I Am Because You Are I Am

September 19, 2007

As a tie-in to the last post:

I just saw a group of daycare kids walking down the street "attached" to a bright, lime-green rope. I don't know how common this "chain gang" daycare travel method is, but everytime I see it I smile (you have an adult at the front and one in the rear - and then this long line of kids holding on to a rope - sometimes with straps over their wrists "attaching" them to the rope). Of course, there's nothing like a bunch of little kids to make me smile. And then I thought, "Sandpeople travel in single file to hide their numbers..." Man, I am a geek.

But...

Here's what also struck me.

Last week's Gospel reading in the lectionary was the parable of the lost sheep and the parable of the lost coin and on the GBOD website Taylor Burton Edwards asked some pretty pointed questions:

So who has gotten lost where the people of your congregation live and work? How do people in your congregation treat these people? Who is out looking for them? Who is staying away from them? Why? How might not looking for the lost actually impoverish you?

One of the things that is shaping my theology and my missiology right now is how interconnected we are. There's an African proverb (that I might have shared here before) that says, "I am because we are." Hillary Rodham Clinton's book a decade ago drew on the premise "It takes a village to raise a child."

So, "How might not looking for the lost actually impoverish you?" Here's something I said on Sunday,

When Lori and the girls go to Blairsville to visit the inlaws without me, there's an empty place inside me the whole time they are gone. I am less because they are not here with me.

And that's true, I think, with the Church. If this is the Body of Christ, and if God's true desire is that everyone would come to faith in Christ - repent - be born again - join the Kingdom of God - then this Body is missing an awful lot of parts - this family is missing too many brothers, sisters and cousins - this kingdom is missing too many citizens.

And so I DO find the term "the lost" to be appropriate in this context - all around me there are people who do not know Jesus. And I am less - and WE are less - without them.

There are a whole bunch of loops on that daycare rope without any hands in them.

And, the African proverb tells only half the story, right? What is the greatest commandment?

Love God with all that you are. "I am because You are I AM."

Second: love your neighbor as yourself. "I am because we are."

I AM

The Waiting

Walking out alone

The night fits like a stone inside a boot heel

Hot and cold winds blow

And no one is here to know the way I feel

The corner I once knew brings me in to view again

So I could stay out late, find new bones to break

But then I’d be dragging home admitting