Second, what does the church have to say about living faithfully in earthquake country? Is this something we should be talking about with our congregations? If you’re a pastor, charged with protecting you’re congregation spiritually, do you have a responsibility to protect them physically as well. How about the rest of the community—in your church or not in your church? I say yes.

With all of the seismic activity around the world recently, many of us here in Southern California are wondering how long it will be until the “big one” hits us. It’s been relatively quite for fifteen years, but seismologists say a massive earthquake is inevitable. Will we be ready?

Will be ready physically? Will our earthquake kits be prepared (I am going to complete mine this week)? Will our homes be secured? Will our friends and families have a plan in place? I highly recommend “The Great California Shake Out”, I just registered this morning, and plan to encourage my congregation to do the same.

Will we be ready spiritually? Since the earthquake in Haiti earlier this year, I’ve wondered how I’d respond if I were a Haitian in the midst of such devastation.  What kind of a person would I be, what kind of Jesus follower would I be? Would I live courageously, or would I live in fear? Would I be willing to give my life away for the sake of others, or would I hunker down, looking out solely for my family and friends, myself? How would I respond to looting, rape, and fighting over rations, as we’ve seen in disaster like Haiti? Let’s not be so naive to think it couldn’t happen in Southern California, in our quiet suburbs. Going to the aid of those who suffer is one thing but what about when we’re suffering too? What then?

I think of Rodney Stark’s book, The Rise of Christianity: A Sociologist Reconsiders History, where he writes about the way people responded to plagues in Roman cities during the first century. Relying on the observations of Thucydides’ about the uselessness of science and religion of the times, Stark writes:

Doctors were quite incapable of treating the disease, people became afraid to visit anyone, and as a result thousands of people died with no one to look after them, indeed, there were many houses in which the all the inhabitants perished from lack of any attention. Bodies dying were heaped on top of one another, half dead creatures were seen wandering an staggering in the streets. Catastrophe was so overwhelming that people became indifferent to every rule of morality, many pushed suffers away, even their own dearest, often throwing them into the roads hoping to avert being contaminated.

But there were a group of people who chose to live differently in the face of such great disaster. Stark goes on to write:

Most Christians showed unbounded love and loyalty, never sparing themselves and thinking only of one another, heedless of danger, they took charge of the sick attending to their every need and ministering to them in Christ, and many departed their life serenely happy, for they were infected by their neighbors and they cheerfully accepted their pain. They lost their lives in this manner and many of their elders and ministers did as well.

I think the question for us as followers of Jesus, is when do we become these kind of courageous people, willing to give our lives away at such times? Somehow I don’t think it happens in that moment, rather by the small choices we make each day to live like Jesus in all we do. God have mercy!

- Rev. Efrem Smith, Sojourner’s “Preaching the Word”

Within a few miles from my office I can leave the idyllic community of Loma Linda, California, where people live to be a hundred, and enter San Bernardino, once ranked the 16th most violent city in America.  Truthfully, I can go about my life, rarely venturing into this urban community in my backyard.

When you live in the city its on top of you, you can’t run from the needs, it’s in your face. But suburbia can anesthetize you to suffering and injustice. You can build a safe life (or so you think), a secluded life, where the world can be shut out. Not so in the city.

There’s lots of challenges to living missionally in the suburbs, but one of the most problematic for me? Complacency. I find myself too comfortable with nice sub-divisions, tidy neighborhoods, and picturesque streets. The Rev. Smith challenges me. I am responsible too. And here in my town I can’t escape the fact there’s enormous needs across the street. So what am I doing about? Sadly, the usual, not much.  What challenges do you face trying to live faithfully in Suburbia?

Jesus, have mercy on me. Remove my complacency. Compel me to action.  Let me not forget the city in my backyard. Amen.

Thanks to my Twitter search widget I found a fascinating article today from the Wall Street Journal about aging in suburbia. There’s a lot to think about here beyond this issue as well, for example, what can suburban communities learn about facilitating greater communal connections? By the way, one of these days I plan to write about the idea behind this blog—the Suburban Pastor, but that’ll have to wait for now.