Stones of Remembrance

 

And Joshua set up at Gilgal the twelve stones they had taken out of the Jordan. He said to the Israelites, “In the future when your descendants ask their parents, ‘What do these stones mean?’ tell them, ‘Israel crossed the Jordan on dry ground.’ 

—Joshua 4:20-22

In this story from the Torah, Joshua had instructed the Israelites to carry stones out of the Jordan river and arrange them as a memorial of their crossing. Leaving memorials in stone is a uniquely human thing we do. From ancient cave drawings, to pyramids, obelisks, statues, or simple grave markers, we leave our mark on stones, so that future generations would know we existed.

On May 24, 2020, the New York Times published excerpts of the obituaries of some of the 100,000 lives lost to the COVID pandemic ravaging this country. People from all walks of life. Parents, children, wives, husbands, professionals, veterans, and laborers. The AFL-CIO had previously posted a scrolling list of their members who died in New York due to COVID. On that list were everyday people, teachers, communications workers, healthcare workers, transportation workers, and grocers. Just ordinary people, “essential” workers in our current parlance. Everyday heroes who carried out their duties despite the risk. While these were electronic, virtual publications, most of these lives will eventually have their names marked in stone by their loved ones. Stones of remembrance. 

May 24, 2020 falls on a Memorial Day weekend. It is a time when we pause to remember the people who gave their lives in our country’s conflicts. Whatever our judgments about the nature of these conflicts, we ought to remember people who fulfilled their responsibilities at the cost of their lives. Their gravestones cover the hills of our military cemeteries as far as the eye can see. Stones of remembrance.

Of all the creatures on Earth, we humans have the ability to build a “durable world” as Hannah Arendt called it. We leave our mark. We alone have a written language allowing us to leave a record, discoveries, and hopefully, lessons learned. We memorialize the people we leave behind. Ultimately, we will be memorialized and become the ancestors of future generations. What will they remember of us?

Will they remember this period as a time when we let our rancor take us into a needlessly lethal pandemic and then onto a second Great Depression? Will homelessness, illness, and hunger reach record levels? Or will we look back on this time and recognize it as a pivotal point in history when people of good will seized this moment to build a more just, a more sustainable society?

The fewest of words for posterity are marked on our grave stones. The name of the deceased. The date of birth and death, separated by a hyphen. In that hyphen is our entire lives. When people come upon our graves one day in the future, what will they remember? What will they tell their children?

Who for Our Sakes Became Accessible

"For your sakes, he became poor..." - St. Paul

This Advent, I thought about how much God gave up to enter our world in the person of Jesus Christ. I also thought about why He did it. He did it to become accessible....to all people. To do that, he had to become one of us, and not just the "one percent", but the "ninety-nine percent". He had to choose the lowest common denominator. To that end, he had to enter the world poor. To be poor is to have neither resources nor status. God gave up both. Christ was born in a barn, with animals. He was born as a refugee.  In many respects he was born in circumstances similar to what a great many displaced people experience in the modern world.

To be poor is to be denied access. Access to food, housing, medical care, a safe environment, dignity, and social standing. There were many barriers to access in Jesus' day. Being a Gentile, Being diseased ("unclean"). Being a foreigner. Being a woman. These barriers were used by the elite to keep out the undesirables. However, it seemed that everyone who was barred from approaching God by the religious elite was welcomed by Jesus. In fact, breaching social and religious barriers was a hallmark of Jesus' ministry. 

From what we know, Jesus grew up as the son of a tradesman. For most of his life, he worked in the family business. His first recorded public appearance was submitting to John's baptism. This was certainly an act of humility, as the religious leaders of the time would not submit to John's baptism. This public act of humility was the first of many. Subsequent acts of humility would have the dual effect of distancing Jesus from the religious elite and drawing him closer to the poor and outcast. Jesus did not exclude the elite. But the elite excluded themselves: either they admitted no need of the prophet from Galilee or would not risk their social status to associate with him.

The birth of Christ was announced with the message of unrestricted access: "Be not afraid; for behold, I bring you good news of a great joy which will come to all people". Despite the message of open access, subsequent church history has more than enough examples of walls being built. Today, the same people-groups are excluded along with some new categories: race, gender-identity, the elderly, and the undocumented. However, the greatest barriers come from our comfortable but isolated first-world lives, our technology, and ultimately modernity itself. Differences of belief and social status still separate us as human beings and from God.

So if these barriers trouble us, what are we to do? This Christmas, might I suggest something different, non-traditional, and non-religious. Reach out to those who are otherwise forgotten. Buy a cup of coffee for the bell-ringer outside your grocery store. The person inside the gas station booth. Public safety personnel working the holidays. The homeless person holding up a sign at the intersection. Nursing home residents and workers. Acts of kindness chip away at the barriers, the walls separating people from each other. If you will permit yourself an open mind, ponder the meaning of Jesus' words: "If you have done it for the least of these, you have done it to me". Beginning with simple acts of kindness, you might find Jesus in the place you least expected to find him.

Merry Christmas