This morning I attended a breakfast and lecture on the 39th floor of the Lyric Opera house at the Tower Club. It was an event hosted by the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) and the Hastert Center at Wheaton College on the topic of free enterprise and capitalism. The three lectures/topis were 'The Fight for Free Enterprise', 'Capitalism:Fix the Machine or Change the Behavior?' and 'My Brother's Keeper: Why Capitalism is Good for the Poor'. We ate a grand breakfast of scrambled eggs, roasted potatoes, the best bacon I've ever had, fresh fruit and pasteries, with coffee, juice and soda. The presenters spoke for a couple of hours and fielded some comments and questions. It was a room of about 75 people, with two people of color.
In a couple of hours I will open up the doors of Cornerstone Center to welcome in about 100 guests for Breaking Bread, a hospitality ministry/soup kitchen of LaSalle Street Church. Keith and the volutneers will be preparing a meal of spaghetti, garlic bread, corn and dessert to go along with our coffee, juice and water. Guests will come in from the cold to sit and talk, participate in a Bible study, listen to some music on my iPod, enjoy a meal and have the option of picking up some free clothes and canned goods. Our 100 guests will be predominately men and women of color.
I write this because these two meals I'm a part of today, that are bookending my day, seem like unreconcilable and uterly paradoxical events. I really, honestly, don't know what to think about it. Part of me wants to yell at AEI and Wheaton. Part of me wants to yell at our guests and LSC. I have no idea what I would say to any of them or why I would say it, other than the fact that this paradox of meals is frustrating.
More thoughts will come later, but this is the context that they will come out of...
Peace,
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
7 comments:
Thanks.
You guys need to come to Philly sometime. I want you to visit our church. And the school where I work. And some of the other schools that have come out of our church. And come to our growth cell. Then I want to have conversations with you about these things. Then, you and Josh and Mike and Jason can either all work at our church (or plant another one), and Emily and Abby and Robin and I can form a sweet group of non-traditional pastors' wives, and we could rock the socks off of urban ministry. And we'd have to get a few other key people out here, too. Like Peju. And others. Just a thought. But seriously, come. Tack it on to a BH reunion, but come.
Keep struggling. And never settle.
More like 86 people.
And they were all people of color, but yes, most of that color was some shade of pink.
Devin...wow. That is quite a day of contrast. I don't have any idea how you can even begin to reconcile that. Sorry.
Hannah, if by "Philly" you mean South Jersey, and by "urban ministry" you mean rural ministry, then yes. I am so in. :o)
Eric, you make me smile.
Yes, a crazy day of contrast that will take a while to work through. Most likely we'll have a post tomorrow.
Hannah, just to let you know, we'll be in Chicago until we're in DRC. However, between now and then I think it would be awesome to hang out, play games and hang out with Shane Claibourn.
Word
Sometimes the bookend experiences in our lives are the most instructive. For me you hit the nail on the head when you indicated you not only wanted to yell at the AEI people, but also your guests. In between the bookends lies the truth. Some of the truth will not be absolute, but relative.
It often seems that the most insensitive people in life are the rich capitalists, who, having much, have the time and the resources to make big differences in the lives of the poor and do not. It becomes easy to see capitalism as the force creating that insensitivity. Yet, the poorest people, the people who suffer the most in this world, live under communistic/socialistic/highly controlled economic systems. Warren Buffet and Bill Gates have committed to each other to not die rich but use their vast wealth to benefit the needy throughout the world. They are capitalists to the core.
Some of your guests are fat. They live in a capitalistic economy. You know first hand the contribution some of your guests make to their own misery. You see the opportunities freely given them squandered and the entitlement mentality that some have. Not all. Some. Perhaps many. Race indeed contributes as institutional racism does destroy lives. No question about that. The rich can not sit in judgement just because they have an economic system that can fatten poor people. They must not salve their collective insensitivity just by throwing large scraps of food on the floor. They must work to bring people to the table for the main course.
Yelling just makes lots of sense. I will pray that you see in this what the Lord would want you to see. I will pray that He directs your steps as you move forward in life and ministry. I will pray for clarity for you and Emily, that you will hear God's calling together.
Hannah's comment was moving to the extreme for me. Perhaps there is something out there that the Lord wants you and your Christ following friends to build that is "church and ministry done a new and exciting way." If the Lord is in it this ministry will not denigrate those that came and tried before. It will build on the sacrificial lives already spent in service to Christ.
I loved being with you this last week. Thank you for letting me serve at Breaking Bread. The picture of you and Emily with her new family thrilled my heart.
Post a Comment