J4P – Imaging another world one step at a time (part 2)

Daniel Farrell – Guest Blogger for the Community Book Review of Jesus for President.

Be sure to check out part 1 as well.

God’s Streets

Crime is the next topic on our agenda.  They used the example of a church in Chicago that started their own nonviolent security team.  I feel like there is a lot of room for something like this here.  Crime is less of an issue in Richmond than it was just a few years ago, but the answers that people come up with(block captains programs that work with the police and neighborhood watch) just funnel people into the prison system instead of trying to help them recover.

My only thought here on resources would be the Richmond Peace Education Center which does conflict resolution training and other helpful things.  Again, if you know of other resources please leave them in the comments.

Living with Old People

This is a topic I’m less than familiar with.  They used the example of a couple they know who adopted an elderly woman with Alzheimer.  We have a penchant for just pushing the elderly away into retirement communities and nursing homes.  These can be some of the lonely places around.  Does anyone know of groups that visit shut-ins and nursing homes?

Give to Uncle Sam what is Uncle Sam’s

Taxes.  They say there are 2 guarantees in life, death and taxes.  But what do we do when nearly 50% of our taxes go to fund war and war related activities?  They give some examples of groups who have chosen to live completely simple lives and stay below the poverty and tax line.  While I don’t think that an easy transition to make it is something to consider.  Beyond that they offer some creative options but nothing that I really found practical.

Make Stuff

And the final stop in our rapid fire things to make the world better is in making our own stuff.  Expressing your creativity is a way to show that you are made in the image of a creative God.  It’s also a way to avoid being a part of exploitation.  Much of our clothing was made in sweatshops around the world by workers forced into awful situations.  Making your own clothes means that there will be less demand for clothes made in sweatshops.  Beyond sweatshops it’s also a way to practice resurrection by creatively reusing things and also a way to demonstrate that we can be sufficient without being fully dependent on the global economy.

I would have liked to see some more thought given to fair trade and local economies around this section.  But I guess that means I should write about that some myself.  But this rapid fire look at alternative ways of living was helpful to inspire me some and I hope it helps inspire you as well.

Daniel Farrell is a follower of Jesus, a husband to Alicia and owner/operator of Farrell IT. He lives, works and plays in Richmond, VA. You can follow along the Pilgrimage that Daniel finds himself on here

J4P – Imaging another world one step at a time (part 1)

Daniel Farrell – Guest Blogger for the Community Book Review of Jesus for President.

There is a lot to cover in these sections.  Shane and Chris rapid fire through a few topics that mean a lot to me.  I’ll try to rapid fire a little overview and some Richmond focused resources.

Good pattern for God’s Good Creation

Using less resources has many personal advantages but there is something bigger being talked about here.  The authors advocate and live(and share about others who also live) radical alternatives to the normal american use of natural resources.  While I have some concerns about the sustainability of large scale use of vegetable oil as a fuel, at this point and on a small scale it is a great thing that they do.

Some quick things you can do to use less resources are getting CFL lightbulbs for your house, use reusable grocery bags, bike any place you can and switch to green or wind energy.  Also connect with groups like the Back Porch Energy Initiative who are focusing a lot on this.

Practicing Resurrection

A phrase the authors use a lot is practicing resurrection.  There is a lot of room in urban environments to breath life into things that look dead.  They have done creative things like turning old refrigerators into compost bins.

Beyond that type of stuff in this section they also address our food. They encourage everyone as “one of the most revolutionary practices you can participate in” to grow your own food.  So much is wrong with how the world food system works that we can’t really go into it here.  But there is a way out.  Besides our gardens, CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) Farms are a great way to get local sustainably grown food and support the local farmers.  SproutRichmond is a great group that will help connect you with a local CSA.  We are also blessed to have Ellwood Thompsons Local Market here with it’s commitment to getting locally grown food.  For gardening resources I can recommend connecting with Tricycle Gardens for some of their workshops.

Setting the Captives Free

Next on the agenda is our prison systems.  The authors point out a couple of very disturbing things in this section.  First is the connection between slavery and our prison systems.  Slavery was outlawed in America with the 13th amendment but it also said that it was only illegal if the person has not been convicted of a crime.  This allows our prison system to provide cheap labor to corporations.  Combine that with the fact that around 1/3 of black men in America is in prison and you have a new slavery.  The other connection was between the welfare system and our prisons.  Philadelphia was used as an example, when they asked a city official how they were preparing for welfare cuts he responded by saying they built 4 new prisons.  How these combined ideas don’t lead us all to be outraged is beyond me.

I don’t actually know of any good prison ministries in Richmond.  If you know of any please leave them in the comments.

Daniel Farrell is a follower of Jesus, a husband to Alicia and owner/operator of Farrell IT. He lives, works and plays in Richmond, VA. You can follow along the Pilgrimage that Daniel finds himself on here

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The Children of an Unrepentant Zacchaeus – part 1

Today I’m taking a break from the Jesus For President posts.  Instead, I want to take a look at an article entitled I Am the Problem: Charity By Robbery that my good friend Matthew Freeman handed me to read.

The article is written about the character in the Bible named Zacchaeus.  Zacchaeus was a man who made a boat load of money which he had acquired by defrauding people.  In the story Zacchaeus comes into contact with Jesus and finds himself dining with him at his own home.  The next part is unclear on what exactly happens.  We do not know what Jesus said to this tax collector, but we do know that Zacchaeus repented and then gave back four times as much as he had taken.  Jesus ends his dialogue with Zach by stating that, “Today salvation has come to this house.”  However, the article takes a new twist on this ancient account…

But what if Zacchaeus had said “no” to Jesus?  What if Zacchaeus kept on defrauding people until he died, and then left his wealth as an inheritance to his children?  And then…what if Jesus had dropped in to visit Zacchaeus’ children after their father’s funeral?

Here the author explores some possibilities that the direction of the question could have gone?

Would Jesus have said, “Look, your father accumulated some of his wealth through unjust means.  I told him how he and his household could be saved from this sin, but he refused to repent.  But don’t you worry about all that.  By inheriting unjust wealth it is cleansed of the fraud by which it was acquired.  Enjoy your good fortune.”

Or might Jesus have let the children know that his continuing invitation to salvation involved their use of some portion of the inheritance to set right Zacchaeus’ wrong doing?  Might Jesus have told them that true reconciliation with their father’s victims required they produce fruits in keeping with repentance?

What do you think Jesus would have asked of Zacchaeus’ children?  In part 2 we will look at some of the ramifications for us.

J4P – Looking Like Jesus

guest blogger: Keila Underwood

Do you know what confuses me? Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie. George Bush (take your pick… either one). Leonardo DiCaprio. Jerry Falwell. Bill Gates. George Clooney. I could go on….

So what about these people confuses me? Why someone who doesn’t confess belief in Jesus can look and act like him more than someone who does. Please understand that I am in no way trying to bash anyone, or lift someone else up on a pedestal. I realize that the names I happened to use could be lightening bolts. I also know that each person mentioned not only has their redeeming values, but also their own moral and ethical lapses. I’m just seriously concerned that someone can obey Jesus’ mandates to care for the poor, oppressed, widowed, etc. without believing in him, and someone else can ignore the commands to love, not to judge, not to kill, etc. all the while using their faith as their argument.

This last section of the book starts out with these very mandates: “Clothes yourselves with Christ.” (Col. 3:12-17) and “Be imitators of God.” (Eph. 5:1) This means that we are to live as Jesus lived… and die as Jesus died. We are to look like Jesus. Do we? Do we remind the world of Jesus? Not just do we look like Jesus, but do we act like him? Do we have his temperament, his character? Do we follow so closely in the footsteps of our rabbi that we get his dust on us? Or are we imitating someone else’s image while calling on the name of Christ? Are we allowing those who don’t even call on the name of Christ to look more like him than we do?

It is the Christians, O Emperor, who have sought and found the truth, for they acknowledge God. The do not keep for themselves the goods entrusted to them. They do not covet what belongs to others. They show love to their neighbors. They do not do to another what they would not wish to have done to themselves. They speak gently to those who oppress them, and in this way they make them their friends. It has become their passion to do good to their enemies. They live in the awareness of their smallness. Every one of them who has anything gives ungrudgingly to the one who has nothing. If they see a traveling stranger, they bring him under their roof. They rejoice over him as over a real brother, for they do not call one another brothers after the flesh, but they know they are brothers in the Spirit and in God. If they hear that one of them is imprisoned or oppressed for the sake of Christ, they take care of all his needs. If possible they set him free. If anyone among them is poor or comes into want while they themselves have nothing to spare, they fast two or three days for him. In this way they can supply any poor man with the food he needs. This, O Emperor, is the rule of life of the Christians, and this is their manner of life.

-Aristides 137 AD

Keila Underwood is an amazing wife, a busy mother of four fun kids and a refreshingly honest voice. You can read more of Keila’s thoughts at her blog, Mosaic.

J4P – It’s the Economy Stupid

Sorry for the delay in posting today. I’m speaking at the beach this week. 🙂

I posted this quote from Jesus For President once before. Some interesting questions from Wendel Berry’s great book of essaysentitled Sex, Economy, Freedom and Community: Eight Essays.

“The sense of the holiness of life” is not compatible with an exploitive economy. You cannot know that life is holy if you are content to live from economic practices that daily destroy life and diminish its possibility. And many if not most Christians organizations now appear to be perfectly at peace with the military-industrial economy and its “scientific” destruction of life. Surely, if we are to remain free, and if we are to remain true to our religious inheritance, we must maintain a separation between church and state. But if we are to maintain any sense or coherence or meaning in our lives, we cannot tolerate the present utter disconnection between religion and economy. By “economy” I do not mean “economics,” which is the study of money-making, but rather the ways of human housekeeping, the ways by which the human household is situated and maintained within the household of Nature. To be uninterested in economy is to be uninterested in the practice of religion; it is to be uninterested in culture and in character.

Probably the most urgent question now faced by people who would adhere to the Bible is this: What sort of economy would be responsible to the holiness of life? What, for Christians, would be the economy, the practices and the restraints, of “right livelihood”? I do not believe that organized Christianity now has any idea. I think its idea of a Christian economy is no more or less than the industrial economy – which is an economy firmly founded upon the seven deadly sins and the breaking of all ten of the Ten Commandments. Obviously, if Christianity is going to survive as more than a respecter and comforter of profitable iniquities, then Christians, regardless of their organizations, are going to have to interest themselves in economy – which is to say, in nature and in work. They are going to have to give workable answers to those who say we cannot live without this economy that is destroying us and our world, who see the murder of Creation as the only way of life.”

So, what do you think?

Jesus For President: a Community Book Review

I am well aware that the title to this book and post could drum up an unsettling reaction in some of its readers. For some it is the uneasy feeling of mixing faith and politics, church and state, and Jesus with President. The scars of the religious right may still be too fresh. For some its the thought that religion has seemed to have done more harm than good throughout the annals of history, so why even entertain such a thought? And for others it just might instill a little hope, a hope that is set not in religion but rather in Jesus and the radical nature of his teachings. So wherever you find yourself on this continuum, I personally invite you to join a respectful conversation that is taking place this summer through this blog and on July 23rd when Shane Claiborne and Chris Haw come to Richmond, Virginia for their Jesus for President book tour.

When: July 23rd @ 7:00 p.m.

Where: Tabernacle Baptist Church (located on the corner of Grove and Meadow)

Below is the schedule of blog post and the posters. You might notice that there are still a few posts that have not been spoken for… if you are interested in writing (Review, Editorial, or just simple questions to start conversation) feel free to contact me.

5-26 Introduction – Brent Underwood

Section 1 – Before There Were Kings and Presidents

5-28 In the Beginning, The Flood, The Tower, Exodus – Matt Sadler

5-30 For Every King There is a Prophet, Big Beast and Little Prophets, When Kings Cry – Keila Underwood

6-2 Power in Weakness, Branded by God: The Purity Code, Set Apart for Something Better – Mark Sprinkle

Section 2 – A New Kind of Commander-in-Chief

6-4 A New Kind of Commander-in-Chief, A Little Political Backdrop, Riots and Revolutions – Anna Miller

6-6 Herod the Not So Great, The Royal Birth, Political Seduction in the Desert,Commencement Speech – Sterling Severns

6-9 A Security Plan That Will Never Win an Elections, Jesus’ Policy on the “War on Terror”, The Way the Kingdom Grows (Or, Was Jesus Like Che?), The Mustard Seed Revolution – Daniel Farrell

6-11 On Citizenship in Heaven and Being Born Again, Down-to-Earth Politics,Take My Yoke, Not Rome’s, Occupied by a Legion – Daniel Farrell

6-13 Jesus and Taxes, Go Tell That Fox,The Anti-Triumphal Entrance intro Jerusalem,Ruling with a Towel – Matthew Freeman

6-16 The Last Prayer, Jesus’ Inauguration Ceremony, Caesar’s Coronation and Procession, Jesus’ Coronation and Procession, The Human Temple – Dean Miller

Section 3 – When The Empire Got Baptized

6-18 When The Empire God Baptized, Washing the Dirty System Off of US,The Empire Has No Clothes, On the Political Fringes of Empire – David Wolf

6-20 Alluring, Pious Rome, Revolutionary Subordination, Constantine and the “Fall” of the Church, Compassionate Imperialism – Matt Bell

6-23 Another Exodus, The Collision of Identity, The Imperial Baptism Continues, The Gospel of America and Beyond – Eric Hasha

6-25 Idols and Images, In the Market We Trust, Co-opted and Confused, Flags on Alters – Faith Martin

6-27 God Bless America, What About Hitler?, The Dangerous Meshing – Daniel Farrell

6-30 Then There is Logan, War Stories, Another Soldier Who Said “Enough”,A Closing Confession – Brent Underwood

Section 4 – A Peculiar Party

7-2 A Peculiar Party, Good News, Looking Like Jesus, What Do You See?, The Issues – Keila Underwood

7-4 Political Misfits, Cultural Refugees, Politics for Ordinary Radicals, Vagrant Campaigning (No SUV’s or Secret Service) – ?

7-7 Good Pattern for God’s Good Creation, Practicing Resurrection, Setting the Captives Free, God’s Streets, Living with Old People, Give to Uncle Sam What is Uncle Sam’s, Make Stuff – Daniel and Alicia Farrell

7-9 A Real Security Plan, The Third Way of Jesus, Bustin’ Out a Can of Grace, Like King David, Lydia – ?

7-11 Practicing Forgiveness, Fighting with Fruit, Getting in the Way: Christian Peacemaker Teams, Amish for Homeland Security, Bearing a Cross – ?

7-14 Practicing Revolutionary Patience, What to Do with Kings Gone Wild?, The Gates of Hell, Revolutionary Subordination, Alternative Economics, Relational Tithe, A Village of Interdependence – ?

7-16 Another World is Possible, Conversion, We Need New… Celebrations, Language, Rituals, Heroes, Songs, Liturgy, Eyes, Holidays – Chris Backert

7-18 Vote the Rock – Anyone who would like to write their concluding thoughts

J4P – Jesus Had No Money

Guest Blogger: Matthew Freeman

“Is it lawful for us to pay taxes to Caesar or not?”

This question, designed by religious leaders to trap Jesus and undermine his authority, makes a basic presumption which Jesus unmasks.

The dilemma of whether to pay taxes to an idolatrous empire is only a dilemma if you have money. Jesus had no money. He had to ask for a coin from someone before he answered the question.

“Give to Caesar what is Caesar’s and to God what is God’s.”

Through his enigmatic and hotly debated response, Jesus avoided the trap set for him while providing fodder for biblical scholars to write books, articles, and sermons about for the past 20 centuries. But he also provided us an interesting and often overlooked tidbit about his personal life: he carried no money with him.

Another tax story: Jesus claimed a personal exemption on his temple tax based on his relation to the owner of the temple, his Father (Matthew 17:24-27). Jesus, however, decided to pay the tax “so as not to offend” the temple tax collectors. Once again we find that Jesus had no money. Instead he sends Peter to a nearby pond to go fishing- telling Peter that he’d catch a fish with a coin in its mouth.

Enigmatic statements and bizarre stories aside for a moment, what kind of leader has no money? What kind of example does Jesus set? How could he responsibly tell people not to worry about “life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear?” (Mathew 6:25) Don’t we need to make money to provide for ourselves and our families? Don’t we need to make money so that we can give it away?

Our culture’s too-quick dismissal of these questions short circuits an important conversation we should be having about our relationship to money and the capitalist system that provides it to us.

But more to Shane & Chris’s point, if Jesus is to be our President, our Commander-in-Chief, the Ruler of the Kings of the Earth (Rev. 1:5), the Chief Shepherd (1 Pet. 5:4), and the Head of the Church (Eph. 1:22)- what are we to make of his leadership? What are we to do with his material poverty?

In other words, what kind of President has no money?

The kind that makes a farce of royal processions by riding into the capital city on a borrowed ass during the Passover celebration of escape from Egyptian slavery. The kind that calls oppressive and powerful world leaders insulting names (Luke 13:32). The kind that counseled his followers that greatness in God’s kingdom is achieved through service to the human community.

In other words, the kind of President who has no money is one who eschews worldly power, makes a mockery of the self-aggrandizement of political and religious leaders, and calls his followers to serve others instead of dominating them.

The real question is, what kind of people are foolish enough to follow a leader like this? And what would their lives look life if we could find them?

Matthew Freeman and his wife Sarah founded the Gabriel House here in Richmond. The Gabriel House is an intentional Christian community practicing hospitality and resistance in the Catholic Worker tradition.

Currently 5 members live together, host community meals 3 times a week (Tues, Wed, Thurs), offer a room to those in need of a place to stay, garden in the back yard and in the neighborhood, and seek to be a welcoming place to all who come to the door.

J4P – Allegiance and Burdens

Guest Blogger: Daniel Farrell

Coming off learning about different parts(Economic, Security, Terror and PR) of Jesus’ platform the authors move a little more into the thick of “what does that mean for us” type of stuff. How are those onboard supposed to live? Wanting to be very careful that we can’t get off on the easy side of “that means I’m supposed to give money to the church and then wait for heaven” they dive right into citizenship and allegiance. This kingdom of god/heaven is like a normal kingdom in that there are citizens and it does require allegiance to operate. Can you imagine a state/kingdom without any citizens? Would it really still exist? I feel like it might just disappear. How about a state/kingdom that no one had any allegiance to? What would that look like? Unfortunately for most of my life that is all I have seen the church be a part of. It was a part of a kingdom where everyone considered themselves to be citizens of someplace else first. It was a part of a kingdom where very few would pledge any allegiance to, especially not like they pledge allegiance to their country. What would it look like for us if we had more concern about being citizens of Jesus’ kingdom than of the US? What would it look like if our allegiance was to Jesus’ kingdom of love first?

Moving on from allegiance they talk about yokes and burdens. Yokes and burdens being the weight that is placed on all of our backs. Think “this is my burden to bear.” I’ve heard it said that we are all slaves but if we are lucky we get to choose what we are slaves to. That is the basic idea here, that being a slave/servant to Jesus is a whole lot better than being a slave to empires, kings, corporations, middle managers, sweatshop bosses, brands, consumerism, tv, video games, etc, etc. Do you feel like you have a burden to bear in life because of the culture we are in? Is that as simple as “live the american dream?” I feel like that idea is a burden to me that I fight against.

One thing I think the authors do very well in the book so far is to always connect things to a global perspective. Because our times are not unlike Jesus’ time, but our position in the story is very different then the Israelites position. We are like those living large in Rome, or if not living large then getting by and getting to enjoy some of the hand me down “large life” things of being on “the winning side.” The Israelites were much more like Iraqis, or poor South American farmers or those working in the sweatshops in east Asia. They were like those that get the raw end of the empire of global capitalism. Until we can read the story with some of that understanding we will always be looking to spiritualize or marginalize any part of it that could challenge our privileged lifestyles. Are the parts where they try to connect with a global context helpful to you?

Daniel Farrell is a follower of Jesus, a husband to Alicia and owner/operator of Farrell IT. He lives, works and plays in Richmond, VA. You can follow along the Pilgrimage that Daniel finds himself on here.

It’s the economy, stupid

In a great book of essays written by Wendell Berry called Sex, Economy, Freedom and Community: Eight Essays, Berry takes on the economy.

“The sense of the holiness of life” is not compatible with an exploitive economy. You cannot know that life is holy if you are content to live from economic practices that daily destroy life and diminish its possibility. And many if not most Christians organizations now appear to be perfectly at peace with the military-industrial economy and its “scientific” destruction of life. Surely, if we are to remain free, and if we are to remain true to our religious inheritance, we must maintain a separation between church and state. But if we are to maintain any sense or coherence or meaning in our lives, we cannot tolerate the present utter disconnection between religion and economy. By “economy” I do not mean “economics,” which is the study of money-making, but rather the ways of human housekeeping, the ways by which the human household is situated and maintained within the household of Nature. To be uninterested in economy is to be uninterested in the practice of religion; it is to be uninterested in culture and in character.

Probably the most urgent question now faced by people who would adhere to the Bible is this: What sort of economy would be responsible to the holiness of life? What, for Christians, would be the economy, the practices and the restraints, of “right livelihood”? I do not believe that organized Christianity now has any idea. I think its idea of a Christian economy is no more or less than the industrial economy – which is an economy firmly founded upon the seven deadly sins and the breaking of all ten of the Ten Commandments. Obviously, if Christianity is going to survive as more than a respecter and comforter of profitable iniquities, then Christians, regardless of their organizations, are going to have to interest themselves in economy – which is to say, in nature and in work. They are going to have to give workable answers to those who say we cannot live without this economy that is destroying us and our world, who see the murder of Creation as the only way of life.”

So what kind of economy is a Christian economy?

I ran into this quote again while reading Jesus For President by Shane Claiborne and Chris Haw.