Solitude and Revolution

“No matter where in the world he may be, no matter what may be his power of protest, or his means of expression, the poet finds himself ultimately where I am. Alone, silent, with the obligation of being very careful not to say what he does not mean, not to let himself be persuaded to say merely what another wants him to say, not to say what his own past work has led others to expect him to say. The poet has to be free from everyone else, and first of all from himself, because it is through this ‘self’ that he is captured by others. Freedom is found under the dark tree that springs up in the center of the night and of silence, the paradise tree, the axis mundi, which is also the Cross.” (Thomas Merton, “Day of a Stranger” [May, 1965]; in Dancing in the Water of Life: The Journals of Thomas Merton, vol. 5 [1963 – 1965], 242)

Is it surprising that a life shaped over years of monastic prayer in the long arc of sung call and response might become poetic, or that a person living in this regimen of art and emptiness might write poems, yielding to what the old monks called the “visitation by the word”? This is the story of Thomas Merton, known among his confreres at Gethsemani Abbey in Kentucky as Father Louis. From his monastic cell and later hermitage, Merton devoted himself to study and writing. Silence may have been the outward shape of his life, but words seemed to be his constant companion in an outpouring of letters, journal entries, essays, and books. And, in the course of his life, he became one of the most outspoken opponents of the Vietnam War, the proliferation of nuclear arms, and the devastating blight of poverty and racism.

That Merton became a writer is not surprising; one could already anticipate as much from his early attraction to literature, a passionate interest that he did not leave behind when he took monastic vows. But this hardly seems the context for the making of a revolutionary, as it turned out to be true in his case. I was struck by this in the collision of news from the Middle East, heard on a Kentucky NPR station as I recently drove through the hills toward Gethsemani Abbey where Merton lived out his monastic life: news of more killings in Iraq, of violent unrest in Jerusalem and Gaza, of the continuing torture of detainees sanctioned at the highest level of government, stories laden with the anguish of death funded in large measure by US tax dollars.

I don’t know what others were watching that evening, though almost every house huddled along the road’s dark edges flickered with the eerie blue light of television sets. I’ve no idea if they were gathered in solemn remorse as the stories played in an apparently unending elegiac mode, or whether they’d flicked the channel from such “bad news” to find the relief of a “Jeopardy” installment or some version of the current crop of so-called “reality” shows. “Distracted from distractions by distractions,” as the poet Eliot put it. It’s hard to make much sense of this, but the hope that such diversions might establish the foundation for an informed electorate seems unlikely.

What does it mean for us to “keep alert” for the Word of God in such times? How will we attend to “the signs of the times,” as Merton was wont to do? This will require that we listen for the traces of a truth often buried beneath the surface of distractions, and hidden by calls to defend our “peace and security,” the classic defense of empire, which the apostle Paul knew about – and scorned (see 1 Thess. 5. 3). What would it cost us to trust the beatitude, “Blessed are the peacemakers,” and heed Jesus’ admonitions to “love [our] enemies and do good to those who hate [us]” (Lk. 6. 27)? What would the national agenda look like, if we took such words seriously? Merton wondered – and thundered – in his day; will we in ours?

Right Prophets and Wrong

What a strange twist in this year’s celebration of political carnival. Now that a Democrat has emerged as a front-runner who is a person of passionate faith, evangelical in fervor and progressive in vision, it seems he isn’t quite right after all. Not for what he believes (or doesn’t), but for what his pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, said in a sermon. If you missed hearing about this, you’re probably among the very few in the nation: it’s been the subject of every possible talk show on television and radio in recent weeks, and parts of the sermon are readily available on YouTube clips, many posted by his detractors and some more recently by his supporters.

But what did the Rev. Wright say before proclaiming the stinging words, “God damn America”? His sermon focused on the fact that “governments change – sometimes for the good, and sometimes for the bad,” as he put it. To make this point, he turned to the prophetic text found in Malachai 3. 6: “God does not change” and went on to say that “God was against slavery yesterday, and God who does not change is still against slavery today. . . God was a God of justice only yesterday, and God who does not change is still a God of justice today.” Surely there are many among us who might dissent from such a view, just as the majority of (white) Christians in the US condoned slavery before the Civil War – either through silent acquiescence or by turning to biblical texts to justify their stance. One has only to read through some of the online blogs associated with the YouTube clips to see how virulent racial fear and hatred remain in our time. This, sadly, is not news.

What is news for some is that Pastor Wright dared to denounce the policies of the US government when these were used to enslave, oppress, and discriminate against some of its own citizens. It might startle these critics to discover that Rev. Wright stands with the long tradition of the prophets in his denunciation: it’s in The Book, after all, if they bother to check. In concert with these difficult voices, Rev. Wright opposed the policies of this nation when these were found to disregard justice for some of its citizens. In the speech that precedes Malachai’s claim that “God does not change,” the prophet had voiced a thunderous word of judgment against the Israelites for a list of crimes which included unfairly oppressing wage-earners, disregarding the needs of the most vulnerable in society (orphans and widows), and holding sojourners (read: immigrants) in contempt. In this denunciation, is the prophet right or wrong?

What came as shocking news for his critics was the sharp word of judgment Rev. Wright leveled against our nation. But there is nothing “new” here, at least for those familiar with the biblical prophets. Rev. Wright simply named the atrocities committed by a nation that – among other less than just acts – enslaved millions of Africans who had been brought to this land against their will and, even after “emancipation,” subjected them to political, social, and legal disempowerment by the forces of racist segregation and discrimination. Would the God of the prophets bless any nation that perpetrated such deeds?

What came as news for some of his critics, but not for readers of the Bible, is that this pastor dared to denounce America for acting unjustly toward its people. He might have said, in agreement with the biblical prophet whose name he bears: “This is the nation that did not obey the voice of the Lord their God, and did not accept discipline; truth has perished; it is cut off from their lips” (Jer. 7. 28). He might have spoken against the wrongs of those false prophets who “. . . healed the wound of my people lightly, saying, ‘Peace, peace’ when there is no peace” (Jer. 6. 14). He might have turned against the false comfort of religion, echoing the same Jeremiah, “Do not trust in these deceptive words: ‘This is the temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord” (Jer. 7. 4). He might have joined the prophet in crying out against false righteousness: “Behold, I bring you to judgment for saying, ‘I have not sinned.’ How lightly you gad about, changing your way. You shall be put to shame by Egypt as you were put to shame by Assyria. . . .For the Lord has rejected those in whom you trust, and you will not prosper by them” (Jer. 2. 35 – 37).

All that his (white) critics heard was the strong use of the “d” word, enough in their minds to condemn him without a more patient hearing. We do not have to wonder how the God of the ancient prophet Jeremiah would view slavery, discrimination, and injustice. It’s in the texts, like them or not. But many continue to denounce Rev. Wright as unworthy of being an American, and dismiss his legitimacy as a Christian minister. And, of course, the blame spills over to Mr. Obama, a long-time member of Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago, the vibrant church Rev. Wright honorably served for more than three decades.

Why this fear of hearing a strong word of judgment? One might say that this is simply one gauge of the lingering racism that defines our nation’s soul. This may be true, as Rev. Wright suggests in his sermon. But he did so in order to call us to higher ground, to remind us that “governments change,” and can turn from doing what is evil to doing what is right and good. Is this un-American? Hardly. Is it a hard word to hear? Yes, apparently, for many. Is it a fair measure of the biblical witness? Of course, for those who know the ancient scriptures that Jews together with Christians and Muslims honor as sacred. Such words echo in line with the faithful rhetoric that came to be called a “jeremiad,” after the name of the prophet of old and his stinging lamentations against his nation – in his case, the “chosen people” of Israel.

What Rev. Wright was doing was calling us to adhere to nothing short of this vision, and to stand with the prophets and, yes, with the founders of our nation in adhering to the principles of equality and justice, above and beyond the apparent fickleness of human governments – ours included – and their often ill-fated policies. What he was doing was exposing the idolatry of nationhood that embraces injustice toward some in order to secure peace for others. What he was speaking against was the false prophecy that refuses to tolerate criticism of the nation and makes of patriotism an obedience that is blind to the principles of equality, freedom, and justice on which this nation was founded.

They will not like the whole Bible that Rev. Wright based his sermon upon, and especially those difficult prophetic parts – including the stories of Jesus in his Not-Nice-To-Power-Brokers moods. They’d prefer a leaner version, trimmed of such unpleasantness that sounds extreme, radical, troubling of the peace. Of course, we all have our own edited version of the Bible, the texts we privilege and those passages we ignore. Even if few of us would be as brazen as Thomas Jefferson – good “deist” that he was! – in actually producing an edited version, we come to recognize this tendency in the song some of us sang during the 60s: “A man he hears what he wants to hear and disregards the rest.”

But we should be clear about one truth: Rev. Wright stands with the prophets of scripture, with Isaiah and Hosea, with Amos and, yes, with Jeremiah. He also stands with the founding fathers of this nation, who declared as “self-evident” the truth that all people “are created equal” and deserve equal justice under the law. And, I am proud to say, he stands with the leaders of the church he and I serve as ministers of the gospel, the United Church of Christ, a church committed to living out the word of Jesus and the prophets faithfully, a church seeking to serve the God of justice and of peace, a church bold enough to bring a word of judgment when necessary and mercy in all ways.

Rev. Mark S. Burrows, Ph.D.
Theologian-in-Residence at Old South Church (Boston) and
Professor of the History of Christianity