Of Being There

Many of you already know that I wrote a letter this past week to the Press Register condemning the recently adopted immigration law (HB 56) which has been dubbed by opponents and supporters alike as “the toughest immigration law in the country.” I had braced myself for the responses that I would get. I knew there would be support, and I knew there would be dissent….the bishop of our diocese graciously signed on to the letter, along with fourteen other clergy that the paper chose to not name(I thought more would sign on)…and the vestry of All Saints unanimously affirmed it as well; and I have received a couple of dozen e-mails from around the state, most of whom I don’t know. Most are positive. There are posts on AL. Com and Facebook…some positive, some negative….some joyful, some politely critical, some dripping with anger, some plain idiotic….But one common trait among all the responses is that they are all passionate. I think that is a good thing.

As I said in my sermon Sunday…the world’s business is the church’s business. We have to give our passion for the good of the whole….we have to be there….Hate and anger are not good things, but worse than hate and anger is indifference….Hate and anger can be transformed by a passion for the greater good….indifference has nowhere to go, has nothing to do, but insidiously subverts our passion.

Our vocation as the Baptized is to commit our passion to and for the world we live in. Our role in this life is to tend to the greater good of our world. We have to be there, mind body and spirit, the whole of who we are. It’s risky work, because when one gives of one’s passion, then the passions of others are enlivened….passions both positive and negative…but passion nonetheless…and that undermines indifference. A people of faith who are indifferent are no people of faith at all. As the Baptized we are world changers…We must be in the world passionately and courageously and imaginatively….Our love ( a proper synonym for passion) of neighbor is the singular reason we are here…all else is dross.

A hope of mine, perhaps naive, is that the gridlock in Washington might be broken because of the passion on both sides of the several issues that face this country….but there is one missing element that I have not mentioned relative to our being in the world as people of passion…and that is humility. Humility honors the passion of the other and it makes way for conversation and creativity. It is a discipline lacking in political discourse these days. It means that however passionate we feel about an issue we must hold on to the possibility that we might be wrong, or partially right, or aware of the possibility of a discovery of perhaps an entirely different approach to a matter….passion with humility opens many doors….We must be passionate with humility for the creative enterprise of tending to the human community and the planet: passion and humility: the essential rudiments of being there.

So let’s work at being there for the need of our world….being there as mature people of faith….people of faith who have integrated their beliefs and passions with a wise humility… Being there is why we’re here.