There's a safety zone about a meter wide¹ in the middle of most sidewalks in town.
This varies from day to day, strongly influenced by the weather. Some days it might widen to include the entire sidewalk, and other days it might disappear entirely. Location matters; some sections might retain an aura of safety over their entire width, and others will be constantly fraught with danger.
On one side, you have water, ice and snow falling from the rooftops. You might risk venturing beneath the eaves in order to escape other dangers, but you will eventually be rewarded with a deluge of cold rain pouring off the rooftop directly down the back of your neck, a cascade of snow sliding down upon your person, or, in colder times, chunks of ice falling with enough angry velocity to leave marks on the asphalt threatening your old age.
Duly noted.
Closer to the road lie different, but equally disconcerting, hazards. One could write about the danger posed by reckless drivers - which is real - but I find this to be something of a constant in most city environments,² so I won't delve into that particular risk here. Of greater significance is the splash radius which passing vehicles generate as they drive through puddles of water and slush. I have seen old women who looked arthritic and fragile one moment suddenly appear as though they're channeling their inner Neo³ as they leap and dodge the diluvial waves of water sweeping across their paths
Say hello to the safety of the middle.
Here's the real problem, though: there's not enough room for everyone in the middle. When the sidewalks are jammed with people, you can try and stay in the center, but there will come moments when someone has to move towards the edge and the dangers awaiting them there.⁴
It's easy to say that everyone should stay in the middle. But some must risk dancing on the edge so that others can walk in the safety of the center.
The body of Christ needs people on the edges, pulling on our sensibilities and living out radical expressions of Christianity, every bit as much as it needs people in the middle, walking steadily and faithfully down familiar paths.⁵ There is a strong temptation to take a personal calling and apply it to the general population. And even greater is the temptation to take general truths that are indeed applicable to the entire body and use it as an excuse to avoid your personal call to a certain part of the sidewalk.
Not everyone is called to sell everything and live in poverty. This is perhaps most obvious to those who do not have this calling, and least obvious to those who do. But some are, and they challenge and inspire the rest of the body to ask hard questions about their relationship with material possessions. Not everyone is called to memorize entire books of the Bible, or to rescue victims of human trafficking from captivity, or to mop the church floor every Tuesday morning. But some are, and they dance on the edges of our comfort zone and cause us to pause and reflect on our place in the body as we journey together.
It's far easier to judge someone for not pursuing my idea of what their calling looks like than to sort out exactly where I'm supposed to be walking myself.⁶
In other words, the best question is not "How then shall we live?," but "How how then shall I live?"⁷
After all, to live on the edge simply to avoid the safety⁸ of tradition and routine is every bit as dangerous as staying in the center to avoid the extraordinary.
¹If you're not accustomed to thinking in metric units, that's about the equivalent of "one quick google search for unit conversions of meters to feet" wide.
²I don't want to introduce hometown bias here, but if you've spent any time driving in or around Boston, it's hard to be overwhelmed by displays by bad driving. I've also been in Rome, so nothing shocks me any more.
³Are "The Matrix" references too dated? Does anyone else conjure up vivid imagery of a man acrobatically dodging bullets on a rooftop when you hear the name Neo, or has that become too obscure of a name-drop?
⁴"Dangers" might sound like a bit of an overstatement, but go pour ice-cold water down your neck and then tell me how safe it felt.
⁵It's also worth saying that if you're not walking on the sidewalk that's headed towards Jesus, then the question becomes more "where am I going?" as opposed to "what is my calling?"
⁶If, however, you see someone about to veer into the street and get smeared by an oncoming trolleybus, it's a good idea to pull them back onto the sidewalk.
⁷Of course there are questions to be asked about the direction and calling of the body as a whole. I'm dancing on the edge and focusing on only one aspect of an entire spectrum of ideas so as to play my small part in the body. (Hey, see what I did there? Avoided potential criticism by using my own argument as an impregnable defense shield!) But if you don't include the aspect of personal calling, then you end up with a giant army of clones. Ask Obi-Wan and Yoda how that turned out for them. (In a word: poorly)
⁸There is nothing safe about this sidewalk, of course. Everywhere is dangerous; just some parts more obviously so than others. It is, in fact, decidedly unsafe. The risk is more relational in nature: people who dance on the edges are sometimes rejected by those in the middle, and vice versa.
