From the Desk of Buddy Martin
 

S e p t e m b e r  7 ,  2 0 0 8

A New Day
 
 
For the last  four years Bud's Desk has reprinted devotions from
"Called To Conquer" by Eddie L. Long, excerpts from "The People Of The Lie"
by Dr. Scott Peck and "The Ragamuffin Gospel" by Brennan Manning.

Doing this each morning has been a challenge. It's not "hard". 
Some days I get behind and flat didn't do it.  On balance I updated regularly.
It was a call from God to work on my consistency.  I desperately need
exercises in discipline because I'm lazy. 

Prior to reprinting excerpts, I wrote about things that interested me.  I like to
write.  I like to clearly identify a position.  Writing helps me organize my mind and philosophies.  Problem is, I'm
not a good writer.  I ramble.  I'm not concise.   I'm not organized.
 
Initially, my heart's desire was to pass along my perspective on happenings as a
 follower of Christ who is not a part of the "organized church."  Being
out of  "the system"  I see things differently. 
It's a blessing and a curse.  There's a part of me that likes being liked
and wants to be wonderfully optimistic.  But I'm not.  I see hope and opportunity
at every corner... but I'm very "realistic" in my approach.  "Here are the factors
here are the variables, now let's deal with what we've got."
Back to what Bud's Desk was.  I wrote.
But when I proofed my work I realized others had better things to say
in or out of "the system"! So I shifted to transcribing the published. 
The reprints were from folk who impacted me in
hopes that they would inspire you.  I'm not sure if I succeeded.  I received little
feedback.  But that's ok.  It was extremely helpful to me as a person.

I am amazed at the books and papers I have stumbled upon. So incredibly
profound.  So well-thought.  With such an emphasis in our culture on
the value of reading and higher learning, I often wondered why I never heard
of the authors and messages that so rocked me.  Why are they not "required reading" in schools and the church?  In many ways their
lack of notoriety fueled my love for what they penned.  Between Neil Postman,
Peck, Long and Devron Fromke's Ultimate Intention entire
curriculums or talk shows could be devoted to their wisdom and insight. 
At the very least a good Sunday School class.

In July of 2008 I came across a masterpiece while showing a house.
Opening a drawer I saw an article entitled "The Nazareth Manifesto" from
the Marianist State Community, Durham, April 19, 2008 by Sam Wells.
Ironically I had just started working on a paper entitled "Manifesto."  Seeing
this title blew me away. God's providence will do that! I had stopped reading
it because I felt I was snooping
thinking it best to ask the owner if I could secure a copy later.

On July 29 the owner brought me a copy.  What a piece.  This is the single best
treatment the proper Christian
mind-set I have ever read.  It confirmed so many ideas I have been given, but could
not reduce to writing.  It's the single best practical
definition of the kingdom of God which
we Jesus says we are to "seek first".  Up to this moment my understanding
of the kingdom was simple and true- "teamwork."  Being "other-oriented."
(Which is the chief attribute of God.)   But Wells breaks it down.   
  I believe this is inspired by God.  Not on the level of Scripture-
but close. 

Before receiving the article, I researched The Nazareth Manifesto
and found two other papers with a different take.  Combined with Wells, they provide an essential framework for living and thinking.  The obscurity
of the topic, the authors, the way I found them and even the town of Nazareth
are all confirmations of the greatness of God and His overriding theme... While we are more than conquerors- called to take over in love- we must do so with the "least of these" in mind- not in theory, but in reality.

  I wish there was some way to convey how important these articles are. 
If you read them and
feel I have overstated their magnitude- I won't be surprised.  I'm easily moved.
I cry watching "The Rookie", "A Beautiful Mind", Patch Adams and
parts of the original "Rocky".

There's something about outcasts, misfits,  the downtrodden, people who are excluded from our created cultural norms that stir  my soul.   These
are the "poor" who Jesus says are "blessed."  But who exactly are they?  How are they blessed?  Why?  What should our responses be to them?
This article (and parts of the other two) answered  my questions.

When I finished reading the article the first time I had a glimpse into Helen
Keller's revelation of  Jesus Christ.  Blind and deaf, when she heard about Him for the first time she exclaimed, "I knew Him,
I knew Him, I knew Him I just didn't know His name!"  With this reading
I found myself saying, "I knew this was it, I knew this was it, I knew
this was it I just never had it in writing."  When the written word brings one
to tears, it's special.

So here it is.    I'll add a little bit each day
until it is complete.  The prayer requests will continue.


Nazareth Manifesto
Marianist State Community, Durham, April 19, 2008
Sam Wells

I want to explore with you what it means to share the hear to one's Christian
existence with someone who may be a very different kind of Christian, a person of a
different faith altogether, or a person of no explicit faith
at all.  I'm assuming that the "other" person is different not just in the language of
faith but in social circumstances- economic conditions certainly,  and quite
possibly racial heritage also.


The Content of Engagement

I want to start by mapping the context of engagement.  What are we taking for
granted when we think together about engaging in ministry, witness, and service?
Usually for example a community like yourselves assumes
that something is wrong and it has an opportunity, perhaps a unique opportunity,
to put that thing right.  There is, after all, almost nothing more satisfying than
setting things straight.  When one looks around a community like this, one
frequently feels, "given the experience, technical skill, professional expertise, and
financial resources in the room, we should be able to do a whole lot together."
But that depends on what's the matter.

Christians have had two traditional answers to the question of what the matter is.
The first answers is, in a word, sin.  The story of Adam and Eve eating the fruit
of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil
crystallizes the human capacity for perversity.  Humans have the propensity
towards extraordinary good- but they also have what seems an
irresistible impulse towards destructive, shortsighted, selfish and almost
pointless evil.  As Augustine puts it, in the Fall humanity retained the capacity
to choose, but lost the ability to choose well.  So the first answer to the question,
"What's the matter?" is, sin.

But this has never been the only answer.  The second answer is, in a word, scarcity. 
Whereas the first answer says, it doesn't matter how much we have, it's all
been poisoned by sin, the second answer says, things aren't so bad, only there
isn't enough to go around.  The poor simply don't have enough - enough food,
enough water, enough health care, enough jobs, enough money, enough space, enough
security, enough education, enough friends.  Now sometimes it's said this is
really because the rich have to much.  But even the rich generally feel
they don't have enough- enough life, enough resources, enough information,
enough expertise, enough revelation.  Fundamentally this sense of scarcity is
traceable back to one source.  There doesn't seem to be enough God.  Sin puts the
blame on God, and says there simply isn't enough God to be and to do all that
we want God to be and to do.

And yet many perhaps most Christians have a deep-seated desire to protect God.
 And so rather than simply plead for more, they tend to become very active
in working on God's behalf to alleviate and reduce the scarcity they
see all around them.
All efforts are spent reducing scarcity of life (death) and scarcity of well being
(suffering).  It is an exhausting commission, made more so by the fact
that the more one succeeds, the greater the expectation becomes.  The higher life
expectancy and material prosperity go, the higher people want them
to go; the one thing that never changes is the perpetual sense of scarcity.

These are noble efforts but I believe they are based on a fundamental theological
mistake.  It's not true to say there isn't enough God.  On the contrary, there's
too much God.  The problem is, we're finite beings and our imaginations
aren't big enough to take in the too much that God is and the too much that
God gives us.  It is not that God does not give us what we need- it is that we do
not understand or use the ways God makes the abundance of grace available
to us.  So we do indeed experience life as scarcity, but because we don't receive all
that we have been given, not because we haven't been given it.

If we gather together as a congregation and say "How does our gospel incline us to
engage with the issues of social inequality?" we can end up feeling pretty miserable, because our gospel feels so small and social inequality can feel so big.  But
the question becomes a different one when we turn it around.  "What is God
giving our community in the gift of people we know who are struggling to hold
life together?  Where and in what ways do we
experience scarcity in our lives and how might God be giving us everything we
need by giving us people very different from ourselves?"  So, for example, it may
be that you know a young person whose ability with her hands was a secret
even to her until she worked with you on a Habitat house.  It may be
that you know a person who has the ability to make a party go but never had
the budget till she joined a re-entry team sharing
and celebrating the journey of an ex-offender back into regular community life.  It
may be that you know a young
man who's basketball was pretty second rate until he started coaching
children at a community center and realized how much he really had to offer.
When one person finds a vocation, another person makes a friend across race
and class boundaries, and a third walks tall in an area of their life where they
had always felt a failure, we could happily use the words "Holy Spirit"- but it would be
easy to miss that part of the term Holy Spirit in each of these cases if the person
is of a very different social location.  God gives us everything we need, but
God doesn't drop everything we need in our lap.  Where would be the fun in
that?  God wants us to go on an
Easter Egg hunt, searching for nuggets of candy and refreshing encounters all
over the divine garden.  The game God plays with us is that God allows us to think
we are doing these things for others.  We might even persuade ourselves
we are doing these things for God.  But as the examples I've given demonstrate,
the real beneficiaries are ourselves, because we have at last found ways to receive
the too much that God has to give us, and so
the dawn of our salvation has come.

I'm talking about a significant change in our motivation for  engaging
with issues of social inequality.  In the scarcity model, we have two almost opposing factions, whom we could call by their conventional names- "them" and "us."  "They"
are distinguished by what they don't have- jobs, affluence, stable relationships,
a college education, healthcare, faith perhaps.  "We" are distinguished by what we
do have- mortgages, conventional security benefits, neighbors we can trust, and this lingering sense of guilt.  In fact the sense of scarcity on the "we" side is
enormous- not enough time, not enough sense of how to make things better, not
enough trust that we can make relationships that won't hurt us, not enough
money to part with very much.  So we match up
our outer affluence and our inner scarcity by coming up with
elaborate theories to protect us from hurt and failure without challenging our
sense of ourselves as benefactors.  One such ancient and familiar theory
is the distinction between the deserving and the undeserving poor.
 This enables us to be benefactors to the thrifty and respectful while withholding
compassion from the reckless and prodigal.  But what needs
challenging is our sense of ourselves as the benefactors.  The whole point is that
if we experience life as scarcity we are the needy.  And we remain in scarcity so
long as we look for salvation in the wrong place.  We read the
parable of the Good Samaritan and we take for granted that we are the Samaritan.
We are not the Samaritan!  We are the man beaten and bruised by the side of the road.
We lack resources, we lack security, we lack everything we need to get to
Jericho.  We assume the priest and the Levite will give us whatever we need.  They
have their place, but they're no use to us on this occasion.  The one who offers us
salvation is the Samarian- the stranger, the enemy, the one we assume is out to
get us, the one we look down on, the one we wouldn't
dream of living next to, the one we've never in our lives eaten a meal with let
alone touched, the one who claims to worship the same God
but whose religion we despise and whose race we regard as inferior.

This then is the context of engagement.  It is not that we're the affluent priest or
Levite driving through the dodgy byways of our local downtown.  As long as we
read the story that was we will continue to find ever more
elaborate methods to pass by the strangers who litter our path.  The point is that
we're the man by the road.  We're the needy one who finds God gives us everything we
need through the person whom our society, our
economy, our culture, and even some of our churches have taught us to patronize,
feel guilty about, ignore, or even despise.  The gospel is not to scurry around busily
making up for the scarcity Jesus so carelessly left behind
when making a botched job of the kingdom of God.  The gospel is to receive the
abundance God has to give to us through those the world sees only for
what they lack, and thus to allow God to give us everything we need.


The Content of Engagement

It's time to move from the "why" of engagement to the "how."  If something is wrong, and
you are a person who wants to help, there are broadly three ways to do so.

One is working for.  Working for means doing things on behalf of other people.
When you see someone leave the grocery store with a huge pile of shopping bags,
it's the most natural thing in the world to say "Here, let me get those for you."
You're then working for that person by carrying their bags to their car.  If it's a simple
task with a short time-span, there's every chance it'll end with a heartfelt "Thank
you!" and a reciprocal "You're welcome, have a great day."  This is what we might call
the conventional model for engagement.  One person has a need, while the other
person has skills, availability and willingness to help.  The latter person
conventionally spends a lot of time working those skills up to a very high standard,
and consequently makes those skills available in specific circumstances under
very strict rules.  This is what we call being a professional.  This is what
medicine is about, this is what the law is about, this is what dentistry is about. 
Physicians, attorneys and dentists do for us what we can't do for ourselves.  It's
hard to overestimate the hold this conventional model has on our imaginations.
Pretty much the whole of our professional school structure- medicine, law, nursing
engineering, divinity, environment- runs this model.  I wouldn't mind betting
that pretty much every undergraduate who comes to a university wanting to make the
world a better place assumes that's the way it's done.  You become very
good at what you do, and you spend the rest of your life doing it for people.

It's immensely satisfying to be able to do for someone exactly what they
need doing, whether it's fixing a child's to or showing a novice how to find a
website on their computer.  We can see an end result, and it affirms us as people
of skill and ability.  In many cases it makes the recipient's life materially better-
and in the case of a physician or firefighter, it may even make the difference
between life and death.  So why do professional people so often
find that their clients don't say thank you?  The reason is that working for makes
the expert feel good and important and useful, but it doesn't necessarily
leave the recipient feeling that great.  The working for model
sets in stone a relationship where one person is the benefactor and the other
is a person in need.  It's humiliating if many or most of your relationships are
ones in which you need someone to do things for you.  The working for model
perpetuates relationships of inequality.  Worse still, it's possible to be
the recipient of a person's help and still find that the benefactor is a stranger to you.
The whole point of the professional infrastructure of divided offices,
administrative assistants, appointment times and special uniforms is to remind
all parties that this isn't a friendship, with expectations of compassion
and tenderness, but the provision of a service with no strings attached
outside and beyond that service.  The working for model dominates contemporary
nations of welfare, but it leaves the rich and poor pretty much where they
started off and it keeps them strangers to one another.

Let's go back for a moment to the person emerging from the grocery store with
too many shopping bags to carry to the car.  It's natural for you to say "Here, let me
get those for you," and thus initiate a working for relationship.  But will the
person automatically say "Thanks so much?"  No, they won't, for one of two
reasons.  The first is that they may feel they are being patronized, particularly if
there is a sensitive dynamic of gender, age or disability.  For some people it is
better to struggle on alone than get on the receiving end of any kind
of working for relationship that simply reinforces their lowly social standing.
The other reason why the person might say no is if they think you might
be going to run off with their shopping.  So these two factors, empowerment and
trust, are prior to any working for relationship getting off the ground.  I'm now
going to look at them in turn.

The issue of empowerment is taken up in the second model of engagement which I'm
going to call working with.  One writer describes working with like this:

Working with the poor is a lot more difficult.  This means recognizing that being
poor is not just about lacking income, but also being excluded from positions
of power.  Working with the poor means waiting for poor people themselves
to define what their needs are, and to support them in the action they decide
to change things.  It involves entering into a relationship with poor people, and so
surrendering some of one's own autonomy and sense of power in being able to
identify what needs to be done and take steps to make a difference.  It means
offering what one has and is for their use.  (Sarah White and Romy Tiongco,
Doing Theology and Development:  Meeting the Challenge of Poverty Edinburgh, St.
Andrew Press 1997) 14.

Working with means bringing different skills and experience together around a
common goal.  It can create a wonderful sense of partnership, provided that the
agenda is being set by the person in need, rather than the person trying to help. 
Instead of a professional relationship, where the person in need sees
the benefactor entirely on the benefactor's terms and in a relationship dictated by
the benefactor's sense of of priorities, the working with model depicts a round
table where each person present has a different but equally valuable
portfolio of experience, skills, interests, networks and commitments.  The working
with model recognizes that the journey is as important as the destination.
Just as on a medieval quest or pilgrimage, the conversations and adventures
one has on the way matter as much and shape character as significantly as the
place one is walking towards.  Working with is not so much about giving
people better material conditions and facilities, it's about making new people
inspired and empowered and finding new skills and confidence through being
given responsibility and access to conversations that have wider influence.

To take a familiar example, there are a number of institutions in our major
cities where a homeless person can find an evening meal.  The conventional model, working for, suggests what the homeless person needs is an evening meal.
But simply providing an evening meal reinforces the person in their poverty,
and leaves them hungry again tomorrow.  So the familiar distinction between the
deserving and undeserving poor separates the person who needs a help up
through a tough time from the person who will keep coming back for meals
however often they are available, and the logic often goes on to assume the
only way to help the undeserving poor is to punish them until they learn to fend for themselves.  The empowerment model, working with, is not content until the
homeless person not only sets the menu but does the cooking themselves.  On this
view community kitchens exist not to produce meals but to empower people, and the
director of the kitchen should
change every few years as a new homeless person comes through the
ranks to take over the reins.  Before long the question of
why people continue to go hungry should bring all kinds of people, business leaders,
city managers and welfare advisers around the table with homeless people to
empower homeless people to resolve their own problems at the table of power.
Working with is essentially about realizing that a social problem is
everyone's problem, and about everyone getting to feel the sense of satisfaction
at resolving that problem that in the conventional model only the
professional person gets.

But there is a third model.  The third model addresses the issue of trust
we left unresolved when we were wondering whether we could take those shopping
bags back to the overburdened person's car.  This model I'm
going to call being with.  The same author I quoted earlier describes being
with like this:

Being with the poor is more difficult still.  It means experiencing
in one's own life something of what it is
to be poor and oppressed, to be disempowered.  To set aside
one's plans and strategies for change, and simply
feel with the poor the pain of their situation.  It involves
seeing the implications poverty and
development have fore people's sense of themselves and
their connections with one another, not only
their material well-being.  This spells the end to an easy
views of poverty as romantic, or the poor as simple and
virtuous.  It means to see tensions and contradictions within
and between poor and non-poor, and to
recognize through this that all of us are part of the problem.
Poverty is not just out there, but within us,
whoever we are (White and Tiongco, 14)

Being with adds an extra dimension.  It means experiencing on one's own body
some of the fragility of relationships and self-esteem and general well-being
that are at the heart of poverty.  It means having the patience not to search around
for the light switch, but to sit side by side for a time in the darkness.
Job's comforters are much maligned, but it's often forgotten that when they came to
him and did not recognize him, "they sat down on the ground with him
for seven days and seven nights with no one speaking a word to
him, for they saw that this pain was very great" (Job 2:13)

Being with is incomprehensible to an imagination that has been entirely shaped
by the conventional working for model.  After all, how can one hope to solve
anyone's problems if one divests oneself not only of the safety of
professional boundaries but of skills that go with them?  As one person who
did this in the Philippines relates, "It was not socially acceptable.  I lost my privileges,
my old contacts, my security.  I felt very vulnerable.  I used to wake
in the night afraid that I would get sick and have no money to pay a doctor." 
(White and Tiongco, 13).  The transition one has to make is that poverty is not fundamentally a problem to be solved.  The working for
model, and some versions of the working with model, tend to turn everything into
a problem ripe for solving.  But some things aren't problems, and some
problems can't simply be fixed.

Just imagine when working for and working with have done their stuff, and
achieved all they set out to do.  What then, when there is no world to fix?
The American expression is, "We get to hang out."  In other words, we enjoy one
another.  We enjoy the actions and habits of life because they make us realize how
good it is to be alive, how good it is to be a person among others, how good it is
to be a person in the created world, how good it is to be a child of God.
The being with this approach says, "Let's not leave those discoveries till after
all the solving and fixing is done and we're feeling bored.  Let's make those
discoveries now."  To say to someone "I want to be a with you" is
to say "When I'm with you I feel in touch with myself, in touch with what it means
to be a human being among others, in touch with creation, in touch with God." 
(That's a lot to say, so on America we put it in code by saying, "Let's hang out.")
To say say that to a wealthy person may be a way of saying, "I value you
for who you are as a person, not what you've achieved in your career."  But
to say that to a poor person is to say something very extraordinary.  Yet
if you can't say such a thing to someone, there is no reason in the world why
they should trust you.  Because if you can't say such a thing to a person,
it's clear you're only using them as a means towards some further end.

Take for example the case of a person who has a terminal illness.  There's very little
working for to do.  Sure, you can fix up all sorts gadgets and comforts to make
the last days or months less burdensome.  But there's no
way to solve the problem.  As for working with, there's certainly a lot to be
said for demedicalizing the person's situation, for getting away from drugs
and technology as much as possible and turning whatever
one can into words and mementos and significant moments.  But what's really
required
is simply being with - staying still, listening, being silent, not having the
answers, sharing the struggle, praying together, singing songs and hymns,
taking time over meals, recalling stories, remembering messages to pass on.  What's
needed isn't therapy - it's company.  What the dying person is saying is
"Please don't leave me alone."

Let's go back to the Good Samaritan for a moment.  Remember the context
for engagement is to see ourselves not as the priest or the Levite, with a variety
of methods of working for, and the freedom to pick and choose
which is the most suitable.  The point is to see ourselves as the man in need,
searching each passer by to see if they have what God promises to give us.
If we see ourselves as fundamentally the man in need, it becomes
absurd to start with the model of working for.  It's pretty difficult to see
ourselves as working with, although it's possible the
man taught the Samaritan a thing or two about donkey riding on the way
to Jericho.  All we can offer is being with, and being with precisely
as the needy person in the relationship.  Only if we
start by thinking for ourselves as the needy, vulnerable person in the story can
we begin to understand that the stranger, particularly the
stranger separated from us by race, or class, can be for us the face of God.
And so maybe being with is therefore where Christian, service and witness begins.


A Theology of Engagement

I want you to think for a moment about the shape of Jesus' life.  We place a
huge emphasis on his last week in Jerusalem - his passion, death and
resurrection.  That's fully justified, because the gospels are balanced the same
way - Mark gives the last week 6 chapters out of his 16, while John gets to
the passionate material in chapter 12 of his 21 chapters.  St. Paul
concentrates almost entirely on Jesus' passion, death and resurrection,
and almost leaves Jesus' life out altogether.

Before that last week Jesus spent two, maybe three years moving around Galilee.
In Galilee he built a popular movement.  He worked with his disciples, teaching
and training them to live in the kingdom he told them was breaking in.  He
worked with the poor, healing them and empowering them to be
transformed from burden on others into carriers of the burdens of others.  And he
made trouble for the authorities, getting into controversy
with those who use their religious and political power for something less
than setting God's people free.

And before his ministry in Galilee, we have to assume he spent around 30 years in
Nazareth.  Doing what exactly?  Leaving aside the incident when Jesus sat down
with the teachers in the Temple at the age of 12, we
only really have two verses of scripture that answer that question.  Luke 2:40 says,
"the child grew and became strong, he was filled with wisdom, and the
grace of God was upon hi"; while Luke 2:53 says similar things, "Jesus grew in
wisdom and stature, and in favor with God and men."

So Jesus spent a week in Jerusalem working for us, doing what we can't do,
achieving our salvation.  If you like, he was the person in the
supermarket parking lot who said, "here, let me carry that burden for you."  he
spent three years in Galilee working with us, calling us to
follow him and work alongside him.  Thinking again of the supermarket
parking lot, he encouraged and empowered the person with the bags,
removing the obstacles and reshaping the load, but letting the person
themselves determine the direction and claim credit afterwards.  But before
he ver got into working with and working for, he spent 30 years in Nazareth
being with us, setting aside his plans and strategies, and experiencing in his
own body not just the exile and oppression of the children of Israel, but
also the joy and sorrow of family and community life.

And so the question of how we approach ministry, service and witness
in our city is fundamentally a question of how we see ourselves before God.
The joy of being a child of God is more than anything else the joy
of being with God - not just working for or with God but simply being with God
because there is nowhere better to be.  We often quote the words of Irenaeus,
"The glory of God is a human being fully alive"; but we generally leave
out the words that follow, which add, "And the human life is the vision of God."
If Jesus shows us not only what it means to be God but what it means to be human,
we should take his example seriously.  For Christian
ministry, service and witness, there can  true working with God or
humanity that is not deeply rooted in being with both.


A Theology of Engagement

I want to conclude with three invitations to explore what it might mean to
embody Nazareth - to minister, serve and witness in the spirit of being with.

The first comes from Augustine.  At the start of his book On Christian Doctrine,
he makes a very interesting distinction between what we "use" and what
we "enjoy".

"There are some things, then, which are to be enjoyed, others
which are to be used, others still which we enjoy and use.
Those things which are objects of enjoyment make us happy.
These things which are objects of use assist, and (so to speak)
support us in our efforts after happiness, so that we can
attain the things that make us happy and rest in them.  We
ourselves, again, who enjoy and use these things, being
placed among both kinds of objects, if we set ourselves
to enjoy those which we ought to use, are hindered in our
course, and sometimes even led away from it; so that getting
entangled in the love of lower gratifications, we lag behind
in, or even altogether turn back from, the pursuit of the
real and proper objects of enjoyment.  For to enjoy a thing is to
rest with satisfaction in it for its own sake."
(Augustine, On Christian Doctrine Book 1 Chapters 3,4 Translated
by J.F. Shaw, Edinburgh: T&T Clark 1892 9)

Going back to the beginning of our exploration, we can understand sin as "using"
that which should be "enjoyed".  Too much eagerness to "work for" and solve
or fix problems leaves one eager to find things one can "use".  Not finding
much to use in a neighborhood can lead one to shake the dust off one's feet and
move on elsewhere in search of more useable material.  But the gift of being with is
learning how to enjoy what many predecessors have failed to use.  When one
says, "I'm happy to be with you" one is saying "I am 'enjoying' you",
that's to say (in Augustine's words) I am resting in satisfaction with you
for your own sake.  You are not a means to any end.  You are an end in yourself.  I
have no purpose in being in this conversation, in this neighborhood,
other than to receive from you all the wonder that God brought about just
in making you.  Usually we only ever say this to people on their birthday - I am
rejoicing simply in the gift God gave us in making you."
Learning to "be with" is learning to treat people as if every day were their
birthday.  If we are to minister, serve and witness among people in our
city in a spirit of being with, we must learn to enjoy them for their own
sake, not try to use them and, finding them wanting or unresponsive, get
cross with them or toss them away.

Perhaps the most significant way in which we can embody the ethos of
"being with" is to share meals with people.  I realized something about sharing food. 
When I care about someone, and want to get to know them or their household
better, I find myself wanting to cook for them.  In other words, I want to
work for them.  When I deeply care about someone, I find I want to cook
with them.  Somehow the little negotiations over how they roast potatoes or
sieve flour and who gets to decide when we disagree become the music to
which the words of our conversation are sung.  This is my most regular
experience of working with.   But when I both care about someone very much
and know that person very well, the food becomes somehow secondary and
it's really an excuse simply to sit beside them and listen to their voice
and spend time in one another's company.  The food is something we use, so
that we can enjoy one another.  I believe eating together is the single
simplest and most enjoyable way of embodying what it means to move from
working for to working with to being with.

Finally I want to share with you tow quotations that have sustained me in
my ministry, particularly in the times when I have sought to be with
disadvantaged people over long periods and have invariably felt I had little
tangible to show for it.  The first is from a man called Bill Arlow, who wrote in the
context of the Northern Irish Troubles in the 1980s.  He said, "It is better to fail
in a cause that will finally succeed than to succeed in a cause that
will finally fail."  So much of working for is succeeding in causes that will
finally fail:  delivering programs that produce good statistics but only
reinforce inequalities, institutionalize humiliation, and disable genuine
relationships.  What will finally succeed is years and years of being with,
building trust, caring about people for their own sake, coming to them as a
needy man to a wandering Samaritan, expecting to see the face of God in
them and enjoying them for the wondrous creation that they are.  It doesn't
look like much, but it's the way Christ spent most of his incarnate life.

And that brings me to my last quotation, from Thomas Kempis, in his work
The Imitation of Christ.  He writes, "That which is done for love (though it be
little and contemptible in the sigth of the world) becometh wholly fruitful." 
Working for may be done for love, or for many other reasons.  Working
with may be done for love, though it is possible to have other goals in mind.
But being with, as far as I can tell, has only one motivations:  it is because
the other is precious for their own sake, solely to be enjoyed with no thought
to use.  Being with can only be done for love.  And in that, it imitates the way
God loves us.  God is with us.  Emmanuel, for no other reason than that God
loves us for our own sake. God enjoys us.  That is the mystery of
creation and salvation.  That is the mystery that all our ministry, service and
witness must seek to imitate and emulate.  If, and only if, it does, it will
become wholly fruitful.

The Nazareth Manifesto
David Couchman
Above Bar Church, Southampton, England

Theologians call Luke chapter 4 verses 14-30 the 'Nazareth Manifesto.'  We can
have the Maastricht Treaty, or the Kyoto protocols.  Well, Jesus had the
Nazareth Manifesto.  It is a public statement setting the agenda for his ministry;
promising his program; telling us what he is going to do.  Please do read this
section from the Bible before you go any further, as the rest of this article
will make much more sense if you do.

This is a very densely packed passage, and it is difficult to unpack all that is
going on here.  We are going to look at the Nazareth manifesto under
two main headings:

The Roots of the Manifesto (Verses 14-21)

The Gospel writers do not always put things in time order, so we cannot be sure
when these events took place.  It seems that Jesus had already had a period of
ministry in Jerusalem and Judea, and then he had come back up north to Galilee,
and at some point in his Galilean ministry, he went back to his hometown of
Nazareth.  Both Matthew and Mark record similar incidents, which may be the same
event, although they do dot record what Jesus said in the synagogue.

Luke puts this here, near the beginning of his Gospel, as a program statement for
Jesus's ministry.  Jesus is setting the agenda.  He is 'setting out his stall.'  He is
publishing his manifesto.

Luke begins by saying that he returned 'in the power of the Spirit.'  The Holy Spirit is
 very important for Luke.  He mentions the Spirit nearly 60 times in the book of
 Acts.  In the Gospel, Luke speaks a dozen times about Jesus being full of the Holy
 Spirit, or ministering in the power of the Spirit.
 
 You only have to look back to the start of chapter 4 to see an example:
 
 Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, returned from the Jordan and was led
 by the Spirit in the desert... (chapter 4 verse 11)
 
 Or look down to verse 18:
 
 "The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me..."
 
 So Jesus comes to Galilee in the power of the Spirit, and people receive him
 positively:  everyone praised him (verse15).  Then he goes to Nazareth, his home town
 - where many of the people would have his relatives- and everything goes
 pear shaped.
 
 Nazareth was actually a rather insignificant place.  It is not mentioned in the Old
 Testament, or by any Jewish writers from the time of Jesus.  It was an unimportant
 village.
 
 Because of this, you may hear people say that there is no evidence that Nazareth even
 existed as a place until a couple of hundred years after Jesus.  Hence, they say, the
 Gospel stories are fictional accounts, made up later.  However, like so many
 objections, this is based on out of date and inadequate information which is
 mindlessly recycled by unbelievers.
 
 The IVP 'Dictionary of Jesus and the Gospels' says this:
 
 Since Nazareth is not mentioned in the Old Testament, in the
 Apocrypha or in rabbinic literature, some during the last century
 disputed its existence in New Testament times.  In addition to an
 inscription mentioning it as a settlement for priests in the third to
 fourth century, excavations of recent years have removed every
 doubt... Remains dating from New Testament times consist
 especially of cisterns and silos hewn from rock, along with tombs...
 
 The Biblical Archaeological Society's web site says:


Prayer list

  Ginger Martin   Callie and Hannah Martin

Thank You Lord for keeping Baine and the team safe during the
Avery win!  Heal Baine's leg that's kind banged up.
September 6, 2008

Jesus thank You for making the Hanna Storm "less"  Keep people safe.
Now just flat get rid of Ike.  Do it!  You can.  You will!
Make it be to Your Glory!
September 6, 2008

Ok folks- lots to pray about today.  But first let's praise!
Son Caleb calls me last night (Tuesday) after teaching his Bible
study to junior high students in Wilmington... (Caleb is part of a
predominantly black congregation called New Beginning and this group is
all black)  Caleb is teaching Revelation and the first lesson last
week was on being prepared.  We have to be prepared for what God
brings our way.  Revelation is about signs that would lead us to
be prepared.  Sunday, James, who is in 6th grade, asked Jesus to forgive
him of his sins, come into his heart and take over his life.  At
the Bible study- James told Caleb it was the word about being
prepared that stirred his heart!  Caleb was fired up.  He told James how
excited he was that he received Christ and that his decision made Caleb's
entire year!  There's nothing better than
being a part of someone's salvation!  I think Caleb was just as excited
as James!  Thank You Lord for Caleb and James!
September 3, 2008

Clients of ours Bill and Virginia Martin have learned that their 40 year old
daughter Ann has breast cancer in both breasts.  The family has a
long history of breast cancer.  This is particularly hard given Virginia's
personal battles with the disease and the age of her wonderful
daughter.  A double mastectomy is scheduled for September 9 at Baptist
Hospital in Winston.  Lord, may the surgery be a grand success. 
Be with Ann, her husband and children emotionally, physically and
spiritually.  You are the Great Physician and all things work
together for good to them that love You and are called according to
your purpose. Let Your presence be undeniable in the days
and weeks to come.  Take away all fear and may the martins trust in
YOU for everything.
September 3, 2008

Be with Baine and Carol as they travel to Charlotte to see
Carol's mom Louise who You have undergirded from her three story
fall back in June.  Continue to heal her and thank You for answering
prayers to enable her to walk by labor day!  You did it!  Now let's see You
enable her to travel to Boone by Thanksgiving.
September 3, 2008

Lord, we asked you to break up Gustav and You did!  Thank You for
the minimal damage in New Orleans and the Gulf Coast!  Please dissolve
the next two hurricanes Hanna and "the other" (I forgot the name).
We ask that they both turn north and stay away- far away.  Thank you
for the rain!  Should You decide to relieve droughts through
these hurricanes- we accept it.  Help us to be prepared.  But I humbly
ask that it be in another form.  Thank You.
September 3, 2008

Dan has a referee buddy who lost both a brother and sister
to cancer inside of the last 24 hours.  The brother actually bought a house
from Dan about 5 years ago.  Bless his buddy.  Comfort the family.
September 3, 2008


Praise the Lord!!!!
Will Dicus tumors have REDUCED 20-40%!!!!
The prayer is that they totally dissolve and go away
and it is happening!  As son Baine told me
"This just doesn't happen"
With God it does!
July 30, 2008
And get this!  I'm told the brain tumor is
just gone!  Do it God!  Do it!  Take it all away.  We believe
You, we honor You and give You praise.
August 10, 2008
Baine told me last night that Will's Brain tumor is flat gone!
Awesome, Awesome Awesome!
August 26, 2008



  I n    g r e a t    a t t e m p t s    i t ' s    g l o r i o u s    t o    e v e n    f a i l
                                                                                                         -Vi nce Lombardi