If you’ve listened to more than one interview or sermon from
our new Presiding Bishop, the Most Rev. Michael B. Curry, no doubt you’ve
encountered this phrase: “The Jesus
Movement.”
Like every good
public figure, Michael has given us a tagline, a sound bite, by which to
identify his core message and mission as our new leader.
I’ve been excited by these three words… and spent some time
on my morning walk trying to unpack what it is that gets me going when I hear
“the Jesus Movement.”
I realized, in part, that I am attracted to the edgy,
radical nature of a “movement.” I am
just old enough to be considered part
of the baby boomer generation… and just young
enough to have missed a full engagement
with the 1960s and its provocative,
sit-in-protest-Woodstock-free-love-drug-hazed-rock-and-roll- days. There were
several movements in that era, carried along by our country’s young adults challenging
injustice and the status quo. I will
admit that I have romanticized that era, and- in spite of having brothers in
the Navy and the Army during the Vietnam war- I seem to step over the memories
of the carnage of war, students killed on university campuses and riots
surrounding racial justice. I’ve clung
onto the idea of a “movement” as something that sounds brave, thrilling and
prophetic. And, I think that movements are, brave, thrilling and prophetic. But they have their costs as well
as their rewards. The 1960s “movement”
dubbed as “anti-authoritarian” struggled to effect change in civil rights,
women’s rights and issues human sexuality. It cost lives, included no small
amount of violence and strife and… it made great strides. And, as I look around today, there’s still
plenty of work to do. The Jesus Movement is not, in my mind, the next-best-plan
for how to solve our on-going social ills; it is a way of life that changes us at our very core- when we “turn and accept Jesus as our Lord,
putting our whole trust in his grace and love. “(BCP pg. 301)
I wonder what Presiding Bishop Curry really means when he
talks about the Jesus Movement. It’s too
early to know, but here’s what I’m hoping for:
·
A re-focusing on living our lives with the
teachings of Jesus as the center point
·
Support for the actions that flow from a sharpened
focus
·
A letting go of structures- institutional,
physical, and hierarchical- that do not serve us as we follow Christ. A release
of the need to perpetuate systems for systems’ sake.
·
The freedom to deviate from the norm for the
sake of justice, joy, progress
·
The holding up of community as a necessary
component for action. (A “movement’ requires group participation)
·
The exercise of that community in prayer,
worship, fellowship, sharing time at table and hearth together.
·
The exploration of new ways of “being church”
that dissolves boundaries and reaches into our neighborhoods… our local
contexts.
That’s just a beginning…
I wonder how you imagine the Jesus Movement to look as it shapes up.
The truth is we’ve been at this Jesus Movement for a couple
of thousand years. It was kindled by a
Jewish rabbi who gathered some fisherman, a tax collector, a few prostitutes
and sinners and taught them God’s way of justice and peace and love. It was catapulted into a scary, electric, compelling, risky venture at dawn on the first Easter morning when the stone was found
rolled away and the tomb empty. Since
that moment, the power of Jesus the Christ, the resurrected One, has been pulling us forward, gathering steam and
working to make justice, peace and love
part of our common experience. We’ve added some layers, as humans are wont to
do: layers of ritual, tradition, thought
and argument, buildings, corporate structure… and now…it’s time to get back- to
the movement.
How will you join the Jesus Movement? How are you already at work as one of its
followers? One of his followers? And where do
you think we’ll go, next?
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