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A
Presence that disturbs. A call to radical discipleship
Anthony Gittins
Frankl lived in a concentration camp during World war
II. He concluded that unless he could
attribute some meaning to his present predicament and to the suffering around
him, even if he were to survive his life would be unbearably prolonged and
ultimately meaningless. And life without meaning is no life at all. But if we
can find a meaning in life, life can be bearable and productive.
His life statement became :
To live you must choose, to love you must encounter, to grow you must suffer.
If we don’t discover a meaning in life and
do not choose for a life worth living to the full, we may not have a legacy for
the generations who follow us.
People can be influenced by the encounters
of life experiences (e.g. Wordsworth by Nature). Christians are people who are
influenced by the encounter with God. è The
have to act. They felt a presence that disturbed them,
they have to become a presence that disturbs. è We must choose to live, to encounter and to suffer in order to
discover meaning in life.
When we look for meaning in life it is good
to look back. Then questions rise : Who are
we ? What are we doing ? Why ?
It can help us to see where we are going and may us
help to see God’s hand in our journey. It may help us also to make corrections.
If we look back to our Christian history
and compare it with our time we see that many people left the Church. Many look
for Spirituality and meaning but don’t find it in the Church. So what hope is
there for Christians and Christianity ?
Some images of God may help :
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God as a sugar daddy à This God does not disturb us. We make up how God is.
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God as a restlessness pursuer à God loves us, and at the same time He sends us. Those who are
disturbed by God are also sent to be a presence that disturbs.
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God as a disturbing presence à As we call ourselves Christians we cannot
ignore the cries of the poor. As Church we are the body of Christ. We are our
brother’s and sister’s keepers. We cannot leave evangelisation and justice to
others.
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A true experience of God à Every real encounter, every real experience of God makes people
restless, more inspired and more engaged with the world and humanity. By an
encounter with God people become disturbed and become disturbers of the status
quo.
God has a
mission. He dreams of the realm of God and the Church is in the service of the
mission. As followers of Jesus we must go wherever there is need, encounter
whoever is in need, and do whatever it takes to bring the Good News of
redemption and liberation. So mission requires that the disciples are like the master : disturbing presence.
Vat II :
« The Church is missionary by its very nature. Everyone is a missionary by
virtue of baptism. » è Every
baptised Christian is called to be missionary.
This has not always been understood as such
in history, where the missionaries became those who joined the religious elite
and mission was for this religious elite (e.g.
Jesuits).
Where the early church was the Body of
Christ, it became in history ‘the people are the body, and the clergy the head.
This was taken very literally.
Because the church became much divided and
there was a lot of destruction in the church many didn’t believe in it anymore
and turned away from the church.
People have turned away from the church.
Yet the message of Jesus remains a beautiful thing. But if our discipleship is
to be renewed, we first must first be ‘Spirit-led’. And the Spirit will help us
to discover the ultimate meaning of life.
Our passionate
commitment is important, but it is God who does the work. We may believe that
God will never break the covenant He made with us. Our challenge is to remain
faithful to God and seek to respond to the spirit’s mission.
A first question
that we have to ask is : « Do we really
believe in the Holy Spirit ? Do we really believe the Lord and Giver of
Life is among us ? Do we believe that the Spirit
still speaks through prophets ?
There are signs
that the Spirit is among us. People who believe in the Spirit :
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look for trouble (# Jesus).
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Ask to be disturbed
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Are united though diverse
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Are convinced they can help to
change the world
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Live exciting lives
And though there
really Spirit-led people, why do so many people do not :
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We expect God to work miracles
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We do not look for God’s
presence è seems absent
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We do not want the Spirit to
interrupt our plans
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We forgot the Pentecost story
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We are afraid what we have to
do when we listen to the Spirit
If we want the
Spirit to ‘renew the face of the earth we have to allow our lives to be
interrupted. We don’t like this and often we resist it. If the Spirit speaks to
us we might have to change our lives.
The Spirit tried
many times to interrupt in the world and the male supremacy.
Gittins gives 7 examples where he
sees the Spirit interrupt the human agenda’s. The Spirit disturbs :
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through Jesus à Jesus
shook His society by saying that men were not superior and women not inferior.
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Through women à Women have always been the soul of the community. Up to the 13th C women
where ordained. When many women leave the church, what does the Spirit wants to
tell us ?
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Through service à In the early church was equality
important. Nowadays the Church is strong hierarchical. Philippine bishop:
« The distrust of the people might be the distrust of the Holy Spirit.
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Through ecumenism à Jesus prayed ‘that we might be one’ and ‘that they may believe that
You have sent me’. Yet there are so many different
churches (and non-Catholics even cannot receive communion) and many people
don’t believe that Jesus is the Messiah. The Spirit seeks unity and conversion
of us all.
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Through the Eucharist à Jesus used meals as encounters to embrace, to teach and reconcile,
to heal and to unite. Ecumenism and Eucharist offer an opportunity to find
unity among Christian churches.
When people where hungry and dispirited Jesus said to his disciples : « You give them something to
eat. » The disciples had to take initiative. ‘Miracles do not make faith
but faith make miracles’.
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Through children à Abused and abandoned children speak up now. This is a sign of the
Holy Spirit. Where people stand up for children, they are the advocate of the
Holy Spirit.
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Through the poor à There are more poor than rich people. God
has heard the cry of the poor.
The Spirit is
wandering over the chaos (Gen 1). It is from this raw material that God created
the cosmos in a creative way.
There are
different ‘moods’. We can just see things that are there and leave it with
that. But we can also look at ‘how it could be’. Yet often our lives our so
uninspiring because our imagination is not stimulated. Often we don’t believe
things can change.
Spirit-led people
are called to live ‘beyond what simply is’. But if we are to bridge the gap
between ‘what is’ and ‘what is yet to be’ then they have to live at the edge.
It is not an easy gap to bridge and imagination and creativity is needed. Renewing
the face of the earth is not an extension of how things are here and now, but
it is something new.
Imaginating is a characteristic of
young children. If we would allow ourselves to become as
little children and use our imagination to imagine a different world.
And as Christians we should not be afraid to take risks and to experiment. If
we never would use our imagination and take risks the Spirit would be kept
quiet. The imagination is the dynamo for ministry.
If we would be alone
we never would act differently, in spite of good intentions. Therefore we need
others, imaginative compagnons, who we can encourage.
People with imagination need to be risk-takers and have to be within a
community which encourages them to take risks. We must be encouraged to strive
for great things and to never give up, even though when it gets tough or when
we make mistakes or experience failure.
If we want
life-giving developments in our ministry we need to have a vision, making
invisible things visible. ‘When there is no vision, the people perish (Prov. 29 :18).
In order for the
vision to remain in view the structure must be flexible and adaptable. The
vision comes first, but has to be carried out. So some strategies have to set
up. The structure is the best from which strategies are set up. Structures identifies the rules in our daily lives.
To sustain the
vision, strong leadership is necessary. It is important so that strategies can
be discerned and structures can be modified as needed. If there is no strong
and good leadership the vision will never be carried out.
In order to live
in a meaningful way, one has to make choices. This is sometimes painful. But
without taking up the cross, there is no real authentic Christianity.
At this moment
Christianity is in a crisis. But a crisis is a time of discernment and
decision. It offers a context in which discernment and decision are required.
Often we like to go around the crisis. But if so no solutions can be found.
There are
different ways of looking at community. When Jesus sent his disciples her didn’t
sent them as individuals or a group of individuals. He sent them as a corporate
body, with one head and a unity of purpose.
There are
different forms of community : where there is
mechanical solidarity (with the same
purpose, though none of them realises it)
and where there is organic solidarity (acting in unison, where each one
takes up his responsibility). With the organic solidarity unity can be
achieved, where there is vision, clarity of purpose, dedication, and living
hope.
If people want to
create something new, there has to be some ignition. This brief moment of
burning energy, of ignition is communitas. It is full
of life, imagination, enthusiasm and collaboration. It is utopian, idealistic
and risk-taking. But it lasts but a moment and start to die. When people start
to organise things communitas becomes community.
Community is the institutionalisation of communitas.
Both are needed.
Because wonderful,
marginal initiatives can become comfortable routine operations after a few generations one
has always to look for ‘the needs of today’. We have to remain liminal, lest we stop living out the mission of the Spirit.
The need for permanent liminality is as needed as it
was in Jesus’ time. If the Spirit is allowed to work people will go to the edge
and leave their save havens. The Church may not recognize them, but if they are
of God they will prevail.
Jesus was a
disturbing figure. He challenged the society and the status quo. His essential
message is of unification and reconciliation, of outreach and inclusion. If we
are to captivated by his dream, we also act as Jesus
and become disturbers ourselves.
The book of
Genesis gives a glimpse of how things should be, filed with mutuality,
interrelatedness, and respect. But from the beginning there were dark forces at
work, and men took part in them è God
confronts them, and so disturbs them.
Humans cannot
exist in a pure state of nature. They have to cultivate, modifying the
environment by controlling nature. This is culture. But even with al the
technological creativity men are incapable of creating balanced harmonious
worlds. Cultures are built on separation and division, classification and
categorization, discrimination and domination. When people
judge they draw a line between them è division, inclusion
and exclusion, hierarchy and privilege.
If people wants to
survive they have to name and tame, but if they start talking about ‘us’ and
‘them’ they split the ‘we’. This can become so hostile that it leads to war.
At the other hand,
when people are hostile to one another, but want to survive they might find ways of living together and
so eventually become friends (e.g. intermarriages).
People from groups :
‘Participants insiders’
and ‘participants outsider’ (us and them), ‘non-participant insiders’ and
‘non-participants outsiders’ (e.g. rich and poor).
Participants
insiders participants
outsider
non-participant
insiders non-participants
outsiders
è Different (religious) worlds are
possible.
In the culture in which Jesus lived there
was only a small group of participant insider. Only a small
elite could be saved (Pharisees and scribes). The majority not for they were
sinners.
Jesus we can put under the insiders (he was
Jew) and participants (people called him rabbi/teacher), as well as under the
non-participants (carpenter’s son). We also could put him under the outsiders
for he crosses the boundaries between Jews and non-Jews. è he is always at the edge.
Important for us Christians is : 1) that Jesus became as a slave (Paul’s letters)
(non-participant) and 2) Jesus identified himself as a stranger (Math 25).
How come that so few Christians wants to become a slave or a stranger?
Jesus who choose
to be an outsider could mix with outsiders. As a Jew (insider) he took stands
for the non-participants and was critical to the participants (religious
elite). è God’s/ Jesus’ primary election is
not the Church but the poor, the nobodies (children, women, deviant,
non-participant males).
Jesus calls to return to what God intended.
It will always b the excluded who are attracted to
Jesus’ message. Jesus told them that they were somebody, that God did not
exclude people. The participants didn’t like to hear this. But even they can
change their lives.
In human lives there will be always
distinction (national, sexe, social), but in the
To follow Jesus is to take up the cross.
Mentors and midwives are those who stand side by side of those who suffer. They
help to make their suffering bearable, and convince them that they are loved.
They can bring out the most noble in individuals, and also breathe the Spirit
in a community.
These mentors and midwives have felt
something of God’s disturbing presence. They try discover
the fullness of life. And they try not to be self-important, but simply integer
people. They proclaim the Good New as not so much by words but by their lives
itself. And they encourage people to spread the Good News to others.
A mentor appears at critical junctions in
life, both affirming and disturbing. He encourages the little ones. « You
are a child of God, so you are worthwhile ».
Our communities needs
mentors who strike the spark of creativity. A good mentor is sensitive to
friction in the communities, knowing how and when to bring healing and peace to
enemies.
Midwives are committed to life and the
well-being of others. They support the mother. Giving new life è she is moral support. While
she is to be found in every culture she has a social, cross-cultural role. She
links past/tradition with the present and future, so she is an agent for
change.
Christians should be midwives, light of the
world, salt of the earth, serving the society, supporting it with wisdom.
People are not born stranger, they are made
stranger. ‘Stranger’ is always seen from an ‘insiders’ perspective. The
insiders make up the boundaries. They expect the stranger to respect it. A
stranger is often seen as one who is not self-sufficient and therefore
dependent. A stranger is expected to accept the hospitality which is offered.
If so, it shows that the stranger is willing to be put in his/her place. From
here a new social identity and relationship can be fashioned.
Many in a society see a stranger as a
potential threat. These ideas give tension. Some strangers feel uncomfortable
and controlled. è They
want to change things and take control. When a stranger is treated as a guest,
s/he feels at ease.
Encounters between stranger and host takes
always place where the host is. It is never an equal relationship. The host is
always ‘up’, the stranger always ‘down’. In general hosts are hospitable and
take the initiative.
Jesus changed
roles, and so status. He moved from being an insider to an outsider, from up to
down, from host to stranger, from master to servant. This means to yield the
initiative and control. In this way neither would cling to power.
How did Jesus do this ?
è As host he made people feel
welcome, and he took the initiative. As guest he allowed the other to take
initiative. And he changed the roles when it was appropriate.
If we want to be followers of Jesus we also have to give up our
status as host and become stranger ourselves regularly.
What can a stranger contribute ?
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A stranger has a different
story.
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A stranger has different
resources, which may be helpful for our society.
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The stranger opens up the microcosmos and bing
the possibility of change.
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The stranger may bring new fire
into the community.
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Every culture needs strangers.
If no strangers come in a culture dies out.
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Yet it is best to develop
slowly the relationships. One has to know another slowly.
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Sometimes there are problems in
the community. A stranger can look at things from a distance.
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Stranger may remain stranger.
He doesn’t have to become like us.