A Movement with the Excluded
On the CAC podcast The Cosmic We, Father Richard Rohr talks about the Franciscan tradition’s identification with those on society’s margins. This priority shaped major periods of Richard’s ministry:
Francis of Assisi always identified with the minority, with the excluded. I went to Assisi after Rome last [June], and the little church that he rebuilt was the church of the leper colony. He immediately went down to those excluded from uptown Assisi and identified with the lepers. So that’s always been a part of our tradition. We were really a subtext in terms of mainline Catholicism.
I was ordained a deacon in 1969—you were always a deacon for one year before you were a priest. In the first six months, they sent me out here to New Mexico to work with the Acoma Pueblo. And then the next six months was at a Black parish in Dayton, Ohio: Resurrection Parish. My start in ministry was outside the mainstream. And then I realized the mainstream isn’t really “main,” it’s just dominant. So that got me off to a great start!
Then the Pentecostal experience with the high school students happened the next year, after I had become a priest. Such beautiful, polyphonic singing in tongues! We’d sometimes go twenty minutes speaking in tongues; people would come peeking in the door of this high school gymnasium, and they’d say, “And they’re Catholics!” They couldn’t believe it! [DM Team: Such Spirit-filled experiences with young adults led Richard to found the New Jerusalem Community in Cincinnati, Ohio.] So that again, for me, legitimated the margins instead of the so-called center. [1]
Rev. Dr. William Barber, activist and co-director of the Poor People’s Campaign, finds scriptural support for those on the margins leading justice movements. Dr. Barber builds on Psalm 118:22–23, “The stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone! This is God’s work. And it is marvelous in our eyes!”:
The rejected must lead the revival for love and justice.
The cornerstone is that part of the foundation upon which the whole building stands. And the Psalmist says, speaking metaphorically of how we view human beings in society, that it is God’s intent that the stones that were once seen as unfit to be a part of the architecture—the stones that were once thrown away or kept in the quarry—have now been called to be the most important stones. The rejected stones make the best cornerstones. The rejected stones actually make the best foundation holders. And whenever you see rejected stones becoming the focus of society, it is the Lord’s doing. [2]
Jesus lived among the rejected. He ministered among the rejected. He died and was crucified as rejected, as somebody who was outside the political power structure. But early Sunday morning, from the grave he led a resurrection movement—a revival of love, a revival of justice, a revival of mercy, a revival of grace. [3]
Jesus Started a Movement
I really don’t think we can ever renew the church until we stop thinking of it as an institution and start thinking of it as a movement. —Clarence Jordan, letter, 1967
Michael Curry is the Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church and is passionate about the church rediscovering itself as a movement of Jesus:
Jesus did not establish an institution, though institutions can serve his cause. He did not organize a political party, though his teachings have a profound impact on politics. Jesus did not even found a religion. No, Jesus began a movement, fueled by his Spirit, a movement whose purpose was and is to change the face of the earth from the nightmare it often is into the dream that God intends. . . .
That’s why his invitations to folk who joined him are filled with so many active verbs. In John 1:39 Jesus calls disciples with the words, “Come and see.” In Matthew, Mark, and Luke, he asks others to “Follow me.” And at the end of the Gospels, he sent his first disciples out with the word, “Go . . .” [. . .] As in, “Go into all the world and proclaim the good news to the whole creation” (Mark 16:15). . . .
If you look at the Bible, listen to it, and watch how the Spirit of God unfolds in the sacred story, I think you’ll notice a pattern. You cannot help but notice that there really is a movement of God in the world.
Curry identifies several characteristics of the Jesus movement [1]:
First, the movement was Christ-centered—completely focused on Jesus and his way. . . . Long before Christianity was ever called the Church, or even Christianity, it was called “the Way” [see Acts 9:2]. The way of Jesus was the way. The Spirit of Jesus, the Spirit of God, that sweet, sweet Spirit, infused their spirits and took over. . . .
The second mark of the movement is this: following the way of Jesus, they abolished poverty and hunger in their community. Some might say they made poverty history. The Acts of the Apostles calls this abolition of poverty one of the “signs and wonders” which became an invitation to others to follow Jesus too, and change the world. . . . It didn’t take a miracle. The Bible says they simply shared everything they had [Acts 4:32–35]. The movement moved them in that particular way.
Third, they learned how to become more than a collection of individual self-interests. They found themselves becoming a countercultural community, one where Jews and Gentiles, circumcised and uncircumcised, had equal standing [see Acts 15:1–12].
