Breaking Open the Circle

I remember back in November, 2006. It was the evening of the first night of Idul Fitri – an all night of muslim prayer marking the end of the fasting month. I was standing on the roof of my house – immersed in the anonymity of the night. Here & there the mere suggestion of shapes & surfaces marked my particular place in the world but my hearing was telling me otherwise. I was immersed in a uniquely bounded moment of a tremendous speech act, a multitudinous calling of the name of Allah from mosques in all directions. From the front, now behind, to the side, the other side… came an unbroken multi-vocal charge of different utterances converging, rising to crescendo then falling again… a creative gaggle of voices congregating around the speaking of the name of God.

However, there is another kind of speech act. It is the unending calling forth of my name by God. It’s like God’s calling of Abram. He says, “Go from your country… and your Father’s house to the land that I will show you… I will bless you…  so that you will be a blessing.”  

Such a calling is a creative utterance. It is a never-ending self-involving unbounded moment. It calls us out from the anonymity of the night & into a world of light and encounter with particular other people. It calls us to become familiar with the sounds of their voices, engaging in their specific situation, immersing ourselves in their unique stories.


To be involved in a conversation with strangers, begins in speaking words with little meaning. The sounds are mostly harsh and unfamiliar. It is hard to remain in that place, like the smoke of burning leaves barbing my eyes or the pungent smell of rotting garbage taunting my nostrils. To remain in the creative gaggle of a continuing conversation with unfamiliar people, day after day, in situation after different situation, etches out a new space of shared meaning. Me and them eventually becomes us – a shared story. This is mission and it applies as much up close as it does far away.

I am shaped & held by the words and the stories of particular other people. That’s why God says, “Go from your country…”. The stretch of it, the leaving of myself behind, builds & intensifies my presence in the world & my relation to the One who calls me forth.

Living Middle…

Martin Buber says when people associate their lives together, when they gather around a living middle then community can arise mong them.

If we stubbornly chose to live our lives in close proximity to other people that means there will be times when they see us weak and vulnerable, times when they experience flashes, even prolonged periods of our darker shadow side, the side we like to hide.  As night follows day, there will be times when we mess up and make mistakes.

Life lived in the presence of others, if it is to be life that is lived truly will be glorious sometimes, yet often it will be inglorious even tedious. Sometimes it will be energising & synergistic, often it will be painful – even self-defeating. Sometimes there will be intense joy yet at other times there will be boredom- even sadness.

Yet here’s the thing. When a group of people make Jesus their rabbi, when Jesus becomes the living middle, then all that chaotic mix and clash of egos and different hard-edges opinions begins to become plastic and malleable and refined in the fires of love. What makes community possible is that they fail and they fail and they fail… The value of that failure is that they are failing forwards and they are doing it together.

And when people who associate their lives together don’t fail, they are magnificent in the quality of community that arises among them.  Together what they can achieve is just so much more ! They participate in the Great Reversal and they change the world. They are truly God’s alternative community who are establishing God’s Kingdom on Earth.

The Knife Edge Cutting Deeper

 “the Egyptians pursued them, all Pharaoh’s horses and chariots, his chariot drivers and his army…”

The image we are given is of Pharaoh relentlessly bearing down. He is rapidly advancing towards the Israelites with his murderous host. The Israelites can see the dust and hear the thundering chariots and they are afraid. They can do nothing because they are trapped on the edge of a very large expanse of water. This is being caught between a rock and hard place… between the devil and the deep blue sea.

And as the Israelites totter on the edge of chaos, their courage evaporating by the second, Moses says to the people, “Do not be afraid, the Lord will fight for you… stand firm!” And immediately God speaks. He says to Moses, “Why do you stand there and cry out to me – go forward !”

Now logic would dictate that ‘going forward’ would mean the Israelites moving into battle against the Egyptians. Scripture says that the Israelites went out from Egypt prepared for battle. However that wasn’t what God had in mind. Instead, God intends this mass of newly redeemed slaves to move forward, out into the sea ! 

The Israelites camped on the edge of the sea is a group of people who have pitched their tents on the edge of chaos. A tremendous mass of newly redeemed slaves moving out into the sea is like Peter the wily fisherman stepping out of the boat and into the angry water to walk to Jesus… It is beyond logic, it is beyond wisdom. This is a holy paradox. Yet in such a place a man can walk on water and a teeming throng of people & their vast menagerie of animals can walk through the banked up water on ‘dry ground’ to the other side.

Like the waters of baptism the Israelites went into the Red Sea as slaves and emerged on the far shore as a community of God’s chosen pilgrim people. Most of the time after that, while they wandered around with God in the desert, they whinged and they whined and they were so barely faithful. Yet instead of standing still, they were now a community whose identity was being forged on the way.

Edge of Chaos

In the last 100 years science has shifted from a more structured view of the universe to one filled with chaos. It seems the universe is constantly forming & unforming, generating & expending tremendous amounts of energy creating and destroying the stars. According to chaos theory the universe is filled with the almost infinite possibility of the next unpredictable moment.

Today, the biological sciences are hotly debating that nature is at it’s innovative best near the edge of chaos. When a natural system fails to position itself in this in-between place it becomes static, out of balance, unhealthy. Eventually it dies. However moving to the edge of chaos creates fluid movement – even upheaval – where both order and disorder are present. Nature itself is suggesting the edge of chaos is the sweet spot for productive change. It seems that chaos is woven into the very fabric of life and the universe.

The Scriptures are filled with a similar notion of the edge of chaos. Alan Hirsch says, “the theologically most fertile parts of the Scriptures are all, yes all, set in the context of the people of God facing significant danger & chaos…”.  Whether it is Abraham being called to leave home and journey to a new land or the harrowing experiences of the Exodus and the Exile, whether it is David’s adventures in becoming king or Jesus’ ministry in the Gospels or even just the book of Acts… none of these describe stable situations. They are dynamic, even life threatening and chaos is ever present. 

Pure Oxygen

Recently, a friend of mine asked the question, “If you were going to use a passage from Scripture to describe the kind of community you think God would like us to be, what passage would you choose?”

I had to think for a bit but the longer I did, the more I liked the Exodus image of being a pilgrim people in the wilderness. Lawrence Kushner says the wilderness is a place that demands being open to the flow of life around you. It’s a place “that demands being honest with yourself, without regard to the cost in personal anxiety… a place that demands being present with all yourself… possessions cannot surround you… preconceptions cannot protect you… guilt can no longer place you safely in the past”.

There is a sense of weakness and vulnerability, of depending upon God alone that goes with this image. It’s an idea of community that says if we don’t work this out together we are going to die here. This basic survival orientation focuses attention outwards, demanding openness to newness & difference. It is a picture of a community of people who are working out their relationship with God ‘on the way’.

Mars Hill is a church in Grand Rapids, Michigan – who have chosen to locate their story in the deep channel of the Exodus story. This grand narrative of Scripture lends movement, intention & focus to their community. It is the idea of having a deep story that they can keep checking in with to make sure their unfolding communal story is located in a place where God alone is the living center.

Kushner says of dwelling in the wilderness, “That such a way of being would be like breathing pure oxygen.” That we would long to breathe air of such intensity & purity in the Church. Amen, amen & amen again.