Unhindered

I am writing from Mali which has had increasing levels of insecurity since late last year, culminating in a coup d'état on March 21, 2012. I am not going to comment here on what has happened or continues to happen. If you are curious look at the BBC Africa page  or Google News and do a search for Mali.

Since late 2009, we have gone through progressive stages of relocating people from the locations best suited for their work and ministry to safer areas. Now we are more or less all in the capital, being told to "shelter in place" by our various embassies. (Has anyone ever successfully "sheltered on the move"?!?) That odd bit of "embassy speak" means we are supposed to stay at home, not go out and respect the curfew - initially a 24-hour curfew and now just 6 pm to 6 a.m.

This week our organization had planned a retreat and a triennial business conference to elect new officers and to look at strategies to best carry out our little corner of God's work here. And now our conference is cancelled, months of planning laid to waste, as people are scattered across the city (and country), "sheltering in place". 

And the question rises, starting as a whimper deep in our guts rising up to something unspoken stuck in our throats: God, how are we supposed to do the work you have called us to do? Circumstances certainly seem to be increasingly limiting, and at the same time opportunities are vast. Why? How?

A few weeks ago, I was struck by something while reading in Eugene Peterson's "Christ Plays in 10,000 places". I began reading this book on my sabbatical about this time last year.As I read pages 296-298, I noted to myself that I should include this in my report to our conference (which is now indefinitely on hold). 

In the third section of Peterson's book, he takes us through Luke and Acts describing God's work in the world: the birth of Jesus and his role in the world in Luke, the birth of the Jesus community and it's role in the world in Acts. 

Luke 2 opens with the Roman emperor calling for a census of the whole (known) world and Acts ends with the leader of the church, Paul, being taken to the center of the known world, Rome. But this is not the end of the story of the Jesus community, but the very first chapter.

So in Acts 28, Paul has been taken to Rome and is under house arrest, chained to a Roman soldier and confined to house arrest for the last 2 years of his life. Paul had just had a disappointing meeting with Jewish leaders in Rome who did not receive him well. Christians are already being persecuted. This sounds pretty familiar to our context, not a lot of freedom to move about. In human terms, it seems daunting at best.

And yet the last verse of Acts (28:31) says that Paul "is preaching the kingdom of God and teaching about the Lord Jesus Christ quite openly and unhindered."  Luke chooses his words very carefully and so he didn't put "unhindered" in there by mistake or just to make the rhyme work. 

"All the emphasis lies on that last phrase.", writes I. Howard Marshall (quoted by Peterson).  "Being chained to a soldier doesn't seem like a promising strategy for accomplishing the salvation of the world." Peterson surmises that this word "unhindered" might not signal the circumstances but rather the means by which the HS accomplishes the kingdom work:

• The gospel has spread "to the ends of the earth" - Rome is the center of the known world. the Kingdom is poised to go out.
• Once resurrection is introduced into any story, all the ways in which we work have to be "rethought, reimagined, and reworked. The world's means can no longer be employed for kingdom ends. We become willing participants not only in what God does but in the way he does it."
• in a Pre-resurrection world, the means the world uses include "power and money, information and technology, lust and avarice, pride and anger." They work rather well but are not God's way. 
• The Jesus community is called to avoid using the world's means instead we should be "unhindered: content and relaxed, practiced and discerning in living the Jesus life in the Jesus way, living a congruence between the resurrection reality and the means by which we give witness and live obediently to it."
  

Peterson says that "the judicial footdragging that has kept Paul mired in prison for years, the religious obduracy of the Jewish leadership, the massacres of Christians in the city DO NOT QUALIFY as HINDRANCES."

Likewise, in God's overall plan the complex security situation in Mali, inability to travel to areas of the country, the need to stay at home. . .  do not qualify as hindrances either to the advancement of the work he has given us!

Lord, give us eyes to see how our "hindrances" are really "opportunities" in your resurrection way of working.