I have one final post on a theological response to the suburban ethos, and then I think there's something of a wrapup post floating around in my head with a few concluding thoughts and some questions for further consideration, if anyone wants to take me up on that. ;) This has been a fascinating series on a personal level, as it began with a few guys from my MDiv cohort sitting around over lunch one Saturday afternoon trying to get a group project pulled together. I hadn't intended to keep it going this long, but there are so many elements to bring to the table in this discussion that it's not something lightly abandoned. I still feel as though I've only scratched the surface on this, so I wouldn't be surprised to see myself come back to it at a later point.

At any rate - the last bit that we discussed in relation to the suburban ethos was the fruit of isolation and rootlessness. When I wrote the original post, I was thinking largely in terms of geography, or about the suburbs as locations without a sense of place. We work in one place, we shop in another, our kids attend school in yet another, and our church is in still another. Geography has simply ceased to serve any sort of unifying or cohering function in suburban life. This results in dislocation, isolation, and what I'm choosing to call rootlessness, or lack of connection to our own homes and neighborhoods.

This presents a formidable challenge to any attempt to bear witness to the gospel. I want to suggest what might seem a surprising narrative response, followed by two significant practices. The narrative resource that we can offer in the face of isolation and rootlessness is, I believe, the hope of New Creation. Eschatology gets a bad rap these days, and frankly, for good reason. Most of what seems to get attention anymore sounds like horoscopes and tea leaves - and I think I'm being quite generous with that description. And let's be honest - Left Behind is an eschatology for the suburban ethos, marketing machine and everything. Why are we surprised that a theology that's all about escape and comfort - let's be honest here - should appeal to such a large segment of American Christianity?

I'm suggesting that we recover a true, robust, and deeply Christian eschatology, one that has its roots in the Old Testament promises of a New Creation and looks forward to mercy, justice, and shalom reigning forever. I want to hear about death passing away, about all things being made new, about oppressive empires being toppled and the poor and oppressed being lifted up. I want to hear about the restoration of the Image of God in humanity and about our final return to our true purpose. I want to hear about the restoration of right relationships between us and God, each other, and Creation itself. I want to hear, not about our escaping to some home far away in the clouds, but rather about home coming to us, right here, in the middle of the mess that we've made, when God takes what is broken and restores it to what it was intended to be all along. Christian eschatology is not about escape - it is about the Kingdom's fullness finally breaking into the present, resulting in the restoration of all things as they were always intended to be. And that's a narrative that makes the other version seem all pale and hollow, a pretender masquerading as something grand and glorious.

Why this narrative response? I contend that isolation and rootlessness had their origins in Genesis 3. More than anything else, Christian eschatology is about the final defeat of the power of the curse, the power from which isolation and rootlessness spring. And, in truth, we fool ourselves if we believe that anything less than the fullness of the Kingdom can bring them to an end. They find their source in our own brokenness.

To conclude, I offer two practices for consideration. The first is hospitality. I won't say much on this point - I'll instead point to an excellent bit of thought by David Fitch here on the subject. My thoughts are simply that I cannot think of a better way to live incarnationally in an isolated context than by making connections and by taking the startling steps of opening our lives to our neighbors.

The second practice is one that I think is fitting to bring these thoughts to a close. A recovery of a robust theology of the Eucharist would do much for churches that minister in suburban contexts. It has to become more than crackers and grape juice to us. The Lord's Table represents so much of what suburban culture does not. It celebrates our unity in a way that specifically critiques a culture of isolation. "Because there is one loaf, we, who are many, are one body, for we all partake of the one loaf," Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 10, and we would do well to remember that and celebrate it. In addition, more than any other element of our shared practice, the Eucharist is an eschatological tradition. It is a simultaneous looking back - "we proclaim the Lord's death" - and a looking forward - "until He comes". We are not, in truth, a rootless people. We are instead a community, bound together in hope, looking forward to the renewal of all things. And that, I believe, is a perspective that the suburban ethos can never offer.

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