God’s Economy: Subtract or Multiply?

I would never make it as an accountant.

I tend to lose focus on details, and I’ve never been too motivated about dollars and cents.

Plus I can get philosophical on something as simple as mathematical functions like subtract or multiply.

What to some might look like subtraction, a reduction in the bottom line, in God’s economy can be multiplication, compounding and expanding in every direction.

It doesn’t make sense mathematically, but there’s a spiritual reality that sets our zero-sum economy

on end.

I’ve been watching this happen in my garden, my backyard workshop for theological reflection.

Exhibit one: Dicentra cucullaria, Dutchman’s Breeches, a native woodland plant in the bleeding-heart family, with white spring blooms shaped like tiny upside-down pantaloons.

Years ago someone gave me some corms to plant, little white bulblets that rooted and grew into a small clump of feathery leaves and a handful of early spring blooms.

And there it stayed: pretty for a few weeks in spring, not expanding much. Hemmed in by wild ginger on one side, a rock on another, a tree trunk on another.

Then last year I dug it up. I gave a few corms to someone else, stuck a few in a new place, a few more in another. Dropped one or two and left them for the squirrels to find.

Then forgot them.

This spring, as the snow finally melted and sunlight warmed the hill behind my shed, I found a new bunch blooming.

Then another.

A few days later, another.

And another.

Fifteen patches in all, all bigger than the bunch I split just last year.

All blooming merrily in new locations, some apparently chosen by the squirrels, while the corms I put back into the same spot are back to a bunch the same size as before.

In gardening, that’s often the case. Divide something up and share it, and you end up with more yourself.

I gave a new friend a garden tour this week, and we ended by potting up plants for her to take home to her own garden. Some bloodroot – heirs of a clump my grandmother gave me decades ago, that grew and multiplied in three different gardens in Virginia, and now is spreading through my garden here. Virginia bluebells and ostrich fern from a friend’s garden here in Pennsylvania. Rue anemone and native bleeding heart that are woven throughout my yard, even though I don’t remember where they came from. And a bunch of Dicentra cucullaria, Dutchman’s Breeches, the same size as the original I was given years ago.

This is the season of plant sales, garden giveaways, digging and dividing. Real gardeners know that a large part of the fun is giving plants away.

I check the USDA plant databases and plant native plants in the park where I’m part of a Weed Warriors workgroup. A few years ago I bought two elderberry bushes, and now, after giving away at least a dozen, I have another dozen more to dig and plant in the park.

And golden ragwort – brilliant yellow this time of year – a small bunch given by a friend now carpets whole areas under my trees, and under the trees of several friends, and is growing into new patches along the pathways in the park. (And yes, I have permission to plant there, as we take out invasive aliens that don’t belong).

Paul wrote to the Corinthians about this expansive principal in God’s economy. 

Remember this: Whoever sows sparingly will also reap sparingly, and whoever sows generously will also reap generously. Each of you should give what you have decided in your heart to give, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver. And God is able to bless you abundantly, so that in all things at all times, having all that you need, you will abound in every good work.  As it is written:
   “They have freely scattered their gifts to the poor;
    their righteousness endures forever.”

Now he who supplies seed to the sower and bread for food will also supply and increase your store of seed and will enlarge the harvest of your righteousness. You will be enriched in every way so that you can be generous on every occasion, and through us your generosity will result in thanksgiving to God.  2 Corinthians 9:6-11 

I’ve written before about the extreme wording that runs through this passage: "God is able to bless you abundantly, so that in all things at all times, having all that you need, you will abound in every good work. . . You will be enriched in every way to you can be generous on every occasion." 

As I’ve said, “I like the extravagance of Paul’s claim: every, always, everything. There is no lack in God’s supply, no halfway measure in his provision.” 

We step into this reality tentatively: offering hospitality with hesitation, giving generously, then rethinking, second-guessing.

Yet, when we’ve chosen as a family to believe it, we’ve seen that any investment of home, money, time, attention, love, has yielded not scarcity, but plenty, pressed down and overflowing. 

I listen to discussions of our federal budget and grieve: by some accounting measures it might make sense to cut back nutrition assistance for poor families, or to shave our one percent international aid contribution to ever smaller decimals.  According to Bread for the World, while the proposed 2016 budget would increase defense spending, trillions of dollars in cuts would come from programs for low-income people. 

I listen and grieve. And grieve again, at the discussion surrounding minimum wage, living wage, how far below the poverty line manyfull-time workers live.  By some accounting measure, the arguments for continuing at the current minimum wage might make sense.   But surely there are business leaders who could speak for another point of view? Sharing profits with the lowest earning workers, in God’s economy, would not subtract from the bottom line, but provide opportunity to see expanded provision.

Writing for last week’s Synchroblog post on “bearing fruit,” I was reminded that the Bible has much to say about what we would call agriculture: the division of land, the processes of sowing and harvesting, the distribution of food, the value of pruning.

In many ways, that agricultural focus intersects with an economic vision: one that calls our current material individualism to account, and offers a radically different structure.

During this season of gardening and growth, I’m planning to think and blog about God’s economy, and to examine the ways our theology finds its way into checkbooks, business practice, policy, politics.

What would happen if we lived the words we say we believe? 

And God is able to bless you abundantly, so that in all things at all times, having all that you need, you will abound in every good work.  As it is written:“They have freely scattered their gifts to the poor;     their righteousness endures forever.”

Earlier posts on agro-theology and/or Biblical economies:

Whose Seed? Whose Food? January 29, 2012

Wondering about Wealth, February 5, 2012

What Do You Have that You Didn’t Receive? June 11, 2012

What Matters, December 30, 2012

God’s Green Equity, August 4, 2013

Seed Parables, August 11, 2013

Miracle Seeds of Sorrows Kingdom, August 25, 2013

New Life. Mystery Fruit, March 23, 2014

Fruit That Will Last, April 19, 2015  

Your thoughts and experiences in this are welcome. Look for the "__ comments" link below to leave your comments.  And if you know of businesses incorporating alternative economics, I'd love to hear about them. 

Generative Grace

My yard is full of ostrich ferns: tall, elegant, a sturdy green presence, shading toward brown as winter edges toward us. A friend gave me one, not too many years ago, and soon I had more. Then more. I dig them up when they crowd other treasures, move them to dark corners under trees, give them away. This week I’m moving some to a park, to replace invasive honeysuckle vines. If you’d like one – let me know. I have plenty to share.

My grandmother was a collector of seeds. At this time of year, she’d be pocketing things, planning where to grow them. She had flowers no one else had, from seeds friends gave her over the years: billowing annuals she grew along the edge of her little trailer home, or planted along the edges of her tiny yard. When she came to visit us in the first house we owned, an aging twin in West Philadelphia, she arrived with a small suitcase in one hand and a bag of twigs in the other, bare root plants for our first garden. We cleared broken glass from our little urban yard and planted what she brought: native phlox, lily of the valley, foam flower. They’re still there in that West Philly yard, lush and green in the alley between the twins. And I took starts of them with us when we moved to Virginia, then again when we moved to our home here in Pennsylvania. The phlox has spread, seeding around the yard in shades of pink and purple. The foam flower carpets patches of ground in my woodland garden, blooming in billowing clouds of white. I give bits away, scatter phlox seed in friends’ meadows. If you need phlox, or foam flower, or lily of the valley – let me know. I have plenty to share.

Last week I dug an armload of plants to take to a friend’s home. Her daughter and I planted their first flower garden, with brown-eyed susan, coreopsis, phlox, perennial geranium. Right now it looks like dirt and sticks, battered down by October rain. Next spring it will look like something new. By summer it will be blooming, a bright wash of color along a sagging fence.

As I dig, and plant, and watch the way things spread, it occurs to me that this is how grace works: we put ourselves in its path, align ourselves with God’s work in this world, sow our seeds of shalom, and then watch a mystery far beyond us. I’m not the one who makes plants grow. I have no control over where the ferns send their runners, little say about where the phlox seeds land. But I can shepherd the generous growth going on around me, share it, celebrate it.

Friends who aren’t gardeners are sometimes reluctant to accept gifts of plants, or seeds. There’s an invisible wall.  My space, your space. If they want plants, they’ll go buy them, thank you. No need for charity here.

What they miss is the joy of the interplay of plants: the give and take, the sharing of the mystery. Fellow gardeners get it. We walk each other’s yards, exclaim over unexpected beauty: vines in full bloom, unusual seed pods, a cotillion of butterflies in a patch of morning sun. We pause to ask about unfamiliar plants, to note how things spread, to offer additions. “Let me dig you a start of this!” “I’ll give you a cutting. Just stick it in the ground and it will grow.”

My friend shows up at our birdwalks some weeks with odds and ends she’s dug from her yard. She likes explaining them.  Cardinal flower. Blue lobelia. A baby juniper that seeded in her yard. I’ve promised her a start of my symphoricarpus orbiculatus – native coralberry. I have it growing in the shade, where it spreads by runners, looking for the sun. I need to start moving it to other places – the park, Sarah’s yard, a sunnier spot in my own. Again – if you want some? Let me know.

I have friends who say they don’t need grace. Don’t want it. Can live without it. God is a crutch. His love an illusion. My space, your space. If I need something I’ll get it myself. No need for charity. I’m fine on my own.

Maybe.

Entomologist Doug Tallamy, brilliant bug man at the University of Delaware, has written about the suburban yard: manicured dead zones where not much will live. Perfect grass. A few clipped shrubs. Everything under control. Nothing unexpected. No caterpillars, praying mantis. No loud bird song under the bedroom window.

C Judd Patterson, 2008, Backyards for Nature: Fireflies

His research is on bugs, the native plants bugs depend on to survive, the layering of nature that makes habitat for bugs, birds, bats. A healthy multi-layered yard holds water, breathes out oxygen, attracts pollinators, provides habitat for nesting birds.

And billows up in new life: tree seedlings, unexpected vines, spreading groundcovers, butterflies.

My neighbor mentioned that he and his daughter sit on their deck and watch the fireflies in our trees. They have some in their yard, now and then. But our trees are full of them. His daughter thinks it’s magic.

Fireflies, like many other native creatures, are disappearing due to habitat loss. They can’t survive in well manicured yards. They need fallen logs, leaf piles, lots of native trees and shrubs.

It’s possible to live a self-enclosed, self-motivated life, with nicely delineated borders, carefully manicured edges.

For a while.

As a culture we’re exploring that option: lives lived in reference only to ourselves. Neatly packaged food from well stocked superstores. Entertainment on individual screens. Personal cars parked in personal driveways. My space, your space. No need for grace.

The dead zones keep growing. In our bays, choked by the nitrogen runoff from our perfectly green lawns. In our cities, struggling under the weight of our self-referential neglect.

In our firefly-free yards. In our fractured families. In our carefully guarded hearts. 

But God’s generative grace is just a heart-turn away. Like the rain, that can run off to flood our streams and spillways, or soak in slowly around ferns, moss, willows.

Like the sun, scorching the chemical-laden turf, or smiling through the layers of locust, dogwood, fern.

Like the spread of sundrops, phlox, and foam flower: someone else’s sticks and weeds, in someone else’s yard. Or gifts of grace to be given, received, shared, swapped, enjoyed.

It’s the perfect time to be moving plants: cool, wet, still warm enough for roots to settle in. 

It’s also time for harvesting seed: aster, ironweed, goldenrod, rudbeckia.

And time, as well, for slowing down enough to think: how does grace flow from my life to others? How does generosity spill from me, to you, my yard to yours, my heart to yours, your heart to mine?

Need some coralberries? Phlox seed? Time? Prayer? 

Let me know. Some days - by God's generative grace - I have plenty to share.

Whoever sows sparingly will also reap sparingly, and whoever sows generously will also reap generously. . . Now he who supplies seed to the sower and bread for food will also supply and increase your store of seed and will enlarge the harvest of your righteousness.  You will be enriched in every way so that you can be generous on every occasion, and through us your generosity will result in thanksgiving to God.

This post is part of an ongoing series on God's Green Equity.

• God's Green Equity: August 4, 2013
• Seed Parables: August 11, 2013 
• Miracle Seeds of Sorrow's Kingdom: August 25, 2013   
• How Much  Does Justice Cost? September 1, 2013
• Taxonomy of Ignorance and the Unknown Unknowns: September 8,2013
• For God so Loved the Earth, September 15, 2013
• Reflections and Refractions on the Anacotia River, Sept. 22, 2013
• Imagining Wholeness, Sept. 29, 2013
• Summoned toward Wholeness, Oct. 6, 2013

 Earlier posts on the same topic:

• Green Grace: May 15, 2011 
• Earth Day Shalom: April 22, 2012
• Hungering Far Past Rightness: March 3, 2013

As always, your thoughts, comments, questions are welcome.   

Courage, Hope, Generosity

No, no, there is no going back.

Less and less you are

that possibility you were.

More and more you have become

those lives and deaths

that have belonged to you. . .

Now more than ever you can be

generous toward each day

that comes, young,

to disappear

forever, and yet remain

unageing in the mind.

Every day you have less reason

not to give yourself away.

  (Wendell Berry,

         The Timbered Choir)

I spent this past weekend in the company of women of great courage, hope, and generosity.

I have been on an interesting journey, and most recently it’s been leading me into political engagement with the League of Women Voters. I’ve been working on a national agriculture study, leading caucuses and workshops about food and farming, and have just been voted onto the local and state League of Women Voters boards.

So, this past weekend, I went to the biennial state convention of the Pennsylvania League in the lovely town of Lewisburg, PA.

The start of the weekend was a wild caravan ride to see some natural gas drilling sites in the hillsides near Loyalsock State Forest. Guided by a local member of the Alliance for Responsible Drilling, our group drove down steep back roads, stopped along roadsides, counted waste water tank trucks in caravans of their own, then hiked across a muddy field for a birds-eye view of six active fracking wells.

One of the members of our group, a woman well into her seventies, carried a small note pad and jotted notes at every turn.

Another, just weeks after hip surgery, gratefully accepted a hand to climb a slippery slope, eager to see and understand further a topic she’s been studying for years.

The conversation never stopped: How many gallons. What happens to the waste water. How far is the nearest stream. How many trucks per day.

From there we went back to our convention site, for meetings about judicial reform, industrial farming, the broken party system, how best to advocate for more open primaries.

Some of those in attendance were younger than I am (57, if you’ve been wondering).

Many were older.

Some much older.

One woman spoke of working for thirty years to find a way to promote a more impartial, well-prepared judiciary.

Another has been studying Pennsylvania politics for almost as long, looking for possible points of reform, showing up for hearings, offering testimony, meeting with legislators, tireless in pursuit of something approaching a more open democratic process.

I sat several times next to a woman working to protect lakes, farms, and a fragile wetland area from the dangers of fracking wastewater being dumped into old, crumbling wells just miles from her home, not far from Lake Erie.

I spoke with another woman working hard to ensure adequate funding for education in rural schools far from any center of political power.

At one meeting we talked about the Pennsylvania Justice Bell and the 1915 statewide referendum on women’s rights. While my county and many western counties voted for women’s right to vote, the majority of state voters (all men) voted emphatically “no.” We were reminded of the 72 years between the 1848 Seneca Falls Convention, hosted by Lucretia Mott and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and the final ratification of the 19^th Amendment in August, 1920.

At another meeting we recognized fifty-year members – women who joined the league to work for Civil Rights, to advocate for the still-unpassed Equal Rights Amendment.

I was struck by the energy and resolve of these women, and the endless hours they give, showing up to register new voters, writing letters, making calls, trying to understand issues. One meeting paused over a motion about sales tax: Who is harmed by higher sales tax? Who benefits? Why should it matter?

Listening to the passionate discussions over morning coffee, over lunch, between meetings, late into the night, I found myself thinking about this month’s Synchroblog topic: ordinary courage. 

“In her book, The Gifts of Imperfection, Brené Brown has this to say about ordinary courage:

'The root of the word courage is cor—the Latin word for heart. In one of its earliest forms, the word courage had a very different definition than it does today. Courage originally meant “to speak one’s mind by telling all one’s heart.'

“The great thing about ordinary courage is that it leads to wholehearted living.”

We live in a world that encourages us not to care: 

Don’t vote, they’re all the same. Give up, things will never change.
 It’s all too complicated, so why bother?
 Look out for yourself, it’s the best you can do. 

It seems unwise to engage our hearts, to let ourselves care too deeply. Somehow it’s okay to be passionate about a TV show, a new restaurant, a hairstyle. But keep your voice level when you talk of politics. Don’t say too much about poverty or prison reform. Don’t offend, don’t insist, don’t dig too deeply.

Please, don’t think too much.

 

This past weekend, one of the women I was with spoke laughingly of a reporter who wrote of “whip-smart women in comfortable shoes.”

Well yes – it’s hard to visit fracking sites in anything but comfortable shoes. Or to run down hallways lugging laptops and projectors in a pair of narrow high heels.

What kind of culture is more interested in women’s shoes than in what chemicals are in our water, what toxins are in our food?

I’m reminded of a passage from Wendell Berry’s essay “On Difficult Hope”: 

"We are living in the most destructive and, hence, the most stupid period of the history of our species. The list of its undeniable abominations is long and hardly bearable. And these abominations are not balanced or compensated or atoned for by the list, endlessly reiterated, of our scientific achievements. Some people are moved, now and again, to deplore one abomination or another. Others . . . deplore the whole list and its causes.
 "Much protest is naive; it expects quick, visible improvements and despairs and gives up when such improvement does not come. Protestors who hold out longer have perhaps understood that success is not the proper goal.  .  .
 "Protest that endures, I think, is moved by a hope far more modest than that of public success: namely, the hope of preserving qualities in one’s own heart and spirit that would be destroyed by acquiescence.” (Wendell Berry, "On Difficult Hope") 

Both hope and courage are qualities of the heart, essential to whole-hearted living, worth preserving no matter the stupidities of the age.

Yet, as I think of the women I came to know this past weekend, I see in them something beyond the  the perseverance Berry describes. I turn back to the poem I started with: the idea of generosity.

What motivates these women of courage is the wish to give something better to those who come

behind us.

The woman living near the waste-water wells, organizing town meetings, writing the EPA, protesting, once again, a dangerous practice she fears will do great harm, said emphatically:

“It’s not about us. Or even our children. It’s our grandchildren. And the children after them. What happens when those well-linings break? What happens when those chemicals leach into the water table, into the lake?” 

It takes courage to look past the economies of today, to spend time, energy, resources tirelessly, generously, in hope of passing on something of value to generations to come.

In a world of self-protectiveness, of turning inward, of looking out for number one, I admire, celebrate, and am happy to walk with those tireless, fearless, generous women who refuse to settle for a life in stylish shoes. 

Every day you have less reasonnot to give yourself away.

This post is part of the June Synchroblog. There are lots of links this month - take some time to visit them and join the conversation.

This Is Courage by Jen Bradbury
Being Vulnerable by Phil Lancaster
Everyday Bravery: Overcoming the Fear of Being Wrong by Jessica
Moving Forward Takes Courage by Paul W. Meier
How to Become a Flasher by Glenn Hager
Ordinary Courage by Elaine Hansen
The Courage to Fail by Wendy McCaig
The Greatest Act of Courage by Jeremy Myers
Sharing One’s Heart by K. W. Leslie
All I See Is Rocks by Tim Nichols
I Wonder What Would Happen by Liz Dyer
What is Ordinary Courage? by Jennifer Stahl
Loving Courageously by Doreen A. Mannion
Heart Cry: The Courage to Confess by Elizabeth Chapin
The Act to the Miraculous by VisionHub
the spiritual practice of showing up & telling the truth by Kathy Escobar
It’s What We Teach by Margaret Boelman

The Great Reversal: A Resurrection People

“Jesus's resurrection is the beginning of God's new project not to snatch people away from earth to heaven but to colonize earth with the life of heaven. . . . Our task in the present . . . is to live as resurrection people in between Easter and the final day.” ( N.T. Wright, Surprised by Hope)

What does it mean to live as resurrection people? As agents of hope in a world where hope is in short supply?

How do we demonstrate – in our daily actions – our confidence that death is no longer the final word?

What does it look like to live so aligned with Jesus, so like him in word, deed, motive, that people who see us see evidence of resurrection?

The sermon on the mount is a good place to start. Looking back, it becomes clear that Matthew 6 is the proclamation of the Great Reversal: a new kingdom coming, a new way to live. Jesus says: Look, you do it this way. Turn it upside down.

Blessed are the rich and powerful? No – blessed are the poor and humble.

You love those who love you? Love those who don’t as well.

You worry? Learn to trust.

You want your own way? Want my way instead.

This reversal shows up in small ways through the gospels: tax collector Zacchaeus, stunned by Jesus’ acceptance and forgiveness, decides to give half his possessions to the poor and pay back four-fold anyone he’s cheated.

Woman at the Well, Hyatt Moore, US

The Samaritan woman at the well starts her story afraid to draw water at the normal times, reluctant to talk with Jesus, a secretive woman burdened by shame. She ends her story sharing the news of Jesus with everyone in town; according to Orthodox tradition, she was renamed Photini, "Equal to the Apostles,” and went on to witness in Africa and Rome before being martyred for her faith.

Were there others whose lives demonstrated a reversal of intent, a radical, visible change? Certainly people were healed. Lives were redirected. The teaching and example of Jesus attracted plenty of attention.

But in the gospels, although Jesus taught about the coming kingdom, it wasn’t really visible in the lives of his followers. The sons of Zebedee, James and John, were still wondering how to maneuver their way to power. Peter, self-focused from the start, was busy with his own off-beat agendas. Mary and Martha bickered about the proper role for a spiritual woman. All seemed convinced their own ideas, their own plans for the future, would somehow work better than whatever Jesus had in mind.

What Jesus had in mind, in his cross and resurrection, took their ideas, plans, hopes, vision of how the world should work, and shredded them. Completely.

Want power? Turn the other cheek. Again.

Want a future? Let your best hopes die.

Want to be an insider? Part of the gang? One of the club? Align yourself with the marginalized, forgotten, despised. Set your reputation with theirs. Claim their abandonment as your own.

The resurrection isn’t some sweet idea of spring and tulips and happy thoughts rising as the days begin to lengthen.

It’s God’s deep song of joy, rising up from the very darkest place of pain and grief: the story isn’t over. The hardest word is not the last. The thing you feared most is the best gift yet. The deepest loss is the avenue to deepest joy.

Beyond that, with the knowledge of that, everything changes.

The Crucifixion of Peter, Filippino Lippi,
c. 1581 , Florence

The disciples, once fearful, found themselves courageous beyond imagining: singing in the face of imprisonment, merry in the face of floggings, buoyant when confronted with crosses, lions, vats of oil, stones, beheading, new instruments of torture. Their persecutors exhausted themselves trying to find more frightening forms of execution. And still the disciples, and those who came after, women, teens, thousands on thousands, went to their death rather than deny the truth they’d come to believe: Jesus was God himself, raised from the dead, bringing freedom for anyone who would follow.

Origen, an early church theologian, at seventeen lost his father to beheading, lived most of his life under the threat of persecution, spent years in hiding and more years suffering a mix of ingenious tortures. In his “Principles,” he wrote:

“When God gives the Tempter permission to persecute us, we suffer persecution. And when God wishes us to be free from suffering, even though surrounded by a world that hates us, we enjoy a wonderful peace. We trust in the protection of the One who said, ‘Be of good cheer, for I have overcome the world. . .  From His victory we take courage.'”

The power of the Christ’s victory showed up not just in the courage of the new followers, but also in outrageous generosity.

Resurrection people, from the start, have shared things with each other, and with those in need. Not just now and then. Not just when the harvest is exceptional, or the person in need a particular friend.

“All the believers were together and had everything in common. They sold property and possessions to give to anyone who had need. . . They broke bread in their homes and ate together with glad and sincere hearts, praising God and enjoying the favor of all the people” Acts 3. 

The early resurrection people acted as if they understood, and could trust completely, what Jesus had said: we don’t need to worry about our own stuff. We can let go of the anxiety, the fear of scarcity, the competitive worry that if I feed you today, my family will go hungry tomorrow.

Ignatius of Antioch:  "I prefer death in Christ Jesus
 to power over the farthest limits of the earth. . .
 He who rose for our sakes is my one desire."

Justin Martyr, in one of the earliest histories of the church, wrote:

“We who used to value the acquisition of wealth and possessions more than anything else now bring what we have into a common fund and share it with anyone who needs it.”

Clement, describing the change visible in any person who took on the name of “Christian,” noted:

 “He impoverishes himself out of love, so that he is certain he may never overlook a brother in need, especially if he knows he can bear poverty better than his brother. He likewise considers the pain of another as his own pain. And if he suffers any hardship because of having given out of his own poverty, he does not complain.”

Clement, like the others who chose to live the resurrection, put a high value on love: your pain is my pain. Your poverty is my poverty. Your illness is my illness.

In Philippians 2, Paul says “Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit. Rather, in humility value others above yourselves, not looking to your own interests but each of you to the interests of the others.”

Who does that? Who puts the interests of others first? Not occasionally, but daily? Not when it’s easy, but when it costs health, future, personal safety?

When plague devastated the 3rd century world, Christians cared for the sick, gathered and took into their homes people thrown into the street by family members fearful of becoming infected.

When Romans and others threw their deformed, surplus, unwanted babies on trash piles or into rivers, Christians gathered them up, fed them, cared for them as their own.

John Chrysostom taught, "If you see anyone in affliction, do not be curious to enquire further... [the needy person] is God's, whether he is a heathen or a Jew; since even if he is an unbeliever, still he needs help."

As Justin Martyr observed:

“We used to hate and destroy one another and refused to associate with people of another race or country. Now, because of Christ, we live together with such people and pray for our enemies.” 

Inexplicable courage, outrageous generosity, sacrificial love. There have been glimpses of those in every culture, in every age.

But only in gatherings of resurrection people do these traits become visible on a scale that rearranges history.

St. Francis and the Leper, Frederic Loisel
1961, France

Resurrection people were the first to imagine free, generous care for the sick.

Resurrection people were the first to offer financial and emotional support for the aging who had no families to care for them.

Resurrection people started the first orphanages, the first free schools, the first homes for the mentally unwell.

Resurrection people worked, and continue to work, to end the ugly sin of slavery.

The story goes on and on, from the first centuries following the resurrection, through stories of Benedict and Francis, through the leper colonies of Africa, mission to untouchable Dalits in India, prison ministry in forgotten holes of misery around the globe.

Yes, generosity shows up in people of other faiths, and no faith. So does courage. So does love.

And yes – people calling themselves Christians have done great harm, in many ways. That’s a story for another day.

But the sheer volume of care, poured out by resurrection people, year by year, country by country, gives proof to a reversal of agenda with no other explanation than Christ’s defeat, through love, of hate and death, and his invitation to live as new people in a new, unending kingdom.

Where that reversal is visible, God’s glory is made clear, the good news is heard and joyfully received, and God’s people “shine like stars as they hold out the word of life” (Philippians 2:15).

This is the second in a series about Resurrection.

• Risen Indeed: The Hermaneutic Community

As always, your thoughts and comments are welcome. Click on the   __ comments link below to post.