Christ's Corpse Bride: Poverty of Being and the Mzungu Legacy

For the wedding of the Lamb has come, and the bride has made herself ready.

During my years at Covenant, I read a great deal about how poverty is fundamentally relational, a result of broken relationships that no longer work for life. At the heart of this idea is the observation that the poor are held back by the lies that they believe about themselves, lies that are often told by the rich in order to keep the poor “in their place.” This is worlds different from the “boot strap” perspective that the poor are poor because they’re lazy or unmotivated; but it does recognize that the poor are literally trapped in a web of lies about their value, their ability, their very personhood. Until recently, I believed this in theory. Now I know it as fact.

One of our friends, who currently lives in the largest slum in Africa, had come for a meal at our place. Let’s call her Mary. Talk turned to the post-election violence that ravaged Kenya in 2008, with our friend relating stories of how she had partnered with a friend from another tribe to sneak out and get food: if a Luo greeted them, the Luo friend would reply; if a Kikuyu, the Kikuyu would reply. This way both friends were protected from the other’s tribe mates. Rebecca and I were explaining our belief that Jesus gives a clear answer to tribalism, for in him there is “neither Jew nor Greek.” “The answer to tribalism,” I said, “is rooted in the Bible.”

“And why are the mzungus so rich? Is that in the Bible, too?”

“What?” I replied laughing. “Of course not . . .”

And then it came tumbling out, like a river breaking its banks after a hard rain. “They are teaching in Sunday School that black people are cursed, because we come from Ham,” “I have heard that you are rich because you had the Word of God first,” “But Jesus, wasn’t he an American?” “But your people are so smart, so good. Our people, most of us are not very smart. And we are very bad.”

This didn’t come from a textbook, a liberal psychological journal, or a rant about “the man;” it came from my dining room table. And before that, it came from the church.

The final scenes of Revelation present a picture of Jesus coming to reunite himself finally and ultimately with his bride, the church of his elect. This is our destiny: marital union with the resurrected Lord and Christ. But what happens when the bride plays the whore, when the church seems more like Burton’s corpse bride than Shakespeare’s Juliet?

And we have indeed played the whore. Oh yes, our churches in Kenya and America have stood on the solid rock of the Scriptures as the inerrant Word of God, at least the parts that make us feel comfortable. Oh yes, we know that homosexuality and abortion are terrible sins, and we know that no amount of good works can save us. But we have played the whore none the less.

How else do we explain the pastor in Nairobi who tells another friend of ours that she is outside of God’s will because she isn’t ready to move back in with her husband who beat her, never had a job, left her for another woman, and threatened her with a knife the last time they met? How else do we explain the emails that fill up our inboxes about how Barack Obama is the anti-christ? How else do we explain our thunderous noise about abortion and our callous hearts towards African American single moms and our resolute opposition to any kind of health care reform? How else do we explain the way that so many Kenyan pastors have used their position as shepherd to bully and oppress, or the American pastor who preaches that the Bible is only about a “personal relationship with Jesus” and that if we only follow Him we’ll get “our best life now?”

Power, wealth, security and control have blinded the bride in America and exposed her to the beast. And we have exported our idolatry around the world. Where did our friend learn that she was cursed from Noah because of the color of her skin? Old propaganda from the South, it seems, dies hard in the rest of the world. Where did she learn that she is poor because she is stupid and bad, but white people are rich because they are good and clever, if not from the wealthy stream of white folks running around her country from the colonialists to the missionaries to the United Nations and World Bank? And where did so many Kenyan pastors learn to lord their power and money over their congregations, if not at least partially from the televangelists on the airwaves and the wealthy missionaries in their midst?

We have but one option: resurrection. If we are a bride, we are the corpse bride. But in the same way that Christ took on a mortal body and the Father raised it immortal and imperishable, Christ will take our rotting, corpse of a church and raise it to be the beautiful bride prepared for the groom. We catch resurrection glimpses in our Kiswahili teacher who walks the muddy streets of his rural village ministering to the poor despite his high level of education and access to much greater economic situations, in the Mennonite missionaries who have worked in drought regions for thirty years, and in the relationships that we see beginning, broken as we are, across racial, ethnic, and socio-economic lines in our own work. But the first step in the process is not the triumphalism, arrogance, or patronizing posturing so common to our career; it is repentance. Down on our knees. No, down on our faces, for the ghettoes and inner-cities in America and the slums of Africa and South America which our idolatry has been a part of building whether we like it or not. If the poor believe lies about themselves it is because, we the rich, have been such talented tellers of lies. “Forgive us for our sins and the sins of our fathers,” Nehemiah prayed. And so must we. This is the first step in walking with Mary into the life-giving reality of God, where every person is made in His image, and every believer given a place of honor at his wedding table. And it is the beginning of taking us off God’s throne where we’ve put ourselves, and getting back on our faces before the King of kings.