2012-09-09 Journeying with Paul (Leslie Hawthorne Klingler).pdf

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and began taking photographs. The gunman immediately stopped the beating as he and his comrades fastened their attention on the impudent foreigner documenting their behavior. They stormed back to Dan’s corner of the bus, shouting curses, and ripped the camera from his hands. Feigning innocence, Dan apologized, assuring them that they were welcome to take the offending roll of film to guarantee that they would not be incriminated. And then, ever so naturally, he swung his arm firmly around the gunman’s bandolier and shoulder in a strong embrace and said, “My brother, the camera is mine.” With that, he gently reached over and retrieved it with a broad smile. The unnerved comrades-in-arms retreated, clutching the spent film, and waved the bus with its odd passenger on its way. Some of those who witnessed this encounter still cluck their tongues to think that a foreigner could have been so naïve as to provoke such an incident. “He should have known that his camera would rile the gunmen,” they say. But Dan was far too savvy to think that either he or his camera would escape notice. Rather, in the heat of the violent encounter, he could not sit idly as cruelty ran its grim course; he intentionally drew the attention of the bullies to himself and away from their Afghan victim in the best way he knew how. When I first read this story, I asked myself, “What was Dan thinking, putting himself and his family at risk like that? At the same time I marveled, “How did he spontaneously act so much like Jesus?” As with most of the stories in the book, I was both in awe of Dan’s actions and critical of them. Dan seemed to do things more with his heart than with a mind logically weighing the consequences. His continual embodiment of his convictions astonished and disarmed me—as it did even the most war-hardened individuals. As I got to know Dan Terry through the book, I grew increasingly impressed by him. Dan was a brother in faith who lived daily his Christian freedom in a country and a world defined by divisions, conflict, and self-protection. “The barbed wire,” writes Dan’s friend Michael Semple, “is a sign of our troubled times, when people conclude that Dan’s ‘open door’ only invites trouble.” Michael asks, “is the era of men and women like Dan, over?” Are the only doors left open the doors of the foolish and of those inviting martyrdom? In August 2010, Dan and nine other aid workers were attacked and killed in a remote valley during a medical tour. Their deaths made world headlines. As I read the New York Times’s brief biographies of these ten individuals, I sensed in each the power of the Holy Spirit and their dedication to living according to God’s call of love, regardless of the consequences. I felt proud to be a fellow Christian.
But is Michael Semple right? Is the Christian life only for fools and those inviting martyrdom? The answer to Michael’s question, perhaps, lies implicit in the life and writings of the apostle Paul. . . . . another, we must acknowledge, whose life ended in violence. Over the past months, we have visited many of the New Testament churches, following Paul’s letters and footsteps in those first Christian communities. We have witnessed Paul’s burning sense of mission and his deep love for his new brothers and sisters in Christ. We have watched him blaze the path of the gospel through social, political, and physical boundaries. We have witnessed his sufferings and shared his joy. What, then, can we take away from all this? What does Paul teach us about the Christian life? What does he show us about how we should perceive the world and our participation in it? While Pauline studies fill volumes and command lifetimes, perhaps we can spend a moment today summarizing a few things we have learned from Paul on our summer journey. Let us focus in particular on his physical, social, and spiritual “map”—How did he understand his landscape, his journey, and his home? Let us consider how his perspectives might inform our own. How did Paul perceive his landscape—his world? Like Dan Terry’s environment in Afghanistan, Paul’s terrain was rough and hostile. As an ardent Christian, Paul was a persona non grata among his own people. Facing such dangers, the typical person might build protective walls and try to survive inside them as comfortably as possible. But people like Dan Terry, like the apostle Paul, know that following Christ means that we can no longer confine ourselves to the expected and supposedly “safe” moral, ethical, social, or even physical maps of our world. We are called to love, and love cannot be constrained. “[Love] bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends” (1 Cor. 13:7-8). Life outside of Christ is a life navigating the world’s continual discrimination and competition, trying to remain as motivated, comfortable, and accompanied as possible. Often, any good or expansion of opportunity that we garner for ourselves involves harming others, or at least compromising their sense of dignity or opportunity. Without the eyes of grace, we perceive our environment as a territory that never expands, with limited resources that never renew—so life is always a game of getting as much as we can for ourselves at the expense of others.
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2012-09-09 Journeying with Paul (Leslie Hawthorne Klingler).pdf

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