The Blessed New Abnormal--May 19, 2020

The Blessed New Abnormal--May 19, 2020

"While they were searching for Paul and Silas to bring them out to the assembly, they attacked Jason's house. When they could not find them, they dragged Jason and some believers before the city authorities, shouting, 'These people who have been turning the world upside down have come here also, and Jason has entertained them as guests. THey are all acting contrary to the decrees of the emperor, sayign that there is another king named Jesus.' The people and the city officials were distrubed when they heard this, and after they had taken bail from Jason and the others, they let them go." [Acts 17:5b-8]

While we are all in our own ways longing for a return "to normal" these days, maybe it's worth calling a brief time-eth out to remember that for the first Christians, it was precisely their faith in Jesus that wrecked their old understanding of "normal" life, and left it in shards.  For the earliest followers of Jesus, living out their faith didn't mean trying as hard as possible to get things "back" to how someone imagined they "used to be," but in fact, living in a blessed new abnormal, a life that reordered everything in light of the resurrection of Jesus.

Don't get me wrong.  In these days when businesses have been closed, schools moved online, church buildings locked, and restaurant dining and movie theaters all relegated to memory, there are lots of things I would like to get back to doing.  More importantly, I look forward to seeing folks in my community without the worries of where their income will come from, or whether their businesses can make it.  If I got wishes, yes, all of that would be my wish.  But in a deeper kind of way, I know there is a temptation all the time--not just during pandemics--to see faith as a sort of force field of inertia, a sort of insulation against things changing.  It can be really, really alluring to assume that there is some perfect "way it once was" from earlier in our lifetimes, and that Christianity is always on the side of getting things to "how it used to be," because, honestly, there is something comforting about the idea of going back to what is familiar.

We certainly don't like to see Christians as "disturbers of the peace" or "troublemakers," but would rather think of the church's calling as being a big soft blanket for all the world to snuggle up in, rather than overturning tables.  It is always comforting (but with a false comfort) to assume that God's job in the world is to maintain the order of the status quo--of keeping things the way they are, or at least of getting things "back" to how we imagine in our selective memory that "things used to be."  And so often, we turn the resurrection of Jesus basically into a cosmic "And everything went back to normal" happy ending, like on a sitcom.  In the sitcoms of my childhood, tensions could be raised and situations could be stressful up until about the last five minutes of each episode, so that everything could be resolved and "go back to normal" in time for next week, so that you could start again from the same wacky premise and have another short-lived round of problems.  And I think sometimes we project that onto the story of Jesus, like his death is the problem and his resurrection cancels his death, so that everything can go back to the way it "used to be."

But the earliest Christians certainly didn't see things that way.  They were convinced that with the death and resurrection of Jesus (together, as one united event) changed everything in the world, and that things were never going back to normal--at least not completely.  In fact, the early church was convinced that was at the heart of the Good News: because Jesus is risen from the dead, nothing will ever be the same--thank God!  Their hope was that Jesus' resurrection changed everything.  The message they spread was that because of Jesus, "the way it always was" was not coming back--because they had seen and lived through all kinds of rottenness in the old order of things.

So notice that when a group of Christians in the city of Thessalonica welcomes Paul and Silas, the local authorities get called in on charges that these followers of Jesus "are turning the world upside down."  They are charged with being a threat to the rule of the emperor, and even the one who was just the host (someone named Jason) gets accused of disturbing the peace and causing trouble.  Notice, too, that we don't get any speeches here from Paul or Jason or anybody refuting that charge.  They don't say, "Oh, no, don't worry--we won't actually say or do anything that would change the world; we're pretty much harmless that way."  But in fact, these are the charges that stick against the early Christians--we were seen as people who announced that God was doing something new, not that God was propping up the ways of "how it used to be."

I wonder, then, whether we need to reconsider how we see the moment we are living in.  Like I say, there's a lot about life before we all got used to words like "quarantine," "stay-at-home order," and "coronavirus," that I will be tickled pink to get back to.  And, yes, we can be voices of encouragement and a presence of help for friends and neighbors who are just trying to get through and get by until they can get "back" to where things were before, whether in their business life, or family life, or schooling.

But if all we have to say in this moment is, "How long until things can go back to exactly-the-way-they-were before?" we will have missed a chance to step into God's promised future, and the world will be the poorer for that missed opportunity.  Maybe this is a time for us not only to grieve the disruptions and losses of this season of our lives, but also to acknowledge how much was broken and how many suffered in what we all agreed to call "normal."  Maybe we can expand our faithful imaginations to see God doing something new that brings us more fully to life in the next chapter of history that will be written.  Maybe we can see with new eyes how Jesus' resurrection turns everything upside down.

After all, in the ancient Roman Empire, what everyone called "normal" (you know, before them trouble-makin' peace-disturbin' Christians came on the scene) was a world in which a lot of people lived their entire lives in slavery, women were regarded generally as property, children were often treated as non-persons, and the assumption was that whoever had the most power, biggest army, and greatest wealth was "right," no matter who they conquered, killed, or stepped on in order to maintain their empire.  That's the world of the Roman Empire in the first century, and that's what everybody accepted as "normal."  Normal, after all, just means "the ways we have gotten used to."  

When Christians spread across the empire, in a lot of places it led to people questioning what "normal" was, and why it was so important to preserve it forever.  Christians created this new kind of community where women and men were both treated like equals (at least in some places, see Galatians 3) and could hold leadership positions. Christians view children as important and of infinite worth, even if they couldn't earn a living and apart from carrying on the family name.  Christians insisted that those who were enslaved were made free in Christ, and pressured those who owned slaves to release them.  Christians created a new kind of community where language, culture, and whatever other labels you had stuck on you before didn't define you or limit you anymore.  And they did all this, well aware that to the powers of the day, it all looked like turning the world upside down.  But they were convinced that if Jesus was Lord, the Caesar wasn't, and that all the things Rome insisted would remain in place forever were being turned upside-down by the God who raises the dead.  The early church didn't draw people by promising, "Jesus will help get things back to normal!"  They set the world on fire by announcing, "God is doing a new thing, and it is blessedly abnormal! Come be a part of it!"

I am reminded of a speech of Dr. King's (delivered at Western Michigan University in December of 1963) that seems very much steeped in this passage from Acts 17. King said, "There are certain things in our nation and in the world (about) which I am proud to be maladjusted and which I hope all men of good-will will be maladjusted until the good societies realize. I say very honestly that I never intend to become adjusted to segregation and discrimination. I never intend to become adjusted to religious bigotry. I never intend to adjust myself to economic conditions that will take necessities from the many to give luxuries to the few, leave millions of G-d’s children smothering in an air tight cage of poverty in the midst of an affluent society. I never intend to adjust myself to the madness of militarism, to self‐defeating effects of physical violence."

What if the goal for us as followers of Jesus is not merely to get things always and forever "back to normal," just because we assume "normal" equals "comfortable," but what if, rather, our calling is to let Jesus turn the old order of things upside-down, as the resurrection makes possible a blessed new "abnormal"?  What if we are being pulled into an ongoing metamorphosis for all creation, in which God is bringing us more and more fully to life out of all the places we have settled for death as "normal"?  What if, every time we let Christ's love change our hardened hearts, every time we dare to ask, "How can we help the folks who weren't doing so great in the old version of normal?", and every time we let God widen our vision, we saw that as good news?

Then maybe, we could be a little more thoughtful about how much of the old "normal" we want to rush back to... and how much of the old world God has it in mind to turn upside-down in Christ?  It turns out, we Christians have a long legacy of troublemaking and disturbing the peace with the news of resurrection.  Maybe today's a day to live up to that legacy.

Lord Jesus, turn us upside down, and keep us forever creatively maladjusted to everything that resists your reign of justice and mercy.