Let Another World Be Born

“For my people standing staring trying to fashion a better way 

    from confusion, from hypocrisy and misunderstanding,

trying to fashion a world that will hold all the people,

all the faces, all the adams and eves and their countless 

    generations;

Let a new earth rise. Let another world be born.” 

Margaret Walker, For My People

Advent is a time of prophecy embodied. We wait expectantly in faith and hope for not just a new way of being in the world, but a new world. We see how the world is distorted and sense our salvation draws near. Jesus’ arrival, from Jewish prophecy, was thought to bring bodily salvation. To turn the world upside down. Within the Hebrew understanding of salvation history, saving was both a deeply physical act (healing and liberation) and a reality rooted in community. 

This Advent we are in the midst of many transitions and ways prophetic work yields to transformations. Generations are turning over in leadership and ways of engaging in work, service, mission, hope, love and care are shifting too. We (Erin & Mieke) seek new ways of engaging, of being church, that reflect the salvific act we expect and yearn for in this time of Advent—in Christ’s birth, a collective liberation. 

A few weeks ago, for the second time, Erin tested positive for covid; she felt terrible but tried to fake health. About one week in, exhausted and ill, she arrived at our virtual staff meeting. Mieke, co-author of this missive and founder of the firm they both work for, asked for a moment after the meeting. With a stern voice, Erin was told to take several days off. Mieke would pick up meetings and Erin needed to rest. All would be well.

Erin had no choice but to agree. That afternoon, laying in bed with circling thoughts, she began to experience panic, dread, and anxiety. She picked up her phone and texted Mieke. “Can you chat?” She had two worries that needed expression. 

• The first: what if Erin rested, Mieke worked extra hard, and then Mieke later resented the amount of work she had to pick up? Time out of the office later in the month had been planned. Would Mieke be angry if Erin took it? 
• The second: What if Mieke found out through her extra hard work that Erin wasn’t needed after all? What if resting shows how replaceable she is, exchangeable, throw-away-able?

What is our worth?

At the heart of the matter, Erin’s questions reflected what we hear over and over. What am I worth? What is my body worth? Am I worthy of love, of rest?

We have worked for years together, asking our clients to explore their money narratives, their worth narratives, and in turn asking ourselves the same questions. How do our bodies and our worth intersect? It was a vulnerable move for Erin to expose her fear, and it was a precious moment for Mieke to receive it. After years of journeying together we tried, for a minute, to choose to live in a different way. 

Our relationships with money and bodies not only shape our relationship with God, but impact our relationships with each other. The narratives we tell about our worth intersect with our ability to recognize God’s movement in the world. We are unable to imagine what belonging means in the kingdom of God and create structures around these imaginings without decolonizing the relationship between our worth and work. 

“The challenge to change from charity to community-based, from mainline to interreligious, from white-dominant to intercultural, from working for the community to serving with and alongside the community is a move that requires acknowledging the structures that perpetrate and perpetuate poverty, xenophobia, and disenfranchisement.” – the Rev. Dr. Amaury Tañón-Santos 

Dr. Tañón-Santos describes the hard part, right? Our culture is designed to ask what the land will produce and how a person’s worth is connected with the profit they produce. The workings of empires are not tied with community-based, relationship-driven structures. Rather, this economy is often at odds with the kingdom of God where healing comes without consideration of profit gain. Yet, this is not God’s story and our hope is in the prophetic made real, in body. In the everyday moment. 

This Advent we await Jesus’ coming to bring a new kingdom. What does an alternative way of being with and for each other look like in the day to day? It is a prophetic act to claim a new way of being for each other that values people over profit, connection over currency, and belonging over belongings. It is these little prophetic acts, done over and over again, that expose our vulnerable selves to alternative understandings of productivity.

In this way, stewardship is shifted to include how we care for ourselves and for each other. 

As we think about shifting structures and new economies, we are reminded that our faith in Christ’s coming is rooted in our day to day relationships, in our momentary connections that reflect our hope and liberation for the kingdom that is to come.

As we await Christ’s coming, we pray as the poet Margaret Walker does: “Let a new earth rise. Let another world be born.”