David Wade

The Joy of Ashes

By David Wade on 02-20-2010

The beginning of Sunday night's Olympic Opening Ceremony focused on the indigenous people of Canada. Initially, this seemed an enormously progressive perspective until one looked outside the stadium to find groups of native protesters. It seems the tribute was merely a concession to having built some of the Olympic buildings over sacred indigenous burial sites. Ashes.

Almost eight and a half years after the event, the site of the World Trade Center collapse remains a large hole in the ground. While this may indeed be a fitting symbol of all that tragedy represents, in fact it is greed, political posturing and infighting, human pettiness, and wrangling over insurance claims that has kept the site empty. As long as the address continues to be prime real estate, the nearly 3000 memories that linger there will remain dishonored. Ashes.

Another grave was dug this week for a loved one gone from me. Jewelry companies would have us believe that diamonds, with their artificially inflated value, are the most exquisite expression of love on the planet. Yet as the dirt was placed over the body of my old friend, I felt that love itself is the most rare and precious commodity we can know. And in that sorrow, I know less of it now. Ashes.

As a young Christian, I was taught that our faith was about joy and triumph. That it was an ever-upward movement. Our worship reflected it. Our evangelism was fueled by it. Now I look back and see that as folly, as mere ash. Christianity is about life. And life is often about sorrow. Disappointment. Fear. Loss. The unique call we receive as followers of the Crucified One is that we can become companions to the sorrow without being consumed by it. We can take on the ashes without becoming ash ourselves.

The message of the Cross is the same as the message of the Birth--Emmanuel--I am with you. Even in your poverty. Even in your suffering. Even in your dying. Never abandoned. Never alone. 

May this joy of ashes be yours during this Lenten season.

David Wade was a part of The Church of the Saviour before moving to Virginia Beach, where he facilitates The Welcome Table, now celebrating its third anniversary. They meet at 6:00 in the chapel on the grounds of Virginia Wesleyan College.

The Story Within the Story

By David Wade on 03-21-2009

I no longer open my quarterly 401K reports. So much of my account's value has been lost that if I were closer to retirement age the prospect of my working at McDonald's into my 70's would be unavoidable.

Despite all of the news coverage on the financial crisis, I feel a vital interpretive element has been missed. It has to do with the story within the story. It is often the story within a story that reveals a deeper truth about the whole. The overweening hubris of our nation's top financial corporations, exemplified by the millions of dollars of bonuses issued with bail-out money, along with the other accustomed accoutrements of the privileged, should really come as no surprise. History is papered with the overblown egos and Marie Antoinette-styled sensitivities of the rich.

Yet we are America. Our founding was driven, in part, by a reaction against European "blue-bloodedness." George Washington was "first among equals." This land is your land, this land is my land. Yet during the recent Presidential campaign, "socialist" was an epithet used to eviscerate any populist economic sentiment----mostly by people, aside from the unbelievably cynical news hounds who threw the term meatily to the masses, who have no idea what the term really implies. And while the lifestyles of the sharks of Wall Street are protected, labor unions are vilified and disempowered in the name of financial stability.

Who's to blame? Who can be held to account for sleeping at the switch while our nation was plundered by robber barons?

We are. The church. We've failed our nation.

For the last 40 years, the American church has been dancing to the drum of political power. Paranoid and pliable, it has promoted the issues its masters have required. And in doing so, lost its prophetic vision--sold for a few seats at the table of kings. And to echo the words of Psalm 2, the powerful now just laugh at us for being so gullible. What a bunch of rubes! Get them to focus solely on abortion and homosexuality. Make these their major issues, get their leaders all lathered up, marching and praying, hateful and fearful. And we'll plunder the coffers of the American Dream. We will run this nation any way we please----secular, misogynistic, violent, imperial. And the impotent Church will beg for scraps from our tables, grateful to receive a White House Christmas card.

We're all to blame. Left and Right. We've all been caught up in the game. We've made clowns out of servants like Jeremiah Wright. Where was the Left to come to his defense? Silent. Where was the progressive church when Prop 8 was on the ballot in California? Defending Rick Warren's right to deliver an over-eager Inaugural prayer. Politeness replacing prophecy. Political correctness replacing holy zeal. The Left has as much to answer for as the Right.

This is the story within the story----the news that's not being reported. And thank goodness! How much more discredited does the church need to become? As a pastor, I say let it go all the way down. Megachurch marketing, Focus on the Family, prayer cabals at the White House and the Pentagon, the Rapture industry, let it all go.

And let's start anew. Let's find our voice again. With no strings attached. Let's minister to the newly disenfranchised, the despondent, the truly left-behind. Let's be the church in the street, on the assembly line, in the food stamp line. Let's call new generations, young and old, to a transformational journey. Let's abandon a false dream, and find the one nestled in God's heart.

David Wade writes from his home in Virginia Beach, where he facilitates The Welcome Table on Saturday evenings at 6 in the chapel on the campus of Virginia Wesleyan College. He says, "We're just a tiny piece, but, together, maybe we can find this new dream." If you're ever in the area, join them in the search.

Speaking Ill of the Dead: A Pentecost Reflection

By David Wade on 05-26-2007

My grandmother was an alcoholic. Actually, in the early years of the 20th century, the language was not so therapeutic, or kind. People called my grandmother a drunk.

Unbeknownst to the family, my grandfather's back was broken in a coal mining accident. When he hadn't returned home for several weeks, my grandmother, in her habit of despair, went on a bender with some local moonshiners. In doing so, she abandoned her young children. The moonshiners were caught by the sheriff, while she was with them, and they were all sent to jail.

After a number of days, the neighbors noticed that the children were alone, and they called social services. When my grandfather returned home from the hospital, not knowing that the mining company had neglected to notify his family, he found his house looted and his children gone. And his wife in jail.

Grandfather cashed in his war bonds from service in WWI and used the money to buy back most of his family. But not all. He would not find the baby, my uncle Jim, for nearly 40 years.

When I heard the news last week about Jerry Falwell's death, I was saddened. And I was surprised at my sadness. I found him to be a bully and a huckster, a character right out of Southern fiction. So I've wondered at my feelings.

Could it be the same feelings I'll have when the current White House administration leaves in 2009? I'll be relieved, but it'll be with the realization that it's too little, too late. All the damage that will have been done. All the loss. The lies, the deceit, the hubris. So much to rebuild, to undo. It'll take decades, maybe generations, to heal.

Falwell's legacy is similar. So much hatred. So much fear. A culture twisted. A whole portion of our population demonized. And in the name of the gospel. In my name, because we're members of the same religious family.

And that's it. That's the reason I'm saddened. I can no more distance myself from Falwell, no matter how much I disagreed with his message, than I can my brothers, or my uncles, or my grandmother. The legacy he leaves is my responsibility to clean up, to correct, to heal.

This weekend is Pentecost. Because of it, those of us who may be potential alcoholics by birth are by re-creation made new, with a new future, and the hope of a new life for us and for the world. Newness begins. That's why the Welcome Table community exists.

For years a friend and member of The Church of the Saviour community, David Wade is now starting a church in the Norfolk/Virginia Beach area called The Welcome Table, which meets in the Chapel of Virginia Wesleyan College at 6 pm on Saturdays. For more information, contact David at 757-518-0876.