Blessed Maundy Thursday. . . God’s invitation to “wash up before dinner.”

Imagine a God who doesn’t demand your worship, mindless obedience, or tithes but actually serves you out of love, simply because that’s who God is. . .

Imagine a God, so located within God’s own identity that God isn’t concerned what others would think, nor bows to societal, religious, or cultural pressures but is present to what is most real. . .

Imagine a God who takes the most holy day of your tradition(s) and through God’s own presence throws open the table so that all are welcome, especially those who’ve been told in a thousand ways that they don’t deserve a seat. . .

Imagine a God who dines with those riddled with doubt, or who think that God isn’t revolutionary enough/or in the “right” ways, or who even deny or betray God. . .

Imagine a God who desires – even needs – real relationships, communing as the Godhead, and with friends
even if God’s friends can’t seem to stay awake. . .

Imagine a God who rejects violence enacted on God’s behalf, healing the oppressor and inviting followers to put away their weapons. . .

Imagine a God who suffers. . .

That’s the kind of God I’d be interested in getting to know. . .

As far as I understand, this is getting at the role Maundy Thursday plays in the annual enactment of Christ’s life; this is getting at what we are observing and remembering and discovering afresh. . .

Have a blessed Maundy Thursday, and for Christ’s sake wash up before dinner!

Gratitude and credit to Dr. Dwight Friesen, original post: ““

The post “The Kind of God I’d Be Interested in Getting to Know”: A Guest Post by Dr. Dwight Friesen appeared first on ÌìĂÀÊÓÆ” of Theology & Psychology.

All summer long ÌìĂÀÊÓÆ” core faculty have engaged a process of , ongoing dialogue, and self-examination about race and through weekly blogging. We’ve taken turns writing posts, and engaging a peer review process with each other’s work so as to stimulate deeper and even more thoughtful reflection about white-body supremacy and what it may look like for our school to become a truly anti-racist¹ learning community.

My colleague sometimes challenges me, “You don’t know! And you can’t help!”² I love him for this. I need lots of support decentering the lie that, “I know and can help” . . . or even worse that I “know better” and “they need me.” Whiteness Christianity groomed me to anticipate my superiority in nearly every situation. When I’m honest, it kinda felt good to choose to believe God predestined me as a uniquely vital Divine instrument for the salvation of others. Turns out this is a white lie. I’ve been unlearning this theological invention for decades now. I may have been discipled into whiteness Christianity, but I am in the process of being saved from myopic, whiteness evangelical religion.

Whiteness divides. Segregation is the goal of whiteness, and completely antithetical to the Gospel. From Genesis to Revelation, we see God reconciling all facets of the relational ecosystem that is creation to each other and to the Divine in Christ. Jesus summed up all scripture saying, “Love God and love your neighbor as yourself.”³ Love and segregation are incompatible; as are love and black-body racism. The scandal of Jesus’ words is that love is always located in the real. Love is particular. It is needful of the other; it’s relational and proximate; never ideological, or theological, or even religious.

My emerging sense is that we cannot separate love of self from love of neighbor or from love of God. These three loves are interpenetrating, interanimating, inseparable
 perichoretic, maybe? If you were to really love your neighbor, you would be loving God and yourself. If you were to really love God, you would be loving yourself and your neighbor. Moreover, if you were truly able to love yourself, you would already be loving God and loving your neighbor, so
 “who is your neighbor?”⁴

Dr. Willie James Jennings writes that “Segregated spaces must be turned toward living places where people construct together an every day that turns life in health-giving directions. Overcoming whiteness begins by reconfiguring life geographically so that all the flows work differently
”⁵ Here are my questions for us as a school: Where are we? Who is already here? And how might we discover God’s Shalom in relation with our neighbors? How might our “flows” work differently?

So much more needs to be said; even more needs to be done and undone. Like the man who came to Jesus you’ll read in my paraphrase of Matthew, I am infected by whiteness
 as are many of the systems “necessary” for ÌìĂÀÊÓÆ” to operate. Systemic and personal racism have no place in God’s kingdom. The Gospel of Jesus Christ necessitates our school’s work and my personal work to be utterly anti-racist. A practical way to begin is tangibly and holistically loving God by loving your neighbor as yourself while together discovering how to reconfigure life geographically. As Jesus suggests, humanly speaking, it may seem impossible. “But with God
”

Peace,
Dwight

I’ve reimagined this passage, Matthew 19:16-26, within this context, and written it below:

“A highly privileged, White seminary professor came to Jesus with this question: “Teacher, what good thing must I do to know eternal life?”

“Why ask me about what is good?” Jesus replied. “There is only One who is good. But to answer your question—if you want to receive eternal life, keep the commandments.”

“Which ones?” the White professor asked.

And Jesus replied: “‘You must not murder. You must not commit adultery. You must not steal. You must not testify falsely. Honor your father and mother. Love your neighbor as yourself.’”

“I’ve done all that,” the White man replied. “What’s left?”

Jesus told him, “If you want to give it all you’ve got, go interrogate your privilege, learn antiracist ways, all the while seeking reparations and equity, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me.”

But when the White man heard this, he went away sad, for he was very privileged.

Then Jesus said to his disciples, “I tell you the truth, it is very hard for a White person to enter the Kingdom of Heaven. I’ll say it again—it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a White person to enter the Kingdom of God!”

The disciples were astounded. “Then who in the world can be saved?” they asked. Jesus looked at them intently and said, “Humanly speaking, it is impossible. But with God everything is possible.”

Resources

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We’re reminded of the power of place every year when we host —a gathering of hundreds of leaders and practitioners from around the world, grounded in the conviction that the nature of our service should be shaped not only by our individual identities and callings, but by the very particular stories of the places we serve. Dr. Dwight Friesen, Associate Professor of Practical Theology, is one of the organizers of Inhabit, and he helps equip ÌìĂÀÊÓÆ” students to explore the intersections between their stories, the story of God, and the story of the places they inhabit.

“Part of my work here at ÌìĂÀÊÓÆ” is to attend to what it means to be located. We are not just souls, and we’re not just bodied souls. Our bodies are actually placed somewhere,” says Dr. Friesen. “In fact, I would say that one of the greatest teachers God gives us is the place where we are, the ecosystem that gives us life and invites us to attend to what our presence looks like, what our footprint is in the everyday stuff of life.”

“One of the greatest teachers God gives us is the place where we are.”

The intersection of those threads—your story, God’s story, the story of your place—is where transformative relationships happen, and it’s where we are most able to step into the sort of wise, creative, and hospitable service that our world so desperately needs.

“When we hide behind doctrine or ideology or even an ‘issue,’ it allows us to become almost adversarial toward those who do not hold the same view. When you stay located in place, however, all of a sudden those issues are not issues. Those issues are actually people, people with names who you are encountering. It takes it out of abstraction and into relationship. That’s what we try to do here at ÌìĂÀÊÓÆ”.”

We’ll be diving into this April 26-27 at the Inhabit Conference, two days of inspired teaching, energizing stories, and thought-provoking workshops.

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