First, let me say “Hail,” to my neighbors in Englewood, Colorado (down the road not too far from where I live, in Boulder, Colorado). We all share a wonderful Gospel ministry.
Secondly, let me say how much I appreciate Joe and Tim’s wise words of counsel, and I hope I can add a tad bit more illumination.
If I were to give a quick synopsis of their thesis, it is this: we are called to bold, public proclamation by our Seated and Enthroned, Resurrected and Ascended King in Heaven, and the very foundation of that proclamation is “blessing.” Our lonely, lost, and secular era is one in desperate need of blessing. And, as my friends have found in Englewood, this kind of proclamation is both odd to modern ears, and also, remarkably welcome. Later, when the price becomes apparent, there is opposition, but at the outset, and to our amazement, and to the surprise of our hearers, it is almost always welcomed. The full outworking of blessing requires paying a price, and just as happened to Jesus, at that point, some, often many people draw back (John 6:66). But the number who “hear gladly” is more often than not, surprising.
Joe and Tim have exercised a remarkable ministry to the homeless. Let me begin there. That is not a trivial fact, but a most important one.
The miracles of Jesus are all both literal wonders, and also are enacted parables. If I were to quickly sum up the public miracles of Jesus, I could do so easily. Jesus gave sight to the blind, speech and hearing to the deaf and dumb, capacity to walk to the crippled and lame. At one point, He restored a withered hand. In each of these miracles, He was acting parabolically toward Israel. When Jesus appeared, the nation was at a nadir of righteousness, and had ceased to be, as she should have been, Jehovah’s servant on earth to the nations. Israel was blind to her calling to God, and to His hand and works, and could not see Him to follow him. She was deaf to His word. She could not hear Him. She was lame, and could not rise up and follow Him. And her hands were withered and incapable to serving Him.She no longer brought the life of God to a dead and dying world, and Jesus several raisings from the dead, culminating in Lazarus, and then of course in a completely comprehensive way, in His own Resurrection, spoke to the deadness of Israel. Jesus in His various miracles, spoke parabolically of, and to, Israel.
Every era has its own representative abrasions. Let me suggest that our deepest abrasion is spoken into, not by the common afflictions of Jesus time (we live in a world of medical miracles), but by another social scourge, the scourge of homelessness. This is an affliction in every affluent western nation, and appears to be oblivious to general prosperity. Nothing that governments do seems to make it better, and we have no prevailing answer to answer it. It is the curse of our time. But it parabolically speaks exactly to the crisis and deepest need of our time. In fact, our secular world, is a world of homelessness. We have no Father in Heaven, no Mother in the church, and our society is a society of homeless orphans wandering our cities and our streets. Joe and Tim have extensively ministered to this group.
All of this corresponds to another phenomena that is now everywhere in (at least) America, and that is the phenomena of the modern suburb, which is not the same as homelessness, but tells another similar parable of the anomie of our times.
Following WWII, suburbs began to be built, beginning first on Long Island, in New York, and spreading everywhere, that completely violated all of the social norms of towns and villages that preceded that time. I can only assume that city planners believed that men returning from the war, wanted to be left alone. All old neighborhoods in all towns across America, had streets that were were laid out in grids of square blocks. In terms of traffic, that meant everybody had a little traffic, but nobody had too much, and there were a hundred ways to everywhere. In the new design, suburbs were built with mazes of streets, most of which go nowhere, and will often come to dead ends. How parabolic is that of current day America? In this design, the point is to have as little traffic as possible, and in all “developments,” all traffic dumps out into a couple of main through-fares, and as a result, traffic jams are normal. In the old town, there were a myriad of ways to everywhere, and all neighborhoods had some “circulation.” Now, circulation is unwanted (transfer that metaphors to your hand or leg; if there were no circulation, your limbs would fall off), and people are “left alone,” except on the through-fare where traffic is a burden. And, it is also the case that all old neighborhoods had houses with spacious front porches, and more often than not, people’s backyards were interconnected and often formed something like seamless playgrounds for neighborhood children. The new developments have houses with no front porches, and all social life is geared toward a fenced in backyard. As a result of these two developments, “neighbors” almost no longer exist.
“Neighbor” is a kind of office. A neighbor is different from your family, and also different from someone of another different office; a neighbor is different from a “friend.” Neighbors are people you see, speak to, and often invite, to your front porch. But front porches no longer exist. Everything is geared to the fenced in backyard with the picnic table and barbecue. You invite your close friends, or your family to your enclosed backyard. Neighbors are nearly non-existent. It is possible to live in a modern suburb for years, and know only two or three people. At the risk of being a bit autobiographical (but it is an autobiography that I share with millions) as a child in a “square block” neighborhood in the older part of town, in the 1950s, we knew, and could name almost every person up and down both sides of our street, and then all the way around the block. Neighboring happened in front yards, on front porches, and our streets all connected in both directions, and one could get anywhere without taxi-ing to some connecting thoroughfare. We did not live in a dead-end, or streets to no-where world.
The homeless represent our extremity. Our suburbs represent something similar with less extremity. The modern world is homeless and/or alone and lonely. We have neither family, friends, or neighbors. But now, the blessing of Jesus, spoken of by Joe and Tim, connects us, just as the touch of Jesus healed ancient Israel. We in the church have the privilege of extending that blessing.
This brings us to another juncture of the need of our time. Various eras are spoken to through various means. The Reformation was the culmination of of a thousand years of dealing with the law of God. The law was initially “good news” to tribal and ancient peoples. One law that exalted one king spoke clarity and righteousness to deeply divided tribes, But, by the time of the Reformation, the law had ceased to be “good news” and had become an intolerable burden. The Church had developed an almost Ptolemical system of sacraments, with epicycles within epicycles of dizzying complexity. Martin Luther brought a stunning new Gospel simplicity that set the Gospel, as justification by faith, as the answer to the law. That spoke dramatically to that era, but no longer speaks to ours in the same way. Our era no longer knows, or cares, that there is law, or that that law represents a human dilemma. The Lutheran Law/Gospel formula is not a formula that speaks to our time, however true it still is.
Likewise, classical Augustinianism, with its emphasis on an utterly sovereign God, has always spoken into eras in which people feel “fated” or controlled, and do not feel free. Paradoxically, in such eras, the sovereignty of God, becomes the source of human freedom. The God of the Bible is stronger, bigger, more powerful than any, and all, of the “fates” of that era. Astrology in such eras (such as Augustine’s) is not an amusing bit of daily entertainment to be read in the daily newspaper, but an all controlling series of powers that are far, far greater than all of humanity. Butcher, baker, candle stick maker, or king and royal court, are no match for the “fates,” but are controlled by them. Likewise, in the time of the Reformation, the power of the Church was essentially ubiquitous. Both Luther and Calvin brought the Gospel of a Sovereign God, who is “for us. (Romans 8:31) Such a God, and His Gospel, was ironically, greater and more powerful, than the Church of that time. Luther’s Bondage of the Will, and Calvin’s well known belief in predestination, spoke to that era, and brought a new liberty and freedom. However, likewise, such an emphasis no longer speaks to our era.
As is well known, America is “the land of the free.” As is also well known, many people do not feel free. However, it is not because people believe they are “fated.” Far from it. If I cannot do as I please, it is because of some injustice, some oppression. Injustice and oppression are not sovereign powers, but powers that are amenable to human manipulation. Protest, complaint, the exercise of “rights,” are all ways of conquering what keeps me from libertine enjoyment. And, if I cannot overcome the oppressor, I am allowed to take upon myself the cloak of victimization, which is itself a pathway to increased power and subsidation. Rousseau said, “Man is born free but everywhere is in chains.” We are all Rousseau-ian’s now. The exercise of freedom is a realizable human dream through human means, because it is our birth-right and chains can be destroyed through entirely human means. However, what we do not have is identity, or relationship, of any meaningful sort.
Our greatest sociological crisis today is fatherlessness. The so called “Sexual Revolution” has wreaked havoc with our times. When Daniel Patrick Moynihan penned his now famous Moynihan Report (1965) which noted the crisis of the black family, he sounded an alarm that the illegitimacy rate in the black community was approaching 25%. He saw this as unsustainable. Today, the illegitimacy rate in the black community approaches 70% and is as high as 90% in some of our inner cities, Now the current rate of illegitimacy in the entire country is approximately 40%. The institution of marriage appears to be in tatters. Leanne Payne, author of numerous books on healing prayer, has said, “Our sense of being, and well being, comes from our mothers, but it is from fathers that one is named and given identity. Mary Ebersadt has recently authored a most interesting book, Primal Screams: How the Sexual Revolution Created Identity Politics. In a nutshell, her thesis is that the collapse of marriage, family, and fatherhood has brought us to the place of being without identity. Hordes of young people have no strong sense of name or of identity. Hence, the rise of “identity politics,” in which especially gender is now seen as a matter of pure autonomous choice. But, it is not working. Families and fathers are the real source of “thick identity” of a dense sense of who one is. Without this, we are lost.
As in all other ages, sociological recovery is preceded by theological recovery. In our time, the “unknown Person of the Trinity”, is the Father. (Pentecostalism, a century ago began to address the Holy Spirit as “the unknown Person of the Trinity,” and has been quite successful.) Fatherhood and family can never be recovered unless we come to know our Father in Heaven. Jesus brought the “Good News.” The Gospel is “Good News.” In our time, the great, and needed emphasis is that Jesus came (as our Elder Brother) to re-introduce us to the Father. He can be known, and must be. Knowing the Heavenly Father will restore the earthly father, and recreate our Earth as our home. Homelessness is addressed in the Gospel. The loneliness of the suburb is addressed in the Gospel. Until we have the experience of being seated on our Heavenly front porch with Father and Big Brother, we will never have a place to invite whoever it is who dwells next door to our own suburban front yard, and porch.
The Gospel is the Good News of our new family, and the recreation of the blessing of our roles, created for us by our Father, our privilege is to bless our communities, and bring this new source of identity close, and present. We are called to begin with and by blessing.
First, let me say “Hail,” to my neighbors in Englewood, Colorado (down the road not too far from where I live, in Boulder, Colorado). We all share a wonderful Gospel ministry.
Secondly, let me say how much I appreciate Joe and Tim’s wise words of counsel, and I hope I can add a tad bit more illumination.
If I were to give a quick synopsis of their thesis, it is this: we are called to bold, public proclamation by our Seated and Enthroned, Resurrected and Ascended King in Heaven, and the very foundation of that proclamation is “blessing.” Our lonely, lost, and secular era is one in desperate need of blessing. And, as my friends have found in Englewood, this kind of proclamation is both odd to modern ears, and also, remarkably welcome. Later, when the price becomes apparent, there is opposition, but at the outset, and to our amazement, and to the surprise of our hearers, it is almost always welcomed. The full outworking of blessing requires paying a price, and just as happened to Jesus, at that point, some, often many people draw back (John 6:66). But the number who “hear gladly” is more often than not, surprising.
Joe and Tim have exercised a remarkable ministry to the homeless. Let me begin there. That is not a trivial fact, but a most important one.
The miracles of Jesus are all both literal wonders, and also are enacted parables. If I were to quickly sum up the public miracles of Jesus, I could do so easily. Jesus gave sight to the blind, speech and hearing to the deaf and dumb, capacity to walk to the crippled and lame. At one point, He restored a withered hand. In each of these miracles, He was acting parabolically toward Israel. When Jesus appeared, the nation was at a nadir of righteousness, and had ceased to be, as she should have been, Jehovah’s servant on earth to the nations. Israel was blind to her calling to God, and to His hand and works, and could not see Him to follow him. She was deaf to His word. She could not hear Him. She was lame, and could not rise up and follow Him. And her hands were withered and incapable to serving Him.She no longer brought the life of God to a dead and dying world, and Jesus several raisings from the dead, culminating in Lazarus, and then of course in a completely comprehensive way, in His own Resurrection, spoke to the deadness of Israel. Jesus in His various miracles, spoke parabolically of, and to, Israel.
Every era has its own representative abrasions. Let me suggest that our deepest abrasion is spoken into, not by the common afflictions of Jesus time (we live in a world of medical miracles), but by another social scourge, the scourge of homelessness. This is an affliction in every affluent western nation, and appears to be oblivious to general prosperity. Nothing that governments do seems to make it better, and we have no prevailing answer to answer it. It is the curse of our time. But it parabolically speaks exactly to the crisis and deepest need of our time. In fact, our secular world, is a world of homelessness. We have no Father in Heaven, no Mother in the church, and our society is a society of homeless orphans wandering our cities and our streets. Joe and Tim have extensively ministered to this group.
All of this corresponds to another phenomena that is now everywhere in (at least) America, and that is the phenomena of the modern suburb, which is not the same as homelessness, but tells another similar parable of the anomie of our times.
Following WWII, suburbs began to be built, beginning first on Long Island, in New York, and spreading everywhere, that completely violated all of the social norms of towns and villages that preceded that time. I can only assume that city planners believed that men returning from the war, wanted to be left alone. All old neighborhoods in all towns across America, had streets that were were laid out in grids of square blocks. In terms of traffic, that meant everybody had a little traffic, but nobody had too much, and there were a hundred ways to everywhere. In the new design, suburbs were built with mazes of streets, most of which go nowhere, and will often come to dead ends. How parabolic is that of current day America? In this design, the point is to have as little traffic as possible, and in all “developments,” all traffic dumps out into a couple of main through-fares, and as a result, traffic jams are normal. In the old town, there were a myriad of ways to everywhere, and all neighborhoods had some “circulation.” Now, circulation is unwanted (transfer that metaphors to your hand or leg; if there were no circulation, your limbs would fall off), and people are “left alone,” except on the through-fare where traffic is a burden. And, it is also the case that all old neighborhoods had houses with spacious front porches, and more often than not, people’s backyards were interconnected and often formed something like seamless playgrounds for neighborhood children. The new developments have houses with no front porches, and all social life is geared toward a fenced in backyard. As a result of these two developments, “neighbors” almost no longer exist.
“Neighbor” is a kind of office. A neighbor is different from your family, and also different from someone of another different office; a neighbor is different from a “friend.” Neighbors are people you see, speak to, and often invite, to your front porch. But front porches no longer exist. Everything is geared to the fenced in backyard with the picnic table and barbecue. You invite your close friends, or your family to your enclosed backyard. Neighbors are nearly non-existent. It is possible to live in a modern suburb for years, and know only two or three people. At the risk of being a bit autobiographical (but it is an autobiography that I share with millions) as a child in a “square block” neighborhood in the older part of town, in the 1950s, we knew, and could name almost every person up and down both sides of our street, and then all the way around the block. Neighboring happened in front yards, on front porches, and our streets all connected in both directions, and one could get anywhere without taxi-ing to some connecting thoroughfare. We did not live in a dead-end, or streets to no-where world.
The homeless represent our extremity. Our suburbs represent something similar with less extremity. The modern world is homeless and/or alone and lonely. We have neither family, friends, or neighbors. But now, the blessing of Jesus, spoken of by Joe and Tim, connects us, just as the touch of Jesus healed ancient Israel. We in the church have the privilege of extending that blessing.
This brings us to another juncture of the need of our time. Various eras are spoken to through various means. The Reformation was the culmination of of a thousand years of dealing with the law of God. The law was initially “good news” to tribal and ancient peoples. One law that exalted one king spoke clarity and righteousness to deeply divided tribes, But, by the time of the Reformation, the law had ceased to be “good news” and had become an intolerable burden. The Church had developed an almost Ptolemical system of sacraments, with epicycles within epicycles of dizzying complexity. Martin Luther brought a stunning new Gospel simplicity that set the Gospel, as justification by faith, as the answer to the law. That spoke dramatically to that era, but no longer speaks to ours in the same way. Our era no longer knows, or cares, that there is law, or that that law represents a human dilemma. The Lutheran Law/Gospel formula is not a formula that speaks to our time, however true it still is.
Likewise, classical Augustinianism, with its emphasis on an utterly sovereign God, has always spoken into eras in which people feel “fated” or controlled, and do not feel free. Paradoxically, in such eras, the sovereignty of God, becomes the source of human freedom. The God of the Bible is stronger, bigger, more powerful than any, and all, of the “fates” of that era. Astrology in such eras (such as Augustine’s) is not an amusing bit of daily entertainment to be read in the daily newspaper, but an all controlling series of powers that are far, far greater than all of humanity. Butcher, baker, candle stick maker, or king and royal court, are no match for the “fates,” but are controlled by them. Likewise, in the time of the Reformation, the power of the Church was essentially ubiquitous. Both Luther and Calvin brought the Gospel of a Sovereign God, who is “for us. (Romans 8:31) Such a God, and His Gospel, was ironically, greater and more powerful, than the Church of that time. Luther’s Bondage of the Will, and Calvin’s well known belief in predestination, spoke to that era, and brought a new liberty and freedom. However, likewise, such an emphasis no longer speaks to our era.
As is well known, America is “the land of the free.” As is also well known, many people do not feel free. However, it is not because people believe they are “fated.” Far from it. If I cannot do as I please, it is because of some injustice, some oppression. Injustice and oppression are not sovereign powers, but powers that are amenable to human manipulation. Protest, complaint, the exercise of “rights,” are all ways of conquering what keeps me from libertine enjoyment. And, if I cannot overcome the oppressor, I am allowed to take upon myself the cloak of victimization, which is itself a pathway to increased power and subsidation. Rousseau said, “Man is born free but everywhere is in chains.” We are all Rousseau-ian’s now. The exercise of freedom is a realizable human dream through human means, because it is our birth-right and chains can be destroyed through entirely human means. However, what we do not have is identity, or relationship, of any meaningful sort.
Our greatest sociological crisis today is fatherlessness. The so called “Sexual Revolution” has wreaked havoc with our times. When Daniel Patrick Moynihan penned his now famous Moynihan Report (1965) which noted the crisis of the black family, he sounded an alarm that the illegitimacy rate in the black community was approaching 25%. He saw this as unsustainable. Today, the illegitimacy rate in the black community approaches 70% and is as high as 90% in some of our inner cities, Now the current rate of illegitimacy in the entire country is approximately 40%. The institution of marriage appears to be in tatters. Leanne Payne, author of numerous books on healing prayer, has said, “Our sense of being, and well being, comes from our mothers, but it is from fathers that one is named and given identity. Mary Ebersadt has recently authored a most interesting book, Primal Screams: How the Sexual Revolution Created Identity Politics. In a nutshell, her thesis is that the collapse of marriage, family, and fatherhood has brought us to the place of being without identity. Hordes of young people have no strong sense of name or of identity. Hence, the rise of “identity politics,” in which especially gender is now seen as a matter of pure autonomous choice. But, it is not working. Families and fathers are the real source of “thick identity” of a dense sense of who one is. Without this, we are lost.
As in all other ages, sociological recovery is preceded by theological recovery. In our time, the “unknown Person of the Trinity”, is the Father. (Pentecostalism, a century ago began to address the Holy Spirit as “the unknown Person of the Trinity,” and has been quite successful.) Fatherhood and family can never be recovered unless we come to know our Father in Heaven. Jesus brought the “Good News.” The Gospel is “Good News.” In our time, the great, and needed emphasis is that Jesus came (as our Elder Brother) to re-introduce us to the Father. He can be known, and must be. Knowing the Heavenly Father will restore the earthly father, and recreate our Earth as our home. Homelessness is addressed in the Gospel. The loneliness of the suburb is addressed in the Gospel. Until we have the experience of being seated on our Heavenly front porch with Father and Big Brother, we will never have a place to invite whoever it is who dwells next door to our own suburban front yard, and porch.
The Gospel is the Good News of our new family, and the recreation of the blessing of our roles, created for us by our Father, our privilege is to bless our communities, and bring this new source of identity close, and present. We are called to begin with and by blessing.
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