I grew up in a community that sang with rousing enthusiasm, “This world is not my home/ I’m just apassin’ through./ My treasures are laid up/ somewhere beyond the blue… .”

Everything was O.K. with that rousing enthusiasm except everyone seemed more like settlers, not travelers. The last thing we were was pilgrims. We talked pilgrim talk, but lived entrenched USAmerican lives. Life’s agenda: raise good kids, send them off to college, make sure they get a good job, get married, buy a nice house and basically “settle in” until you die. I came from a generation that actually decried living as a pilgrim as irresponsible. 

I guess it was assumed that since we were headed to heaven when we died, we were pilgrims. We really didn’t have to be pilgrims or live like nomads and, God forbid, that we should ever be called “transient.” We, good settled Christian people, were by definition pilgrims. Oxymoronic.

Jesus was a real transient. He was the essential pilgrim–the whole “no place to lay my head” idea. Peter, picking up on the nomadic nature of the kingdom of God, called God’s people “foreigners and exiles” and later told them to “Live as free people…” Foreigners and exiles… . Live as free people. Settlers aren’t free. They’re, well, settled. Entrenched in 21st century American culture, narcoticized by the “principalities and powers” of the commercialization of everything including the faith, Christians are the first to complain that “Christmas decorations” are up before Thanksgiving. Yet they’ll race to be first to that “Black Friday” sale at the mall. “It’s good stewardship,” I’m told. How much greed does the phrase “good stewardship” cover?

Jesus was a free man. Does his way of life speak to us as well as his words? Does being free of sin really mean a whole lot to prisoners of culture, Christian or otherwise? Or, is the evidence of being free of sin written into lives truly free from “the powers that be” that promote things in every billboard (”Don’t look, Honey, it’s for 0 down and 0% financing”), every funny TV commercial (we’re laughing ourselves into billions of dollars of debt), every sales pitch (did you know that Art Van is having its one and only store-wide clearance sale this weekend), sexualizing everything (that knock down, gorgeous blond sure has a nice set of snow tires)?

Lest you think I’m loftily throwing stones, I’m not. I’m sick. Sick of being treated every waking moment as a consumer, sick of being duped by very smart and creative people who want me to take money out of my wallet and give it to Sears, sick of being manipulated to buy gas at almost $3.75 a gallon on one day (and so I do), only to have it go down to $2.50 a gallon as soon as I hang up the gas nozzle, sick of being told what and what not to eat, drink, sleep on, wear, shave with, and stick in my sneezy, coughy, runny-nose, achy body. Did you ever see parents, a week ahead of school, starting to panic over what their kids will wear so their kids will be thought of as “in,””cool,” “hip”? The latest style of clothes has become the biblical standard for good parenting. How free are we? Doesn’t it seem like the phrase political freedom is used to make us commercialized slaves? (Maybe that’s too harsh.)

The emerging conversation is taking a long, long look at Jesus. At his way of life. Now, don’t get gooney about it. We aren’t dressing as nomads and riding camels and living in tents. Some of us do have homes and have sent kids to college, etc. So, yes, we do have a place to lay our heads.Yet, we are wondering how to re-engage the cultural freedom Jesus lived out. We’re banding together to learn how to subversively undo what USAmerican culture is doing to us—turning us into global oddities who fight to save trees and to kill babies; to pompously use the Bible to ridicule other members of the family of God; to buy a retro-car with a hemi-engine that does 180 mph and the fastest we can go is 70 mph (110 mph wasted); to think that the TNIV “de-manhoods” the Scripture; to quibble over carbs and calories and exotic flavored yogurt and biblical recipes for snack bars; to lobby for the 10 Commandments in the court house and public schools and we can’t even quote them from memory and certainly don’t live them out in practice; to beat our wives in order to teach them the meaning of biblical “submission.” We could go on ad nauseum.

Foreigners and exiles… . Live as free people. The emerging conversation is comprised of explorers, not arrivers. Questioners, not answer- givers. People willing to probe and ask “Why?” People who admit that getting in touch with the Jesus of the Gospels, the Jesus of 1st century, second Temple Judaism is like being thrown into a cell and going cold turkey until the addiction called the American dream is sweated out of our souls. I recently returned from Ukraine. I mean it, I love America and I do vote and drink Coca Cola. It’s the dream that screws us up.

Jesus was (and is) the first emergent leader; the true pilgrim; the One best to follow and to follow together because we’re way too vulnerable alone.

“Foxes have holes, birds have nests… .” “My kingdom is not of this world.” His kingdom is in it, not of it. Do you hear deep freedom in his words? Some of us are beginning to and we’d like to have a long conversation about it and live it. Join us.

Jesus and his Way are the hope of this big blue marble. Pilgrims of the world, unite!    

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