The Brickyard

I’m not sure what kind of work you are in.  Maybe you are a school teacher, marketing exec, contract laborer, professional athlete or stay-at-home parent.  Regardless of vocation we all experience the trappings of the Brickyard.

The Brickyard is the monotonous place of production without realization or gratification.  The Brickyard is focused on maintaining the status quo for sake of the bottom line.  There is no need to be creative within the Brickyard for our role is already laid out, planned, and neatly organized (no need for free-thinking beings in the highly regulated brickyard).  The Brickyard gives the allure of safety but steals our individual identity.  Demands and quotas are the only incentives in the Brickyard. 

In the Brickyard, industry thrives at the expense of our humanness.

The myth of the Brickyard is that if we work hard enough, complete the latest project, or do as we are told it will finally pay off.  Yet it never does.  There are always more bricks to make and more walls to construct.

Walter Brueggemann writes, “the brickyard is a place of hopelessness.  Not only must we produce for the others, but there is no prospect, not in our wildest imagination, that things are ever going to change.  There will never be enough bricks to meet the quota”.

Sadness and despair set in where we lose our creative imagination for what life may bring.  Life is viewed as “the daily grind” - something we try to get through and survive, rather than a gift that is anticipated and received.

Stepping outside of the Brickyard takes courage and faith.  Courage to stand up against the managers and systems that relish in holding to the company line and faith, that when reach out in trust, the Divine reaches back.  The choice for you and I is simple:  choose between those who say, “Make more bricks” or the God who says, “Let my people go”.

Mobility and the Biblical Narrative (Mobility pt. 3)

The Biblical narrative gives us another way to view mobility. In the Old Testament the Israelites are led out of slavery and into the promise land. At a quick glance it may seem as if God is concerned with the upward mobility of his people, but upon further study more is taking place. Although God is leading them to a place of hope and promise, God also leads his people through a place of struggle and pain; the wilderness. In fact as the journey out of Egypt unfolds, the Israelites request they be sent back to Egypt (Exodus 14:11-12; 16:3; 17:3).

For the Israelites this is not the type of mobility they had hoped for, yet God is concerned not just with “where they are going”, but “who they are becoming”. The Exodus story is not simply about God’s people moving from the slums to the suburbs but rather moving from a scattered and fearful people to a new community that finds its identity in God.

The life of Jesus is also one that causes us to re-think our affinity for mobility. In the Gospels Jesus has a conversation with the mother of Zebedee’s sons (Matthew 20:20-28; Mark 10:35-45). She makes a request that her two boys sit next to him at his thrown; this is the request of upward mobility. Jesus replies by asking if they can drink from his cup…the cup not of his “success” but rather of his suffering. The account then goes on:

“Whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wants to be first must be your slave - just as the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.” - Matthew 20:26-28

Jesus communicates in his words (see his conversation with the rich young ruler) as well as with his life (especially the journey to the cross) that type of mobility one is to aspire to as his follower is one of downward mobility. While our culture may aspire to moving at a greater speed and acquiring more in the name of success and efficiency, Jesus beckons us to cast aside our nets and follow him not on a path of mobile comfort but rather down the path that leads to Calvary for the sake of the Kingdom.

What other examples from the Scriptures/life of Jesus do you see regarding “downward mobility”?
What is lost in a life of “downward mobility”? What is gained?

The Pain of "Forget"

Throughout life there are experiences that we wish we could forget. Pains and past hurts that serve as an on-going reminder that we are “not okay”. Ironically there are also things within our life that we hope we never forget. The sound of the ocean tide sweeping the shore, the warmth of the sun on our face, the moment we had our first last kiss, and the time when our child invited us to come and play.

These moments of goodness are essential to our memory. They serve as a compass, always pointing us in the direction of possibility and hope.

Yet sometimes during the pains of life, we become so overwhelmed with a destructive reality that our capacity to “remember” life’s joys drastically diminishes. The opening narrative of Exodus tells of a good God who had continued in life-giving relationship with his people throughout the generations. God had expressed his goodness to Joseph and his descendants in such a way that all of God’s people knew their identity and their hope.

The story takes a dramatic turn with the death of Joseph’s generation and the birth of a king (who had no memory of the good past). These two events cause the collective memory of God’s goodness and promise fade away. Exodus 1:8 hits like a thud: “Then a new king, to whom Joseph meant nothing, came to power in Egypt.” This was the turning point; the moment when God’s people began to forget.

When the difficulties of life come our way and begin to make for us a new reality, it becomes all too easy to forget the good of the past. Not only do we loose our hopeful memory of the past but we also let go of the possibility that good will re-emerge in the future.

Maybe in the midst of a difficult relationship, the loss of work or in declining health, your capacity to “remember” the goodness of life, and the One who created it, has escaped your memory. Yet this is not where the story ends. Pharaoh (and the lords of this earth may have forgotten) but the God of creation never forgets.

May you, whether wondering in pain or basking in joy, be reminded of a good God who has not forgotten.