Blessed Are Those Who Have No Other Choice

For theirs is the Kin-dom of Heaven

I have been reflecting a lot on something I was told quit frequently toward the beginning of my planting journey. I knew getting people on board for such a non-traditional and un-tested church model would be hard. I knew I was inviting people into a journey and not necessarily a set destination. I was only able to offer people a vision, a hope, and a conviction— the practicals of which would be up to us to work out together, if they so desired to enter into such work.

And so something I was told by mentors, trusted friends, and those who truly believed in what we were doing early on is that I would just have to give people time. Time and experience. When traditional church models and a certain way of “doing church” was all people knew, part of our long journey ahead would be allowing people to simply see a different way forward. A large part of my job would be providing them an opportunity and a space to bear witness to a different kind of community and presence that was just as (if not more) fulfilling as the ideas and preconceptions of church they may have entered in with.

And for a little over a year now, I have seen this to be true. For my soul included, this last year has been an endless revelation of what church and community can mean outside of our preconceived notions and patterns. Our small group of committed disciples has gotten to bear witness to some amazing moments of honesty, transparency, healing, growth, and belonging. We have certainly, each of us, gotten a taste of the kin-dom¹ of God in very real, substantial, and tangible ways.

And this is a hope I have long staked my life on, quite literally— a belief I have placed absurd amounts of faith in: If people could just see the Kin-dom of God before them, if they could only experience the real, substantial, and tangible effects of its goodness, wholeness, and healing, how could they not want it?

And maybe it’s just the nature of overly idealistic beliefs like this one that are destined to be scruffed up, kicked around, and humbled by life’s cruel blows eventually…

Maybe it’s our church’s exciting, yet shifting dynamic causing me to place an increased trust in this belief in ways I have never had to before…

Maybe it’s this past election cycle that revealed a dark reality as to what most people in this country want and what most white protestant Christians are willing to settle for…

Maybe (probably) it’s a combination of all of the above…

But recently, this belief has been through the ringer, and it’s come out the other end a little less rosy and a lot less secure.

The truth is that now, I don’t know nor believe that anyone who sees the Kin-dom of God before them or experiences its real, substantial, and tangible effects will want it. More specifically I don’t know nor believe that people who bear witness to the Kin-dom of God before them won’t simply want something else more.

Over the years, I have borne witness to people choosing power, greed, comfort, security, status, and personal goals over Kin-dom realities constantly. People make such choices everyday. And where once I believed a majority of these folks made such decisions out of pure ignorance, out of solely not knowing there was another option available, my hardened, war-torn experiences have shown me time and time again this is not the case. For many, they will have the Kin-dom of God and all of its goodness, wholeness, and life before them, but also its sacrifices, hardship, and cost and they will simply choose a lesser path. A path of lesser goodness. A path of lesser cost.

And as I have spent some time sitting in this newly developed, far less optimistic reality, I have still been met with a far more grounded hope that keeps my desire alive to work toward a future and an eternity of wholeness for all, regardless of who else may or may not choose to endeavor toward that same work with me. And that hope is this:

The kin-dom of God belongs to those who simply don’t have a choice.

It belongs to those whose lives do not bear the privilege of choosing sacrifice, hardship, or cost. It belongs to those who have only known sacrifice, hardship, and cost. For when there is the privilege of choice, all too often, we will take it to the detriment of even our own flourishing.

In the upside down kin-dom of God, privilege and opportunity is often what will cost us, and what the world costs us is often what allows us the privileged opportunity of seeing the Kin-dom of God rightly.

It is a reality I have begun to truly wrestle with in learning more and more from marginalized and forgotten, yet faithful, religious gatherings from history. The ones that actually made a difference and ended up on the right side of history. The ones that were true displays of community, dependence, mutuality, and hope.² One thing they all had in common? Radical and undeniable need.

And no, I don’t mean the overly-spiritualized, sanitized version of “need” presented from most pulpits on a Sunday mornings— the need for all of us to just accept Jesus into our sinful hearts. I mean real, tangible, life-at-stake needs for food, shelter, safety, provision, and help.

There is a type of community, a type of Kin-dom living, that can only be attained through knowing such a need. That can only be attained through having no other choice but to depend on others, show up for others, fight for each other, and seek just with one another.

So then, much of this job and most of this planting journey hasn’t really been about saving or rescuing anyone from the damages and dangers of our world or of our current church culture. No, with so many wounded souls, disabled bodies, malfunctioning dopamine receptors, and religious outcasts among us, the job has rather been to help this beloved crew of misfits recognize, celebrate, and take in the fruit of what such need and lack in life has divinely revealed to them.

For in their wounds, in the midst of the ashes that is their former religious lives, desired selves, and hoped for communities, when most of us lost any semblance of a choice in what we believed, where we belonged, who we could trust, or who we were, there is the Kin-dom of God.

And as new opportunities, healing, comforts, and privileges return to our lives, my prayer is that we would never lose sight of our center, our hope, our true place of refuge when the powers that be become a little too loud again:

Blessed are the meek
Blessed are the poor
Blessed are those who do not have a choice
Whose lives are marked by suffering, by loss, and by grief
We are afforded the choice to exist in mutuality among them
The choice to take up their causes as our own
For theirs is the Kin-dom, the glory, and the power forever
And it can be ours too
So long as their suffering is ours too
Their loss is ours too
Their grief is ours too
Their fight is ours too
Blessed are we who relentlessly choose the meek, the poor, and those who do not have a choice. 
Ours is the Kin-dom of Heaven.

1. I have been attempting as best I can to transition my use of “kingdom” language to “kin-dom” (a term often used by feminist and liberation theologians) in order to properly reflect the shift in my own beliefs regarding Christ’s desire for community living that is non-hierarchical, non-patriarchal, and anti-imperialist.

2. Hush Harbors, Comunidades Eclesiales de Base (Base Ecclesial Communities), Cesar Chavez and the United Farm Workers of America, Oscar Romero and the campesinos of El Salvador, the Sanctuary Movement of the 1980s, Las Madres de la Plaza de Mayo, etc.