Blogging Towards Sunday

August 19, 2007

Lindsay Lohan, Barry Bonds, Jesus & Your Hair

This week at our church we're having a garden-themed worship celebration, as a guest preacher teaches on "Finding God in our Gardens". The scriptures we'll be centered upon are Luke 12:4-7 and Job 12:1-10.

I'm struck by the words of Luke 12:6-7 in particular:

6Are not five sparrows sold for two pennies? Yet not one of them is forgotten in God’s sight. 7But even the hairs of your head are all counted. Do not be afraid; you are of more value than many sparrows.

In age in which we are so marginalized and dehumanized by massive Chinese-made toy recalls, failing national infastructre and a seemingly powerless presence in our democracy...it's easy to feel that we're inconsequential, not merely unwanted and overlooked but completely inconsequential in the midst of our Global technologically enhanced society. Only the uber-powerful/rich/beautiful are lifted up as individuals - for good or for bad - such as Barry Bonds, Karl Rove, and Lindsay Lohan. How radical of a word then that Jesus says that we are important enough to and for God that all the details of our lives are know, even the number of hairs on our heads.

You might reflect a materialist knee-jerk reaction that such a comment is just some sort of proletariat-dupping statement to make us content with our lives and places as cogs in the global captialist machine...yet I find it transformative. Jesus is saying you don't have to take steroids (or not take them - I don't want to be sued by Mr. Bonds for slander), work as/for the President, or be a Hollywood bad girl to have importance and make-meaning in the universe. Who we are is infinitely important, not because of what we've done or what we may do, but because we ARE, because we are the beloved children of God, because God in Christ made us for, and redeemed us to, such essential existential importance.

How might such knowledge transform us and shape the way we interact with other people? If in our urban day-to-day fight-or-flight reality we remember and act from the affirmation that we are loved, we are known, we are each and all important, when we relate to one another on the street, in the long line at the register, in the crowded BART train, in that committee meeting when that one super-talker just won't shut-up, when we're irritated by other's seemingly incoherent choices and actions? How might it impact the way that we shop in terms of buying products that are manufactures at the expense of those living in the Majority or Southern World?; our actions/silence in terms of injustice and genocide in such places as Darfur and Zimbabwe? And how might such an affirmation of faith and human importance transform the way that we think about ourselves?; and feel about our own importance in terms of making meaning and fighting for justice in our neighborhoods, city, and global economy?

For me I have to believe in a God who loves all people, who loves us deeply, who loves us radically (which is what the life, death and resurrection of Jesus is all about), and who invites us to love each other and oursevles in the same manner. But it's not just a love-fest. It's an outward turning knowledge, a community of participation, passionate meaning-making, and life-affirming faith-given purpose.