I didn’t do this lightly, and had wrestled with both the idea of getting arrested, and with my convictions about war and violence. But us thinkers need to bite the bullet sometimes (not a very nonviolent metaphor, is it!), and do something, even when all the questions don’t have satisfactory answers.

We were arrested, and had our day in court today. We pleaded guilty to the offences. The magistrate found the charges to be proven, but did not record a conviction, and chose to dismiss the charges, and chose not to give us a punishment. It’s the legal equivalent of saying, “I know you did something wrong, but I like it!”. One of our number did receive a good behaviour bond (as a repeat offender) but still was not convicted.

Before we were sentenced, the magistrate allowed us to say a bit about why we broke the law. I hesitate to put my statement out there, because of 2 reasons: (1) There is a lot of misplaced talk of ‘heroism’, ‘sacrifice’, ‘inspirational’ applied to people who commit civil disobedience. I think it’s unwarranted unless the person is at real risk of jail time or harm. I am at risk of neither, nor do I like words like ‘heroic’ being applied to me; (2) the other reason is that I have a small, but significant profile in the Christian community of Bendigo. In smaller places, news that someone has been arrested spreads fast and can dent one’s reputation. Not that I care overly about my reputation, but if people are going to criticise me, then I’d rather they would do it from the basis of fact.

Please contact me to argue, disagree, converse etc. It’s what I love doing and I don’t mind talking about the tensions and difficulties in living out the good news of Jesus Christ.

This is what I had to say:

Your Honour knows from your records that in 2002, I was taken to court for refusing to vote in the 2001 Federal Election. I did so because of my belief that our political system tends to marginalise the powerless, and as a Christian I felt I needed to stand against it. I still think our political system is deeply flawed, but I now believe that I need to participate in it to reform it. So this year I voted in 2 elections…though their ambiguous results have hardly inspired me.

But that is what my actions at Queenscliff were basically about. I acted as a Christian citizen of a democracy. My trust in Jesus Christ inspires me to participate in our democracy for the sake of peace and justice. I can do this through voting, but I also take part in my community’s activities, and through my paid job as a youth worker. Political involvement means more than the ballot.

And when our government insists on fighting an unwinnable, immoral and unjust war, then we need to act. When our Prime Minister commits to another decade in Afghanistan, even though the war’s original reasons have been lost in the crippling need to appear resolute, then we need to voice our opposition forcefully. We have shown that such opposition can be done peacefully, and non-violently.

This war won’t root out terrorism: the war against terrorism needs to be fought with the weapons of peace or not fought at all. Using the violence of armies to extinguish the violence of small groups will only result in the proliferation of terrorism. We are already seeing that as a result of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Most Australians implicitly realise that the Afghanistan war will not solve terrorism. And a majority of us want our nation to withdraw. As a citizen, I want to participate in the democratic process to persuade my government that their actions are wrong. Drawing attention to the secretive Swan Island military base is part of that persuasion.

Your Honour, my Christian beliefs inspire me to advocate for a just peace. I was often told as a child that that Australia is founded on Judeo-Christian values. I sincerely hope that it is, and those values would include those of Jesus Christ, who advocated loving our enemies and refusing to take revenge.

Jesus continued in the tradition of the Old Testament prophets, who called the leaders of their day to justice and mercy. And that is what I call our leaders to today – to forgo revenge, to love mercy and do justice by withdrawing our soldiers from Afghanistan.

We are actors thrust upon a stage without a script. We have the first few acts of the play, and some inkling of the exciting but ominous end. So, how do we fill in the remainder of the play?

In the last post, I talked about why and how heaven shapes our life on earth. I used the metaphor of a stage play, where we have the script of the first few acts and some inklings about the end of the story, and have to improvise to fill in the gap. We have 2 rules: (1) to be faithful to the events of the story as it starts and ends…the story has to make sense as we move from scene to scene and; (2) to make sure our improvisation keeps faith with the meaning of the story contained in the script that we already have…our improvisation can’t just make up any old meaning – it has to make fit with the start and the end.

Improvisation
The problem is, most of us don’t like improvisation. So we avoid it in a few reliable ways. One of the most common ways is to worship the play. We come up with a script that uses the same language, plot, characters that are contained in the first few acts that we have been given. Because it’s all we’ve got, we stick to it rigidly. On the metaphorical stage, we endlessly repeat the first few acts. Meanwhile, the audience has walked out from boredom. Another common strategy is to ignore the play. We get fed up with sticking to the script and just have fun. I mean, something good is happening at the end, isn’t it? And repeating the same old lines was fairly boring and frankly some important parts of the story just don’t make sense in this day and age. So, we concentrate on amusing ourselves, and desperately trying to keep the audience’s attention. The last tried and true strategy is to watch the play. Improvising is too hard, and the antics of the worshippers and the ignorers is too much to bear, so we sit it out in the seats.

Note, this metaphor is not of a church service or gathering, but of our whole common life: discipleship, work, witness, worship…everything. We, the followers of Jesus, having been handed the Old Testament, the life of Jesus, the witness of the early church and some inklings of the end…tend towards slavish imitation, wilful ignorance, or surrender of our spiritual inheritance. But these 3 approaches aren’t the only way. Improvisation is the way. Improvisation isn’t making it up. It isn’t starting with nothing, it stays faithful to the message of what has been handed to us. But we take account of the changing stage on which we now find ourselves, and also keeps faithful to the ‘end’ that we know is coming and is already here. Our life here on earth, if we want to follow Jesus, has to make sense not only in terms of the EVENTS of the story of God and his heaven, but it also needs to make sense in terms of the MEANING of the story of God and his heaven.

Regardless of what view of heaven we have, it affects our practice of church, discipleship and mission. This is what eschatology is all about. Humans naturally work towards an end. We are narrative beings. We tell ourselves, sometimes literally, big and small stories. All these stories have ends (actual events & also meaning) which we bend our lives towards. If the story you tell yourself is one in which you are a hero, your life will bend towards egoism and heroic deeds. If the story you tell yourself is one in which you are a passive actor, then you will probably not act to take responsibility of your life.

In the same way, my view of the ‘end’, of ‘heaven’, shapes the way I live now as a disciple of Jesus. We instinctively work to bring about the ‘end’ that we desire or have been taught to desire. I think this is a human characteristic, regardless of the particular religious commitments we hold. Even for the thoroughgoing atheist, she has an ‘end’, a purpose of human existence, in mind, and her life bends toward that end.

If you believe that heaven is a place where you don’t have a body, then in this life the body won’t be a thing of value, and there’s not reason to value it. If you believe heaven will be an individual state of mind, psychology will be important to you. If you believe heaven is populated by your enemies, then that will transform your treatment of your enemies. If you believe that heaven is where people are physically beautiful, then the ugly will always be slightly suspect. And let’s not forget that these beliefs are not the ones we know we have, but the ones that lie deep inside us, often unconscious.

This characteristic of ours, to bend our lives toward the end, towards heaven’; this is the reason Jesus spends so much time talking about the ‘kingdom of God’, or the ‘kingdom of heaven’. He knows that our view of these ultimate events/meanings deeply shapes the way we live now. The Israelites thought the kingdom would be a place of freedom from oppression from foreign rulers – Jesus says the kingdom is within you. Children were exploited, ignored, seen as spiritually immature – Jesus stakes our entry to the kingdom on imitating them. We think we can get away with apathy toward the poor because God has forgiven us – Jesus tells the parable of the rich man and Lazarus.

I’ll write a post someday about how our view of heaven affects our practice of church and mission (and vice versa), but in the meantime…What’s your picture of heaven?

What are we waiting for? And what are we going to do about it in the meantime?

Those are the two questions which shape this book. First, it is about the ultimate future hope held out in the Christian gospel; the hope, that is, for ‘salvation’, ‘resurrection’, ‘eternal life’…Second, it is about the discovery of hope within the present world: about the practical ways in which hope can come alive for communities and individuals…(Surprised by Hope, Tom Wright)

Most Christians don’t think about heaven, except that we would like to be there. Most of us do, anyway, and we tend to think it will something we will enjoy. We are put off by the fact that other people think it might be: (1) endless praise and worship services or (2) small group discussions about social justice while crocheting organic smocks or (3) theological lectures or…you get the picture. Other Christians think about heaven a lot though, for different reasons. The most pressing reason is that we want people that God loves, which is everyone, to be with God when they die. I think this is a good reason to think about heaven, but there are also other reasons to consider what we mean by ‘heaven’.

Surprised by Hope
Tom Wright stirred the heavenly cauldron recently, as he is wont to do, with a book about heaven called “Surprised by Hope”. I first heard a radio snippet of his views on heaven which was transcribed for an article in Time Magazine. In the radio snippet I heard, he said that heaven is not what happens after we die, but that it is “life after life after death”. This repetitive sentence momentarily confused me, which I don’t cope with well. So I bought the book.¹ The book explains what he meant by “life after life after death”. Heaven, in Wright’s view, is not the state that we go to immediately after we die, but a later event which happens when God brings all history to a close, renewing as God has promised. A disembodied state after death may be what happens…but it’s not heaven. It’s just a disembodied state after death. Heaven is what happens when God renews all Creation, as the end of Revelation indicates. When that happens, Wright says, we won’t be disembodied souls floating around, but in some way we will be living life in real bodies as God intended – radically different from how things are now, but in some ways radically the same.

Heaven Here on Earth
All very interesting. I like interesting thoughts, and so I’m a sucker for books like that. But does talk of heaven matter now? I think it does. And not just because I want everyone to be there. It matters to how we live our lives now. And no, I’m not saying that we earn our way into heaven by being extra good in our life now.

I think it matters because of 2 things: books and ends.

‘End’ is a funny word, elastic word. In a story, like the Bible or whatever story, ‘end’ usually means the chronological finish, when all the events have happened. In Peter and the Wolf, the end of the story is the procession of Peter, the animals, the hunters and the wolf with the quacking duck inside it. That’s where the story leaves us. But ‘end’ also means the ‘purpose’, the meaning, the message of the story. That, of course, is a matter for interpretation. What is the ‘end’ of Peter and the Wolf? Chronologically, it is the procession with Peter at the head. Meaningfully, it is the triumph of youthful risk over elderly caution. Or the success of nonviolent means of defeating your enemy. Or, to stretch things, a cautionary fable that mother wolves tell their wolflings. Both ‘ends’ have to make sense for the story to ‘work’. Chronologically, the end of Peter and the Wolf would be a nonsense if Peter played billiards with the wolf after capturing him. Meaningfully, our interpretation would be a nonsense if we decided the story’s meaning was to listen to your elders’ advice, because that is exactly what Peter refuses to do, and the story vindicates him.

So, for discussions about ‘heaven’, the ‘end’ is what happens chronologically, but also what heaven means, what it is, where it is, our place and part in it. Why is this important? Now we need to think about stories, which for me are often found in books.

Books – because yes, they are heavenly. If you have ever read a book, or watched a movie, or listened to someone tell a story, you will be familiar with the following narrative device. I can’t remember its name, but it goes like this: at the start of the story, a small glance at the chronological end of the story is revealed. For example, in the opening scenes of recent film Tomorrow When the War Began, the main character (Ellie) is narrating the story from the end, via a video recording. Then the story goes back to the events that led up to that, every now and then returning to Ellie’s narration. The effect is get us, the viewer/reader, to wonder how the story is going to get to the end. Given what we have seen of the end, and given that we know the initial events in the story, how will we end up at the end? In Tomorrow, the end sliver gives us the picture that something violent, bloody, unexpected has happened, and Ellie is a world-weary, tired but intrepid character. But the events at the start of the story show her as a care-free, happy, idealistic character. Our interest is piqued…how will the Ellie character be transformed from care-free to world-weary? What events will shape her? How will she respond? We are interested because our interest in the chronological end (how will the story make its way to the last events) but also in the meaningful end (what the story’s message is).

Our Role in Hope on Earth
Christianity is the same. Our story (the Bible) has given us slivers of what the end is, in both chronological and meaningful sense. In the book of Revelation, this is most clear, with graphic passages seemingly about the end of the world.² We also know some of the initial events that have set us on our way to the end – Jesus’ life, death and resurrection and the early church. But what will happen in-between?  To use a oft-used metaphor, we are actors thrust upon a stage without a script. We have the first few acts of the play, and some inkling of the exciting but ominous end. So, how do we fill in the remainder of the play?

Stay tuned…

1. Heaven is a large, dusty, wooden room with ceiling high bookshelves, a comfy recliner-type couch next a small table with one of those Tim-Tam packs that never runs out, except it’s Cadbury, and large cold glasses of milk…and no doors…so no-one can interrupt…
2. There is a fair bit of debate about whether Revelation is describing what the literal end of the world will be, or whether it is an allegorical way for the writer, John, to describe the society of his day. My opinion is that he is primarily describing the Roman Empire of his day, but also saying that ‘empires’ like Rome will be present in all times. When it comes to the questions of whether he is describing literal ‘end of the world’ events I think that is not his first concern, but I think we can safely say that John definitely thinks there will be an end to the human story

It’s a pretty big file – next time I might chop out the songs..but then again, that might be boring.

Hope you get to have a listen!

Political Evangelism – the good news in the public sphere
Once upon a time, a young man in Europe was in court. His father, a wealthy textiles businessman, had taken him there because he had stolen some silk from his father’s factory, sold it and used it to fund some property development. During the public hearing, he renounced his father’s wealth, stripped off his clothes and strode away, naked, promising to serve ‘Lady Poverty’.

A while before that, another young man led the respected people of his nation to the rubbish dump, and informed them that they were responsible for a coming catastrophe. He told that they had filled the land with innocent blood, and that in return they would experience a military siege so terrible they would turn to cannibalism of their own families to survive. As a finale, he held a clay pot above his head and smashed it – “This pot is the house of Jerusalem and the house of Judah”.

The first young man was Francis of Assisi, and the second young man is the prophet known as Jeremiah. They were both prefiguring and continuing one of the most common practices of Jesus, which I call Political Evangelism.

Definitions
I realise I am using two words which are contested – often used for many different purposes. So let me define them.

By “political”, I mean:

• That which concerns power  and its use
• That which concerns the public sphere
• It is always personal, but never private (secret)
• I do not mean…’party politics’

By “evangelism”, I mean:

• That which concerns the good news, or the ‘evangel’ (GK) – the good news of God..a word used by the gospel writers to convey the message of the kingdom of God, which they had appropriated from the Caesars, who used the word ‘gospel’ to convey their victory in battle.
• That evangelism includes both a NO and a YES, judgement and mercy, criticism and invitation to a new life.
• Let us try to remove stereotypes of evangelism from our heads.

Political Evangelism, for the purposes of tonight is: Acts of public witness to the good news of God and his reign

Politics and Religion
Tonight I want to explore what place political evangelism might have in the life of the church, and in the interaction of the church with the surrounding public. We are often told that “religion and politics don’t mix”. The witness of the Bible and Christian history says that such a viewpoint is inaccurate, and also impossible. The problem is not that religion and politics mix, it is HOW they mix.

Tonight I will focus on one element of that mix – that of publically declaring (in word and deed) the good news. There are so many others ways that Christians act politically: from letter-writing to the clothes we buy, from how we make decisions in church to how we vote. Every act and decision we make is political, because human life is about allegiance. Who will we be loyal to? is the question to which the Christian answer is “Jesus is Lord”, not simply in a general sense but in a specific sense. Is Jesus our Lord in our finances, our employment, where our kids go to school, the kind of toilet paper we buy, how we produce and eat food etc etc etc .

I don’t have the whole picture, nor do I regularly do what I am going to talk about, but it’s something that I think needs to be thought about in the church, and acted upon. Also, I have my own political persuasions, but this seminar is not meant to be about my particular beliefs. I think that Christians of all political persuasions should be acting publically and politically. Again, the argument is not whether doing so is warranted – the argument is about HOW we do so.

Biblical Examples of Political Evangelism
Apart from the Jeremiah example, there are plenty of biblical instances of public acts of witness:

• Moses and the plagues (Ex 9-10)
• Elijah & the prophets of Baal (1 Kings 18:20-40)
• Jesus illegally healing on the Sabbath (Matthew 12:9-14)
• Jesus eating illegally on the Sabbath (Mark 2:23-28)
• Triumphal Entry to Jerusalem (John 12:12-15)
• Acts of Apostles: constant examples of healing and preaching in public, often provoking unrest, arrest, imprisonment and sometimes death.

Let us look at 3 of them, and for each I will look at what constitutes these acts of public witness: the setting, the symbols, the showing & telling, the consequences and why they are political and evangelistic acts.

1. Jeremiah 19 – the clay pot

• Setting: deliberately public – he leads the elders and senior priests to the entry of the Potherds Gate (entry to the rubbish dump)….sometimes called the Dung Gate (KJV)
• Symbol: clay pot –  visual as well as verbal; acts of public witness often use symbols to convey a message
• Showing and Telling of God’s judgement upon the idolatry and violence of Judah and Jerusalem:

Because the people have forsaken me, and have profaned this place by making offerings in it to other gods whom neither they nor their ancestors nor the kings of Judah have known, and because they have filled this place with the blood of the innocent, and gone on building the high places of Baal to burn their children in the fire as burnt-offerings to Baal, which I did not command or decree, nor did it enter my mind (Jer 19:4-5)

• Consequences: Jeremiah is imprisoned and ‘struck’ (whipped?)  in chapter 20.
• Political – pitting the powers of Judah and Jerusalem (the elders and priests) against that of God.
• Evangelism – God’s judgement is always for the purpose of God’s eventual mercy and restoration of Israe

2. Matthew 12: 9-14 – illegal healing

• Setting:  the setting is a synagogue on the Sabbath…illegal to do any work on the Sabbath
• Symbol:  the man and his withered hand is the visual method that Jesus uses to demonstrate the heartlessness of the Pharisee’s way.
• Showing & Telling: Jesus commits a crime for 2 reasons: one is to heal the man, but the second is to create a counterargument about the Sabbath and what its purpose is. (see previous story of illegal eating).  Ongoing battle between Jesus and the powers – “…so that they might accuse him” (v. 10b)
• Consequences – the Pharisees conspire to destroy him.
• Political – it is about who has the power to say what is legal, and an ongoing battle of myths between religious leaders and Jesus.
• Evangelism – Jesus is communicating that healing is more important than a law.

3. John 12 – messianic battle
This story is one of the most obvious examples of Jesus acting in public and political way. Let us look at the sequence of story:

1. Enters Jerusalem
2. Hears the crowd’s messianic myth – “King of Israel”….what is a King for them? Violent, restoration of Israel. Look at Jesus reaction to this last time! (John 6:15)
3. Decides to get a donkey
4. Rides it, providing a countervailing myth of what it means to be Messiah

• Public: 6 days before Passover, Jerusalem is filled
• Symbol: donkey, a ridiculing of the stallion, the usual victor’s steed.
• Showing & Telling: Jesus does no telling, but his message is clear – his kingship is different.
• Consequences:  all the people go after him!
• Political – they want him to have power over them, to violently restore Israel
• Evangelism – the good news of a nonviolent Lord

So, in summary, political evangelism:

• Is public – people are watching, they can see us!
• Communicates a message about God and his good news.
• Almost always in conflict with other messages in society which are taken as normative
• Uses symbols to communicate
• Consequences are inevitable, both punitive and positive.
• Nonviolent

Political Evangelism in Christian history

• Telemachus (404): intervening publically in gladiatorial contest
• Francis of Assisi (1205): disrobing to demonstrate non-attachment to possessions
• Martin Luther (1517): nailing theses to the church door
• Civil Rights movement (1960s): counter sit-ins
• Pro life (20^th C): picketing abortion clinics
• Oath Keepers (20^th C): taking public oaths
• Women Christian Temperance Movement (late 19^th C on) : prayer inside saloons
• St Maximilian (295): refused in court to be conscripted and was executed

Political Evangelism Today
When Crown Casino was being established, a small movement existed to call attention to its degrading social effects, and the inappropriate relationship between the government and the casino owners. Each Sunday, we got together outside the site and prayed. We had a banner, and talked to people who approached us. We had T-shirts made up that communicated our message and also used the Crown Casino logo in a humourous way. We had a plenty of verbal abuse hurled at us, but also plenty of people who agreed with us.

I found this to be a good experience, but also a hard one, not least because of the reactions of Christians I spoke to about it. From those conversations, I began to think about the barriers to political evangelism.

Barriers to Political Evangelism
Acting publically and politically is difficult for all of us. There a few key barriers to Christians acting publically and politically.

1. FEAR:

• This includes embarrassment, wanting to avoid criticism or abuse, and the fear of being recognised by someone who may think badly of you.
• These things are absolutely understandable, but are also predicted by Jesus as expected consequences of following him…it may even show that we are on the right track

2. PRIVATISM: this is the belief that religious concerns are separate from political concerns, therefore Christians should keep their faith out of the public sphere.

• As I showed before, faith is a matter of allegiance, and allegiance is a matter of which power we will be loyal to.
• Christian faith is always personal, but it is never private. It is impossible to look at Jesus, and the church of Acts, and conclude that our faith is meant to be kept out of the public sphere.
• Christian faith is not captive to party politics, but that hardly means it is nonpolitical. Again, look at the conflicts Jesus has with the powers of his day; look at the way the apostles come into conflict with the powers of their day.

3. QUIETISM: this is the belief that ‘making a fuss’ in public is unproductive, and that the general public will be alienated from Christianity by public acts of witness.

• It is true that political evangelism will alienate people, as it will attract some people. Jesus predicted this, and demonstrated it in his own ministry. So that’s not an argument against political evangelism
• The question I would ask is – When has our social conformity assisted the church?
• Nonconformism was the order of the day in the early church, and that attracted people!
• I’m not arguing to be nonconformist unthinkingly, but for us, the church, to be our true selves, and not worry so much about what the world thinks
• Quietism is actually a product of the Christendom worldview, in which state and church gave each other power. The  church didn’t want to rock the boat because it had that power. Well, now we don’t have it! Let’s enjoy the freedom!

4. THE POWERS AND FAITH

• The most insidious reason we don’t want to do Political Evangelism is that we believe that the powers of state and corporations are basically in sympathy with the aims of the church, that we are walking arm in arm, that we basically have the same idea of what a ‘good’ society is.
• Now, if you believe that, then there is no reason for you to think about Political Evangelism.
• But if we don’t believe that – that is, if we believe that the aims of the community of Jesus are in conflict with the aims of political and economic powers, then we need to use every weapon in our arsenal to bring that conflict to light.

Conclusion
Public witness to God’s kingdom is clear throughout the Bible and in Christian history. The questions is not whether to do it, because that has been answered, the questions are WHEN and HOW.

Even though I know he is in improved circumstances, I feel a wave of frustration rise and fall. What is the use of building relationships when they are constantly eroded by transience? I have, many years ago, resolved that long-term relationships were necessary to unveil the reign of God, whether among the poor or whoever. I had decided that speaking out the good news needed to happen on the platform of trust and respect.

But it’s a lonely stance. Often, those we relate to want to move on to something else quickly. This is the case whether we are among the poor who want to rapidly escape, or among the general population for whom the next best thing can’t arrive too soon.

How do we deal with transience, when our theology inspires us to grounded lives and longevity?

Here’s a couple of ideas:
(1) We rid ourselves of any heroism: our desire to be the ‘key’ people in others’ transformation can cripple us when we no longer have the opportunity to be that ‘significant’ person.

(2) We re-member ourselves: “re-membering” is recalling the fact that we are members of a body, a movement, a people that is far-spread. We, as individuals, are not it. That should give us some hope in the face of transience. As the biblical saying goes: some sow, others reap, and we enter into each others’ labour. When we can no longer be a part of a person’s life, someone else will take up the labour.

(3) We recall the Trinity: relational mission struggles with the tension of ends and means. Is the relationship for the purpose of more effective evangelism, or so that the person will have a better life? Or is it simply for the sake of the relationship? I don’t think there is an answer to this one, but in the face of transience we need to remember the Trinity; the Godhead in which relationship is essential to the character of God.

I visited Greg recently to invite him to lunch at 12pm. He asked me what the time was, as he had no clock and the one on his DVD player was wrong – he had no clock. Middle-class time is so important that I was momentarily gobsmacked by this small but significant clash of cultures – it meant that Greg would always struggle to turn up to anything on time. Think about the implications for relationships, health and employment.

In the Seeds community here, we are all middle-class. Our experience has been smudged in places by the same factors that affect our neighbours, but not in combination and not for long. Though we are trying to be in solidarity with the poor, our class loyalty is still to the middle-class, which distracts us in many and specific ways from our stated desire to be amongst the poor. I say this bluntly because unless I swallow this bitter pill, this dynamic will corrupt and deflate many of my efforts to love my neighbour.

‘Class’ and ‘Culture’ are abstract terms, but they jump out when we uncover some fairly ordinary items. How does our middle-class loyalty manifest itself?:

1. Spending time with the middle-class: we know the codes of middle-class relationships (when to speak, what to say, what not to say, how often to swear etc) but we don’t know how to spend time with those who live in generational poverty. Do watch the TV that’s always on? Is laughing at crude jokes OK? Should we ask personal questions? Because we have meetings to be at and people to see, we middle-class people have a sense of time which is cut up into segments for apportioning. Sitting for an hour on someone’s dirty lounge while watching wrestling seems like a waste of time.

2. Refusing the food of the poor: food is crucial to mission, as Jesus the glutton and drunkard attests. It connotes hospitality, connection and welcome. Even in our culture, refusing to eat someone’s food is extremely rude. People often offer me a beer or a Beam and coke can at their house, but this year I’m not drinking alcohol. The issue of accepting alcohol has nothing to do with ‘getting down to their level’ (what a hypocritical phrase of misplaced superiority) but of accepting the hospitality of those who we serve. We want to extend hospitality to them, but not the other way around…well, maybe it would be OK if they would only offer nice food. In my area, people generally eat unhealthily, and their children do too. This is a sensitive issue for middle-class  parents, who understandably don’t want their children eating sugary and fatty foods. Is the price of mission paying for dental work?! I don’t have children, so I’ll leave someone else to give a definitive answer.

These are just 2 examples – others are entertainment, physicality, sex, clothing etc

I don’t raise the issue of class because I want us to forget our family and friends, but to remind myself that cross-class solidarity is so difficult as to require regular self-scrutiny. Our middle-class upbringing is not evil, but has instilled norms of purity which seem as natural as the sun rising. Our desire to serve Jesus in the poor can’t be sacrificed for our middle-class sensibilities.

A couple of friends and I were comparing missional efforts we’d been involved in, and seeing what lessons we could learn for our current situation in Bendigo.We quickly concluded that our previous efforts, while recognised by others as ‘innovative’ and ‘radical’, were still mainly reliant on people coming to us…to our houses and ministry spaces. In the part of Bendigo where we live, people hardly move from their couches, let alone out of their houses. People tend to be wary of coming to things, even the front door when you knock. We re-realised* that we needed to get out to people’s houses. If we meet someone, find out where they live and visit. Call people up to come to events. Get to know as many people as possible, shallowly. Get to to know a few people deeply. Just keep doing it.

When Kylie and I moved to Long Gully, we spent the first 6 months visiting the neighbourhood centre once a week. Every time we would try to talk to them about our desire to volunteer, and gave them our contact details. It took 6 months to get a response. It took doggedness. For the last 18 months, I’ve seen a bloke in the street – and I just smile and say g’day. A few weeks ago, I saw him again, and the Spirit prompted me to introduce myself – turned out I was the first person in 2 years to do so.

In a climate of flexibility, got-a-better-offer and continual reform, doggedness seems twee, a bit naff, old-school in a bad way. But, to remix a cliche, if something’s worth doing, then it’s worth doing over and over again. In fact, in contexts of poverty and associated distrust, doing something repeatedly is the very definition of sanity and strategic brilliance. The shell of indifference with which so many people clothe themselves won’t be pierced by energetic church services or enthusiastic, but shortlived, attentions. It will take a long tapping away at the stone until one day it cracks.

I could write masses about this, and maybe I will. Stay tuned for the other unsung missionary virtues.

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* I do a lot of ‘re-realising’ – simple things get lost in my brain.

I’m nowhere near working all this out, but one initial thought is: perhaps we need to be a distinctive community that is consistent with Jesus, but endeavouring to be ‘not inconsistent’ (whenever we can) with the norms of the multiple subcultures we are faced with, while at strategic points being deliberately ‘of’ that culture or neighbourhood, and at other points being critical and standing against it. Our practice of incarnation needs to go beyond following the ‘pattern of Jesus’ so that a desired outcome will occur, and into “place-sharing” (Andrew Root) that hopes for transformation but is not beholden to it.

I’ll be speaking on “Rearranging the pews while the neighbourhood burns”.