Wind, weddings, and wine bars

I spent the evening (waif dessert at a wine bar) with a couple who drove into the aftermath of hurricane Katrina. They shared story after miraculous story of generosity and grace (a serendipitous can of orange juice for someone craving it. Diapers and baby food that arrived just as the supply went out. Women who had nothing, but just wanted to be hugged...) but my favorite story involved their reason for driving into the devastation. 

Their son was getting married. 

The wedding had been scheduled long before the hurricane arrived, and while many would have canceled because of crumbling buildings or weeks without power, this couple chose to say their vows. The extra festivities (food and dancing, live band and white dress) would happen later at a "second celebration" but the core of what a wedding should be (prayers and vows and worship) --the deep heart of a wedding's purpose can't be blown away by any wind. 

So the bride spray-painted "worship Sunday at 10am" onto a torn sheet, stretched it across the church front and invited anyone who wanted to join them. Most of the church members had driven north to escape the storm, so the wedding took place among strangers (survivors) who genuinely gathered to worship God --even after storms devastated their lives.

One woman was in tears: "my whole life--everything I have--is destroyed. I don't even have a single shard of a teacup to remember how things were... Yet here you are. Making a new start. A new life amid wreckage. Thank you for letting me witness this! It gives me hope."

Someone brought flowers (to this day, the couple has no idea where they came from or who brought the bouquet and altar flowers). A complete stranger from down the street managed to cook food for the ten or so in the party's family. And the bride spent her honeymoon days sleeping on the hospital floor because she was a nurse and patients were filling all the beds. 

Faithful people are amazing. 

The boats were full

Our Tuesday worship service has settled into a communal bible study --sort of a group lectio divina. And, since I've been reading Luke, our passage this week was Jesus' calling of the disciples on lake Gennesaret (Luke 5:1-11). I've read the passage a million times, but someone else noticed this week that the disciples left everything behind to follow Jesus. Not just the boats and nets and gear, but EVERYTHING--including the miraculously gigantic haul of fish that almost sunk the boats. It may be because artwork usually depicts the boats as empty, but I never realized that the boats left behind we're full. 

 After an exhausting and disappointing night of catching nothing (meaning no fish to eat or sell for their families) they obey Jesus and experience an incredibly successful endeavor. Fishing was their livelihood--Their business--so those boats and nets were full of profits. Success was right in front of them; 

they were going to make bank! 

And they left everything to follow Jesus. 

Now, granted, leaving a boat full of old fish might not seem great for passerbys or downwind neighbors, but what about the crowd who gathered to hear Jesus--what if they were still around? And who listened to Jesus better than the poor? (It was an 8-year-old boy named Elijah, actually, who suggested the fish could go to the poor). What if the would-be disciples landed ashore with boats full of fish and immediately encountered a hungry crowd of Jesus' poor. 

If so, then THAT is the context where Jesus said they would be fishing for people. That's the context where disciples left their profits behind to feed the poor and follow Christ. 

Segregated Heaven

A woman from my church came into the office today looking for a book. She was preparing a program for her women's circle and wanted something about a woman who faced adversity and struggled through--so I gave her Delores William's Sisters in the Wilderness. I warned her that it was a theology book and a little on the heavy side, but especially recommended the first chapter about Hagar the slave-woman from Africa. If ever a woman faced adversity, surely it was Hagar as interpreted through the lens of a black woman.

The woman, in turn, shared with me a story about a black woman who worked for her family--raising the kids and helping with laundry.

"I loved to watch her iron," she said, "because she was always singing. Worship songs, usually. 

One day, I asked her--'May? Is there a white Jesus and a black Jesus?'' 

And she said, 'no child. There's only one God--it's the same for all of us. Why?'

and I said, "because when I get to heaven, I want to be where you are."

...the woman smiled at the memory, laughed about the way that children think--and then said it wasn't all that strange of a question. In the midst of a segregated world, why wouldn't a child think about a segregated heaven? Scripture, of course, insists that--even with our differences--there's only ONE Christ and only one heaven for all of us (Ephesians 4:1-6; Galatians 3:27-28) but the injustices and systemic sins of our world can warp our view of God.

But the flip side is true too: If our heaven isn't segregated, why on earth should our world be?
I doubt that Christ has a giant wall up in heaven to separate one kind of culture from another.
...so why on earth would we build one here? Why would that even start to be a viable political question for people who are praying to make this world more like the Kingdom of God?