Outer-Space Outlaws?

One of the pictures above depicts an illegal alien. Can you guess which one?

Whenever I hear the phrase, "illegal alien", that's all I can think of: "What do you mean, like an outer-space outlaw"?

Part of the problem is our use of the word "alien". The internet says that the standard modern use of the term - referring to an extraterrestrial - is traceable back to 1864. In our post-X-Files world, whenever you say "alien", the first thing that comes to most people's minds is a little green man.

Part of the problem is our use of the world, "illegal". As is often said, people cannot be legal or illegal. People can commit crimes. People can have or not have proper documentation to be in a place. But people can't be illegal.

So when we put these words together - "illegal alien" - we get this notion of an inherently polluted nonhuman creature. A beast so incapable of civility that its very nature is law-breaking. Sadistic, unsympathetic, and unworthy of human decency.

That's why it's so easy to say things like this:

However.

Consider this loving God that we proclaim and we serve.

Consider the words of the prophets and the patriarchs -- "The foreigner residing among you must be treated as your native-born. Love them as yourself, for you were foreigners in Egypt." (Lev 19:34) This is not an isolated command, but a running theme, and nowhere is there any mention of legal immigration status.

Consider the call throughout Scripture to care for and defend the people most powerless in society (the Scripture often explicitly referencing immigrants) - and who, in our society, is more powerless than people who have no protection from a legal system that will rip them from their lives and families to incarcerate or exile them if they speak up?
Consider grace, that quality of God that causes God to love each and every one of us despite the ways that we hurt, that we defile, that we destroy.
Consider love, that quality of God that causes God to do and wish the best for each of us no matter what we deserve.

Consider what the Kingdom of God - the Domain of God, the Reign of God, the Family of God - really is. It's a version of our world in which there is no "us" or "them'. It's a vision of our world in which all nations are the human nation and all families are the human family. It's a glimpse of our world in which people are treated in human terms as equally as they are loved in God's heart, and where "justice roll[s] down like waters, righteousness like an ever-flowing stream."

Poverty is a problem for all people. Injustice is a problem for all people. And the national/moral barriers that we put up between people and people, people and resources, people and God? Those barriers are as false as the barrier between Jew and Gentile, slave and free, male and female...

This is not about who deserves to eat and drink and have shelter, because every human being deserves those things. This is not about who gets a slender slice of the meager pie, because there is abundance both in God and in America. This it not about who got where first, or who has the right papers and who doesn't, and it's not even truly about the law - because, "the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. Against such things there is no law." (Gal 5:22-23)

In Christ, and in the beloved community that Christ is creating among us, nobody is illegal, nobody is undeserving, and nobody is an alien. We are all beloved children of God.

Commitments, Covenants and Church Members

I've been thinking a lot lately about membership.

It's long been a running joke in churches that membership is a made-up number.
There are many churches, and many dedicated staff members, who put excellent and thorough work into calculating church membership. But things happen - people accumulate on the rolls but fade out over time. People are transient - they move, they change careers or sides of town or groups of friends, and people fade away. More often, "active membership" is a fluid term - is somebody active if they come to worship once every six weeks and a small group five weeks out of every six months? And what about all those people who clearly have a relationship with a church, but who never came forward during the altar call and answered The Big Question in front of God'n'everybody? What about all those people who fall between the cracks of "visitor", "member", and "active member"?

That's life.

So here's the question - what do we do about church membership? Because it's clearly built around a model that's no longer realistic, especially in cities. We can't expect people to establish a church home and stay there for their whole lives, and we certainly can't guilt people for living their real lives out there in the world instead of in church every day. Furthermore, research is clear that Millenials - the new adult generation formed of people like me born in the 1980s and 1990s - aren't joiners. They don't join - they do and they serve, if they believe in the cause, but they don't join. How passe!

Aren't we equipping people to live as Jesus-followers out there in the world?

Furthermore, all the traditional "benefits" of membership - exclusive communion, barrier to church leadership, social stigma - are failing. In our church, anybody can and does take part in leading worship. Any and all people are invited to take part in the Sacred Feast of Christ. We recognize the value of engaging with people where they are, even if they only show up to church every couple of months.

By the same token, we can't abolish membership. More to the point, we can't ignore commitment. We can't ignore the fact that people will inevitably respond to the Gospel, from time to time, with the fervent desire to dedicate their lives to what has for centuries been called The Way. That's a sacred covenant, with great responsibilities for both individual and body.

Becoming a Christian has nothing to do with baptism. It has nothing to do with church membership, youth group, or lifting your arms in worship. It has everything to do with a commitment to a love-oriented way of life. That's a very hard thing to dedicate yourself to - and when somebody decides to take that identity onto themselves, we should celebrate their bravery and strength with all due pomp and circumstance. Baptism and other commitment rituals are crucial. We need to recognize commitment... without pretending that "church members" are a separate and better class of people.

However membership ends up "looking" at FCC SouthSide, I know this -- our easy labels telling us "who's in the club" are gone. All we have are people - people dedicated, people wavering, people unsure, people trying, people succeeding and failing, people helping one another on the journey to God's wholeness and peace. If we can recognize the power of each moment on that journey, celebrate the difficult decision to walk, and walk with people as they take each trepidatious step, we will all reach the Kingdom together.

Share your thoughts on this complicated and deeply-rooted subject below, on Twitter with @revgeiger, or on Facebook with PastorGeiger. Thanks, and may your day bring you all the blessings you seek and more.

Madness and Prayer

Hey folks!

It's been pointed out to me that I never gave a final update on the outcome of Lent Madness through this blog when it ended last week.
So, if you're itching to get up-to-date, here it is:

After a hard-fought Faithful Four and final matchup against St. Luke the Evangelist...

Frances Perkins has won the Golden Halo! Apparently Christendom has a soft spot for social justice workers and "firsts" - as she was the first woman in the US Cabinet, and is responsible for all sorts of social reforms on everything from child labor laws to establishing a minimum wage to creating Social Security.
Congrats Madam Secretary!

---
I also wanted to take a moment to share with you a new take on the Lord's Prayer that is a rather fitting for this venue and this modern age:

"A Blogger's Prayer" by Andrew Jones


Our Father
who lives above and beyond the dimension of
the internet

Give us this day a life worth blogging,
The access to words and images that express
our journey with passion and integrity,
And a secure connection to publish your daily
mercies.
Your Kingdom come into new spaces today,
As we make known your mysteries,
Posting by posting,
Blog by blog.

Give this day,
The same ability to those less privileged,
Whose lives speak louder than ours,
Whose sacrifice is greater,
Whose stories will last longer.

Forgive us our sins,


For blog-rolling strangers and pretending they
are friends,
For counting unique visitors but not noticing
unique people,
For delighting in the thousands of hits but
ignoring the ONE who returns,
For luring viewers but sending them away
empty handed,
For updating daily but repenting weekly.

As we forgive those who trespass on our sites to
appropriate our thoughts without reference,
Our images without approval,
Our ideas without linking back to us.

Lead us not into the temptation to sell out our
congregation,
To see people as links and not as lives,
To make our blogs look better than our actual
story.

But deliver us from the evil of pimping ourselves
instead of pointing to you,
From turning our guests into consumers of
someone else's products,
From infatuation over the toys of technology,
From idolatry over techology
From fame before our time has come.

For Yours is the power to guide the destinies
behind the web logs,
To bring hurting people into the sanctuaries of
our sites,
To give us the stickiness to follow you, no
matter who is watching or reading.
Yours is the glory that makes people second
look our sites and our lives,
Yours is the heavy ambience,

For ever and ever,
Amen