I Believe in the Dislocation

A friend of mine sent me the following e-mail the other day:

Did you attend this event?

That’s it: no “Dear Dave” or “Your BFF, Eric.” He’s not a talker, that guy.

But, as a matter of fact, I did attend that event in question, the Chicago leg of Peter Rollins’s pub crawl across the United States, “I Believe in the Insurrection.” Loved it. LOVED. IT. Sponsored by a couple of organized theological conversations in the area, the evening was a liturgy of readings, songs, art and performance by Peter and two of his friends, songwriter Pádraig Ó Tuama and DJ Jonny McEwen, all from Dublin.

Rollins is perhaps most famous for “playing” theology, which includes some manipulation of well-worn passages of Scripture. To the newcomer, this can sound decidedly sacrilegious, and I suppose the jury is still out on how comfortably Rollins sits within Christian orthodoxy (that jury sure does like to deliberate!). But I’d contend–and I think the spirit of the event I attended reflects–that the playfulness that Rollins brings to the Scriptures and the tenets of the Christian faith is rooted in a deadly serious piety: we unleash the Scriptures in order to put to death the presumptions and prejudices we so often saddle them with. Rollins is in good company in his commitment to this practice for reasons well articulated by Robert Farrar Capon in his trilogy on the parables, Kingdom, Grace, Judgment:

My commitment to Scripture as the inspired Word of God–as a sacred deck of cards, not one of which may be discarded and not one of whose spots may be altered or ignored–in no way inhibits me from playing with Scripture. . . .

We may be the oikodespotai of the treasure of God, but we were meant first of all to spend huge amounts of time in the attic just poring over it and trying all of it on for size. And were were meant, above all, to invite the world up into the attic to play dress-up with us. We are supposed to be kids, you see: ‘I thank you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that you have hidden these things from the wise and prudent, and revealed them to babes.’ You can’t get more encouragement than that for holy horsing around.

Anyway, I came out of the Insurrection tour inspired with a theological playfulness, only to immediately dive back into confusing theological terrain. The issue that keeps presenting itself to me lately, in the books I edit for a living and in the books I read for fun, and in some of the conversations I’m having with friends of mine in ministry, is the theological meaning of incarnation.

Much ministry today is modeled after the incarnation of Jesus: the minister (or missionary) enters an environment entirely different from his or her place of origin. In this new place, the person brings good news that has heretofore been hoarded by his or her place of origin: think suburbanite moving to the ghetto to fight for state and federal funding there, or middle-class American moving to Rio De Janairo to help street kids and child prostitutes find alternate ways of feeding themselves and discover the liberating presence of Jesus in their lives. To do incarnational ministry is to go somewhere and do something you never would have done at home.

You would think that incarnational ministry would be a no-brainer; Jesus’ ministry, which took him from the hand of God to the earth and then to the cross, is nothing if not incarnational, and if he did it, so should we, right?

Not so fast: “incarnation” in the wrong hands starts to look a lot like colonization, which starts to look a lot like imperialism, which starts to look a lot like domination. Like any no-brainer, then, incarnation is a strong candidate for teasing and poking–holy play aimed at putting our presumptions to death and bringing the truth back to life.

So, given my immersion of late in the vagaries of incarnational ministry and the complexities of theological play, I thought the time might be right for a mashup. What would happen, I thought, if we played around with the theology behind incarnational ministry?

What if, for example, “incarnation” wasn’t step one in our ministry methodology, but was actually step two? What if before we can incarnate ourselves anywhere, first we need to be dis-incarnated elsewhere? What if we need to dislocate before we relocate?

And, for that matter, what does it mean that an incarnated Jesus is still God, whereas me incarnated is still just little, old, screwed-up me? In short, how might we think of incarnational ministry as something other than showing up unannounced in a foreign place?

So, without further ado, my homage to Peter Rollins and my first foray into the sticky, tricky business of playing with Scripture–in this case, a re-imagining of the events of Genesis 11, where we first meet Abram (later Abraham), our original role model for incarnating ourselves somewhere as an act of blessing. Please be kind: I’m a novice at this sort of thing, and my play, however ponderous, is intended as pious.

***

The LORD had said to Abram, “Leave your country, your people and your father’s household and go to the land I will show you.

“I will make you into a great nation and I will bless you; I will make your name great, and you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and whoever curses you I will curse; and all peoples on earth will be blessed through you.”

So Abram left, as the LORD had told him; and Lot went with him. Abram was seventy-five years old when he set out from Haran. He took his wife Sarai, his nephew Lot, all the possessions they had accumulated and the people they had acquired in Haran, and they set out.

As they reached the city limits of Haran, Abram heard the voice of the LORD.

“Turn around, and return to the land you have left–your country, your people and your father’s household.

“It is here that I will bless you, among these people that I will make you a great nation.

“It is by the modest and simple relationships that you discover anew in this land I am showing you, by the blessings and curses that pass between you and these your countrymen, your people and your father’s household, that all the peoples of the earth will be blessed.”

So Abram returned, as the LORD had told him. And there he found the place they had left, now free of the possessions they had carted off with them. He began to see the simplicity available to him in this place, and he unburdened himself of the vast majority of his wealth, keeping only what was essential to daily life. And he began to see those people he had acquired during his time in Haran with new eyes–less as possessions to be used and cast off, and more as people in need of blessing.

Abraham lived out his remaining years blessing people as he found them, and as they came and went freely (for they were now free to come and go), they spoke of the great man they knew in Haran, and they treated the people they met in the ways that he had treated them. And so the world was blessed because of Abram, and so his name became great.

Photo courtesy of sierraromeo.