Denver, Looking West
Photograph by Jeffrey Louden
I’ve lived in inner-city Denver for over 25 years now. Not necessarily the kind of landscape that first comes into our minds when we think about “landscapes of faith”. The cityscape, though maybe not the place where I go to “find God”, is definitely the place where God finds me and calls me to practice incarnational living.
Often I’ve heard people say, “I don’t have to go to church to find God, I can find God in nature”, to which my response is, “That’s easy, anyone can find God in nature; it’s finding God in the midst of humankind that is the real test of faith”. It’s not nature that needs redeeming (or healing), it’s us, so if one wants to be where God is about the work of redemption/healing, you have to be where the brokenness is. There’s not quite anyplace like the inner city to encounter our broken humanity and the God who is steeped in it. That’s one reason why it is significant that Wartburg College, a college of the church, saw fit to begin an urban education program called “Wartburg West” in Denver back in 1985, and which my partner and colleague Bonita Bock and I have been coordinating since 1991.
Actually-- to correct my earlier statement-- according to the apostle Paul, the creation does need redeeming/healing, too, but that healing can only be accomplished in conjunction with our own (Romans 8:18ff). The very cosmos can only fulfill its destiny, says Paul, when “the children of God” are revealed, i.e., when we real-ize our true purpose/identity as that creature in the web of life which has the capacity to consciously live in awe, wonder, gratitude and reverence for the sacred gift of creation, to conscientiously exercise stewardship of (“tend and keep”) it, and to share its bounty with all our neighbors, human and non-human alike.
Speaking of stewardship, for the past several years I’ve had the privilege of serving as an advisory member and liaison to the Rocky Mountain Synod for the Four Winds Council, a ministry by and for Native Americans which has for over twenty years operated out of a former Lutheran Church at a particular location in the urban landscape--the intersection of 5th Ave. and Bannock St. in Denver’s inner-city. Four Winds serves a population which, due to a legacy of centuries of dispossession, displacement, oppression and discrimination, are among the poorest of the poor and who, among all populations in this land, have the highest rates of incarceration, suicide, mortality and morbidity from various health problems, and the lowest rates of educational achievement.
It is to the credit of the Rocky Mountain Synod that this ministry has continued for over two decades in response to the 1991 resolution of the ELCA Churchwide Assembly declaring the year 1992 (the 500th anniversary of Columbus’s arrival in the “New World”) as a “Year of Repentance, Remembrance, and Renewal” regarding the relationship of the ELCA to American Indian people, and pledging support for their ongoing efforts at self-determination and reclaiming their heritage and identity as the indigenous occupants of this land, and to be an agent of healing and reconciliation between Indian people and those who subsequently dispossessed them and occupied the land, including that land at the intersection of 5th and Bannock.
So what does that have to do with stewardship? Just this—that the property which legally (according to the western Christian legal tradition) belongs to the Synod is now realizing its purpose and identity as a sacred space where justice for Indian people, reconciliation with the rest of us, and redemption for all of us can begin to become real—incarnate, if you will. As much as anything else, that is what it means to be the church, the body of Christ.
Pastor Nelson Bock
Wartburg College West
Denver
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