Pastoralia

I remember exactly when I first realized our fun little experiment had swerved completely out of my control: it was the day I learned someone had given away a grandmother.

People had been giving each other lamps and toasters and other sundry items for months. That alone was amazing to me, because for years I’d been fascinated with Acts 2:44-45: 

“The believers had everything in common and gave to each other as they had need.” 

Really? Everything in common?

As a young fired-up Christian that bit about “everything in common” clobbered me like a two-by-four. That’s not how we live, I often thought. Our church was full of people who acquired as much as possible, while others scraped-by. Moreover, those who built wealth and lived comfortably tended to be ushered into the seats of power at church. Even worse, I wanted to be one of those people. 

But Acts 2, and 2 Cor 8, and especially Exodus 16 kept bludgeoning my conscience. There was something at work in these bits of scripture, something altogether different than market-capitalism. It seemed that when the Spirit of God was in charge the outcome looked more like equality for all than prosperity for some. And when there was prosperity it was prosperity with the responsibility for creating justice.  

Still, this is not what I observed in church. Why didn’t the Bible literally revolutionize our lives in every way? I asked pastors and elders point-blank, but was generally met with condescending smiles and tousles of the hair. 

Then, not long ago I was reading Luke 3 and stumbled across these words:

John said to the crowds coming out to be baptized by him, “You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the coming wrath? Produce fruit in keeping with repentance. And do not begin to say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham as our father.’ For I tell you that out of these stones God can raise up children for Abraham. The ax is already at the root of the trees, and every tree that does not produce good fruit will be cut down and thrown into the fire.”

“What should we do then?” the crowd asked.

John answered, “Anyone who has two shirts should share with the one who has none, and anyone who has food should do the same.”

There it was again. Sharing. Giving. Was it really that simple? A heretical thought began to creep into my mind. Maybe the solution to poverty isn’t found in making everyone on the planet more self-sufficient, maybe it’s found by inviting everyone into interdependence.  

So, we did what everyone in a globalized world does when they think they have a cool idea: we started a website. We encouraged (pleaded, cajoled, threatened, and blackmailed) everyone we knew to join Twoshirts.org and post their extra things so others could freely take what they needed. 

The next thing I knew people were showing up at church carrying lamps and toasters and giving them away to each other. That was pretty cool. Mission accomplished, I thought. But then people outside the church started joining and that’s when everything went all pear-shaped. We started bumping into non-Christians and poor people and rich people and witches and buddhists and Methodists. You know, the sort of people we normally would have avoided at all costs, except they wanted our toasters - and we wanted their lamps. 

In the process something entirely new was birthed between us, something which hadn’t previously existed for the most part: gratitude. That gratitude usually sprouted kindness and kindness sometimes blossomed into friendship and somewhere in the midst of it all the Kingdom showed up. 

I couldn’t believe my luck. All I’d wanted was to promote a little communitarianism in the midst of isolated individualism. Maybe counterfoil mindless consumption and make people think a little about the insane pursuit of happiness through product gluttony. I wanted people to experiment with a life of gifts, rather than a life of greed. All that seemed to be happening somewhat, plus friendship. 

But then came the “grandmother incident.” 

On that day a woman named Kelli logged into Twoshirts.org and posted a need for a “surrogate grandmother.” A surrogate grandmother! She and her husband, it seems, had moved into the area and didn’t really know anyone. She’d recently given birth to twins, whose early delivery had complicated their health. Without a network of support the couple was simply overwhelmed:

HI! As the mother of twin girls with medical issues, I need a surrogate grandma or just a good friend [...] Is there someone out there with a kind and patient heart who has a few hours a week during the day that they would like to spend playing with 2 little darlings or helping me tackle a few big projects???

Within days Donna responded. Herself the mother of three grown boys who’d all moved out of state, Donna felt drawn to this woman’s needs and ready to help. Now she babysits, and helps with hospital visits and offers advice. They laugh together. And to my utter amazement something far deeper than mere gratitude or friendship has grown between them - they’ve formed a family. 

That’s when I realized a life of gifts is about more than lamps and toasters, it’s about love and trust. In a culture where people are defined by conspicuous accumulation ordinary stuff tends to dead-end in someone’s closet or garage. Like Manna that has been hoarded it eventually rots, becoming the symbol of our stubborn, self-sufficient isolation. Yet true gifts never rest. They move freely from one to another shifting from shape to shape to become the stuff that enriches, nourishes, and sustains the community through an economy of grace and mercy. Sometimes it’s lamps and toasters. Sometimes it’s grandmothers.  

This is how the economy of God operates; the Spirit is at work ceaselessly among the people of the world imparting gifts of grace and mercy that must be shared - or risk rotting. More than anything else, being missional means joining God in His work. That is exactly the kind of economy America needs now more than ever.

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(If you’d like to read an interview with Kelli & Donna, click here)