Liberation AND Salvation

I have been following this story of Glide Memorial UMC in San Francisco. Basically, to boil it way down, it's a big church that does a lot of work with the poor, but they got into some conflict with their bishop and now they aren't getting any appointed clergy. They moved away from some standards of United Methodist polity and refused to accept the leadership of appointed clergy, focusing instead on a non-profit foundation carrying their name. I think there are a lot of issues here, around the role of former clergy, around polity, around finances. Of course I don't know the details about all that logistical stuff so I'm not going to comment on that part of it now. Issues like these are usually much more complex than any article can explain or outsider can fully grasp. 
What I am more interested in are the theological issues this situation has raised. Sadly, this church conflict is now major secular news. This article says, "Glide says the schism has to do with its emphasis on social mission work ahead of the spiritual, where the Bishop feels like God should come first."  
Another article says the chair of their board said, "Our focus is saving lives, not saving souls." That article also says they don't have a cross or altar in their worship space. An open letter from the bishop says they don't have Christian worship, but uplifting, secular concerts. 
Too many liberals and conservatives make these hard and fast lines. It's saving souls, or saving lives. It's mission work, or spiritual work. It's Christian worship, or being welcoming. It's liberation theology (the theology that God has a preferential option for and special love of the poor and needy), or soteriology (the notion that God saves us from sin in Jesus Christ). I refuse to choose. What God has joined together, let none of us separate. We need both. 
I can tell you from experience marginalized people-- with addictions, with problems, with a past-- have a deep sense that they are broken. Most of us middle class people look to our bank accounts, diplomas, and achievements and think we are basically good. We repeat religious language about salvation but we don't really believe it-- we think we can handle our souls like we handle most everything else without needing help or needing God. Most people on the margins know better; they know they are sinners who need a Savior. They cry when they sing "Amazing Grace" because it's real for them. 
A serious liberation theology requires a Savior. Not only because the poor, in their hermeneutical privilege (a $10,000 phrase meaning that the poor are better able to understand Scripture), know they need a Savior. The more aware we become of our privilege, of our subtle prejudices and paternalism that do damage to human beings made in the image of God, the more we know we need a Savior. 
Moreover, it's the bodily resurrection of Jesus that makes liberation possible. Jesus, the innocent victim, oppressed by evil, was murdered and raised by God from the dead. Only the resurrection could be powerful enough to accomplish the defeat of oppression and poverty and suffering. If Jesus never rose, liberation is wishful thinking, and ministry with the poor a futile exercise. 
But I want to say in the same breath that any gospel that is unconcerned about the poor is heresy. If you take the Bible seriously it's clear that the poor are the third sacrament. Jesus says, I was hungry and you fed me. I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink. I was a stranger and you welcomed me. If we fail to be in community with the poor we fail to encounter Jesus. Neglecting ministry with the poor should be as unthinkable as neglecting Communion, baptism, Scripture, or preaching, and is equally crippling for the life of the church. 
Methodists, in particular, can't bifurcate the gospel into spiritual and social. We began as a movement of mostly the lower classes of laborers in England. Wesley incurred the wrath of many in his time for denouncing slavery. And Wesley also insisted visiting the poor and the sick and the prisoner-- not just almsgiving but visiting-- was a non optional means of grace, a means just as important as prayer and Scripture of going on to perfection.
I really don't know what all is going on at Glide UMC but reading about their story made me think about the sloppy theology on both ends of the spectrum about ministry with the poor. I believe it's time to do serious, practical liberation theology. It's time to follow the Jesus who saves us from sins both personal and corporate, who delivers from both shame and poverty, who came down from heaven to be poor. 

As the Stone Rolls Away from Your Tomb

Resurrection rouses you from familiar darkness

And snatches back the sleep you craved

Sharp rays of light prying open your eyes

Bone on bone, aching, rattling

This ripping, this tearing of flesh

The dizzying turn from down to up--

And this, your only prayer

Burning up your lungs

Stuck like sludge in your throat:

O holy Trauma, delicious Pain

Come inflict yourself upon me

Who am helpless with no help but You...

Do You Want to Be Made Well? A Poem on John 5:1-12

It’s a holiday, his ears filled with the sound

Of faraway jubilation, folks laughing and eating and

Being together. But he’s alone. Not really, but it feels that way

Everyone alone together, some deaf and some dumb and

Some lame and some blind and everybody half dead. It’s the

Fellowship of freaks, and he’s not sure what his ailment is--

Just sick, sick all over. Sick longer than he can remember.

He’s watched baptisms in the frothy waters but

There’s nobody to take him. So when a voice speaks

He’s never heard before, or perhaps once when time began

He startles. It’s a question, a sharp one—do you want to be made

Well?

But he can’t imagine life right side up. He shows off all he knows:

The practiced art of gloom, the well aged excuse. But the voice cries

Get up! Cuts him seamlessly, from yesterday/today, lifts him

Soaring! from the mat soaked with vomit, hurls him from the pillow dark.

Pick up your mat and walk, and he groans with vertigo

Suspended between no and yes, feet planted firmly on the fork,

Party doors swinging open and he rises to the occasion

Walks steadily to the gleaming

Now.

Reboot

It's been almost 4 years since my last blog post. In college, I blogged fairly regularly with poetry and random little essays. It helped me work on developing my voice as a writer and learn to get comfortable writing for an audience. Which I now have to do every week, albeit in a different format, as a preacher. Then after college, I was in seminary and doing tons of academic writing and writing weekly sermons. Then the year after that I was in full time ministry learning two brand new contexts. 
Now, with the end of Annual Conference, begins my second year of full time ministry and my fourth year of pastoral ministry. And I am convinced that for me to sustain this calling I'm going to have to write. Writing and especially writing poetry is the deepest kind of prayer there is for me. In poetry I can say things to God and hear things from God I never could any other way. 
So some of that is just for me and God. But some of it, I can share, and should share, if there's a chance the Holy Spirit might speak in it for someone else, and so I can grow as a writer. I also hope that blogging publicly will hold me accountable to keep taking time to write, instead of letting work take up all my energy and succumbing to the lazy leisure of television and the Internet. Writing is a more difficult but more rewarding Sabbath. 
Back in 2012 when I began I gave this blog I gave it a rather cliched but heartfelt title. It still fits me. I am a wanderer, itinerant like Jesus. As a United Methodist pastor, I have no permanent home but wander to wherever I am sent. As a writer, I wander, exploring truths from different angles, following threads of inspiration, fragments of verse, wherever they take me. As a Christian, I wander, on a journey to grow in grace and become more and more like Jesus each day. 
The path is uncertain, many particulars unknown, and yet I am not lost. God is with me, and so I can wander but never get truly lost. 
Indeed, I suspect the more I wander in my writing, the more I will be found.