we understand Yahweh, then several things flow. We noted two:

(1) We need to see the poor as occupying a very special place in the heart of God. He hears them, he sees them, he responds to their cry. Proverbs characterizes Yahweh as "their Defender" and "their Maker." That is, they belong to him. And he will "contend their contention" against those who oppress them. It was of interest to us that Yahweh as a character in the Exodus drama does not make an entrance onto the stage of that history until someone got bullied. That brought him out of hiding, and nothing else. This says something for how we understand God.

(2) We need understand that our “being chosen” by the Exodus God is defined by our “being sent” by Exodus God to put the Exodus God on display. Which means that caring for the poor is not a side-issue of discipleship: If we’re following the God of Exodus, and the Jesus of Jubilee (cf. Luke 4), then we have to see this as central and pivotal. We exist to make this peculiar God known: the God who is peculiarly interested in the underdog, in those who are on the underside of power.