One of my favorite stories from Clarence Jordan’s life deals with a conversation he had with a newspaper reporter who came to Koinonia Farm to investigate this radical Christian community. Koinonia Farm was Jordan’s attempt to gather Christians of all races together into an intentional community based on the teachings and example of Jesus. In south Georgia during the 1940s and 1950s, this was a costly witness. Jordan and the others at Koinonia faced threats, beatings, shootings, bombings, boycotts, and many other types of violence. Remarkably (or perhaps miraculously) Koinonia survived and became and still is a beacon of truth and love in a dark and hateful world.
Understandably, this reporter came to investigate a community that was doing a lot more than raising a few eyebrows. The following is the conversation that resulted from the reporter’s meeting with Jordan according to the religious leader’s memory:
The reporter asked me, “Who finances this project?”
Well, all along, folks who had helped us said that the Lord had sent them, so I said to this newspaper reporter, “The Lord does.”
“Yeah,” he said. “I know. But who supports it?”
I said, “The Lord.”
“Yeah, I know,” he said, “but who, who, who, who, uh, who—you know what I’m talking about. Who’s back of it?”
I said, “The Lord.”
He said, “But what I mean is, how do you pay your bills?”
I said, “By check.”
“But,” he said, “I mean—hell, don’t you know what I mean?”
I said, “Yeah, friend. I know what you mean. The trouble is, you don’t know what I mean.”
I’m not sure I know what Jordan meant either. What bothers me about my faith is that I do not expect God to act, be present, and bless my faithfulness as much as I feel I should. And by “bless” I do not mean to transform the way of the cross into the “happy trails” of material goodies and perpetual grins. I mean the involvement and presence of God in ways which transform mere existence into abundant life and which speak God’s great “nevertheless” of truth, unconditional love, and justice to all of the world’s stale logic and impoverished expectations.
We shall soon enter the season of Pentecost, that glorious time when God’s Spirit came upon the church with unsettling power and transforming fire. And those first century Christians were as much of an enigma to their contemporaries as Jordan was to that newspaper reporter. They were an enigma because they lived out of the mystery of God’s presence and involvement in their midst.
I wonder how much of an enigma I am to the world. Perhaps the world knows exactly what I mean because we speak too much the same language. So, to be honest, I’m not sure I know what Jordan meant. But I have a feeling that Pentecost may be just the time to find out.
