Can anything good come from Flint? Salvation of the Absurd
Flint will minister to you. You simply need to let it happen. Once, while settling into a Quaker waiting worship, a quote entered my mind. From what I can remember, it went something like “The Holy Spirit needs no invitation, nor acknowledgment. It is ever-present.” I believe that to be true, but I also believe that while the Spirit is ever-present, we make a habit of avoiding the invitation that this Light of Being extends to us.
The Spirit is alive in Flint, yet the invitation that I experience is one that results in a great deal of me being ministered to by others. Flint is a city that refuses to consider that God has somehow abandoned them. While attempting to live biblically, as absurd as it is to think it possible; my journey of gospel exploration and embodiment has become a shared experience of the strength of the Spirit among a people who have little more than their portion of strength and resiliency left to them. My journeys through Bedrock have brought me face-to-face with the accuser, and my savior.
There was a long period of my life in which I had rejected Christianity and any other potential supernatural reality. I was a passionate person, but neither spiritual nor religious. My heart was invested wholly in expressions of justice and equality (and a lot of drugs and alcohol), and my view of the church and of Christianity in general was remarkably negative. What was most prominent in my thinking and my perspective was that God, at least the god of white folks and the suburban church, had abandon the city. Always, and in every neighborhood I knew of in Detroit, empty and deteriorating churches stood witness to the fact that much of Christianity was not interested in their inner-city neighbors, race-relations, economic justice, or even relationships. I still remember the Diocese making the decision to close a number of church buildings in the 80’s.
The white churches that tended to remain in Detroit, from my perspective, were dying out, or were historic churches of politically liberal persuasion. These buildings actually seemed to draw people into the city from the suburbs, if for no other reason than to satisfy a sense of servanthood. And, there were some very active white churches that seemed to do everything they could to embody the gospel. These few congregations were peopled with great folks, but they seemed tired, overworked, and limited by an ethic I had no understanding of. Indeed, if I would have been consulted, I would have told them to cut the Bible-stories loose and find other motivation for political change. Their struggle to be faithful seemed to me a Sisyphean task.
Looking back on this period of my life and my feelings about gods, I can see that I had fallen victim to the accuser, because it was the same god-of-the-suburbs that was under critical consideration. The only representations of the church I accepted as real were the negative images of a hierarchal institution acquiescing to the bare-boned needs of the ghetto. Soup kitchens, bus passes, work clothes, and food pantries represented the kind of outreach that seemed to me, necessary only because the folks that used to attend all of those city churches moved out, and took the tax base and their gods with them.
Yet, a look at the gospel provides a glimpse of where salvation really comes from, and it is not the salvation that we think of most often. It is certainly not a salvation that I associated with the church in my youth or atheist years. Heaven can wait, if it turns out that we actually somehow experience such a post-mortem resort-like life. The gospels indicate that first-century Jews were expecting salvation to come, quickly, and in their favor. But when a soon-to-be-disciple of Jesus is told that the guy from Galilee may be the messiah, he responded with a loaded question. “Can anything good come from Nazareth?”
For those who did not have the eyes to see, it was in fact the religious establishment and the people who had means to lead a stable life who needed Jesus’ message every bit as much as the poor, the un-pure, and the prostitute. Too often the gospels point out that individuals who overlooked the humanity of others, and the divine spark within each of us, were doomed to an unfulfilled life. It is the unexamined life that many of us need to be saved from, every bit as much as the hungry need to be fed. Yet our first thought might be, can anything good come from Flint?
Too often, our idea of ministry is that we are to serve those who are marginalized because they are a people in need. While this is true, and we are commanded to meet the physical, financial, and spiritual needs of all who suffer, we overlook a truth that is just as important. We overlook the fact that we are called to be in relationship with others, not simply a “resource,” for their benefit. We are called to be in relationship with everyone to remind us of our own humanity and need for humility in the sight of God and all others. We are not to be a church of outreach, we are to be a people who are part of a unified body of faith. The distinctions between those members who have and those who have not must end.
When building relationships, Facebook invitations do not bring gobs of folks to a Tuesday Night church dinner. Last evening, while Mary and Jenn made soup and salad for our planned meal, I drove some folks home after water distribution and returned to a dinner with few in attendance. So, I set out to walking the neighborhood and invited anyone I saw, whether I knew them or not, to our banquet. I walked up one street and down another, inviting everyone from children to homeless folks to people waiting for the bus. In time, we had a banquet, and it was a messianic in nature. We shared ourselves with one another.
Last evening’s meal became a witness to the faithfulness of a few folks who put on a meal and simply relied on the expectation that God would provide mouths to feed. In response to invitation, we shared a table with children and adults from across the neighborhood. Some knew about the dinner and had come a little late. Others responded to the invitation of an overweight and possibly overzealous plain preacher who said there was food in the church basement. And those people who came stayed. There was more than a meal shared, but stories, jokes, and yes, even some real-life struggles. And it is in such relationship building that we recognize salvation comes to us all, often from the very people and places we might quietly think God left behind.
Flint, as I have mentioned before, has been “Left Behind.” (®©™) Yet it is not God that has left Flint behind. Rather the inability of many to recognize that our salvation can only be properly experienced when it is shared with and by “the other” can we fulfill the gospel. Amidst the burned-out buildings, vacant houses, and empty store-fronts it was the folks who have been lift behind who made salvation real – tangible. The folks of flint gave salvation meaning. I say this because, last night, folks who cannot drink their own water were happy to receive a meal and share of themselves with no strings attached. For many of us, we can only give with strings, and can never experience the joy of receiving gifts, especially from those we deem needy.
We can only understand salvation when the folks we believe we are serving are viewed by us as our equals in every way, without distinction. It is my belief that we might all have some neediness as far as relationships go, and it is only in Christ’s communion that we begin to resolve those issue of fear and loneliness and otherness so as to enjoy life to its fullest. After all, life is not preparation for heavenly reward. Life is present, and need not be invited. We need only to respond to life’s invitation to live. In Christ’s name. Our salvation depends on it.
