A Christian Response

You’ll notice that the tagline for this blog is “Wishing & working for a world transformed.”  While that tagline works well with the title of this blog (Father Prime) and comes from the first line of issue #1 of Marvel’s Transformers comic that debuted 30 years ago (“It is a world transformed…”), I sincerely wish that it were a world transformed.  And the past two weeks have shown why. 

I am speechless with the recent news out of Staten Island that the police who killed Eric Garner were not indicted.  No, I don’t have a dog in the fight, so to speak.  But as a Christian I believe that all humanity is united as children of God, that that’s what Jesus came to show us.  Eric Garner was my brother.  So was Michael Brown.  What I fail to understand is how anyone who calls him/herself a Christian cannot be outraged by the death of a brother or sister.  The only image that pops in my head is the image of Jesus standing there, watching his children kill each other, and weeping. 

Yet there is also something else that has been at play in my heart and mind in the wake of the recent news:  I am more and more acutely aware of my own privilege.  I’m a heterosexual, cisgender man.  I’m white.  I’m from a small mountain town where my family, while not wealthy, got by with relative comfort.  And while I was the only Episcopalian in my school and was sometimes mocked for it, I am a Christian and have been afforded all of the “benefits” that that label affords.  I have a comfortable job—I write this blog from a cozy chair on the third floor of our cathedral—and besides the bills for my phone and the house I rent, I have no great financial responsibilities.  Based on all of the labels that I carry, my life is really, really good.  So why care about low-income black men who are killed by police, or a Muslim teenager run over by a car displaying anti-Muslim rhetoric in Missouri, or a young gay boy who killed himself after endless bullying for being who God made him to be?  Why should I care?

Because that is what Jesus would have me do.  The wandering rabbi that I call my Lord did not look upon people with labels.  He ate with tax collectors and the worst kinds of sinners (Matthew 9: 10), he healed Gentiles, even those who he himself did not initially welcome (Mark 7: 27), and, when faced with an adulterous woman who should rightfully be stoned to death by the laws of her day, he called the one without sin to cast the first stone upon her (John 8: 7). 

Here’s the thing about being a Christian:  it’s about more than just Jesus!  Yes, Jesus is our Lord, and yes Jesus is the pioneer and perfecter of our faith, but it is up to us to be Jesus’ hands, feet, and heart in the world right now!  The earthly form of Jesus of Nazareth is not walking through the door anytime soon, and so it is up to those of us who have the audacity to say that we are his followers to carry on what he set out.  The tired adage of What would Jesus do? is not enough.  That mindset leads us to say, “Sure, Jesus would do this.  But I can’t.”  If that’s the case, then maybe this Christianity thing isn’t for you.  If you cannot see the Other as your brother or sister, if you cannot bring yourself to care for the least of these, if you are satisfied with the economic and social disparities in this country, if you can’t take Jesus’ words seriously, then maybe you shouldn’t call yourself a Christian.  We look at the frustrations and sadnesses of our world and say, “It is the way it is.”  Jesus did the same thing in his time and said, “It doesn’t have to be this way.”  See the difference?

So what can Christians do?  Pray.  And work.  Saint Augustine of Hippo once said, “Pray as though everything depended upon God, work as though everything depended upon you.”  Pray for peace.  But when we are faced with the opportunity to act, we must act.  If Christians are not on the frontlines fighting for equality for our brothers and sisters, fighting for an end to the labels, an end to the disparities, then who will?! 

Maybe if enough of us did just that, showing the world that the kind of love shown to us by that baby whose birth we claim to honor in two weeks’ time, then maybe, just maybe, we really can transform this world. 

Until then, I leave you with this prayer from page 823 of the Book of Common Prayer.  It is the prayer that I used for the concluding collect of the Prayers of the People this past Sunday.

O God our Father, whose Son forgave his enemies while he was suffering shame and death:  Strengthen those who suffer for the sake of conscience, especially in Ferguson, Staten Island, and all areas of civil disparity; when they are accused, save them from speaking in hate; when they are rejected, save them from bitterness; when they are imprisoned, save them from despair; and to us your servants, give grace to respect their witness and to discern the truth, that our society may be cleaned and strengthened.  This we ask for the sake of Jesus Christ, our merciful and righteous Judge.  Amen.