Out of My Mind

By Colin Saxton - General Secretary-Friends United Meeting

Reflection appeared in the March/April Issue of Quaker Life

The Middle Eastern refugees had either fled or been exiled from their homelands for religious or political reasons. They had come to Nepal and settled in this refugee center hoping to be granted permanent asylum by some willing country. Many had been there waiting for years, in the longest case, 17 years. Several had already had their cases reviewed and rejected. Most of the group were Christians or had become Christians in Nepal. Several were there as seekers or simply to be warmed by the fellowship of this gathering. We sang songs in various languages and shared a terrific meal together.

As we sang, I could barely breathe. But it wasn't the thin mountain air that was bothering me. Instead, this felt like a "thin place" - that experience described by some Christian traditions where the boundary between heaven and earth is especially narrowed. I knew this as the overwhelming presence of Christ gathering and uniting us as a people in ways I have rarely experienced before or since.

In a world that insists on dividing, alienating, oppressing and killing people based on the color of skin, gender, economic or class/caste status, I saw what may have been the clearest picture of heaven I have ever seen. There, gathered in and around Jesus, members of many tribes, tongues and nations came together in unity, to speak with one voice and to be one people. In this moment of worship, we lived out among ourselves the fullness of God's reconciling power.

Across the open-aired terrace, I looked into the eyes of an Iraqi brother in Christ. As we spoke together, there was a real and visceral kinship between us. Despite our respective political leaders' decisions to insist we are enemies, we both understood a deeper, eternal truth. Long after the memory of his government or mine would be remembered, when history would be rolled up as a scroll, our unity as brothers would endure and, in fact, be complete. The thought that we could somehow commit an act of violence against each other over earthly political differences was, to us, an abomination.

The experience of unity is a great gift. Sustaining unity, well, that is a whole other matter full of problems, challenges and landmines just waiting to be stepped on. There are real and important differences that come between us at times. Like most Friends I know, I have to "die for" issues. These are the beliefs, commitments and practices so core to my identity as a follower of God that I would rather die than betray them. It is these matters of conscience that often spur us to make a principled stand on some social, political or theological issue when we feel challenged or see the necessity for change. I love this prophetic impulse, and the world is richer for it even though it can lead to conflict among ourselves and with others.

For all of our principled moral and doctrinal stands, however, I keep wondering, "Why is there almost never a principled stand for unity, at least among those who are followers of Christ?" In fact, in the face of our conflicts, it seems the prospect of unity is one of the first things we jettison as a possible outcome, rather than the last.

Throughout the pages of the New Testament, the priority for unity is overwhelmingly clear. Key to this is the fact that Christ had already united all brothers and sisters in Him. They were knit together by the common Holy Spirit, being formed and shaped in one Body comprised of many distinct parts. Whatever human divisions that had previously caused separation were now leveled by the reconciling presence of Jesus. This is the gospel at its core - we who are in Christ are one.

What is left for us, the New Testament's writers plead and cajole, is to live into this reality with such passion and devotion that we will experience a unity that transcends our diversity.

Unity, I admit is not easy, but is essential. It is at the core of our identity as Christ followers. The costly peace of Christ waged and won at the expense of his very life makes it so.

Unity for unity's sake serves no one. Unity for Christ's sake serves us all and the world.

Is anyone willing to take a stand for it, or even more, consider dying for it?

So far in this series onFive Ways to Respond to the Letter from Birmingham Jail, we've talked about celebrating the progress that has already been achieved,confessing the sins of the past and the present for myself and corporately,continuing the struggleagainst prejudice and racism today. Today I want to introduce the fourth way I want to respond: finding the new fights which MLK and the Civil Rights Movement should inform us in today.

Cultural Evils

We would too often like to freeze our Black leaders in carbonine, making them our own "Han Solo of 1968," rather than letting them live on in their own path. We do this with Martin Luther King, Jr. himself. Since he was killed in his prime we can think that he would have continued to fight the same fight in the same way. But we see by reading his works and speeches that he was already working for many other oppressed people, the poor in particular. One of the ways I can learn from the Letter from Birmingham Jail is to unfreeze MLK and let his movement live on again in my heart by fighting the new fights.

I'll return to this thought at the end of this, but for now let me say that I think that the Letter from Birmingham Jail inspires me to think about the cultural evils all around me that make things "okay" that are simply not "okay." Many of our cultural evils are perpetuated in a way that has little to do with the law, and are about . Around the world people are always inventing ways to oppress other people, or they are resurrecting old patterns of oppression (the history of Afganistan is a case-study in the latter.) I see people actively working for women's rights and against human trafficking. I see people alert to new signs of ethnic cleansing,  and others working for the rights of indigenous peoples, or the rights of children (which for me includes those children who are unborn). Multi-national corporations and the ubiquitous nature of the internet have both caused us to ask human rights questions that cause many to fight new fights.

In each of these cases there is a new topography to evil, even if there is a longer history and track-record of oppression  What is not new is that those in power will often oppress those without it. Power corrupts, and in systems where power becomes more and more absolute the tendency is for the oppression to be absolutely insurmountable without someone else with power, whether it be the power of communication, government, community mobilization, networking, or even scholarship, must speak truth into the vacuum cultural evils create. I believe each new generation has within it an inner light to find these new fights and to fight them valiantly, if we can cultivate it. As a Christian I believe the Church is the greatest power to fight these evils. However all too often the Church looks the other way (as it too often did in the American Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s) with only the more active Churches and Christian leaders as exceptions.  At other times the Church is actually complicit in the cultural evils itself (as it was in American Slavery from the beginning and right up until the Civil War, with only a few abolitionist movements, like we Wesleyans) as exceptions. But when the church is at its best (as it was among abolitionist churches and civil rights movement churches) there is no more powerful force on earth for change.

In part because of the example of the Letter from Birmingham Jail, I feel compelled to fight the new fights that come our way as evil reinvents itself in every age. (to continue reading follow link below)

For full article, click HERE

As Congress works on the final details of legislation on Immigration Reform, lets continue to pray for our political leaders, the President, and more importantly for the millions of immigrants that will be affected by this legislation.

Link to CCT statement on Immigration Reform - HERE