Get Proximate: The Art of Radical Mercy and Staying Hopeful in COVID Times

“Hope is our superpower. It reorients our spirit. We cannot do justice without hope.”

Bryan Stevenson

In his powerful book Just Mercy, Bryan Stevenson shares how his struggle for justice and ability to understand the complexity of mass incarceration is rooted in “getting proximate” to the people whose lives are most affected by the issues at hand.

OUR LIVING HOPE

Armed with a living hope, we dare to ask: What is God saying to us in this moment, and what would He have us do? We know we want to develop a Kingdom-life centered approach to the myriad hot-button issues of our time, but do we know how to “get proximate”?

Oftentimes, we, the church, can shy away from issues like immigration, abortion, racism, and mass incarceration, instead of getting proximate to them, out of fear of offending or simply not knowing how to engage. Many churches include folks who will criticize their leaders for avoiding them, while others implore their pastors to avoid any topic that seems “political.”

GET PROXIMATE TO MERCY

In light of these tensions, is there a both/and way to get proximate to the challenges and contradictions that influence our communities? In the Vineyard movement, we seek to heal fractures, not permit and perpetuate them. John Wimber, known as the father of the Vineyard movement, fused our core Vineyard value of “partnering with the Holy Spirit” with the pursuit of God’s mercy and compassion:

The manifest presence and power of the Holy Spirit in our midst is connected, inseparably, to His mercy and compassion. God will not be treated like a smorgasbord as though we can pick and choose what suits us best. That’s not the way that it works. It is impossible to have one without the other. We just wouldn’t survive the surgery.

John Wimber

The Way In Is the Way On

The wind of the Holy Spirit is calling us to get proximate to God’s radical mercy in this moment, as a way to properly prepare and align our hearts in the pursuit of God’s justice.

When we get proximate to people most impacted by racial injustice or any issue of inequity, it fosters Kingdom mercy. Kingdom mercy clears out the fog of confusion stirred up by politicians and news media, who try so hard to infect us with their perspectives of what is normative. 

MERCY TRUMPS PURITY

Ahmaud Arbery. Breonna Taylor. George Floyd. Elijah McClain. In the wake of these killings, millions of people rallied out of their homes to protest and lament the black lives lost as a result of our nation’s criminal justice systems and our culture of white supremacy. Across our country, many Vineyard churches and pastors have joined with their neighbors in getting proximate to their cities’ collective cries for justice and reform. 

However, some common concerns echo through many of our Vineyard churches: shouldn’t churches and pastors “stay in their own lane” and out of the public square and streets? Isn’t social justice unbiblical? Shouldn’t our worship of Jesus remain “pure and undefiled,” free from any association with questionable organizations that don’t share all of our values?

These are sincere questions, and ones that can be addressed within our Kingdom theology framework, through Scripture, and with Jesus. And we see that the first step in getting proximate is getting in step with the mercy of Jesus, not purity. We remember that in God’s rule and reign is defined by loving mercy first, and then doing the work of administering justice, as we walk humbly together as those forgiven and rescued by a Savior.

Time and time again, the Gospels illuminate Jesus choosing to get proximate to the sin, the suffering, and the brokenness of people–especially the poor and marginalized. From the woman caught in adultery to Zaccheus to the tables in the temple courts, the ministry of Jesus proclaims and demonstrates saving acts of mercy that point to God’s Kingdom justice.

Each of these stories record Jesus acting in public, acts of protest and advocacy for the sinner and the marginalized within his context that sought to prioritize purity and segregation between the haves and the have-nots. In each of these accounts, Jesus’ proximity to a “problem person” or “problem situation” released a mercy response of forgiveness, embrace, or provision.

It is God’s mercy, not God’s judgment, that leads to God’s justice.

NO UNDESERVING POOR

Many years ago, John Wimber shared a story of healing and mercy. During a ministry time, John invited people to come forward for prayer and healing. A young woman asked John to pray for her because she had contracted a venereal disease. She was a single young adult and knew that the illness was a consequence of her sinful choices. John prayed for her and she was healed! He went on to share that many months later, she came forward because she had once again contracted an STD. As he shared this story, we can imagine the thoughts going through the minds of those in attendance. “I can’t believe she has the audacity to ask for healing again!“… “God already healed her once, she should’ve learned her lesson”… “She obviously didn’t really repent the first time”… John prayed for her, again, and she was healed, again. 

Judgment and retributive justice say that she didn’t deserve another chance. Mercy and compassion say that we don’t actually deserve any of the good things that God gives us. Radical mercy says that not only does God give us healing and blessing, but he is willing to do it over and over and over again–no matter how often we mess up. Radical mercy sounds wonderful when we are receiving it, developing a lifestyle of extending it–it’s as extravagant as an alabaster jar of expensive perfume broken over Jesus’ feet. It didn’t make sense then, and it defies logic now. It may not seem “fair“. And yet it exemplifies the character of God and the aroma of God’s kingdom. 

Rather, a Kingdom framework reserves judgment for the self-righteous, the privileged, and powerful. The Scriptures continually bear witness to the offense of God’s radical mercy through Jesus.

OUR DEMONSTRATED FAITH

Jesus’s brother James highlights what it looks like to get proximate through showing radical mercy:

14 What good is it, my brothers and sisters, if someone claims to have faith but has no deeds? Can such faith save them? 15 Suppose a brother or a sister is without clothes and daily food. 16 If one of you says to them, “Go in peace; keep warm and well fed,” but does nothing about their physical needs, what good is it? 17 In the same way, faith by itself, if it is not accompanied by action, is dead.

James 2:14-17 (NIV)

James reminds Kingdom-minded people that the good news of faith in Jesus must be demonstrated by acts of mercy, acts of drawing near enough to understand and meet the physical, tangible needs of another person. The Holy Spirit calls each of our churches to neighbor in new and creative ways in this moment. The black brothers and sisters in our movement and our nation are calling for us to neighbor by sharing in the physical, emotional, and spiritual burden of disrupting and dismantling white supremacy. In a cultural moment that demands justice, it’s critical that we tether our calls for justice and faith in action to a faithful interpretation of justice, faithful action, and mercy in Scripture. 

A GARDEN OR A COURTROOM?

Justice in scripture isn’t confined to a courtroom scene, it is also a flourishing garden. Most of us have exclusively inherited a picture of justice as a courtroom, where people come to be judged as right or wrong and are then rewarded or punished. When we project this picture of justice onto God, we realize that we all fall short (Romans 3:23). Since we all fall short, we need someone who is perfect to take our place before the judge — enter Jesus, perfect and beloved. In this courtroom scene Jesus takes our punishment because he is only one perfect before God, the judge. 

Imagine, instead, that we read justice the way Old Testament writers and readers did? In this view, justice was about the flourishing of everything in the world under God’s rule. This picture of justice expands outside of a limited courtroom scene into something bigger, something beautiful. God’s justice isn’t a response to bad stuff, it’s a picture of all of creation thriving and growing into all that it was meant to be and become. In addition, this picture of justice helps us transition into the presence of God because we get to keep on doing justice and keep seeing God’s good intentions burst into flourishing all around us. 

In this view of justice, God sees creation (people, plants, and animals) withering and dying, which is the antithesis of what God intended them to be — this is when God says “where’s the justice! I need to get to work!” When the psalmist hungers and thirsts for God, the psalmist longs to see God’s justice flourishing in his or her own life and community (Psalm 69). In Isaiah 55, when the prophet invites everyone to come drink from God’s well, it’s because everybody’s thirsty. This is what justice looks like, it’s not God torching and salting the garden because someone broke the rules.

Justice invites us to get proximate, and when we do, we can renew our minds to see that Jesus isn’t sitting in the seat of judgment taking our judgment on for us. Instead, he’s tending a community garden thriving with life for all of us.

MERCY, NOT MERITOCRACY

The flourishing garden of God’s restorative justice and radical mercy weeds out the toxic notions of “deserving poor” and the limits of courtroom justice. In Dominique Dubois Gilliard’s book, Rethinking Incarceration, he offers the helpful term of “meritocracy.” Meritocracy insidiously distorts how people see themselves in juxtaposition to others. A “them and us” worldview replaces community with increased distance and even fear. Power and privilege drive victimization; the “war on drugs” and mass incarceration unjustly impacting people of color are examples. When the church is immersed in nationalism and partisanship, both its distinction and its purpose are compromised.

Gilliard argues that the role Christian theology has played in mass incarceration is large, from where it began to where it is now. The church in America has often bolstered a meritocratic ethic in which people get what they deserve, thus driving punitive state action rather than holding it accountable. Meritocracy and an unwavering faith in self-justifying “rugged individualism” functions as American ideology, loudly diminishing scriptural witness to restorative justice and flourishing hope. Gilliard highlights the role of the Church to protect, help, and restore the marginalized, the immigrant, the imprisoned, not extinguish the fire of hope.

Returning to our first love moves us in the right direction. Loving God and loving others bring us to His throne of mercy and grace, which is foundational to our belonging in God’s Kingdom. Getting proximate with our community, or differences, our struggles, is a method for radical mercy to take shape.

GETTING PROXIMATE AND LOVING MERCY DURING A PANDEMIC: 

SPOTLIGHT WITH DAVE HANSON, DIRECTOR OF SUNRISE OUTREACH CENTER IN YAKIMA, WASHINGTON

When people are hungry, you feed them. When they are homeless, you shelter or house them; this is the message of Isaiah 58. But what happens when a pandemic hits? People are getting infected with a serious illness and no one wants to get close to them. The fear of getting deathly sick or spreading the virus to loved ones is very real. A biblical parallel might be leprosy, only the ill effects are much faster. So how do you get proximate with a community struggling with COVID-19?

When COVID hit, neither the local taxi service nor the dial-a-ride service providers would pick anyone up from the hospital that was COVID positive. This became a serious problem for our community hospital.

So our shelter director picked up an old ambulance, complete with a contained air-filtration system, and started picking up people the hospital tested and/or treated as Covid positive and brought them to either shelter or housing. We got a crash course from the hospital on how to adequately sterilize the ambulance after every transport. Our community had the highest per-capita infection rate on the West Coast for four weeks so we did quite a bit of transports, which we continue today. We’ve not had any of our staff infected, and a vital need has been satisfied.

Having an eye on the community, watching what God is doing, and participating in solutions with the provision He supplies is an example of radical mercy and getting proximate!

GETTING PROXIMATE AND LOVING MERCY IN THE WAKE OF GEORGE FLOYD: 

SPOTLIGHT WITH DONNELL WYCHE, PASTOR OF ANN ARBOR VINEYARD, MICHIGAN

Who deserves mercy? How much mercy? When we find ourselves in the place where we are the ones who have exhausted the mercy of the people around us, we long for someone who will continue to extend mercy. Jesus did this in the Bible, and he continues to do it today. We receive unending mercy from Him in spite of what we have done or continue to do. 

Our church found ourselves in a position where we were being asked to extend mercy. A small group came to the pastoral staff with a request from a member of their group who had been incarcerated. He was longing for mercy. He needed funds to post bail – the difference between him spending a year in jail and getting out of jail was around $4,000. He was requesting help from the small group and the church in gathering these funds. The pastoral team met with his parents to let them know that the church was willing to secure the funds to get their son out of jail, but the parents were uncertain that this was the best course of action. They were out of mercy because this recent engagement with the last in what was a much longer story of pain and disappointment that they had experienced with him. Our church, however, had not experienced this pain, and he was somewhere he didn’t need to be. 

The pastoral staff, small group members, and other congregants worked together to secure the funds to have him released six months before his incarceration was supposed to end. When he was released, members of his small group worked to help him find employment and housing. This man was guilty, but the church chose to pay his fines to free him as opposed to leaving him incarcerated. 

The story was complicated and difficult – it wasn’t a clean narrative, but the church was okay with that. And sometimes practicing radical mercy means we have to be okay when these situations are not as clean or clear cut as we think or want them to be. Jesus extends the invitation to us to be people who stand in the gap. Our church had the resources and the time, and we were full of mercy. While it is easy to stand aside and form a judgement, we are called to stand in the gap and extend mercy.

If hope is our superpower, then let radical mercy be our antidote. How can mercy be an antidote in your church? Your community?

OUR INVITATION: LEARN TOGETHER WITH A VJN ONLINE LEARNING COHORT

This October, VJN will pilot online learning cohorts. The purpose of these cohorts is to equip Vineyard pastors and leaders to “get proximate” and practice radical mercy in their local communities by studying Jesus stories like those mentioned in this article. We invite you to take a fresh look at Jesus’ practices of radical mercy to lead us into new or deeper ways of pursuing the abundant life for everyone in our communities.

Outcomes:

• Learn to do a “mercy audit” to become aware of the shape of your community and imagine ways to engage that are grounded in the love and mercy of Jesus. A mercy audit asks the following questions: 1) How are you getting proximate to your neighbors and key issues impacting your church and city? 2) Who are the people in your church who already neighbor well and can help lead you into mutual relationships? 2) How can you practice radical mercy in a way that invites the Holy Spirit to surprise, confront, and comfort?
• Learn to be an ambassador of mercy in your community. VJN will partner with you and your church community to discover how to respond to key issues such as criminal justice, race, home and food security, and inequity. 

Cost: $175

When: 6 monthly Zoom calls, October 2020-April 2021.

How: 90 minute cohort sessions with a VJN coach, based on affinities.

To register, go to vineyardjusticenetwork.org/learningcohorts.

Contributors: Kathy Maskell, Donnell Wyche, Dave Hanson, Cheryl Pittluck, Hana Lehmann, Steven Hamilton