7: An Experimental Mutiny Against Excess

by Jen Hatmaker

  This was one of those moments when my mission became very clear, very concentrated, very unambiguous. Static has always surrounded the Christian life; so much threatens to distract us from the main point. People have always preferred details and complications and rules, but when Jesus was pressed, He said (Jen translation), “Love God and love people. That’s pretty much it.” Staci’s story reminds me:

  This is what we do, and this is why we do it.

  Sometimes the best way to bring good news to the poor is to bring actual good news to the poor. It appears a good way to bring relief to the oppressed is to bring real relief to the oppressed. It’s almost like Jesus meant what He said. When you’re desperate, usually the best news you can receive is food, water, shelter. These provisions communicate God’s presence infinitely more than a tract or Christian performance in the local park. They convey, “God loves you so dearly, He sent people to your rescue.”

  I guess that’s why “love people” is the second command next to “love God.” And since God’s reputation is hopelessly linked to His followers’ behavior, I suspect He wouldn’t be stuck with His current rap if we spent our time loving others and stocking their cabinets.

  But there I go, off on another tangent, imagining apples can be part of the gospel.

  Next I’m going to tell you the last will be first or something crazy.

  Day 18

  I’m two and a half months into 7, and I’m noticing some things. God historically moves epically in my life. I don’t have subtle seasons of change. Our rhythm works like this: I experience a maddening tension I can or can’t exactly put my finger on, and then BAM. God kicks me in the teeth and things change.

  7 is becoming epically transformative. Tension led me here; now God is making a mess of things. I sense God preparing us for change. My sensitivity is peaking; noteworthy, because I have the sensitivity of a thirteen-year-old boy. I feel raw and less and less attached to my stuff. Scripture is pouncing on my brain like a panther. It’s like when I first got glasses and couldn’t get over how clear everything was. And I walked weird because my perception was altered. I kept shouting, “Look at all the leaves! I can see every leaf on the tree!” like it was a miracle after having been impaired so long.

  I have no idea what this means, but my hands are opening. I know my next phase of life is not going to look the same.

  I’m scared. Hmm. When I first typed that, I accidentally spelled sacred.

  Perhaps those have always been flip sides of a coin. Like my friend says, “Obedience isn’t a lack of fear. It’s just doing it scared.”

  Day 20

  “God? Connect us with people who need our stuff.”

  “Okay. Hey? How about these refugees?”

  Refugees are an invisible population, marginalized by language barriers and ethnic stereotypes. They disappear into society, unseen as they clean our hotel rooms, flip our burgers, and sweep our airports. We look right past them, unaware of the trauma they’ve endured or the countries they’ve left behind. Their stories are lost to people who only see their function—Please leave us extra towels. Take us to 5th and Broadway. One Coke and the paper.

  Austin New Church is learning about refugees the way we do: stalking experts and attaching like barnacles. The Refugee Services of Texas is teaching us how to empower this forgotten group. Typically, RST is understaffed and overworked, the plight of the average nonprofit. So we jumped from, “Hi! We’d like to learn about refugees, please,” to “Good! A Burmese family is flying in Friday with the clothes on their backs. Can you furnish their apartment and pick them up at the airport?”

  Oh lawd.

  Insert: e-mail frenzy, harried administrating, and a massive cancellation of calendars. Off the list I spotted some items I’d been waiting to give away, one in particular: bedding. This Burmese couple and their two teenage daughters needed everything, and this was something I had to share. In addition to one full-sized bed, out went:

  Seven sheet sets and the fixins.

  We supplied furniture, dishes, toiletries, groceries, clothes, and accessories. Obviously, that is only the beginning of this family’s journey. The true obstacles are yet to come: financial independence, language acquisition, education, empowerment, community—an overwhelming transition in an unfamiliar country. They’ll need us more in the coming months, but for tonight they’ll sleep on their own sheets in their own beds at their own apartment for the first time in years.

  So once again, we pray God is evident in every pillowcase, each fork, all the simple comforts we take for granted. While they’ve known violence and fear, we hope tonight they’ll experience safety and love.

  Day 25

  For the last three years, God used Easter to mess me up. I’ve mentioned the Easter I gave my boots away and life was forever altered. The next Easter we launched Austin New Church, and my story divided in half: before ANC and after. The following Easter was our church’s one-year anniversary as God delivered on His promise, and ANC was legit, a monumental lesson on His faithfulness.

  So let me finish the story about this Easter; there was more than NeNe and her little pink purse. When you bring your entire church downtown to feed eight hundred homeless people including a band, worship, a message, Communion, and resource stations, it gets . . . messy. The sanitized version of church goes out the window. The rules to maintain an organized service simply don’t apply to an outdoor service dominated by the homeless.

  So during Brandon’s brief message, one very sad, very lost woman screamed, “Where were all of you when these men were violating me?! Where were you??” There was more, none printable. It was raw and desperate, littered with expletives and sorrow. If we came to proclaim freedom for the oppressed like Jesus said, then we needn’t look further than this broken woman.

  This was my Bartimaeus.

  What did I do? How did her grief move me? Well, I motioned for Tray to “take care of her.” My instinct was to protect the service, keep everything decent. I mean, a shattered woman screaming during church is just too messy to indulge.

  My church family, however, responded with grace befitting the Bride. Brandon spoke gently to her, Christi tried to embrace her, Ryan held out his hand, others interceded for this prodigal daughter. If Jesus really meant the church was a hospital for the sick, not a showcase of the healthy, then we were seriously having church.

  Cut to the next day.

  I was preparing to be the keynote speaker at a monstrous event two weeks away, the Ladies’ Retreat for the Baptist General Convention of Oklahoma, around three thousand women. I was locked into Mark 10, where Jesus engaged blind Bartimaeus a week before He went to the cross. I got down to business studying.

  I had so much to teach. Other people.

  Ahem.

  Bartimaeus: poor, blind, beggar. Probably looked like every homeless person I know. Outcast, shunned from the temple, unclean, discarded in every way—a true societal reject. And here comes Jesus with His entourage, headed to Jerusalem to be “king” (oops, they had a little misunderstanding about what that meant—their bad). Everyone is excited, everyone is cheering. Yay, Jesus! We’re getting our king and we’ll be free!

  As Jesus and his disciples, together with a large crowd, were leaving the city, a blind man, Bartimaeus (that is, the Son of Timaeus), was sitting by the roadside begging. When he heard that it was Jesus of Nazareth, he began to shout, “Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!” (Mark 10:46–47)

  Whoa up. Yikes. This is awkward. This is embarrassing actually. There is nothing dignified here. This reeks of desperation. I mean, Bartimaeus? Poor, blind Bartimaeus screaming at Jesus? Sheesh. What a mess, Jesus surrounded by normal, decent followers, forced to deal with this sad, sorry homeless guy screaming bloody murder.

  Many rebuked him and told him to be quiet, but he shouted all the more, “Son of David, have mercy on me!” J
esus stopped and said, “Call him.” So they called to the blind man, “Cheer up! On your feet! He’s calling you.” Throwing his cloak aside, he jumped to his feet and came to Jesus.

  “What do you want me to do for you?” Jesus asked him.

  The blind man said, “Rabbi, I want to see.”

  “Go,” said Jesus, “your faith has healed you.” Immediately he received his sight and followed Jesus along the road. (Mark 10:48–52)

  And bam, right in the middle of my important studying to teach others how to follow Jesus, the Holy Spirit leveled me. Who was I in this scenario? Not Jesus, mercifully pausing for a blind beggar on His way to the cross, but the embarrassed “Christ followers” who scorned this humiliating interruption during their Christ-following and sanitized this awkward confrontation to get on with their holiness.

  I cried for an hour.

  I have so far to go.

  “Rabbi, I want to see.” Bartimaeus asked for the most basic human need. In biblical times blindness meant he was considered cursed by God, which made him unclean, which made him an outcast, which made him a beggar. Unlike James and John who nine verses earlier asked to sit at Jesus’ right and left hand in glory (predicated by the awesome demand, “Teacher, we want You to do for us whatever we ask”), Bartimaeus only asked for mercy.

  This is like the starving asking for food, the orphan asking for parents, the homeless asking for shelter, the sick asking for medicine; basic human needs—food, shelter, care, love. These aren’t tangled up in power or position; they aren’t born out of entitlement or greed. They are a plea for mercy, the cry of every human heart.

  Decorum has no relevance for the mother who prostitutes to feed her children or the nine-year-old who eats trash to survive the streets. The “rules on how to behave” are meaningless for the sixty-six children infected with HIV in the last hour or the twenty-five thousand people who died today from starvation.

  The poor world is begging for mercy like Bartimaus, while the rich world is asking for more favor like James and John.

  I taught this mess at the BGCO Ladies’ Retreat, including my dismal failure on Easter two weeks ago. I wondered if the American church was like well-mannered nice-talkers, sitting in a living room sipping coffee, talking about choir practice, while the world burns down outside our windows. While the richest people on earth pray to get richer, the rest of the world begs for intervention with their faces pressed to the window, watching us drink our coffee, unruffled by their suffering.

  It’s just not right.

  So I blubbered in front of three thousand women, bawling for the anguish of others and my own heinous disinterest, worried we were missing the point. I told the story about giving away my boots and asked if a similar moment wasn’t in order—not that shoes will change anyone’s life, but there is something spiritual and submissive about offering the shoes on your feet, the sweater off your back. It tells Jesus: I’m in.

  It’s the engine behind this month of 7: giving away is somehow sacred, connecting to the sacrificial heartbeat of Jesus. It’s as transformative for the giver as a blessing to the receiver. When God told us to give, I suspect he had spiritual formation in mind as much as meeting needs.

  You might want to sit down.

  Before I formalized this or offered any structure, women started pouring down the aisles, pulling their shoes off. They left jackets, Bibles, purses, diamond necklaces, wedding rings, cameras, iPhones, bags—I have never seen anything like it. Eventually, I just turned off my microphone as hundreds of women lay face down, sobbing, barefoot. The stage was covered in their offerings, falling onto the ground and taking over the room.

  It filled seventy large moving boxes.

  It was the greatest possible giveaway of Month Three.

  I learned something: There is much hope for the American church. It’s too soon to declare the Bride hopelessly selfish or irrelevant. The fear my message would be received poorly was so debilitating I hadn’t slept for a week. When women are accustomed to beauty and happiness messages, discussing a crumbling world caused me no end of anxiety.

  I’ll repeat: seventy moving boxes full of offerings, thousands of women going home in the pouring rain barefooted. The church is not beyond the movement of Jesus. A stirring is happening within the Bride. God is awakening the church from her slumber, initiating a profound advancement of the kingdom.

  Please, don’t miss it because the American Dream seems a reasonable substitute, countering the apparent downside to living simply so others can live at all. Do not be fooled by the luxuries of this world; they cripple our faith. As Jesus explained, the right things have to die so the right things can live—we die to selfishness, greed, power, accumulation, prestige, and self-preservation, giving life to community, generosity, compassion, mercy, brotherhood, kindness, and love.

  The gospel will die in the toxic soil of self. Paul wrote, “We were therefore buried with Him through baptism into death in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life. If we have been united with Him like this in His death, we will certainly also be united with Him in His resurrection.” We want the life part without being united with Jesus in the death part, but that version of Christianity doesn’t exist—that is a false gospel, void of sacrifice.

  The fertile soil of death is where the gospel forms roots and actually bears fruit. We have to die to live; we have to die so others can live. It almost sounds like Jesus’ mission. This is the church He was willing to die for, a Bride that inspires and changes the world. This vision is worthy of radical obedience. Don’t give up on the church.

  There is hope for her yet.

  Teaching at the BGCO Ladies' Retreat. My only disappointment was that the stage was so small.

  This picture is so powerful to me.

  Cameras, jewelry, money, glasses. Women left everything they had.

  I wish I knew every story behind every pair of shoes. There were hundreds and hundreds of them...

  My little eye spies a Coach purse. Hugs to the woman who parted with that. I hope you have a new story to tell: The Day I Gave My Coach Purse Away.

  This is just a tiny portion of the stage. I don't believe a single woman went home with a coat.

  When I think of how many women left their Bibles, full of highlights and notes and underlines and memories, I could just come unglued.

  Day 27

  Connie: I know you’re giving stuff away, and I have some really underresourced kids at the school where I teach.

  Jen: What do you need?

  Connie: One of my boys wears his sister’s old jeans every day. They are so small he can’t button them, so he pulls his shirt down.

  Jen: Bring him to me. I’ll be his mother.

  Connie: That’s one idea, but maybe just give him clothes.

  Jen: Perhaps.

  Connie: We also need girls’ clothes. And boys’ clothes. In basically every size.

  I delivered three boxes of my kids’ clothes and shoes. There is no reason for any boy to wear his sister’s jeans when we dump kids’ clothes at Goodwill twice a year. Calling the counselor of an underresourced school about felt needs takes three minutes. Meeting a need directly is a guaranteed solution, getting nothing lost in the shuffle.

  Day 30

  After a month of liquidating, my friends and I still have stuff to give away. I am not even kidding. Our closets, drawers, cabinets, garages, attics, and shelves have been purged, and the volume created a pit in my stomach I can’t shake.

  When did this lose relevance for me?

  Do not store up for yourselves treasure on earth, where moth and rust destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where moth and rust do not destroy, and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. (
Matt. 6:19–21)

  I’ve creatively distanced myself from this, namely, a strategic focus on the “treasures in heaven” with a blind eye to the contrary “treasures on earth,” addressing the spiritual list, ignoring the tangible list. But Jesus set these two in opposition, much like:

  You can’t serve God and money.

  You’re either a sheep or a goat.

  There is only a wide road and a narrow road.

  You either love your brother in Christ, or you’re a liar.

  We’ve invented a thousand shades of gray, devising a comfortable Christian existence we can all live with—super awesome, except the Bible doesn’t support it. According to Scripture, no real disciple serves God while addicted to the dollar. There is no sheep/goat hybrid. There is no middle road. There is no true believer who hates his brother.

  Grayed-down discipleship is an easier sell, but it created pretend Christians, obsessing over Scriptures we like while conspicuously ignoring the rest. Until God asks for everything and we answer, “It’s yours,” we don’t yet have ears to hear or eyes to see. We’re still deaf to the truth, blind to freedom, deceived by the treasures of the world, imagining them to be the key when they are actually the lock.

  Nothing like handing over a big pile of your stuff to drive this point home! After giving away one thousand items this month, there is still more. Ditto for my friends. (Insert pit in stomach.) So Molly, with her “bonus storage room” that would make packrats weep with envy, devised a plan: Let’s organize her space and use it as a supply room for streamlined giveaways from here on out.