I learned about an interesting character in one of Charles Dicken’s books today: Mrs. Jellyby. Mrs. Jellyby’s story, in Bleak House, can cause us to think about our Christian lifestyle, especially when we bring in the word Mission or Ministry.
Mrs. Jellyby is a person who is devoted to Christian philanthropic projects, especially in Africa. He talks constantly about it yet Dickens describes her house as covered with litter, “not only untidy but very dirty.” Her children are unwashed, scantily clothed and in a state of chaos with dirt and disaster, accidents and neglect.
Eugene Peterson, whom I learned about this story from, writes this: “She introduces herself to the three young people who are to be her guests for supper and the night, saying, ‘You find me, my dears, as usual very busy; but that you will excuse. The African project at present employs my whole time. It involves me in correspondance with public bodies and with private individuals anxious for the welfare of their species all over the country… It involves the devotion of all my energies, such as they are; but that is nothing, so that it succeeds; and I am more confident of success every day.” (Practice Resurrection, p.229, Eugene Peterson)
This story comes at us and right to the heart of what we’re about in a lot of church gatherings. What we see, I believe, in Peterson’s writings is not a distaste for mission work, but a distaste for how mission and ministry are done in many examples today: essentially, without much care for those around you, at home and workplace. It becomes quite simple, and even quite life-stifling, to focus our attention on the distant. the grandiose, and neglect the close up, the intimate, the neighbor. Our God projects might get in the way of being with God and living out a with-God lifestyle with others.
Peterson goes on, “…the practice of resurrection, the very heart of the church’s life, is squandered into disembodied causes and projects in far off [places] by men and women who give neither time nor attention nor touch to what is going on in their home and workplace… they are far too busy to engage in the glorious practice of resurrection in caring for their own children and keeping the household clean in the tedium of the ordinary.”
What does this mean? It means that we’re passing on and living into a certain lifestyle, this resurrection life worked within us by the Holy Spirit. This can’t be reduced to God projects. Instead, when we’re on missions or at the grocery store, we have the opportunity to express the love of God in the ways that we love and interact with others – either far (if we were on a mission) or close by (if we’re still at home). The location is insignificant here; what matters is the focus of God in your location – the intimate, the personal, the relate-able, the conversational God that has called us to come and live and to have us call others to do the same. I suppose it’s more of a temperament really.
Peterson brings this Dicken’s clip into his book to talk about how so many ministers in our world today have neglected family and friends for some kind of God project they call “Public Ministry.” Peterson reflects that such a God project misses the point: life with God and a lifestyle that is absolutely rooted in the very-personal around us. To neglect family is to neglect resurrection life and the locus of that life – right at home.
Now, what about missions? Missions are still needed but only truly work (as I force my interpretation on Peterson’s words) in a pattern similar to how you live at home, I mean, still considering the lifestyle of where your mission is at. Essentially, working yourself to a thousand pieces rips the fabric of the resurrection life, and if busyness is what our missions look like (one project after another) instead of living together and telling/hearing stories we plant something else in the field, something that’s not resurrection seed. I’m not sure what it is, but it grows fast and spreads like a virus. It doesn’t make anything worth eating either.
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Jude loves his pool in our backyard. (The picture is not our backyard! even though Jude would like it to be.)
