Last weekend, we saw the first images of devastation and heard the stories of terrible loss from Humphreys County and Waverly. This weekend, on the 16th anniversary of Katrina, we hope that hurricane Ida will not hit the Louisiana coast with similar levels of destructive force. In the days between, dozens of people were murdered in a bombing attack in Kabul, and we learned that Tennessee surpassed 1 million Covid-19 infections. Brett Kelman wrote in the Tennessean,
Not only [does Tennessee have] one of the highest [infection rates] in the nation, but it also grew 53% from the previous week, an increase that is more than 45 other states. … No other state in the U.S. reports the same combination of per-capita infection rates that are both very high and growing quickly… [And] over the past week, more than one quarter of all new infections have occurred among school-age children, ages 5 to 18.[1]
Heartbreaking as all of this is, it’s hardly surprising. “Be quick to listen, slow to speak, slow to anger,” counsels James with one of his 59 imperatives in just 108 verses, and I find myself pushing back, wanting to suggest that anger isn’t wrong in itself, that it can alert us when something’s wrong, and that it’s really a question of what we do with it; that anger can be quite destructive, but also constructive. I fondly remember a saying the late Bill Coffin attributed to Augustine of Hippo, “Hope has two beautiful daughters; their names are Anger and Courage. Anger at the way things are, and Courage to see that they do not remain as they are.”[2]
The picture I am taking with me from this very difficult week is that of a little Afghan girl in yellow pants, skipping across the tarmac of an airport somewhere in Belgium, the picture of a beautiful daughter following her mom and dad and little sister into a future that I hope will remain wide open to her dreams.[3] Seeing that little girl made me very happy, and I continue to be grateful for her little leaps of exuberance. Seeing her gave me much-needed courage. Seeing her made me want to give myself anew to the work of changing the world so there would be fewer reasons for families to flee and more occasions for children to skip and jump for joy.
On Thursday afternoon, one of our members sent me a text, asking if we had ever talked about refugee resettlement. “I have no physical strength to be of help,” this dear friend wrote, “but my heart just wonders what we could do.”
“We have been involved in refugee resettlement, but we have always depended on higher level agencies like Catholic Charities to help coordinate,” I responded, “and during the last administration, due to sharp cuts in the number of refugees allowed into the country, all resettlement agencies across the country had to cut their staffs. But let me find out how things have changed.” And so I called the Catholic Charities office in Nashville, and they confirmed that, yes, they had to let go of their entire resettlement staff over the past four years, but that they were in rebuilding mode, and that the refugee numbers were going up, and that they needed help.
And the entire time I saw that little girl in yellow pants skipping across the tarmac. She and her family will need a place to stay, they’ll need furniture and all kinds of household items, they may appreciate getting help with transportation and with navigating an unfamiliar culture, and no matter what they need, they will do better, just like we all do, with neighbors who care.
I wrote back to the friend who had texted me, “Thanks for the nudge!” Later this week I’ll find out more details about the local process, and I’ll let you know how we can get involved.
In James we read, “Religion that is pure and undefiled before God, the Father, is this: To care for orphans and widows in their distress, and to keep oneself unstained by the world.” It may take us a while to sort out how to keep ourselves unstained by the world while also engaging with it, how to challenge and change it without conforming to it[4]—but caring for orphans and widows in their distress is about as plain and straightforward as it gets. “Orphans and widows” is biblical shorthand for the most vulnerable members of our communities - anyone in economically precarious circumstances; anyone without access to education or healthcare; refugees, undocumented immigrants, the unhoused - all those who find themselves pushed to the margins. Our care for them in their distress, according to James, is the measure by which our piety is being assessed - not the purity of our convictions or the fervor of our prayers. Not that ideas, doctrines or fervent prayers don’t matter - they do, they very much do! - but only if they help us become the people God wants us to be; only if they help us become doers of the word and not merely hearers; only if they help us embody our love for God in our loving actions toward our neighbor.
Much of the life of faith is aspirational; many of us would probably hesitate to claim that we are Christians, and be much more comfortable affirming that we try to live as Christians, that we want to follow Jesus. And yet, “when asked about the church, the first word college students think of often is ‘hypocrite’,” as Laura Holmes reports from the classroom.[5] There’s a distance between what we profess and do, and we often find it easier to see where others have fallen short of walking the talk - they may be folks sitting in the pew behind us, or entire congregations and traditions whose faith has a very different flavor, or the driver of the car who cut me off in the parking lot and took my parking spot, and then I saw the sticker from a local congregation on the rear window. “Is that what they teach you there?” I grumbled.
It’s much harder for most of us to see where we ourselves have failed to live out the faith to which God has called us. You remember what Jesus said about that:
Why do you see the speck in your neighbor’s eye, but do not notice the log in your own eye? Or how can you say to your neighbor, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ while the log is in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your neighbor’s eye.[6]
So, yeah, when asked about the church, the first word college students think of often is one Jesus thought of as well.
James compares those of us who struggle with becoming doers of the word with people who take a quick glance in the mirror. You check your hair or make-up, you make sure there’s no spinach stuck in your teeth, and off you go. The moment you turn away, you forget what you were like. And now James contrasts that with the look into a different kind of mirror, the word of God, which he calls the perfect law, the law of liberty. This look isn’t a quick glance in passing, nor is it a narcissistic gaze. It’s an unhurried look, unrushed and honest, one that welcomes with meekness the implanted word that has the power to save our souls. Bill Coffin wrote, “I read the Bible because the Bible reads me. I see myself reflected in Adam’s excuses, in Saul’s envy of David, in promise-making, promise-breaking Peter.”[7] And because you can see yourself reflected, you may notice that log in your eye; you may see clearly what needs confession and repentance and practice. Søren Kierkegaard, a 19th-century theologian and philosopher from Denmark, taught that
The fundamental purpose of God’s Word is to give us true self-knowledge; it is a real mirror, and when we look at ourselves properly in it we see ourselves as God wants us to see ourselves. The assumption behind this is that the purpose of God’s revelation is for us to become transformed, to become the people God wants us to be, but this is impossible until we see ourselves as we really are.[8]
James says, “Every generous act of giving, with every perfect gift, is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change.” And for James it almost goes without saying that our transformation includes our becoming welcoming, because the God we worship has welcomed us; and that it includes our becoming generous, because the God we worship is generous toward all. And because we praise, in the company of all God’s earthly creatures and the heavenly host, the “God from whom all blessings flow,” we become a little less prone to greedily grasp what is so generously given, and learn to share—and learn it not just in our minds, as a concept or a beautiful idea, but in our actions.
This past week has been a very difficult one, after months and months of difficult weeks, and I know that for many of you “difficult” doesn’t even begin to describe what you’re going through. Where does hope come from?
James reminds us that the world, whether we perceive it as vast or small, is not a system in which various forces are constantly pushing, pulling, shifting, rising, dropping, and emerging; a system in which all that ever happens, happens; a system that is essentially closed. James reminds us, or at least suggests for our careful consideration, that the world, all of reality, is an open system, one defined by the endless bestowal of gifts by a generous God - a reality where genuine newness is possible. A reality where, even when optimism has long taken a seat in the corner, hope comes skipping across the tarmac in yellow pants.
[1] Brett Kelman, “This Week in COVID-19: Tennessee has one of the worst outbreaks in the U.S.” https://www.tennessean.com/story/news/health/2021/08/27/covid-19-tennessee-has-one-worst-outbreaks-united-states/5601740001/
[2] As quoted, without reference, by William Sloane Coffin, The Heart Is a Little to the Left: Essays on Public Morality (Hanover and London: University Press of New England, 1999), 6.
[3] https://twitter.com/reuterspictures/status/1430544933463760896
[4] I’m reminded of Paul’s warning to the church in Romans 12:2
[5] Laura Sweat Holmes, Connections, Year B, Vol. 3, 276.
[6] Matthew 7:3-5
[7] William Sloane Coffin, The Heart Is a Little to the Left, 41-42.
[8] Steve Evans summarizing Kierkegaard’s insight as quoted by Robert Kruschwitz https://www.baylor.edu/content/services/document.php/174976.pdf