Jesus continued, "Now to what can I compare the people of this day? What are they like? They are like children sitting in the marketplace. One group shouts to the other, 'We played wedding music for you, but you wouldn't dance! We sang funeral songs, but you wouldn't cry!' (Luke 7:31-32)
How could one ever resist loving the innocent eyes through which Lou saw the world? Fifteen and vulnerable, he never seemed to let circumstances dissuade him from his conviction that everything would turn out fine. I remember politely reserving my laughter as Lou told of being stopped by police while driving through a neighboring township. “You actually thought they pulled you over for having an air freshener hanging from your mirror,” I half chuckled. “Yeah, that’s what they said,” he naively replied. “You’re saying there was another reason?” Lou shyly inquired. His classic Mayan face registered pure shock as I suggested that he was pulled over because he was driving while loaded down with Mexicans on his way through a quiet South Jersey suburb. I felt a little guilty bursting Lou’s bubble – the one that had him believe that America would actually judge him on either content or character – but, for the sake of his future survival, I had to reveal certain truths every undocumented immigrant should know.
I began to mildly chide Lou because, at 15, he was below New Jersey’s legal driving age of 17. He respectfully absorbed my moralizing and, with characteristic respect, explained why he was driving through the suburbs early on a Tuesday morning. Having no papers, Lou’s parents were not eligible to obtain drivers licenses. Most low level industrial jobs that depend on undocumented help are located outside of the city. Someone had to drive the family to work and back. As is sometimes the case, Lou’s entire working aged family labored at the same facility. Lou figured there would be less serious consequences to the family if he were the one caught driving without a license. He was convinced that either of his parents would be deported if they were caught in such a fix. He relied on the kindness of America to cut him a break if he was caught and if not, his deportation would be less injurious to his family. My respect and admiration for Lou grew with every word that proceeded from his mouth as he fearlessly and unhesitatingly explained his role as the family’s sacrificial lamb. Those trapped in the unrighteous belief that immigrants, documented or not, are liabilities to America’s future, have obviously not encountered a treasure like Lou.
Lou has certainly been a blessing to our community and to me personally. Working past the fears and stigmas attached to arms stretched out toward strangers, revels everyday blessings and facilitates powerful collisions with unimaginable grace that come through encounters with the Lous among us.
Encounters with Lou and his like are especially important for guys like me, who have lost meaningful connection with the endless platitudes, grandiose assumptions and comforting clichés of Christian culture. Some of us need constant contact with the least, last and the lost for concepts such as life in Christ and right relationship with God to actually make sense. While this might work to buttress my faith, it doesn’t seem to work for some other Christians around me. Some find it outrageous that we offer sanctuary to undocumented families being pursued by immigration authorities. Others abhor the fact that we have found ways to circumvent policies in order to gain college admission for undocumented residents. Such people accuse that I should be cooperating with those in authority, who they believe are God appointed. It is not my intention here to defend against such critics, but only to say that while I understand their views, I do not agree. While they tend to have what they believe to be a Pauline view of the believer’s relationship to governmental authority, I tend to have a view more in line with the Magi, who aided and abetted the divine Christ child, the enemy of the state. On these issues I’ll agree to disagree and continue to work with those of opposite persuasions as we all love and affirm the work of God within us. What does bug me however is the nagging accusation that suggests what I do in relationship to Lou and others like him has nothing to do with the gospel. I am accused of preaching and practicing a social gospel.
Encounters with Lou and his like are especially important for guys like me, who have lost meaningful connection with the endless platitudes, grandiose assumptions and comforting clichés of Christian culture. Some of us need constant contact with the least, last and the lost for concepts such as life in Christ and right relationship with God to actually make sense. While this might work to buttress my faith, it doesn’t seem to work for some other Christians around me. Some find it outrageous that we offer sanctuary to undocumented families being pursued by immigration authorities. Others abhor the fact that we have found ways to circumvent policies in order to gain college admission for undocumented residents. Such people accuse that I should be cooperating with those in authority, who they believe are God appointed. It is not my intention here to defend against such critics, but only to say that while I understand their views, I do not agree. While they tend to have what they believe to be a Pauline view of the believer’s relationship to governmental authority, I tend to have a view more in line with the Magi, who aided and abetted the divine Christ child, the enemy of the state. On these issues I’ll agree to disagree and continue to work with those of opposite persuasions as we all love and affirm the work of God within us. What does bug me however is the nagging accusation that suggests what I do in relationship to Lou and others like him has nothing to do with the gospel. I am accused of preaching and practicing a social gospel.
The social gospel was the exact critique my father offered after being forced to sit through my first sermon. “That was a good social gospel,” is the only comment he has ever given me concerning my preaching. I remember standing there for a moment, attempting to discern whether the comment was laud or disapproval. I’ve decided it was neither. Like many God loving, holy living, Christ serving Evangelicals, my father seemed to be numbered among those who see the social gospel as some form of innocuous pseudo-gospel. In other words, it’s pretty harmless and acceptable if preached on rare occasion, as long as you don’t have a bunch of South America Marxists waiting for a signals to revolt hidden in your every word. Somehow though, for my father’s crew, this social gospel is something short of the real gospel or what they would consider the gospel that gets people saved.
My father is a blindingly brilliant man of beautiful contradictions. I’ve completed an article exploring his unique body of teaching, which joins Fundamentalist Pre-millennial Dispensationalism with Black Radical Theology. I’ll post it as soon as I muster the courage to publish something he would so vehemently oppose. Dad suggests that liberals like me are headless bodies with outstretched hands. Conversely, he views conservative Christians as bodies complete with heads but lacking arms and hands. In his view, liberal Christians tend to focus largely on the issues of society while neglecting the deeper and more important doctrinal concerns. He would contend that conservatives do better on sound doctrine but do so to the neglect of those in need. His version of an authentic Gospel is one of both heads and hands involved in well-reasoned charity and clear focus on the need of saving souls more so than filling bellies and handing out warm coats.
Regardless of his theological perspectives, my father has lived the social gospel. Ours was the house where strangers came to eat. He was one of the first pastors in our area to use computer training as a way of preparing poor people and displaced workers for employment in a new technology driven world. He was mentoring neighborhood kids before the word mentoring even appeared in the standard dictionary. Joining this life-evidence with his staunch belief that one’s lifestyle trumps whatever they say or profess, I have to place my father near the pinnacle of social gospel champions. Sorry Pops but you earned it.
Regardless of his theological perspectives, my father has lived the social gospel. Ours was the house where strangers came to eat. He was one of the first pastors in our area to use computer training as a way of preparing poor people and displaced workers for employment in a new technology driven world. He was mentoring neighborhood kids before the word mentoring even appeared in the standard dictionary. Joining this life-evidence with his staunch belief that one’s lifestyle trumps whatever they say or profess, I have to place my father near the pinnacle of social gospel champions. Sorry Pops but you earned it.
My father’s sentiments on well-reasoned social responsibility are not uncommon or groundbreaking. In fact his is a very rational point of view, and therein lays my disagreement with it. We respect and honor St. Francis of Assisi now but if we were with him back in the 13th century would we have encouraged him to exchange his worldly opportunities and goods for a life lived among lepers and society’s throwaways. Would we truly have advised young Martin Luther King Jr. to forsake the middle-class comforts that accompany being a pastor of a prestigious African-American Baptist church and instead opt for a life of struggle ending in death on the balcony of a second rate motel. It must have been flawed reasoning that led Harriet Tubman, after securing her own freedom, to risk life and limb to go back and lead others to liberty. I suspect that it is a bunch of good rational reasoning that seems to continue to tie the hands of rich gifted Christians and prevent them from fulfilling the gospel in society. Instead, mainstream Christianity seems stuck in a default mode of a well-reasoned but antisocial gospel.
If I were a better reasoned person I would have never met Lou. Our encounter was facilitated by a poorly reasoned commitment during a time of crisis. I made this commitment in the midst of a meeting with the Latino leadership alliance. My friend, brother and co-laborer Angel Cordero invited me to hear the distressed voices of Latino parents. Concluding that local high schools were much more proficient at serving up physical assaults and verbal abuse than they were at delivering any academic tools, the parents had decided not to send their children to public schools anymore. Their children were the most vulnerable of victims. Mostly Dominicans, they were the city’s newer Latino immigrants. There were language and dialect barriers between them and the other students. Many held immigration statuses that prohibited them from going to the authorities to report incidents of violence and abuse. Realizing they had few options and no other affordable educational choices I volunteered our church to serve as an education center for the students and others who had slipped between the cracks of the public education system. Lou enrolled with our first class of students.
Come on let's face it,
a ghetto education's basic
A most a the youths them waste it
And when them waste it,
that's when them take da guns and replace it
Then them don't stand a chance at all.
I’m not suggesting here that Christians are to go off half-cocked and venture into foolishness in the name of the gospel. Christians should instead be well acquainted with the gospel, deeply immersed in its rhythms and intricately familiar with its notes and chords. Such intimacy with the words, spirit and bio-ecology of the gospel frees the believer to venture into the deep and lush woods of God’s grace and discover marvelous treasures delicately and serendipitously arranged there. It’s the freedom to embrace lepers, knowing this somehow fits into the rhythm of Jesus' ministry. It is the intrinsic knowledge that insures us that helping Lou is somehow connected to the divine anointing of bringing good news to the poor, even if it risks compromising official conventions. While many argue that such rhythmically wild practices are out of sync with the gospel, I argue they are the metaphorical equivalent of virtuoso jazz saxophonist Dexter Gordon inserting a quote from Pop Goes the Weasel into the middle of Our Love is Here to Stay. Thinking about it may seem odd but hearing it confirms its standing among the great performances - truly music, truly jazz, certain genius and pure beauty. Welcome to Bebop Theology..........To Be Continued
