Living and working in the neighborhood has been a time of real growth. I imagine the time as time spent at a table eating rich, filling food for some reason. But when I sit and think about this year, it becomes clear to me that there are things I have learned from being in a Christian community and then there are lessons learned from the neighborhood itself. The lessons have often been hard and at times discouraging, and I don't think I would see the silver lining in either without Scriptural encouragement to trust in.
I suppose one of the lessons that the neighborhood has taught me would be that a very real, tangible kind of racism still exists in our society today. This racism still manifests itself in the form of segregation. Physical, cultural, spiritual, and economic walls have been thrown up all around inner city communities like Binghampton and Orange Mound. As several authors of the books we have read mentioned, the goal of church culture is seldom to lift these communities out of exile, but instead to sit back and welcome anyone worthy to join them after they have made it out of the ghetto. I think that the term exile is really effectively to describe the situation of people living in the inner city neighborhoods of the world. Technically, exile is a noun meaning "the state or period of forced absence from one's country or home." Residents of America's inner cities have, as a result of several forces like racism and classism, ended up in a state of forced absence from the rest of society. People, who were originally created to live in right relationships with each other, have been separated and are now hostile towards each other. Blighted inner city communities consist of the kind of people with which the "healthy" world does not want to interact with. People with means have moved away into homogeneous suburbs with homogeneous school districts. Businesses have followed people in this flight and have left inner city communities underserved. Private school systems have popped up creating a segregated educational system. People left in the inner city have been forcibly exiled from the functioning world. They are the product of the selfishness and ignorance of people who are intended to be in community together. Now, the affluent world has not so much denied this responsibility as it has conveniently forgotten it.
I say all this, I suppose, because seeing the result of this exile is pretty powerful. The neighborhood has taught me that only Christ is capable of truly bringing about spiritual and physical change here. Without an understanding of Christ's call to go to places like Binghampton and make disciples, people would really have no reason to interact with this community at all. The neighborhood has taught me that Christians have to take responsibility and once again return to places and people previously exiled and so as to be salt and light. It’s a tremendous call and I have only recently heard it.
What has made this particular lesson so poignant has been the times that I have gone out to big, affluent suburban churches to speak about the work SOS is doing. The times I have gone to these churches with Big Dog have been even more interesting. These trips stand out to me for a few reasons. The first reason is that although what I have to say about SOS is almost always well received, I have never heard someone indicate that they desire to do anything more than perhaps write a check or volunteer once and a while with us. Perhaps I have just missed it, but it appears that most people are very willing to see us as uniquely equipped missionaries rather than regular people. We get patted on the back just for doing what we are clearly called to do by Jesus himself. I think looking for easy ways to volunteer a few times or writing checks have just become ways church folks assuage guilt. I have yet to see someone compelled to be involved with the ministry that is going on in Binghampton with any depth. I assume a great deal that perhaps I'm not in position to assume, but I know that for the most part the church in America has failed our inner cities. We refuse to acknowledge that our desire for comforts and the pursuit of the American dream has left our brothers and sisters in the inner cities to fend for themselves and wallow in the situation our flight from responsibility has created. Rather than jump alongside those serving in the inner city, most are comfortable offering prayers cheapened by an unwillingness to make personal sacrifices in the name of service.
Another thing that has become painfully obvious to me as a result of my time sharing about SOS in suburban churches is that we are still a society full of prejudices and racism. Folks at the largely white churches leap at the chance to interact with Big Dog, a very large black brother. Yes, he is a charming man with an incredible testimony, but there is no way I could be convinced that they would treat him the way they do if he was white. At one church in particular, after being introduced to a man Marlon had just met, the man I shook hands with moments before acted as if I had turned and walked away. Shortly thereafter a circle of middle-aged white guys formed around Big Dog. Despite his attempts to include me in the conversation, attention remained focused exclusively on Marlon. I simply was not interesting enough to merit even a second look. I am sure that it was because these guys, despite being decent people, rarely interact with an African-American in their daily lives. When the opportunity does present itself they leap at the opportunity, almost as if it was a way of assuring themselves that they are accepting and not in any way racist after all. The slow developing exile that has so clearly divided class lines here in the South has created to different worlds, a white world and a black world.
For all the despair and darkness I know see around me, and for all the problems I have been exposed to living here in Memphis, I still have not resigned myself to real frustration. It’s because I trust that Jesus Christ will continue to work and will continue to push people towards true reconciliation and true Kingdom work. There is so much good being done here and it’s been an incredible blessing to be a part of it all. After all, I keep reminding myself that the greater the problems here in this world, the more glorious New Jerusalem will be when Christ comes back and sets things right.
April, 2009