Flint, and the politics of the absurd
It wasn’t “new job” anxiety I felt when my wife Jenn pulled out of our driveway to drive me to the Greyhound station in Grand Rapids. I told her I was a little nervous, but the anxiety came from a different place – that inward feeling of anxiousness that is the body’s response to a state of unknowing. As the story of the Exodus indicates, even the Hebrew slaves got angry at Moses for liberating them from slavery when faced with the possibility of hunger, violence, and “living on a prayer.
But the Bible is all about taking leaps of faith, or what psychologists might identify as healthy risks. My anxiety stems from not knowing whether my mission to go home is truly Spirit lead or a misguided political action. I think the truth will be known soon.. Perhaps it is not being mistaken that creates the most anxiety. Perhaps, it is finding out that such absurd interpretation of the gospel such as traveling across the state to do ministry is in fact Spirit led. That makes it a little more difficult to consider easy ways out of any binds of faith that I find myself experiencing.
The idea to come to Flint to serve others certainly reflects political as well as spiritual thinking. The question to ask, rather, is whether the ministry leading is reflective of the politics of Jesus, or the patronizing politics of using folks on the margin to make a point. The politics of Jesus, to paraphrase John Howard Yoder, reflects the ethics of Jesus through the emptying of privilege to serve others. The politically loaded error of patronizing the poor is easily recognizable – it is the attempt to win arguments with political enemies by yelling about how Jesus wants us to feed and house and clothe people while not actually doing it. We try to shame others we disagree with spiritually or politically by reminding them of all the things that Jesus tells us to do for people on the margins, without sacrificing our own means to do so.
The politics of Jesus indicate that we should not only feed the hungry or visit the prisoner and shelter the homeless. The gospel is relational. We are called to serve others, and walk with them in the struggle to mend brokenness. It is indeed a broken world, and Jesus calls us not to salve the world’s problems – as they will always be with us. I believe Jesus calls us to respond to the world’s problems with mercy and grace, and offer an alternative way of living amidst the brokenness by offering community within the kingdom of God.
The politics of patronizing “the other” makes a point of establishing relationships with the powerful and privileged persons of a community, often at the expense or exclusion of the very people we say we want to help. The politics of patronizing the poor is running for office to have political power, and using the stories of the poor to get you elected to that position of power. The gospel might be handed down from on high, but it is made known and identified as truth from the ground up, and, through the truth of the cross. There is no political power in the cross, only servanthood, and the voluntary sacrificing of privilege through which all can be liberated from brokenness and sin.
Sin is not evident in wanting to help folks on the margins. Sin is manipulating others to make sure that it gets done. In fact, the more we come to know sin and brokenness through Jesus and the story of the cross – we come to realize that it is us with privilege and means of gathering wealth that are ultimately going to be ministered to. Tomorrow morning, church begins.
