Get Under the House: Reflection by Emily Rutledge

I would say as a whole Americans are pretty uneasy about the state of humanity.

Uneasy may not be the word you would use so here are a few that may speak to you...

concerned
anxious
distressed
disturbed
troubled
uptight
bothered
perturbed
upset
biting one's nails
butterflies in stomach
in a stew (my personal favorite)
on pins and needles

All of us are in a stew about the way things are right now.  What we individually believe is the root problem or solution or escape route differs radically but the feels that are going around seem to boil down to the same emotion.  Distressed.  It crosses socioeconomic status, party lines, gender, sexuality, religion, citizenship, and race... yet the affect that the current state of our country has on our daily lives is greatly determined by our own privilege.

I am a white, Christian, middle class, straight, college educated, cis woman.  I am showered in privilege.  Doors open easily for me.  I work in a privileged parish.  I minister to privileged teenagers. Our youth community is progressive and driven by a deep desire for social justice as it was taught to us by Jesus.  Yet, we each know, that for the most part the change we hope for will affect others far more than ourselves.

Last week 28 of us drove in a five minivan caravan to Martin, Kentucky.  We wore matching tie-dye t-shirts.  We ate snacks.  We listened to Spotify.   We were a big caravan of privilege.  While I was unsure of what we would do exactly while working with the Christian Appalachian Project I was sure of a few things:  we would be working with people who experience poverty in a way that none of us can truly understand, most of our political beliefs would differ from those we were serving, and the people of Martin's access to education, employment, nourishment, and basic health care would be limited.

While we can understand the systematic root of Martin's poverty: closed coal mines, a lack of educational opportunities, and a rural location... we can not conceive of the affect it has on an individual's life.

As my small group arrived at the home we would work on for the week we met the three wonderful women who lived there.  We heard stories of the childhoods lived within those walls and of the changes that had come and gone through their small town.

After meeting our family and getting the lay of the land, the first job assignment was offered up:  who would like to go under the house to tack up insulation?

Let me translate that:  Who would like to put on a marshmallow suit in the 90 degree heat, crawl into a small and confined space, battle whatever life may be living there, and staple up huge strips of plastic to hold in insulation that gravity is trying to pull down on you?

Two of our youngest students quickly volunteered.

Not only did they complete their task with another fearless adult leader (please do not be misled: I am NOT that leader) they did it with a song, literally, and joy.

There are a lot of things I do not love about short-term mission trips.  If organized as a week where one group of people go somewhere to 'save' or 'improve' another's life we only continue to deepen the divides between us.  If we assume our mere presence or unskilled labor is going to somehow make the life of a person living in poverty better we are sadly mistaken and frustratingly arrogant.  Short term mission trips teach us about the realities of the world in ways we can not understand without entering into them.  They are far more about changing the lives of those who go on them than those we serve.

The Episcopal Office of Evangelism & Reconciliation defines missional ministry as

a Christian community that crosses boundaries to embody and participate in God's mission- loving the world into wholeness- in all that we do: prayer, worship, preaching, teaching, loving service, and daily life.  

Mission is one thing... crossing the boundaries that separate us and loving the heck out of the people of God.  All of them.

Mission is getting under the house.  It's not letting the awkward, the hard, the uncomfortable get in the way of being present and hearing stories and getting mixed up in the complexity that is poverty and race and gender.  Mission is recognizing our privilege and seeing it for what it is: not a gift from God but rather a situation we were born into that allows us the basic human rights that are taken from others because of social inequality.  If you are privileged it is not because God wanted to give you something He didn't want others to have.   The God we love doesn't play that game.  We follow a God of equality and wholeness and inclusion.  We have created the structures that continue to break apart the Kingdom.  It's not a new problem, Jesus showed up 2,000 years ago to deal with it.  He taught us that there was no longer Gentile or Jew, man or woman, slave or free, but that we were all one in Him.  One.  Wholeness.  Social equality for all not a lucky few.

This is the mission of God and as Her followers it must be our mission as well.    We must allow the concern that is rumbling within our hearts and throughout our country be a call to action and not an invitation to hide.

Get under the house!