Balancing Kiwis

I’ve been reading Eugene Peterson recently.  He’s a guy with a lot of wisdom from years of trying to figure out “what is this thing we do?”, and I have found many excellent nuggets within.  One of the ideas he writes on is that of “subversive spirituality”.

If we take the concept of “subversive” as meaning to “come up from under” then we see again and again in the life of Jesus that he modeled this with incredible love and power.  He traveled where the religious wouldn’t, hung out with those that others looked down on, and grew The Way directly out of the current cultural contexts of his day.  He brought community out of barrenness, joy out of suffering, love out of torture.  He “walked on the water and swam on the land” (To quote the King Missile classic).

I’ve been asking myself over and again what does this mean for me in my cultural context?. . . Where are the places to seep into, to drench into the ground so that the kingdom can “come up from under” and effect community, faith, hope and love?  Jesus the Liminal lived on the margins, but he also lived right in the very center of life. 

To be subversive spirituals we need to start by being in the center of life.  We get sidetracked by busyness, individualism, mixed agendas, knowledge and ignorance.  To grow the kingdom is to go where He goes and to be on the outer limits.  It is to risk everything, to be held back by nothing.

I approached a friend with a crazy idea a couple of months ago, and asked his thoughts . . . Specifically, I asked “Can you think of a good reason not to do this?”  His answer - “There’s probably a million good reasons to not do this.   But none of that means you shouldn’t”.  We can only bring God’s way ”up from under” when we have first “seeped into”.

And that means risk.

 

This entry was posted on Tuesday, August 29th, 2006 at 10:32 am and is filed under Faith, Revolution. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.