I sit and look out upon all the sorrows
of the world, and upon all
oppression and shame;
I hear secret convulsive sobs from young
men, at anguish with
themselves, remorseful after deeds done;
I see, in low life, the mother misused by
her children, dying,
neglected, gaunt, desperate;
I see the wife misused by her husband—I
see the treacherous
seducer
of young women;
I mark the ranklings of jealousy and
unrequited love, attempted
to be
hid—I see these sights on the
earth;
I see the workings of battle, pestilence,
tyranny—I see martyrs and
prisoners;
I observe a famine at sea—I observe the
sailors casting lots who
shall be kill'd, to preserve the lives of
the rest;
I observe the slights and degradations
cast by arrogant persons
upon
laborers, the poor, and upon
negroes, and the like;
All these—All the meanness and agony
without end, I sitting, look
out upon,
“See, hear, and
am silent,” writes the poet, Walt Whitman. Sometimes, mute witness is all we
can muster in the moment. Suffering can
reduce us to silence. But while silence
may be our first response, it cannot be the last. Eventually, we have to follow Jesus and set
our face toward Jerusalem.
Jesus was no
stranger to the suffering endured by Whitman’s “laborers, the poor, and . . .
negroes, and the like.” He was
intimately familiar with the lives of the outcast and forgotten people of the
world. He created a movement embracing
a politics of mercy and justice. He
called it “the Kingdom of God,” saying it was coming soon to a town near you.
Jesus invited
people to join this movement with a clear-eyed understanding that it would not
be easy. He told his followers to let
the dead bury the dead. Sustaining kingdom
movements requires us to be willing to let go of the past, no longer defined by
the limited and limiting identities we have internalized. We cannot rest on partial successes, or be
paralyzed by crushing defeats. Let the dead bury the dead. The past is
past. Keep your eye on the prize of
God’s promised future.
Jerusalem – Montgomery
– Selma – Tiananmen Square – Cairo – Washington – Wall Street: following Jesus sets us on a direct course of
nonviolent confrontation with the centers of power that oppress God’s people
and destroy God’s creation. We will be
tempted to turn back, to settle for less, to lose our life by trying to save
it: But there is too much at stake to
waver. Thus, Jesus’ stern words, “No one
who puts a hand to the plow and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God.” The plowman who looks back soon loses control
of the oxen, and ends up butchering the field rather than preparing furrows for
planting. His work yields nothing.
When he spoke
this aphorism, Jesus may well have had in mind the story of Elisha’s call to
follow Elijah. When he heard the call of
the prophet, Elisha was tempted to check-in with mom and dead, make sure no
bridges were burned, hedge his bets. But
at Elijah’s taunt, “Go back again; for what have I done to you?” Elisha
slaughtered the oxen on the spot and cooked them using his plow for fuel. He destroyed any possibility of going back to
his old way of life, and made of his sacrifice an offering to feed the people
of his community. The prophetic call
requires total commitment, because that is the only way to follow Jesus through
the cross to new life.
Mahalia Jackson
gave voice to this truth for the Civil Rights Movement singing,
When I get to heaven, gonna sing and
shout,
Be nobody there to put me out.
Keep your hand on the plow, hold on.
I know my robe’s gonna fit me well,
I tried it on at the gates of Hell.
Keep your hand on the plow, hold on.
If God’s will were
already done on earth as it is in heaven, we wouldn’t need kingdom movements. The robes of righteousness are fitted at the
gates of Hell: in places like Camden,
NJ.
Whitman’s poem
may well have been prophetic. Whitman
spent the last twelve years of his life in Camden and is buried there. Once a dynamic industrial city, Camden is now
the poorest city in the United States and is usually ranked as one of the most
dangerous. The per capita income is
$11,967. Nearly 40% of its residents
live below the poverty line.[2]
The level of
corruption and brutal police repression in Camden is on the order of a despotic
third world regime. A harbinger of the
corporate surveillance state, 75% of the city budget is spent on police and
fire departments. The library closed due
to lack of funds. Aside from the
thriving drug trade, the main economic activity is the riverfront’s trash
burning, sewage treatment, and scrap metal plants.
Among
industrialized nations, the U.S. has the highest rate of poverty, the greatest
inequality of incomes, the lowest government spending on social programs as a
percentage of GDP, and the highest level military spending. 25% of the world’s prison inmates are
incarcerated in the U.S., including one-third of all adult African-American
men. Today, more African-Americans are
subject to correctional control through prison, probation, or parole than were
enslaved a decade before the Civil War. The Civil Rights movement was a legal
victory (with an emphasis on was
in light of the Supreme Court’s recent gutting of the Voting Rights Act) but
never attained the goal of economic equality.
Camden is
terrifying microcosm of the future of postindustrial America, providing a stark
contrast to the promised kingdom of God.
But even here, the Jesus movement is alive and well. Father Michael Doyle, the priest at Camden’s
Sacred Heart Roman Catholic Church, is trying on his robe at the gates of hell.
Father Doyle was
one of the Camden 28, a group of left-wing Catholics and anti-War activists
raided the local draft board in 1971 and destroyed all the A-1 draft
registrations in protest against the Vietnam War. The group was arrested but acquitted due to
the role of an FBI informant in setting up the operation. Father Doyle lost his teaching job and was
transferred to Sacred Heart in 1974.
Since then,
Father Doyle has kept his hand on the plow.
When the Diocese tried to close Sacred Heart School, Father Doyle secured
donations to keep the school functioning in a community where 46% of students
never finish high school. He helped
found Heart of Camden, which has renovated hundreds of homes, and his parish
oversees a second hand clothing store, a greenhouse and community gardens.
Father Doyle
describes Camden as “a casualty of capitalism.
It’s what falls off the truck, and can’t bet back on the truck.”[3] “America has decided to concentrate its
poor. It does not have a welcome for the
poor outside of these places. A very
high wall surrounds Camden. It is an
economic wall. You can’t get over
it.” When asked how he maintains hope,
he replied, “I say hope is the best four letter word in the English
language. I have hope in the little bit
done well. I like what Dostoyevsky
would say. . . that three things will save the world: Truth, Goodness, and Beauty. And if the first two fail, Beauty will do
it. I would like to be dedicated to
bringing a little bit of Beauty to Camden.”[4]
Today, many of
us are celebrating marriage equality in California, a major milestone on the
road to human rights for LGBT people.
And we should give joy its full due in the flowering of this little bit
of Beauty in California. But we must
remember that there are 37 states were same-sex couples still cannot marry, and
76 countries where homosexuality is criminalized; four of which impose the
death penalty as punishment. Celebrate, yes,
but keep your hand on the plow.
Today, many of
us are grieving the setback to voting rights for people of color in this
country. Several states and counties are
already moving quickly, enacting laws to limit access to the ballot. It is the last gasp of white supremacy trying
to retain control in the face of demographic realities. So, grieve, yes, but keep your hand on the
plow.
John Howard
Yoder wrote that
“Jesus was not
just a moralist whose teachings had some political implications; he was not
primarily a teacher of spirituality whose public ministry unfortunately was
seen in a political light; he was not just a sacrificial lamb preparing for his
immolation, or a God-Man whose divine status calls us to disregard his
humanity. Jesus was, in his divinely
mandated . . . prophethood, priesthood, and kingship, the bearer of a new
possibility of human, social, and therefore political relationships. His baptism is inauguration and his cross is
the culmination of that new regime in which his disciples are called to share .
. . a cross identified as the punishment of a man who threatens society by creating
a new kind of community leading a radically new kind of life.”[5]
Heard the voice of Jesus say
Come unto me, I am the way.
Keep your hand on the plow, hold on.
When my way get dark as night,
I know the Lord will be my light,
Keep your hand on the plow, hold on.
Hold on
Hold on
Keep your hand on the plow, hold on.
[1]
Walt Whitman, “I sit and look out” in Leaves
of Grass.
[2]
The following description of Camden and U.S. rankings is from Chris Hedges and
Joe Sacco, Days of Destruction, Days of
Revolt (New York: Nation Books,
2012), pp. XIV – XV, 61-113.
[3]
Hedges & Stacco, p. 76.
[4] http://www.nbcnews.com/video/rock-center/51091212#51091212
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