The Black Lives Matter movement and
the CoVid-19 Pandemic can be summed up in two important words: “essential” and
“matters.” Two words that confront one truth: this world’s values are upside
down. We do not know what is essential. We do not know what really matters. Or,
put better – we do not know who is essential – we do not know who
really matters.
There are right answers to the
problem – not political, social or economic answers. Spiritual answers.
Workers matter. Not work, workers. Luther
taught us that we exercise our faith in the daily vocations which serve the
well-being of the community and the needs of our neighbor. Our world
undervalues workers. While we have been busy living and dying by the rise and
fall of Dow Jones Industrial Average the foundation of all that is real and
important has crumbled beneath us. Professionals, people with high-paying white-collar
jobs have been able to survive this crisis, officing from home, preserving their
routines and well-being with minimal consequence to themselves or their income.
It is the unemployment of waitresses and bartenders and retail clerks and
custodians that has crashed the economy and driven millions to unemployment, food
insecurity, homelessness. All of the investment bankers and stock traders together
cannot save the world.
Teachers matter. Not merely because
many parents are overwhelmed by trying to solve the
work-at-home-and-school-the-children-at-the-same-time puzzle and discovering how
hard teachers actually work. Teachers fill a great spiritual need in the
community. Faith is nurtured in the sharing of our story from generation to
generation. Passing on the deep values of the Kingdom and preparing children to
live them out in an increasingly complicated world is a demanding exercise, a task
that cannot be replaced by all of the self-serving home schooling in the world.
No amount of rote memorization will bring back the “good old days.” No amount
of ignorant anti-elitism will stop the future from coming. It is time to stop
pretending that education is an evil thing, that thinking and questioning are
bad things. Teaching children - all children - to use their God-given
gifts of imagination and reason, helping them to reach and grow is a matter of
life and death, and not just for the sake of the students but for all of us who
have to live in the world they make.
Stuff does not matter. We just think
it does, and crises like these heighten our self-indulgent anxiety about stuff.
Hoarding is the go-to response. Hoarding of everything. Who truly imagined a world
where finding toilet paper would require a significant personal quest? There
are empty shelves in the grocery stores now. It’s unsettling, but we have and
will survive. Maybe even more than survive? We have lived so long in a state of
overabundance that we have completely lost track of the meaning of the word
“enough.” Perhaps it’s time to get reacquainted. A little honest reflection will
reveal that we actually can do without most of what we are actually doing
without. Reflexively we complain about what we have no longer have, probably
because we don’t feel like we had a vote in the matter. That does not erase the
truth: we have more than we need, a more painful realization when we watch others
lose what little they had to begin with and spiral into hunger and
homelessness.
The social contract matters. Being
disconnected to the needs of our neighbor is one thing. Being divorced from the
structures and norms that sustain the very fabric of community is quite
another. We mourn the decline of beloved institutions, the organizations and
societies that the world used to care about, but we overlook our essential
value on which they were built. Community requires structure, organization, ritual
and tradition. Community requires governance. Richard Rohr reminds us that
boundaries are …
“necessary in any spiritual system both to reveal and to limit our basic egocentricity. Such containers make at least some community, family, and marriage possible. Boundaries seem to be the only way that human beings can find a place to stand, a place to begin, a place from which to move out. Even those who think they don’t have any boundaries usually do. We discover them when we trespass against them. The human soul flourishes on solid ground.”[1]
God ordains governance. Not the fiasco
we call politics that keeps radio and cable TV news commentators in business,
but the holy work of establishing peace and justice in the kingdom of this
world. The Hebrew word for justice, mishpat, is rooted in the realities
of courts, of judicial processes and procedures, the very real systems and
structures that establish and maintain community. Just community is not a
philosophical ideal, it is a tangible human practice, a commitment that we must
all make and keep to each other. This can be a very painful revelation to
creatures who think they should be allowed to live their lives unbound and
unimpeded.
Community is lived out in offices and
vocations, in orders that create and preserve justice and keep chaos at
bay. It is the heart of how Luther taught the 4th Commandment. Giving
“honor” was not limited to biological parents, it was commanded for all
authority figures. “Out of the authority of parents all other authority is
derived and developed … The same may be said of obedience to the civil government.”[2]
Authority belonged to those institutions and structures that enable and protect
community. It’s not about power, either seizing it or succumbing to it. It’s
about something much bigger.
Governance serves the greater good. We
may at different times fill different roles, sometimes leading, sometimes following,
but in all things we complement one another for the sake of something larger,
something that mirrors the very nature of the Kingdom of God. In a world that
worships individualism, being told what to do is the enemy. Faith leads us to
strive after fulfilling God’s expectations. Monuments to the Ten Commandments
stand guard over houses of worship to serve as guidelines to personal
advancement rather than the measure of life well shared. We refuse to keep
God’s precepts in daily life, to personify them by honoring, protecting,
keeping, respecting, and preserving the well-being of our neighbor. And we
really, really resent being told that we have to.
Luther believed in the importance of
good government and respectful citizenship – not theocracy (which he fought
against), but faithful people using their God-given gifts to establish a civil
and equitable society. It is how the gospel is manifest in the world. Disciples
serve the community; they do for others. Followers of Jesus reveal God’s love
in their acts of love for others – not merely in words, and surely not in love
for self. If only we could live in such a world! But we have replaced serving
with idolizing, humility with self-importance, faith with religion. The
pandemic and the Black Lives Matter movement are the light revealing that our neighbors
have paid the price of our sin, sometimes with their lives.
Rather than embrace our shared
responsibility to one another, we have created an adversarial relationship with
Government. As Luther wrote 500 years ago, ““Why, do you think, is the world
now so full of unfaithfulness, shame, misery, and murder? It is because
everyone wishes to be his own master, be free from all authority, care nothing
for anyone, and do whatever he pleases.”[3]
Propagandized myths proclaim that Government is incompetent, corrupt, useless,
expensive and so must be abolished, disregarded, bankrupted. Right analysis,
wrong conclusion. Rather than address the problems of the individuals who corrupt
their calling to governance or systems that empower them, we throw the
proverbial baby out with the bath water. Anarchy functions at both ends of the
political spectrum, and each accuses the other of being un-American. The cost?
A world that does not function, peace and justice that go unserved, the
powerful and rich profit while Rome burns.
The problem is systemic. Institutions
that are meant to serve and protect the many have been recast as instruments of
violence and oppression to guard the few. Poor people, migrants, people of
color, all those who fit under Jesus’ designation “the least of these” are regularly
decreed de facto criminals. The system of justice has devolved into a
system of punishment, neighborhood patrols have become combat units, peace
officers exchanged for storm troopers. The Black Lives Matter movement was
precipitated by the intersection of the long historical arc of American racism
and the rise of police militarization. The American community is burning
because we set it on fire.
One more. One more important thing. Diversity
matters. If sin is the force that constantly turns us back into ourselves,
diversity is the work of the spirit to remind us that we are not in this alone.
Our need to separate things (separate people!) rejects the creation’s defining
quality in favor of its meanest attributes. Ethnicity. Race. Creed. Sexual
orientation. Gender. Trivialities all. Ninety-nine percent of the genetic
information in DNA is common to all human beings. The remaining fraction is, to
borrow a word from Luther, adiaphora; i.e. “other stuff.” Unimportant.
Indifferent. Things which cannot logically be differentiated. A great amount of
hate built on nothing real or useful.
That is not the nature of the
creation. God defines life by its abundance. We define it by false notions of
supremacy - a meaningless activity that leads to soulless hatred and violence.
We are desperate to compete, conquer, destroy, as if our esteem depended on it.
Having divided the world into winners and losers, we will be winners, no matter
the cost. Unable to live in peace, we have made war and violence normal, a
readily available solution to protect the pretense of community while not
giving up our place of privilege. And we will not give up our privilege,
knowingly or not, at any price.
The old chestnut that we are
“color-blind” when it comes to others is a comfort afforded only to people of privilege.
Good intentions are not a solution to discrimination and divisiveness but a
shield against its ugly truth. The experience of people of color in this
society, the struggles of our black and brown neighbors is neither accidental
nor deserved. And it is not the same as ours. We cannot love our neighbor while
denying his/her truth. We cannot expect others to be more like us when we
construct barriers to keep them separate. And we shouldn’t expect that anyway.
God made unique creatures to inspire and challenge one another, to complement
and teach one another, not to separate or subjugate or disregard one another.
Learning to treasure and respect one another and use our differences to build
community is the best and only path to the Kingdom of God.
We are being confronted by so many
hard truths right now. The time of quarantine is opening our eyes to the inherent
brokenness of our world. But the gospel is itching for us to turn it
upside-down. Love our enemies. Turn our cheeks. Give without asking, pay the
late-comer the same as the one who worked all day. Make the last first, and the
first last. Jesus' words, his works, lead to one infallible conclusion: he has
in mind a very different kind of world than the one in which we live. Can we
follow where we have been led? Now that we have time to change things, will we?
Only if we can find a way to accomplish the most essential act of humanity, and
say the words that really matter: I am wrong.
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