Because of important things happening where I live, I’ve been thinking a lot about Christians who have relationships of trust with politically and economically powerful people of faith, and and how the former can best connect the later to community constituencies with far less (if any) access. Certainly, Christians who operate across these spheres are called to be bridge-builders, but to build good bridges, I suspect we must know both shores of the chasm. It’s not enough for Christians of privilege to connect Christians of greater privilege with these constituencies by edict. It seems to me that however well we know the rich, we’re called to know the poor better, to know the poor more.
In some senses, bridges and chasms are failures of language. In Christ, we’re called into the bleed of Venn circles, to the realization that we’re all in this together. Sometimes, that’s hard to remember.
This morning, I led the discussion in the Adult Education hours at church in place of the traveling John Franke. I wanted to explore the relationships of Hebrew prophets to power and consider how best we, as Christians in Allentown called into the bleed, can be most faithful. Last night, I read this passage from Pete Rollins before bed.
Don’t read Pete Rollins before bed. Do read Pete Rollins, though. How does “Finding Faith” land for you? I closed the early session by reading this story as a devotion with this disclaimer: “there’s no right or wrong way for it to land. It kept me awake last night and I wanted to share it with you.”
And I want to share it with you.
Chris Cocca 