Christianity & the Suburbs
Christianity & the Suburbs:
Well, let’s pray, shall we:
Prayer:
Father: thank you that we’re here–not just here in this room, but here in this place, this part of Columbus, today. Receive this time we’ve put aside for you as an offering; receiving the words I’m about to speak as one also. Glorify yourself through us, and shut me down if I mislead us. Please. In Jesus’ name we pray: Amen.
Introduction:
I’m excited today. I feel a little nervous, a little vulnerable. Like I’m in line at a roller coaster. We’re talking about the suburbs, today; and other things, things that are close to my heart. What I hope we’ll see today–well, at the end of today I hope that we’ll see the suburbs like we’ve never seen them before.
I pray to God that we’ll know exactly what it is we have to say about the suburbs, especially about the neighborhood right around this building, and I hope that we’ll see how important it is for us to say what we have to say.
But like I said; a little nervous, a little vulnerable, because I’ll be sharing some things about me, my heart, you know–I feel a little like I’m getting on a roller coaster.
Roller Coaster:
Have you ever been on a roller coaster? Or-a better question-have you ever waited in line to ride a roller coaster.
It’s no fun! The lamest part, I think, is the thing where you’re sort of standing there, and you think that just around that bend, is the roller coaster, you expect that, okay, one more chunk of line disappears, and I’ll get to ride, you know–but around the corner is more windy things, and people waiting, and then around the next corner, up some stairs, there are more windy things, and more people waiting.
I expect to get to ride the ride soon, but don’t; What I expect doesn’t happen: and it’s okay, when I’m, like, panicking and screaming and leaving my stomach behind on the roller coaster–it’s worth it. Have you ever expected something, and it hasn’t happened. It can be hard, right, even if everything ends up good.
Guessing Our Expectations:
I don’t know what you’re expectations are about today’s message; but I hope that in the very best way I don’t meet them. That at the end of this morning, no one cares that they weren’t met, because it’s been good, and the Lord’s been with us.
See, it’s my guess–I could be way off–but it’s my guess that really, we’re more or less expecting me to condemn the suburbs, and by extension condemn all of us for living in them. I mean, we heard the texts that were read, right? It wasn’t comfortable, snuggle bear sort of Bible.
If I were you all–and I’m projecting, but still–sitting and waiting to hear a message about the suburbs, I would be feeling anxious! Who wants to be told they are bad because they bought a nice house in a good school district 20 years ago, right?
But there are a lot of reasons to feel anxiety, right? Society isn’t out to praise the suburbs, is it? I can think of some songs.
Jesusland:
There’s “Jesusland”–a popular song by a popular musician, Ben Folds. He’s writing about the suburbs, and he’s talking about how “christiany” they are, too. He writes, about Jesus:
“Take a walk
out the gate you go and never stop
past all the stores and wig shops
quarter in a cup for every block
and watch the buildings grow
smaller as you go
Down the tracks
beautiful McMansions on a hill
that overlook a highway
with riverboat casinos and you still
have yet to see a soul
Miles and miles
and the sun goin’ down
Pulses glow
from their homes
You’re not alone
Lights come on
as you lay your weary head on their lawn”
I’ve heard more positive ways to describe suburban creep. Or there’s a song by Derek Webb, a Christian musician, called “Rich Young Ruler.”
Rich Young Ruler:
Derek–he and I are friends, apparently–Derek writes:
“poverty is so hard to see
when it’s only on your tv and twenty miles across town
where we’re all living so good
that we moved out of Jesus’ neighborhood
where he’s hungry and not feeling so good
from going through our trash
he says, more than just your cash and coin
i want your time, i want your voice
i want the things you just can’t give me”
Positive?
I mean, these aren’t the most positive things ever expressed, right? They condemn, they discourage, they create some anxiety in us about where we live and what we’re doing with ourselves–or tap some sort of anxiety that’s already there. We start to feel guilty, or feel angry that someone else is making us feel guilty.
I don’t want to be your tour guide for a guilt trip. I have other things to do.
But we should be honest, about something.
The Best Policy:
We should be totally honest, that there is a sort of suburb where people are, in fact, escaping into well-insulated pockets of middle and upper middle class security and uniformity. Society, peer-pressure, our own insecurities or places in our hearts untouched by the Spirit push us and prod us into wishing we could live there, in that neighborhood, with new and nice things, and safe and respectable people. This is a natural, reasonable desire–and except for the fact that we Christians are supernatural, and unreasonable, seeking after that kind of suburb, what it signifies and what it offers–makes a lot of sense.
But that’s not the only type of suburb, right? That’s not the only type of suburb. There is another type of suburb; the suburbs that are being forgotten, slowly being forgotten by a world that wants shiny and new and safe and secure, a world that wants what the first suburb pretends to provide.
My Soul, and the thoughts I wander around:
And now, I want to share with you a sort of “part of my soul.” These are some of the things that have been swirling around my head and my heart for months, months, and are only now beginning to land.
about the suburbs:
Since you all and God first got together and agreed that I should help pastor here, I have been thinking about what it would mean for Carolyn and I to live in the suburbs, pastor a suburban church. I have spent years prior to this last year nurturing a general distaste and dismissal for any neighborhood that didn’t have a grocery store you could walk to, you know?
My interests–theological, philosophical, sociological–are ones that lead me to dismiss the suburbs, have led me to question if anything good can come from nazareth–or a place without a strong bus line. I have spent hours and hours reflecting on what it means for Carolyn and I to live here, in the neighborhood that surrounds Smoky Row Brethren Church’s building, what it means to take up the most foundational part of ministry, which is incarnation, entering into the general experience of those whom you’re trying to reach with the message of what God has done through Jesus.
my expectations:
I had believed, had hoped, that we would leave Seminary, and move to some bombed out ghetto, some place that society had turned away from, because it was no longer economically important, no longer worth America’s time, filled with people who are not valued by society–because of the lack of education they’ve had, because of the color of their skin, because of the languages they speak, because of the things they’ve done in misguided but genuine efforts to stay alive.
This was my expectation. To serve a place and the people of the place that society has forgotten and avoids. A place that has been forgotten; that I could remember, actively, with my heart and my hands and all my efforts.
And then we found ourselves here, certain–so sure–that God had wanted us here, that what was best for Smoky Row, and best for us, was to be here– and ever since we’ve been here I’ve been thinking about our neighborhood. The neighborhood around Smoky Row.
I’ve spent hours praying and reflecting on the place where we live, where the church building sits, and asking God over and over and over what does it mean to live and minister here in this place when I am filled with these sorts of passions and concerns and self-ideals, which I still nurture in so many ways.
Friends:
And I still spend hours with friends who don’t own licenses, because they don’t need a car; I talk with people who have moved to the emptied, decaying, neighborhoods, filled with entrenched poverty, that promotes itself and repeats itself into generation after generation. They’ve moved there as missionaries to serve these places, and we chat, and friends ask, “so, what’s it like to live in the suburbs?” And it’s not an “I’m interested” question; it’s an “I’m sorry” question.
Their assumption–just like used to be my assumption–is that there is no one thirsty, there is no one hungry, there is no one in prison, folk don’t have family members–brothers or sisters, moms or dads–who’ve been locked away. Their assumption–like it was my assumption–is that there is no one in the suburbs who needs clothing, who is a stranger–unfamiliar with the culture or the language or the streets or the opportunities around them. They assume that you cannot find one who is among the “least of these” out where the buses don’t run and you can’t walk to the grocery store.
They read the parable that was read to us this morning:
“Then the King will say to those on his right, ‘Come, you who are blessed by my Father; take your inheritance, the kingdom prepared for you since the creation of the world. For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me.’
“Then the righteous will answer him, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you something to drink? When did we see you a stranger and invite you in, or needing clothes and clothe you? When did we see you sick or in prison and go to visit you?’
“The King will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.’
“Then he will say to those on his left, ‘Depart from me, you who are cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels. For I was hungry and you gave me nothing to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink, I was a stranger and you did not invite me in, I needed clothes and you did not clothe me, I was sick and in prison and you did not look after me.’
“They also will answer, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or needing clothes or sick or in prison, and did not help you?’
“He will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did not do for one of the least of these, you did not do for me.’
“Then they will go away to eternal punishment, but the righteous to eternal life.”
And we could theologically discuss what this passage means for hours, but what it at least means–which my missionary-to-the-forgotten-inner-city-friends recognize–is that Jesus wants us who are his followers–sheep of his flock–to go to the one who is a stranger among us, go to the tired one, the hungry one, the thirsty and naked one. We are to go to them; and to one another, of course, when we find ourselves hungry, and tired, and strangers. And Jesus takes all the service we give them, every way we provide them, as service and providence to himself. And through our actions we claim them as the neighbors they are, love them, and through our actions create a whole group of neighbors, a neighborhood.
But some of my friends, and the radio stations I listen to, and the chance TV show I catch, or song I hear, or the books I read that–that all lump together that first suburb with the second, and universally condemn them both–because they are so environmentally unfriendly, or so out of touch or whatever–they don’t realize something.
They don’t realize:
They don’t realize what I’ve come to realize, which is just that maybe its harder to generalize to be about whole swaths of land, filled with houses, and the people inside them, than we’d like to think it. Maybe they think, like I thought, that the suburbs are only those new suburbs, the ones further out, further away, insulated, where people act reasonably, and Joneses after Joneses keep up with each other–
and you know, I do think that those places exist. It is honestly hard, when we’re living in gated communities, to be thankful that Jesus broke down the gates of hell.
We cannot discount:
But we cannot discount the emotional troubles of middle middle class life; they exist and they are real, and painful, and horrible. I don’t discount them at all. The Bible says “every heart knows it’s own sorrow,” and Jesus cares about hearts and came to bring peace in the middle of sorrows. I have talked about this many times, and will continue to, because if there is an opportunity wealth should bring, it should be the opportunity to deal with the wounds and pains being alive attaches to us. But…those problems are a different sort than the ones that Jesus talks about in not only the sections we looked at today, but a whole lot of other places too.
But all those friends and books and songs and things: they don’t realize things like this:
Things like this:
“About one in 10 Dublin schools students receive free or reduced-price lunches.”
“About 13 percent of Worthington schools students — 1,255 of 9,567 children — are eligible for free lunches.”
“The Columbus metro area had the second-highest poverty rate among 16 similar metropolitan areas, including Cincinnati and Cleveland, according to a 2008 report the Columbus Partnership commissioned. Only the Louisville, Ky., area has a higher rate of poverty.” (Now, another study has cleveland higher than Columbus, but still remarkable.)
(The Columbus Dispatch, “Suburbs Share in Suffering” June 1, 2008, Rita Price & Mark Ferenchik)
or this, based on the most recent census data, & written before the bottom dropped out of the housing industry:
“Poverty has moved to the suburbs. Or, more accurately, poverty has expanded to the suburbs. Today, 13.8 million poor Americans live in the suburbs–almost as many as the 14.6 million who live in central cities. The suburban poor represent 38.5 percent of the nation’s poor, compared with 40.6 percent of the total who live in central cities.”
“Both the number and proportion of the poor living in suburbs has increased steadily. In 1970 only 20.5 percent of the nation’s poor lived in suburbs. By 2000, that had grown to 35.9 percent. And those trends have continued.”
(The Nation, “Poverty in the Suburbs” Sept 2, 2004, Peter Dreier)
See, the voices that cry out dismiss, deny, disregard the suburbs and their worth forget that people are always of worth. And they overlook–for any number of understandable and unhelpful, reasons–the facts about the suburbs, and the change going on in them.
They ignore the single mothers on our street, and the large families in small apartments, with cheap rent, with parents that work every hour so their kids can avoid gunshots. They ignore what it means to have your car go out, when the only way to get anywhere is to drive, the only way to get to all the social services downtown, that you depend on is to drive.
They don’t realize the growing population of “strangers” to America that flood tired suburban neighborhoods: strangers to our language, our clocks, our laws. Some of these strangers are becoming less so, to us, the ones that compose about half of your church, that will sit in these seats, this afternoon.
They ignore the desperate need for ICAC and Worthington food pantry, and Dublin food pantry, and the woman and daughter I drove around yesterday because their radiator is broken, and the guy I drove around some time ago, because his truck wouldn’t go–and he had a place to be, like everyone everywhere has a place to be. Because everyone everywhere has a place in the heart of God. This is what Christianity has to say about the suburbs.
Us:
But I am not as interested, today, in what Christianity has to say about the suburbs as I am in what Jesus has to say to us about our neighborhood; our suburbs. The streets around our building.
–and I talk about us, this neighborhood around our church building, because it is the Jerusalem of our outreach. It is our first and closest mission. Remember that section from Acts? It’s right before Jesus leaves to prepare places for us, before the Holy Spirit is sent to us so that we might do even greater things as a Spirit-filled community than Jesus did while he was here, and people ask, with their tiny small focus, if Jesus is going to make Israel the greatest people in the world, and Jesus says:
He said to them: “It is not for you to know the times or dates the Father has set by his own authority. But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.” (Acts 1:7-8 tniv)
I–and others–consider this a sort of map about where our outreach should go, those nearest us (jerusalem), those who we share a culture with (judea), those we don’t want to go to (Samaria), and to places we’ve never imagined. And I think it’s good to start at home, right? Down the street? Our neighborhood.
me, again:
I mentioned my longing to be in a place that society has forgotten–a place ignored and overlooked and uncared for because it is no longer successful, viable, pleasant. Right? A forgotten place.
In my thinking about the suburbs, thinking about things, I have realized that many of the places I wish to go to in Columbus–not all by any means, but many–are places that are no longer forgotten. They are places where people of means–not rich people, necessarily, but educated, financially stable, people with strong support networks–are moving in, not to build and bless and encourage, as my missionary friends, but to take advantage of old character, and cheap property, and good access, and those places in Columbus that were forgotten are being remembered, and those who have, are slowly displacing and forcing out the have nots. The poor, the blind, the naked, and thirsty, those who have been affected by prisons.
And I’ve been thinking about this, too. Where do these forced out people go? How does this relate to my desire to be in a forgotten place? How does this relate to my new awareness about what the suburbs really are like, which is so different from what I thought.
Here’s why this matters.
Because I have a presentiment. There is a poem, by a poet (go fig!) Rainier Maria Rilke. He writes:
I’m like a flag surrounded by distance.
Divining the coming winds, I must share their existence,
whereof things below reveal as yet no traces;
doors are still closing softly and quiet are the fire-places;
windows are not yet shaking, and dust lies heavily.
But I can already sense the storm, and surge like the sea.
And spread myself out and into myself downfall
and hurtle myself away and am all
alone in the great storm.
(All alone, of course, until the storm comes, right? And then everyone is together in this).
This is a poem about sensing what is coming. A person having a “presentiment”–a sense that something is going to happen. And so much of what this poem expresses I identify with.
The world is changing around us. I have sat with this idea, played with it–like with a dog, run around in the yard of my mind with this notion that we are a place, our neighborhood, right around Smoky Row, that is in the process of being forgotten.
We could talk about the data we saw, earlier. We could talk about any number of anecdotal things: the pay day lenders, the man I saw at Borders on Sawmill eat what I think was someone else’s leftover cake, the lady, up the road, that I have twice now given rides to places–because her car is old and breaking down, and where we live, if you don’t have a car, you are a prisoner.
But mostly when I say that I think we are being forgotten, I say it as someone who has the Spirit of God, and has been reflecting a lot about the neighborhood his house and his church building sit in.
Our church, I think–and I share this, believing it to be true, but unsure in some ways–is encircled by what I think, 20 years from now, will be the new forgotten place, an abandoned place. The new place where those who are the “least of these”–and have the least of our society’s resources–end up. I simply believe this.
That’s fairly negative, right? I’ve been wrong many times. But I wonder if any of you who have been here long have sensed the changed winds, have noticed Columbus, Society, whatever turning it’s interest and gaze and esteem elsewhere.
So what?
So. What might it mean for us to take seriously Jesus’ statement that…
“When you give a luncheon or dinner, do not invite your friends, your brothers or sisters, your relatives, or your rich neighbors; if you do, they may invite you back and so you will be repaid. But when you give a banquet, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind, and you will be blessed. Although they cannot repay you, you will be repaid at the resurrection of the righteous.”
What might it mean for us to think about the neighborhood around us, the people around this building as people who should be on our guest list?
What might it mean for us to look to the future and see that there is not only a banquet now, but a buffet coming, a thousand meals of service and ministry and care that we’re supposed to offer people?
Hope:
I hope, years from now, for people to say, Smoky Row didn’t prevent the change of the neighborhood: couldn’t stop it from changing. We cannot ignore time and it’s affects. But I want people to say that we changed with our neighborhood, we guided it, and guarded it, and kept it safe, so that our neighborhood flourished in the midst of change: so that as our society turned away its gaze from here to wherever the new, and valuable, and important will be, that we stand guard against evil, and decay, and give of ourselves, and build and bless the people who were graced by God to be near us.
Today?
But that is the future. We are living in the Right Now: the Today. And there are churches, and pastors, that I know, today, have no idea what to do with themselves, because they have walled themselves off from the changes in their neighborhoods, and simply cannot hold a banquet, cannot meet the needs, of the people around them, because they don’t know the people around them.
There is a feast around us, around this Jerusalem, this widowed and orphaned place–a place that will only continue to be forgotten as more and more of those who can flee, and more and more of the least of these flood into the spaces they have left behind them?
Demanding Engagement:
This possible future demands present engagement with our minds–that we might discern how best to change with this neighborhood around us, with our appetites, that we might discern how to hunger for the banquet God has given us, and not for some other thing, not hunger for some other place, but figure out how to live here, now, well. It demands that we notice these streets, and attend to them, tend them, like they are our garden, and hope that they bear fruit for God’s Kingdom.
So my hope is this morning that we see our neighborhood differently. My hope is that we begin to try and engage this place, that is being forgotten, before we ourselves, Smoky Row Brethren Church, is forgotten by it, disregarded because we’re unnecessary, and unhelpful, and out of touch. The suburbs, they are a changin’. Will we change with them? Will we put our resources, and our time, and our efforts into keeping pace with our streets, and caring for them just like Jesus? That means changing the way we think about the neighbors we have, right? It means organizing for ministry, for service.
In 15 years, 20 years, our neighborhood will be the place, where fresh-out-of-Seminary-students want to be, long to be. And guess what? We’re that sort of place right now. There is a buffet of needs around us, and if we meet them well and rightly in the power of the Spirit, then we will be able to continue meeting them well when our neighborhood looks much, much different than it does today.
Conclusion (it’s really short, I promise.):
Think deeply about this. Pray about this. Notice our streets; look at them. Walk around this neighborhood, together! What do you see? And what do you see coming? What changes are on our horizons? And pray the whole time, the whole time, “God: What are you up to here? What are you bringing our way? And how should we engage with our neighbors now, so that whatever the future brings, we can be faithful to your work in the present.”
I think that together, with each other and with God, we can learn the answers to these questions, and engage our neighbors more faithfully, beneficially, and completely than we ever have. And we’ll be ready for anything time brings our way.