On Easter Sunday we made our way to the top of Bernal Hill to celebrate the resurrection and then descended to our house for a leisurely and prolonged brunch with familiar friends. Spring is a season of new beginnings. The following week we started two Learning Labs called Creating Community that will serve as incubators for our year-long ReIMAGINE tribes experiment. Groups are meeting in flats in the Richmond and Mission Districts. Each week participants take turns leading core practices of Christ-conscious community– a hospitality meal, Eucharist celebration, scripture discussion and group prayer. We are also doing weekly experiments on themes Jesus taught his disciples: service & humility, forgiveness and reconciliation, love, honor and discernment. It is rewarding to see a new generation of people learning to cultivate and practice Christ-conscious community together.
The week after Easter some friends who work with university students invited me to “play Jesus” for an event outside of the student center at San Francisco state. While other volunteers offered passers-by free pancakes and coffee, I introduced myself as “Yeshua the Nazarati” (Jesus of Nazareth). This performance and hospitality sparked lively conversations with students and faculty– among them a German exchange student, several musicians, chemically enhanced neo-hippies, an orthodox Palestinian activist and a surprising number of hip-hop kids. SF State is one of the most diverse college campuses in America. Some themes from my conversations: Jesus is O.K., but organized religion is passé; Life is about seeking your own happiness; if we each seek our bliss we can all get along and see peace.
This month I also spoke at two Bay Area Perspectives courses on Christian community development. When I first started teaching this course seven years ago there was a lot of resistance to the suggestion that there is a vital link between the gospel of Jesus and the call to seek justice locally and globally. The tide is definitely turning– both younger and older participants seemed passionate and eager to tangibly care about the wounds and brokenness in our world. For many people the call to justice feels like a second conversion– a reimagining of what they thought the message of Jesus to be. I try to normalize this awakening by suggesting that we go through many conversions on our way to fully embracing the gospel of Jesus– one of which is the conversion to identify personally with God’s heart for those who are hungry, thirsty, naked, sick, lonely or imprisoned.
Melody Gates, an apprentice in our winter learning lab on creativity, was a key organizer for a large demonstration held recently in San Francisco called, The Rescue. We are pleading with U.S. political officials to petition the U.N. to bring an end to the 23-year year-long rebellion of the Lord’s Resistance Army in Uganda, led by Joseph Kony who has overseen the torture and brutal killing of thousands of people through a savage army he has built from victimized child soldiers. (For more information check out www.invisiblechildren.com) This national effort is being initiative by people acting in the name and Spirit of Jesus. Noah and I along with a group of ReIMAGINE tribe’s people, supported this demonstration involving two thousand participants.
