A Basket of Summer Fools

As I read Amos’ disturbing prophecy and Jesus’ unsettling parable of the rich fool, an equally upsetting question was spoken to me: “Why do so many white ministers leave seminary called to serve the poor only to abandon that call to be paid by the wealthy?”

I immediately threw my bible away and went in search for a kinder, gentler interpretation. Alas I did not find one. So I did what almost every minister my age does, I posted my question to twitter. I had two wonderful and very different conversations, of course neither really were able to fully answer the question. It is a hard question for me because I am deeply a part of this question. I constantly hear from others, "Invoke change but make sure you can get paid." Over the past 7 years since beginning and ending seminary I have watched others I went to school with proclaim a very challenging gospel that railed against the wealthy and remembered the poor. Several went on to be missionaries for a few years advocating for the end of abusive power structures and an end to modern-day slavery. Several also went out and began working directly with the poor in real meaningful ways. As time went on and funding disappeared things changed.

When the funding disappeared for several missionaries they cried victim and tearfully packed their bags and left a place they believed whole heartedly called to serve. Eventually they found their way back to America, accepted a position at an upper-middle class white church, and bought home, a car, a motorcycle, kayaks, and a whole host of other "American" ideals while still railing against the power structures.

Why didn't they stay?

I know there are numerous reasons and I understand those reasons while understanding those reasons to be complicated; however the question comes to mind, "Why not stay? Why not become just like the people who you were helping, to live as they do, to work as they do, and to really be a part of their lives? Why come back embracing the lifestyle you once called immoral? Why not stay?”

Amos speaks to an unjust system of which we stand in our pulpits and preach against while taking the “bribe” and profiting from that unjust system. Amos and Jesus are urging ministers to speak from a position of poverty and lowliness instead of one from a position of power and wealth. When we wish to speak prophetically from a position of power we are limited in how prophetic we can be; we can only be as prophetic as the budget giving allows. Our prophetic pastoral voice is neutered and controlled by our desires for security and comfort, as we believe we have earned the right to enjoy.

The question, “Why do so many white ministers abandon their call to serve the poor?” is answered by the false notion that the pastor must be able to make a living as a pastor. We give up a portion of our prophetic voice when we take on a paid full-time ministerial position for when we speak out against the powerful, against the majority, we will find ourselves on the outside, possibly jobless. We believe the church is a place where everyone is supposed to get along and you can speak of God’s movement without ever taking your place on the cross. Even though Jesus clearly says that’s impossible, twice.

It is why we seek churches that believe and act just like we do. If a church’s theological understanding of scripture, mission, and Jesus fits into ours we have the freedom to speak openly against “the majority” even though the majority we are speaking to would be the minority in our context. It is not prophetic pastoral speech if the majority of the people who hear it agree and give us a raise. That’s called preaching to the choir. Prophetic pastoral speech, unfiltered prophetic pastoral speech carries with it only one guarantee: the cross and a set of nails.

And we are deeply afraid of that guarantee. We leave seminary embracing our cross until the day comes we are nailed to it, then we call ourselves victims and quit the church.

That is why we must learn how to preach from a position of poverty or a position of servitude in our Christian faith communities. By doing so we then become free to be nailed to the cross we carry for the burden of security in wealth has been removed. We no longer become afraid of the cross Jesus tells us we must carry, instead we lovingly embrace it for we know it brings new life.

Michael Graves writes, “What if we have misunderstood prophetic preaching, and not just in ancient Israel? What if we have defined it too narrowly for our day, made a caricature of it in the process? In her new book, Prophetic Preaching, Nora Tisdale paraphrases Walter Brueggemann’s description of the prophet’s task as “perceiving the world as God sees it and having our hearts break over the things that break God’s heart.” Prophetic preaching entails speaking the very agenda of God.”

We struggle with our prophetic pastoral voice because we have been conditioned to believe our pastoral voice and prophetic voice are separate; yet that is not the case. In fact it is furthest from the truth. Our pastoral voice is in which the prophetic voice speaks. Do we not understand when we preach from the scriptures we are speaking prophetically? We are speaking to God’s agenda. When we speak of a messiah who showed us how to love unconditionally, was crucified and raised from the dead, we are speaking prophetically because we are sharing God’s movement and inviting others to join that movement. Do we not realize when we sit with the dying and with great hope say, “This is not the end. Your seat at the banquet table is waiting for you.” we are speaking the prophetic voice that death no longer has its evil sting? We cannot have a pastoral voice without our prophetic voice nor can we have a prophetic voice without our pastoral voice.

Why are we afraid? Why do we lack the courage to embrace our prophetic pastoral role?

If I were to guess, with the help of social media, I would suggest we are afraid of losing what is ours. We have become the rich fool Jesus speaks against, for we have cultivated a Church culture which for a short time prospered and we built our buildings so that we could hoard our ‘goods’, our people, and live off what we had “earned”. Now as our pews are becoming empty and budgets are struggling to be made and ministers are losing their jobs, we have turned our attention to how we can once again prosper. So our prophetic pastoral voice has become one concerned with trends and millennialist.

We post our articles about why millennialist are leaving the church, each one claiming to speak a need for change in the church culture; yet these articles do not speak to a change in thought or change in practice but a change in how we protect what is ours. I believe our concern about why millennialist are leaving the church is, deep down in places we do not talk about at parties, about why a bunch of middle-upper middle class white kids in their twenties are no longer going to church. We are not concerned with why we still worship separately from our black brothers and sisters, our Hispanic brothers and sisters, or our brothers and sisters of other races and cultures. We are not concerned with truly helping free the poor, or the oppressed, or heal the sick, visit the imprisoned, feed the hungry, or give a drink to the thirsty. We are not concerned about them because they can’t afford to pay us.

While others are being enslaved, abused, or fall further into addictions, as children sit abandoned by parents (43% grow up without a father), or dropout of high school because they’ve been told they weren’t good enough (73% of dropouts come from fatherless homes), and our economic system continues to keep people on welfare, we sit in our lawn chairs saying to ourselves, “If we can just get those good white millennialist folk back in our churches, then we can focus on the Jesus stuff.”

We have become a summer basket of rich fools. We have lost our courage. We have lost our prophetic pastoral voice. We have given over to what Martin Luther King Jr. calls the drum major instinct. We have given ourselves over to the desires for wealth, power, and control.  By giving ourselves over to such desires we will do whatever it takes to maintain what is ours. During our most recent election season the following amounts were spent: The presidential candidates spent nearly $1 billion on television ads and other campaign advertisements. The men who ran for our district's congressional seat raised close to $1 million for their advertisements to be elected. Several Christian organizations gave close $600 million for advertisements to try and get someone elected. Let us ask ourselves this serious question: Could that 1.7 billion dollars have been given to a better use? Could that amount of money gone to organizations like Habitat for Humanity or countless other organizations who work to ease the worries for the homeless, the hungry, the naked, the sick, and the imprisoned? Could that amount of money gone to something that is more important than an election? That’s a lot of money to maintain the status quo.

If Jesus is right and where we store our treasures is where our heart is also, then we must admit we have become fools whose hearts are not set on God’s movement, for we no longer look to the birds or to the tiger lilies to see how God provides. We have placed our faith in the power of men and in the power of wealth in hopes they will provide for us, ministers, a lush home on the golf course with a balcony to put our feet up and relax as others tee off. We are striving for things of the nation, things of this world, and not for things of the kingdom.

There is good news though, if we can transform our minds and hearts from a position of power, stature, control, and wealth, to a position of poverty and humility. I believe the good news is in ministers fully imitating the humility of Jesus from a position of poverty. What I mean by that is what Henri Nouwen calls the descending way of Jesus. Paul writes that we are to imitate Jesus just as the writer of Hebrews suggests we are to fixate our eyes on Jesus because he is our perfector, our forerunner of the faith. Nouwen writes, “In his servanthood God does not disfigure himself, he does not take on something alien to himself, he does not act against or in spite of his divine self. On the contrary, it is his servanthood that God chooses to reveal himself as God to us.” (Nouwen, Henri, Show Me the Way pg. 63).

When we speak of poverty, we are not using it in terms of a person’s economic situation. Remember the poor are never told they are virtuous (neither are the wealthy) instead they are told theirs is the kingdom. So they are blessed not because of what they do not have but by what they will have. A position of poverty for us then becomes a position in which we preach from with humility in truth and grace. It is a position that challenges those in our midst knowing all the while we the minister are being challenged most of all. We are not excused from the harsh words of Amos or the foolishness of the rich man, and we must allow the words to penetrate our hearts and transform us, for God is not just speaking to them, God is speaking deeply to us as well. If we can alter our belief of what ministry is and what church is from a place which functions as a system of power, wealth, and control to a functioning system of poverty, humility, and the cross, I believe we will see a greater change in the church system than any that could from power, wealth, or control.

If we can learn to preach, minister, and live from a position of poverty, humility, and lowliness we can fully embrace our prophetic pastoral role for we no longer have the fear of “what do I have to lose”. Instead we have the joy of generosity and hope, so we are able to give more, to speak more honestly and in greater tenderness than before because we are speaking from the downward pull of Jesus. Instead of fearing the cross, we embrace it, as Jesus does, because we see it as a part of our lives not as a consequence of our actions. Meaning when we are nailed to the cross for speaking the light of God into the dark world, we do not hang there as victims. Instead we hang there knowing this comes with the ordination of the minister.

Jesus tells his disciples to be as wise as serpents and as gentle as doves. Often we have come to interpret those words from a prophetic pastoral perspective as, “Choose wisely the place you wish to make your last stand.” However, from a position of poverty and humility, we are able to reimagine in way that stays true to the nature of Christ, the nature we are called to emulate. At this moment we may be a summer basket of fools; yet God offers hope in the form of a downward lifted up Jesus, whom we are called to follow and imitate.

I’ll close with excerpt from King’s sermon, “A Tough Mind and Tenderheart”:

“At times we (the minister and congregation) need to know that the Lord is a God of justice. When slumbering giants of injustice emerge in the earth, we need to know that there is a God who can cut the giants down like the grass and leave them withering like the Greek herb. When our most tireless efforts fail to stop the surging sweep of oppression, we need to know that in this universe is a God whose matchless strength is a fit contrast to the sordid weakness of humanity. But there also times when we need to know that God possess love and mercy. When we are staggered by the chilly winds of adversity and battered by the raging storms of disappointment and when through our folly and sin we stray into some destructive far country and are frustrated because of a strange feeling of homesickness, we need to know that there is Someone who loves us, cares for us, understands us, and will give us another chance. When days grow dark and nights grow dreary, we can be thankful our God combines in his nature a creative synthesis of love and justice that will lead us through the life’s dark valleys and into sunlit pathways of hope and fulfillment.” (King Jr. Martin Luther. “A Tough Mind and a Tenderheart”, Strength to Love pg. 9).

Amen