MIS AMIGOS JUAN Y FELIPE

Juan and Felipe are two Mexican boys who live in Chicago. For nearly a month this summer, while I attended Christian Peacemaker School, I spent a few minutes in daily conversation with them. The boys, ages 8 and 6 responded to a question and answer routine I developed with them. I asked questions which included geography, history, numbers, and famous people. When I stepped out of the classroom for scheduled breaks they were most often standing at the fence with their own question: "Ask us some more questions mister? While I was in Chicago, their father was arrested and was held in jail for a short while. He was deported to Mexico because he was undocumented. Juan and Felipe live with their mother.

LIVE OUT LOUD!

Emile Zola has written,"If you ask me what I can do in this world, as an artist I will answer you, I can live out loud."

I like that! What does it mean for Christians to live out loud? To “live out loud” as a Christian allows one to enter various arenas of life with concern and voice for life. Loud voices of faith are useful ones when they rally human beings around issues such as the green-house effect, depletion of scarce resources, global concentration of financial capital, population explosion, marginalization of unskilled workers, internet-pornography and issues of peace and justice. Loud voices of faith are useful voices when they announce God's passion for the world and God's desires to bring salvation to it.

In the Celtic tradition the Holy Spirit is represented as a bird, but not the peaceful and serene dove landing on Jesus at his baptism. For their symbol of the Holy Spirit, the Celtic Christians chose the Wild Goose. Doves are docile and delicate, but the wild goose is intractable, and unpredictable. Instead of a soft coo, the wild goose is noisy and raucous. The goose is also a messy bird! And it seemed always to be on a pilgrimage. Jesus said that those Christians who were led by the Spirit were like the wind — you don't know where it comes from and you don't know where it's going. Perhaps Christians who take their clue from the wild goose are loose and free themselves. They live lives that are less than predictable. They live life to the fullest (John 10:10). They are wild and free, loud, untamable either by a world that would bind them with lies or by some denominations that would chain them with duty and obligation.

But what does it mean to live our lives out loud? It often means that we have to step out of familiar roles of institutional church membership. Church membership alone is not enough to establish God’s truth; we need ongoing theological reflection and faith in action. Scriptures, creeds, doctrines, offices, sacraments, and liturgies are all “means of salvation”. They are instruments of the Word of God which arouse and sustain faith in the power of the Spirit. But, as Zola writes, we need to “live out loud.” If Christians are not “loud” about faith, the church and her message will be condemned to irrelevance. People are attracted today to the voices and actions of Christians where they find credible responses to felt needs – whether material, communal or spiritual. The question is whether the response offered empowers such people to face their problems, or whether they provide escape routes into fantasy and compensation.

As a Christian I don't want my faith to be reduced to handing out religious tracks, preaching sermons, or entering buildings where I am not supposed to be to “evangelize”. I don’t want my religious life to get stuck in a place like that. For me, living life out loud has meant embracing the view that salvation is about everything, and sharing this message with everyone everywhere. Living life out loud has meant finding a way to create a place or presence for life in my everyday world--with family, with friends, and with strangers. I haven't been completely successful in figuring out how to do this. It is a process that changes as I change. It is a process that engages the world beyond my own everyday world.

The church is also struggling with living its life out loud. In a historic change, non-celibate gays and lesbians can now lead parishes of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA). Everyone doesn't like the decision. But you know what I think? I think the 549 delegates to the ELCA Assembly last August who voted for this change were actually trying to live their lives, and their faith out loud in the model of Jesus Christ. That's what I think. In a manner that is loving, supportive, and open-minded, but definitely out loud.

OBAMA WATCH

Is President Barack Obama's presidency saving capitalism? Timothy Egan in the New York Times, claims that President Obama has indeed saved capitalism. Egan argues that under the Bush watch, America experienced the worst stock market decline in history. As Bush flew home to Texas, the net worth of American households had shrunk. If you needed to finance a house or stay in business, private sector borrowing was dead. In a recent appearance on The Ed Show on MSNBC, Newsweek’s Jonathan Alter credited President Obama with preventing another Great Depression. Host Ed Schultz pointed out that Obama is not receiving credit for recent gains in the stock market. Alter said: "He saved them. He saved their fortunes. We were headed for a depression. We were losing 750,000 jobs a month when he took over. If we'd stayed on pace, we would have had another Great Depression in late 2009. He saved them." History will, no doubt, regard the Obama administration as a presidency that saved America at a crucial point.