Mark Scandrette

I’ve finally begun reading again after a year and a half of writing. Arrogance, I am understanding is not the same as ego strength, and I’m slowly learning to value the thoughts and experiences of others who have gone before me as much as I value my own thoughts and experiences.  This week I’ve been reading SUBMERGE, written by John Hayes, and other neighbors who work with INNERCHANGE, an urban order among the poor. The message of John’s book resonates with what I am learning on a deeper level right now: that we love our Maker by caring for the needs of people who live in the shadows of empire. Sacred texts like Isaiah 58 and Matthew 25 make it very clear that loving God translates into care for those who are oppressed, lonely and abandoned. People who are hungry, thirsty, naked, sick or imprisioned should always be on our radar of consciousness and relationality. Whenever I have spoken of this recently, there is always a strong reaction– and those responses (defensiveness, justifications, minimizations) really say something about how challenging it is for us to digest the reality that our love for God is measured by our concern for the poor. Perhaps we shouldn’t so readily dismiss the tension we feel and the questions that are raised by the call of justice. Maybe we should always be wrestling with the question, “how am I loving God by caring for all that God has made?”
“Religion that God our father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world.” Yesterday my friend Charley suggested that people who care about justice often play fast and loose with their personal moral ethics– while those who are well-off and (offended or convicted by justice rhetoric) often comfort themselves emphasizing their personal piety and prudence. Seems that we are invited by the brother of the Nazarene to do both– seek justice and attend to our daily personal ethics.
So… back to SUBMERGE. It is a balanced well-articulated and well-lived apologetic for a life after justice in community with others along the same path, with helpful insights from John Hayes, who has has taken the path of “a long obedience.”  It is less a book and more the story of how a community wrestling with the question of how to love God by livingwith and loving the poor.