Garden > Wilderness > Garden

John appeared, baptizing in the wilderness and proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. (Mark 1:4 ESV)

I wonder, where was the wilderness? Was that a word for anywhere outside the city and out beyond the farms and vineyards, the rocky places where no one lives? Is that what wilderness means?

"John appeared, baptizing in the wilderness."

Wilderness, as opposed to what? Civilization? Is the desert more wild than the city?

Back in Genesis, God expels Adam and Eve from the garden (that is, from the place of His presence), and into the wild. The wild is a place apart from God. And there we find the proper juxtaposition: Garden/wilderness. This is the great tragedy behind all tragedies. Here is what God says about the world into which he was sending the young couple.

And to Adam he said,
“Because you have listened to the voice of your wife
and have eaten of the tree
of which I commanded you,
‘You shall not eat of it,’
cursed is the ground because of you;
in pain you shall eat of it all the days of your life;
thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you;
and you shall eat the plants of the field.
By the sweat of your face
you shall eat bread,
till you return to the ground,
for out of it you were taken;
for you are dust,
and to dust you shall return.”
(Genesis 3:17-19 ESV)

The world into which Adam and Eve were cast is the world in which we, their descendants, still live. The wilderness is the world. The world is a wilderness.

Note: it was sin, Adam and Eve's attempt to deceive God and to be like gods themselves (Gen. 3:22) that caused this curse on the earth's "ground." From garden to wilderness, by God's decree.

Note also: when John the Baptist arrives on the scene, saying "prepare the way of the Lord," the act that prepares the way is repentance. Here in the wilderness, surrounded by the consequences of sin, we rethink what we've done and what we've been. That's how the way of the Lord, a way through the wilderness, is "prepared."

Now the first story about Adam and Eve after their expulsion into the wilderness is the story of their two eldest children, Cain and Abel. It is, of course, the story of envy, jealousy, and murder. It is the story of wilderness.

Are you getting the feeling that the word "wilderness" may not primarily apply to the natural world of soil and crops, etc., but to the spiritual condition of men and women. We have built a civilization since Adam's day, but we have not built a garden. We are still in the wilderness.

Now flash forward to Isaiah, who prophesies a day when God will pour the Holy Spirit out upon the world, and the effect of that will be a restoration of the Garden:

Beat your breasts for the pleasant fields,
for the fruitful vine,
for the soil of my people
growing up in thorns and briers,
yes, for all the joyous houses
in the exultant city.
For the palace is forsaken,
the populous city deserted;
the hill and the watchtower
will become dens forever,
a joy of wild donkeys,
a pasture of flocks;
until the Spirit is poured upon us from on high,
and the wilderness becomes a fruitful field,
and the fruitful field is deemed a forest.
Then justice will dwell in the wilderness,
and righteousness abide in the fruitful field.
(Isaiah 32:12-16 ESV)

The fully-realized effect of the Holy Spirit's being "poured out" is the re-gardening of the earth, the reversal of the Genesis 3 curse. And in Isaiah is more evidence that God is not speaking here merely of soil and crops (though there is that, and it is not insignificant), but of spiritual things, when he says that "justice will dwell in the wilderness, and righteousness abide in the fruitful field."

Here it is in a nutshell. Fruitfulness of all kinds is closely associated with the place of the presence of God: the Garden. When the Holy Spirit is poured out, that is a restoration of the presence of God. The hallmark imagery of the restored creation in John's Revelation has to do with the overwhelming presence of God.

Then the angel showed me the river of the water of life, bright as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb through the middle of the street of the city; also, on either side of the river, the tree of life with its twelve kinds of fruit, yielding its fruit each month. The leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations. No longer will there be anything accursed, but the throne of God and of the Lamb will be in it, and his servants will worship him. They will see his face, and his name will be on their foreheads. And night will be no more. They will need no light of lamp or sun, for the Lord God will be their light, and they will reign forever and ever. (Revelation 22:1-5 ESV)

Now back to John the Baptist. He's preaching in the wilderness. In that wilderness he is announcing a major event in the story of God's redemptive purpose for the earth. A Mighty One is coming, long ago prophesied by Isaiah (see Is. 40:3-5), and he will baptize with the Holy Spirit!

And he preached, saying, “After me comes he who is mightier than I, the strap of whose sandals I am not worthy to stoop down and untie. I have baptized you with water, but he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit.” (Mark 1:7-8 ESV)

That is a high promise indeed. He, this one so much mightier than John, will restore the presence of God to his people! And when that happens, as Isaiah says, fruitfulness, justice, and righteousness shall "abide" (continue in settled permanence).

We live in a wilderness that is destined to be a garden again. For now, we may at times harvest a crop, but it is mostly thorns and thistles, and the work is killing. That's civilization. But there is one thing more to be noted. Christ the son of God has come (John's "one who is mightier than I"), has fulfilled the prophesies, and the purpose of God for His creation is assured. The restored Garden is not yet, but by the power of the Holy Spirit fruitfulness, justice, and righteousness are possible realities even here in the wilderness.

Kingdom-Oriented Relationships 2

In a recent post (Kingdom Oriented-Relationships) I tried to focus on the relational Kingdom-oriented community of believers that isn't essentially church-shaped. I wrote:

So the question is, out here beyond the church foyer doors, out between the stop signs of life, how do we train our relationships toward the Kingdom, toward a Kingdom orientation and Kingdom authenticity? The hope is that, out of the ground of ordinary "life together" relationships real Kingdom oriented, Jesus-shaped communion can happen.

In the wake of that post, I went to see an old friend who is dying. She called on the phone to tell me she didn't have much time, and she wanted to see me. I hadn't known she was even sick. My wife and I went to her house and found her frail and as "worn out" as I have ever seen anyone look. Her husband told us her immune system had been destroyed by radiation treatments for cancer.

She and I and many others had been a part of a tragic and frightening church conflict in a small Lutheran church back in the 90s. She was the victim of a campaign of pastoral slander, an evil that still makes me angry to this day. I'm not going to get into the details, but it was an experience that taught me to be extremely suspicious about authoritarian church leadership, and also of the amusing concept of "denominational oversight."

Anyway, in that church, it being a good liturgical Lutheran church, we "took communion" every week. But here's the thing: there was no communion! None. Not if you understand communion to be oneness in Christ. This failure, in my opinion, is what Paul was referring to when he said,

For anyone who eats and drinks without discerning the body eats and drinks judgment on himself (1 Corinthians 11:29 ESV).

Anyone, in other words, whose communion is mere religious box-checking and not a real participation with others in the unity of faith (while living, in fact, in disunity and denial of the oneness of the Body) is essentially despising that unity in favor of an empty ritual practice, which you have elevated above the reality of body of Christ oneness. You are just eating and drinking (communing) your way to judgement.

And recall what Paul wrote to the church at Philippi:

So if there is any encouragement in Christ, any comfort from love, any participation in the Spirit, any affection and sympathy, complete my joy by being of the same mind, having the same love, being in full accord and of one mind. Do nothing from rivalry or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves. Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others. Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus. . . . (Philippians 2:1-5 ESV)

Now just imagine a church that has, instead of heeding Paul, heeded the devil's counter-argument to Philippians 2:1-5. How would the devil ask a congregation to "complete his joy"? Do everything from rivalry and conceit. Let the same mind be in you that was in Judas, in Pontius Pilate, in the super-righteous Pharisees, even in Herod. And above all, think of your pastor as more significant than everyone else, no matter what evil he does. That's a portrait of what happened in that "church family."

My point is not to rehash church horror stories, but that visit to my dying friend has stirred up these thoughts and memories. I am more committed than ever to walking out faith in relationship, though I'm not always sure what that actually means. But here's a guess. When you come together with your believing friend, whether to have a beer, play bocce, watch a movie, or pray, do it in the name of Jesus, and have confidence that therefore Jesus will be there with you. You're going to church! That's what I mean by kingdom-oriented relationships.

Clearly, kingdom-oriented relationships are not necessarily more common in the church than in the wilderness beyond the church doors. In fact, the "much ado" that is church-life can be a convenient religious cover for our willful isolation from one another. So the task I've set for myself is to see relationships--all kinds of relationships--as the place where we walk out our faith. And in tandem with that the recognition that we do not always walk it out in our relationships, but simply pay lip service to it in our blogs, etc.?

Kingdom-Oriented Relationships

It has become commonplace for people to say that Christianity is a relationship (as opposed to a religion). And yet their are elements running through our very nature that tend to undermine relationship, or at least render them continually problematic. If it's true that relationships are the fundamental building-blocks of community, and yet we have this anti-relational side that likes to routinize relationships or simply use them for our own purposes and then discard them, then community is always, it seems, in danger from within.

Another way of saying that is, I am a danger to my friends, and my friends are a danger to me. This is what makes community difficult, and fleeting, as the stories of Adam and Eve, Cain and Abel, and countless others vividly illustrate. C. S. Lewis brilliantly illustrated this problem in his book The Great Divorce.

But of course we could do church without relationship. It happens all the time. For example, you've heard of churches that command people to ostracize a member because they infringed the rules or (more likely) threatened the autonomy of the pastor. Shunning, they call it. I used to sit under a pastor (many years ago) who said the church was like an army and the pastor was the general. Church was all about command structures, authority, discipline, and structures of accountability. But the least tincture of fear can mar love badly. [Aside: but we know what drives out fear: the "perfect love" of Jesus. We love because he first loved us.]

A couple of nights back I wrote out a few things I'd like to experience in community that may or may not fall under the church rubric. I should note first that I'm not dismissing all churches, or arguing strenuously for house churches as opposed to the "institutional church" (as some do). I'm just wondering what might be beyond--to use Michael Spencer's phrase--"the wreckage of a church-shaped religious faith." I'm guessing at the possibilities.

So the question is, out here beyond the church foyer doors, out between the stop signs of life, how do we train our relationships toward the Kingdom, toward a Kingdom orientation and Kingdom authenticity? The hope is that, out of the ground of ordinary "life together" relationships real Kingdom oriented, Jesus-shaped communion can happen.

In no particular order here are some of the characteristics of such a community.

• They pray together.  They approach the throne of grace together.  They are weak and dependent together.
• They take seriously and talk frequently about how to represent Jesus in the world.  How to be ambassadors.  How to introduce strangers to Jesus. They wonder often about how to spread the fame of Jesus in their daily contexts.   In other words, they take mission seriously.
• They sing spiritual songs together.  [A front parlor sing-along is better than a spiritual rock concert, btw.]
• They teach one another.  Maybe even at times "admonish one another in all wisdom" (Col. 3:16 again).  To go along with that, they learn from one another.  This is rather a stunning possibility!
• They bless one another frequently, in large and small ways.  Lots of not so random acts of kindness flowing freely back and forth.
• They share in one another's suffering.
• Meals together.  

All these things can happen among any close-knit group of friends.  I've seen it happen for a while, here and there, but it has been a rather transient experience.  I'm wondering if we can be more intentional about sustaining it, beginning if necessary with only two or three and seeing where it goes.  

As I said above, I'm not really down on the big church, but I do think it tends to pile on obligations much faster than it builds relationships.  Out here among the stop-signs of life, I'm looking to start with relationships (orienting always toward the Kingdom of God) and see what follows.  

Simply Organic

Most of the folks on my blogroll are avidly churchy people. In fact, many of them are church leaders. I've tried to give the blogroll a missional focus, because I want to keep up with that coversation and believe that it's one of the more hopeful signs of life in the church today.

Trouble is, as I've been at pains to say lately, I seem to have fallen off the board when it comes to church-ly things. There's an Acts 24 church in my town that I'll attend now and then, but a survey of the rest of them leaves me pretty cold.

I'm starting over. I'm right back where I was at the beginning of my Christian walk, except now I'm a lot more picky. Maybe even jaded. I'm thinking about this and processing it aloud here at WF, so I hope you'll have patience with me. I'm not sure where I'm going with this.

A friend of mine said, "I hope you find what you're looking for." Thing is, I wasn't actually sure at the time. Maybe a little more sure now. Maybe.

I said it a couple of posts ago, I guess: "a small tight-knit group of friends who will, among other things, worship and pray together, learn from Jesus together, and serve one another and the community in which they live."

Simple. The "church" (if by that you mean the assembling together of Jesus followers) manifesting itself out of the loamy soil of human relationships, as opposed to assembling at a big building once a week for a specially prepared "worship experience" en masse and then hoping for relationships to happen (it's not that I rule out the possibility of the latter--I've seen it happen--but it hasn't really worked for me).

I think that starting from relationship might be part of what Frank Viola calls organic church. Viola says that "there is a phenomenon today where countless Christians are leaving institutional forms of church and exploring non-traditional forms of church in pursuit of authentic, shared-life community." Viola credits T. Austin Sparks for the term "organic church." Sparks, in his own inimitable style, put it this way:

God’s way and law of fullness is that of organic life. In the Divine order, life produces its own organism, whether it be vegetable, animal, human, or spiritual. This means that everything comes from the inside. Function, order, and fruit issue from this law of life within. It was solely on this principle that what we have in the New Testament came into being. Organized Christianity has entirely reversed this order.

Viola, whose new book is called Jesus Manifesto: Restoring the Supremacy and Sovereignty of Jesus Christ (whilch I'll be reviewing here in a week or two), goes on to say this about the organic church movement (and why it's not a "movement"):

So many things can replace our Lord. But God’s eternal purpose—that which has been in his heart since before time—will never be fulfilled if our first rattle out of the box is a new way of doing church, a method for multiplying churches, or a technique to change the world. God’s purpose will only be restored if we blindly and singularly make Christ our pursuit, our life, and our motive. Everything else will flow out of that.

Yes. My experience of church small groups, which I "led" for a number of years, is that the church leadership tends to see them as little local subsidiaries, rather than organic manifestations of people's love for one another and desire to walk together. They inevitably highjack the small groups to promote their latest program. The groups were primarily tools in the functioning machinery for maintaining the programs of the church.

So, anyway, there's this concept out there called "organic church," which may or may not be a movement. I'm interested. I've also heard of "simple church," which I think is more or less the same thing. The stuff these people are describing sounds about right to me. Some simple churchers in the blogosphere are Roger Thoman at SimpleChurch Journal and the folks over at raw religion, where you can find an article entitled 5 Things to do Until an Organic Church Comes to Your Town. Watch and pray, baby. Watch and pray.

Wilderness Faith

So, transition.

I'm not really sure why the whole church thing stopped working for me. The Sunday morning concerts (known in the church biz as "worship") got too self-congratulatory, I suppose. The preaching was okay, but I didn't see the point of sitting in rows and listening to the special person talk for an hour.

Then there was all the "let's go, people" type sermons. It could be almost painful at times to listen to. So after a while, I just gave up.

Since then, I've attended another church that I like well enough, and yet I haven't actually sunk down roots there. I'm not sure why. What I really think I'd like, really, is a small tight-knit group of friends who will, among other things, worship and pray together, learn from Jesus together, and serve one another and the community in which they live.

Imagine that. I don't actually expect to find this any time soon. But I'm looking. I expect to visit churches from time to time, and seek other ways to get together with believers to talk or sing or whatever, and my whole point here is to say that I'm going to journal the day to day experience here at Wilderness Fandango.

The truth is, when I changed the name of the blog to Wilderness Fandango, it was in recognition of something I saw in the offing, but hadn't yet fully understood or wholly entered into. The "wilderness" is essentially a place between, a place of transition. It is not necessarily a place of terror, but certainly of discomfort, of long gazing at far horizons, and of, by necessity, great patience.

In this time, as might have been expected, the very purpose of blogging has been in transition also. Many years ago, I thought of it as a kind of ministry. Now, I simply want to record the journey. I'm not even sure what I mean by that, or what it will entail. I'm still thinking that through.


More to come.

Community?

Following up on my last post, Thoughts of a Church Leaver. I find Alan Jamieson's two articles in Reality magazine very helpful. Read A Churchless Faith and In search of Turangawaewae and then come on back.

In the first article, Jamieson describes several categories of church-leavers (based on sociological research), and in the second he describes the groups that such church-leavers have often formed to replace the faith-communities they've left behind. I'm fully aware that these sociological categories are not absolute, as if every church-leaver must fall into one of these boxes, but I did find them helpful. I myself can relate to much in the "Reflective Exiles" category (but not all).

Bottom line, though, is that church-leavers do not prefer loner-status. They do desire to be part of a faith community, but for whatever reason (there are many) the church as they have known it no longer works for them.

I just mentioned the c-word: community. I kind of dislike that word, it seems so vague and trendy. In what is certainly a commentary on our times, it seems to have replaced the equally malleable word, family, as the label of choice to describe the church. And yet, for all our self-conscious striving after community, how little of it there really is.

I can honestly say that in nearly twenty years of steady church attendance (two churches) I have only experienced it for a very brief time. Solid relationships, which are surely the building blocks of community, have been quite rare. This may be because I'm a hard person to get along with, or it may be because people are just too busy, but my point is that "community" in the church is as much a will-o-the-wisp as it is in the world.

But I've not given up. I have this notion that a group a people who truly know and love one another, meeting in one another's homes, singing and praying together, is a real possibility.

More on all this in a future post.

Jamieson, btw, blogs at Prodigal Kiwi.

Thoughts of a Church Leaver

So it's simply a beautiful morning here in Maine. Cool, breezy, sunny. My honey and I are going for a bike ride this morning . . . on our new bikes! This is going to be fun.

I got a kick out of this video the other day, but then read the conversation in response to it at Pastoralia and at Bill Kinnon. What to make of the fact that the video was produced by a church that is, apparently, much like the one being satirized? Of course in the culture these days, when cool people satirize their own coolness, they grow only more cool! Perhaps that old curmudgeon, Qoheleth, was right. Meaningless, meaningless, everything is meaningless.

Having left a church last year I have come to realize I'm not going to land in a new church any time soon (thus, the bike ride on a Sunday morning). Not that I'm ruling it out, only that I'm not out there "shopping" for one. I think in the end I might settle for occasional attendance at one of the handful of churches in walking distance from my house.

I'm thinking about this sort of thing after reading a series of articles on the subject of "church leavers." It started with Len Hjalmarson's post at Next Reformation. Too much of the conversation about church leavers comes from church leaders who mis-characterize these people as, inevitably, selfishly flitting from church to church, unable to commit or submit, consumeristic, etc. I bought into that for a while. It is a helpful and comforting myth. I now believe that the selfish ones are those who continue to put forward that egregious straw man.

Anyway, Len's article is much better than all that. Am I a Reflective Exile, a Transitional Explorer, or perhaps an Integrated Wayfinder? I don't know. I know I do want company on this path, and as Len points out rather brilliantly, "transitions require liminal space." Anyway, I'm finding Len's meditation very helpful, and I'm grateful for his links to the work of Alan Jamieson (here and here).

So anyway, all these links above are to very thoughtful and nuanced articles concerning the matter of "church-leavers." Me, I'm clearly in one of those liminal spaces that Len talks about. As I said, I'll probably wind up occasionally attending one of the handful of churches within walking distance of my house, but what I do desire, of course, is what I might call the understanding companionship of a few fellow-wayfinders. I have no desire to "do faith" in isolation, but I'm done with the "tyranny of they."

I'll end with a snip from Len's post:

God may call you out of your faith community. Or, you may find yourself unwillingly on the outside. It will be a tough journey. Keep your eyes on Jesus. I know – the challenge is for some that this journey begins without conversation partners. But if you are reading this, then already you are gaining a broader perspective.

As God’s people in exile we face many daunting challenges in our time. Times of Reformation are always confusing and dangerous. Much that we thought could not be shaken is now being shaken. The rate of people leaving churches in North America is on the increase. The diaspora is hard on everyone – people, leaders, communities.

Now, let's go riding!