Please Leave Your Inner Hero at Home

As someone that spends a significant amount of time thinking through mission, Church and service, I often find myself asking the question, “How can we show Jesus to them?”

 

It’s a good question to ask, right?

 

Many times this question is then followed by a strategic plan for service events, mission trips and educational opportunities. In the name of development, justice and effective programming, I plan how I can show Jesus to others. Did you catch that? I plan how I can show Jesus to others.

 

My desire is that others would experience the love of Christ, a love that radically changed the world. My desire is to feed the hungry and clothe the naked – to bring justice where there is injustice. My desire is to bring the kingdom of God, on earth as it is in heaven. However, to be honest, I often miss the mark when I think about how I can deliver a program or a mission trip that will facilitate this happening. When my motivation is primarily about saving other people, I end up trying to be the hero.

 

But that’s not the way it has to be…

 

 

When I first met Margaret, we were huddled in a small corner office of the Church that hosts YouthWorks on the Cheyenne River reservation in South Dakota. I had arrived on site a few moments earlier and was excited to learn more about this unique context and the statistics of poverty and injustice that I knew had ravaged the place.

 

As I began to listen Margaret, though, these were not the statistics that she rattled off. Margaret spoke with the same soft and peaceful cadence that marks Native American populations. She spoke about Cheyenne River as a place that is defined by history, culture and beauty – rather than violence and poverty. When it came to the Lakota people who live on the Cheyenne River Reservation, Margaret exhibited a love that saw past statistics and looked into the eyes of a beautiful culture – an incredible group of people made up of fellow humans.

 

I learned later that Margaret is an Episcopal priest on the reservation but was not always a resident of Cheyenne River. Like me, like our staff, like the participants on the trip, Margaret had come to this place from somewhere else.

 

This was a place that she had learned to love – not as a hero coming to the rescue, but as a fellow human who was able to look past pain, violence and poverty and see people as beautiful and worth knowing.

 

In my opinion, the work that Margaret does in Cheyenne River is heroic, but Margaret seeks unity with the Lakota people – unity rather than heroism. Since coming to the reservation a few years ago, Margaret has opened the doors of several churches that have not operated in years, invested into children, taught the Bible to her neighbors, sat at funerals with families, explained the Gospel in ways that are relevant to the Lakota people and fully invested into the Native American way of life. All this in the name of unity.

 

 

 

In the first chapter of the Gospel of John, the writer tells a story about a God who transcended time and space and became flesh among us, so that we might be saved. The Word became flesh and as Eugene Peterson puts it, moved into the neighborhood. This incarnational model of Gospel proclamation provides a template for our pursuits in advancing the Gospel today.

 

Seeing relationships and unity as mission is not how many of us have traditionally thought about mission trips; especially trips that only last one week. We think about service projects, feeding the hungry and preaching the Gospel. All of these things are crucially important. However, a gospel that puts working harder over relationships, and heroism over unity, is a false one.

 

A gospel that is not centered on the incarnational way of Christ is an empty gospel at best.

 

American culture is often one that lifts up heroic figures; but the opposite of unity is heroism. Like my friend Margaret in Cheyenne River often reminds us, we all are the ones that need to be saved. We don’t save anyone. Margaret pursues unity, first and foremost. And in this pursuit, something is happening.

 

In unity – Christ is found. In embracing solidarity in the humanity of others – barriers are removed. In the midst of authentic, vulnerable, God-honoring relationships – the Gospel is proclaimed. 

 

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Ben Capps blogs and helps develop training and programming materials for YouthWorks. Ben lives in South Minneapolis with his wife Bekah and daughter Margot and spends a lot of time with emerging adults. His life long goal is to rid the world of boring music, lack luster coffee and shirts that are not made of flannel.