Breathing Differently

This February, temporary occurrences threaten to distract our focus from those monumental events which give true shape to our identity and purpose.

As Americans we want to take some special time to focus on and to celebrate the gifts our society and culture relish in from contributions of African Americans. As Christians we want to begin an annual time of remembering and responding to the gift God gives us in the passion and death of Jesus which we celebrate in Lent.

This year we’re doing that amidst a dream most of us share to live out the rest of 2007 in a Super Bowl city. Too bad that’s not our only distraction.

The legislature is in long session, to build a budget. We’re again beset with value choices which will shape how we live, regardless of our Colts’ achievement of the football field. Decisions about: education, (full-day Kindergarten and modifying ISTEP [again!]); health care (providing access to those unable to afford insurance); criminal justice (to reduce jail overcrowding and decrease “good-time” earned by those incarcerated); gambling (increasing video gaming and “leasing” the state-operated lottery); and, road-building (by private contractors who will “own” these proposed toll roads). Lest we forget, the proposed amendment to the state’s constitution, banning gay marriage, is up for second passage by both houses. This is required for the amendment to be on the general election ballot in 2008, coincidentally, a presidential election year.

Beyond the issues, the legislature must determine the tax strategies required to fund our shifting values. These will effect all of us, without concern for either our ethnicity's or our faith postures.

While we may be the first Hoosiers to breathe Super Bowl, we’re not the first citizens to remember Black History. Neither are we the first Christians to remember the way of the cross.

We celebrate differently because we remember differently. We stand amidst the ancestors whose courage, long-suffering and joy still propel our own becoming. They stood for the freedom of all persons, as imagio dei (image of God). They laid down their lives for equal access and opportunity.

We stand at the cross of Jesus whose blood still sets us all free to be people of God. While our ethnicity's diverge and converge, though our faith postures vary and coalesce, by the Spirit of the risen Jesus poured out upon us, we breathe differently. In that breathing space some of us are interested in thinking critically about God, faith, personhood, world, and our life together in that mix. Others seem more interested in practicing a personal faith. The latter, it seems to me, goes something like this: the Bible says it; I believe it; that settles it.

However we breathe, inside the space where the ruach (wind / spirit) of God sustains us, our practices ought not to be about either sucking the oxygen out of the room, or blowing out the life-spirit of any other. Inside this different breathing space neither of those results can be on our conscious agenda, nor can we allow them to stand as the unintended consequences of our cross-remembering, cross-celebrating practices.

When you’re finished celebrating our Colts victory, no doubt a monumental event, please also remember to make your opinions known to our legislators from the depths of your identity-shaping, purpose-making remembering and celebrating in Jesus’ name.

Together, remembering and celebrating, our focus is sure and our future is certain. I look forward to the awesome experiences this February holds out for us as we keep on Sharin’ Plenty Good News!