CCM September Article-The Power of One (unedited)
 Margaret Becker                                                    
 
It Started With One It took everything I had not to sob as I looked out the window of the 737 on approach to LaGuardia airport. It was nine days after 9/11, and where the beautiful twin towers once stood there rose an eerie cloud of gas and dust, illuminated from underneath, like a gray dandelion lit from below. I am a native New Yorker. I lived there when 7th avenue was not safe to walk, and when being out after dark was Russian roulette. But I also lived there when the Twin Towers were the mark of urban architectural achievement, when children grew up dreaming of working in them, when class trips were made to their summits, to see the world from God’s angle. Evident even from 10 miles away now at night, was the indescribable destruction. My city, the skyline, forever changed by the determined destruction wrought by one single man, evangelizing, proselytizing others to his cause. It started with one. Everything starts with one, both good and bad. It’s what I remember as I travel through life and someone asks me what I do for a living. I take the low-key approach, I write music and books. Which is always then followed by the next question, What kind of music and books? Which inevitably starts the verbal chess game, where they probe and I precariously proceed. I find myself praying internally during these encounters, asking Jesus to give just enough of this and not too much of that. This and that are my present dilemma: how do I describe my passion— to communicate God’s gospel effectively in a culturally relevant way—without bumping into pre-conceived notions concerning the words, Christian, Jesus, Gospel, etc.? They are there. The notions and misconceptions are both gross and prevalent in our culture when it comes to these very holy words. In fact, I have found over the years that when I say Jesus or Christian, the face staring back at me turns porcelain, in an attempt to buy time, waiting to see if I am one of them. The them who cross personal lines of others too quickly, with agenda and without relationship. The them who beg for the money of others only to have opulent lives themselves. The them who commit their own personal atrocities while inciting judgment on everyone else. The them – frankly—who have very little to do with the qualities of Christ – but who wield him like a sword against others. The them who propagate the damage, the damage that hinders our culture. How I don’t want to be one of them. They’ve been the biggest barrier in my many conversations with people over the years. I can’t seem to find a way, in the small amounts of time I normally have, to get beyond the them filter. Many years ago I was discussing this with my friend Brian who is a Pastor. He maintains that since the advent of mass media, we have managed to trivialize the name of Jesus to the extent of it being almost impotent in our culture. Our media portrayals, our angry preachers, our own cover-ups, they have served to make Jesus a caricature – overwrought in every way. When he first said it, I instinctively flinched. but as our conversation went on, he raised the hard questions that I couldn’t answer, like what are we holding out to our world? How often do we see Zaccheus invited down from the tree, delighted to know that he was invited to relationship, even though he was a thief and a tyrant? And even harder questions like how often do show our underbellies – our struggles – and allow those who are not convinced about faith, to watch God lead us through our deserts - not just the acceptable ones, but the ones we don’t want anyone to know? Brian says we don’t extend genuine expressions of true faith in action like that because we don’t like the loose ends of such an exercise. Jesus is perfect – infallible, and so we think we should be too. And if we are not – well then, it’s best not to focus on it – could be confusing. But that’s just the point according to Brian. It is quite confusing. That’s why we need a God. We can’t do this by ourselves. It’s one of the major tenets of our faith. Why are we so afraid to admit it in real ways? He even went so far as to say that if we are not holding this authentic vulnerable picture up, we are frauds – and our fraudulence is exactly what people can spot a mile away. Skepticism prevails, he says, because there is a reason to be skeptical. We’ve reduced the holy to half-hour TV shows. We’ve boxed the mysterious into 5 easy steps. I didn’t like what I heard honestly. I struggled with Brian’s words for months afterwards, asking for God’s guidance. It seemed pretty risky and left minded. I didn’t want to be held accountable to his message and become the sacrificial lamb in a society where perfection is a god. It almost seems sinful to be found out, vulnerable and flawed. It almost seemed punishable to invite tyrants to dinner, knowing they were such. And yet, that is what our God did – truth be known. He dined with the unrepentant and he bled in front of a crowd. He loved, and he allowed his wounds to be known. He was powerfully vulnerable. That’s what I’ve noticed as I’ve traveled the U.S., talking with people. We are all vulnerable. We are all flawed. We want to know how that factors in to the overall system of things. We want someone to make reasonable sense of it all in a way that we can at least begin to trust. As a culture, we are seeking balm for our wounds, seeking Bandaids in things, in status, in stuff. Because we are inundated with media impressions all day long, we have a distorted view of what true help is, true healing. But we all know that gods and demigods ultimately fall prey to their own lies. They cannot fulfill. They cannot heal, and though some of us reach that conclusion early in life, and some later – we all eventually come to the same place – threadbare and disillusioned, begging for something real. That’s when Wall Street becomes ineffectual, merely the small man behind the big curtain. That’s when authenticity becomes the marketer’s envy. It’s irrefutable, because it’s real. It can affect. It will fulfill it’s promise. And it is Jesus. It’s what we cried for after 9.11 – more than we have in a very long time. Some would say that the “hunger” for spirituality, for something solid, has waned since that day. Sure-if you are counting the seats at church services, that would be true, but if you are listening to conversations, hearing what is on people’s minds, you will find that people are still seeking – still looking, they just are not willing to become convinced after two Sundays. They need more than that. They need to see real and trustworthy in ways that they can grasp. They need to hear us speak the long lost dialect of real and trustworthy. And our ability to resurrect that language, to show up in relevant ways, is key. I frankly don’t know what that looks like for all of us. I know that for me, genuine faith means spending time with my 10 year old neighbor, being available to listen. It’s giving when I least want to. It’s being as joyful in the small things as I am in the big ones. It’s telling someone that I am hurting, that I am sad, despite the fact that I am a Christian. It’s acknowledging what I know as an experiential fact: that God can even take pain and sadness and make it into something beautiful. And also, for me, it’s not judging or dismissing. It’s speaking openly and plainly to those God sends my way. It’s attempting to always find the best in people. It’s being comfortable in my own continually ragged state, expectant and open to Jesus’ interventions along the way. It’s something I toyed with as I slowly walked down 51st street that week after 9.11, on my way to sing at a New York City prayer breakfast. A little over a week after the tragedy –I felt the open wounds of New York. A place that is traditionally callused and indifferent was raw, unable to cover itself. The steel was shorn, and the bruised hearts lay bare. The last thing anyone wanted to do was feel isolated. People were saying, “excuse me” when they bumped into each other. People were looking into one another’s eyes as they passed on the streets. On the sidewalk, huddles of mourners brought life to a dead stop, as they paused, taking in the many makeshift shrines that were erected. Taped onto walls everywhere were pleas for help in finding someone not yet accounted for, or eulogies for the presumed dead. Candles burned. Flowers lay in perfect undisturbed bundles on the pavement. Trinkets that loved ones left behind were displayed, laid out like tiny beacons empowered with genuine desire, sending messages to loved ones souls... come home. Come back. Find your way. There in the city streets, where red roses bled against concrete, people stopped. Strangers rested hands on one another as they prayed at the shrines experiencing their collective pain, and grieving along with those who were left behind. I confess that I am not entirely positive to whom they were praying, but I am positive that I encountered Jesus there. Jesus with his hand on their shoulders. Jesus weeping. Jesus studying the hearts of those who lingered, and I have to believe that in some way, for those who were ready, he was speaking the language, rushing in like a sea of healing balm to those who opened wide their tattered defense. I know that he was there because he met my sister a few months later at Ground Zero on Christmas day. She went there on the marked birth of our Savior, to grieve and acknowledge. The streets were mostly empty, as she wandered, snapping pictures of the shrines and crying along with the few who maintained vigil. It was late in the day when she saw a beautiful picture of hope – which essentially, I think – is the gospel. On a deserted back street, she watched as a young Asian businessman walked with purpose to the perimeter of the devastation. He faced the horrific sight squarely and placing his briefcase with the tiny American flag protruding from it’s top, down at his side. She observed him stand almost at attention taking in the carnage. And then, in an undeniably humble act, he effectively managed to do what I have attempted to do for years – pierce my sister’s heart. He placed his two palms together in a perfect prayer position, bowed slightly into the devastation, and prayed – quietly, reverently, and solitarily. When he was through, he began to walk away. She followed him. She followed a stranger down a deserted cit street. She couldn’t deny the authenticity of his act. Instead of going to a building or a bus, he walked on until he found the next opening to the site. He walked to its edge where he began the same process. When a policeman came to stop him, my sister heard him plead; I only want to pray. Please let me pray. The policeman softened and backed away. He watched too as the young man walked off. My sister followed from the street to street, watching him intercede. She went because she was moved. It was real. It was from the heart. Whatever baggage this gesture would’ve held before 9.11 was lost in the tragedy. There was no filter of preconceived notions on her broken heart. And there couldn’t have been a better day for her to see authentic faith humbly expressed. She told me this story, and although she does not share my beliefs ultimately, I know that she saw Jesus that day. Jesus, walking with the man, interceding – out of the public eye, out of the limelight and fanfare, quietly – in action, doing the most authentic evangelical thing: expressing real faith in humility, with grace and dignity. He spoke the lost language, and she warmed to its cadence. And that I think is the biggest challenge we face here in the post modern world, how to restore a genuine expression of faith in a society that is programmed to want inauthentic, but is truly crying out for something real and lasting. It’s no easy task, resurrecting this experiential approach. You’ve got to be vulnerable. You’ve got to be attuned. But then, it only takes one.
Thursday, August 10, 2006