September 3, 2006

Walkin' & Talkin'

By Susie Bjork

Susie Bjork is a student at Pacific School of Religion and was our Minister-in-training for the '05-'06 school year.

Martin Luther had a hard time with the Epistle of James. In fact, if he had gotten his way, he would have thrown it out of the New Testament canon all together.

Luther thought that this "epistle of straw" (as he called it) was too heavy-handed on works and actions and neglected what he emphasized above all else, faith and belief.

Now, Luther saw a lot of abuse by the church during his lifetime (which in some instances encouraged people to buy their way out of purgatory or work their way into the church's favor). So it makes sense that he would cast a critical eye on James' emphasis on being "doers of the word."

But I think Martin Luther misunderstood James' message precisely because he oversimplified it.

Rather than suggesting that works and actions lead to being in God's favor (in a very individualistic sense), James' letter suggests that faith itself gives birth to action.

A holistic faith invites participation and a passing on of the grace of God. Faith itself gives birth to a way of life. Grace is not given because of action, but action is carried out in response to grace.

I think James is advocating a walkin' and talkin' faith.

A walkin' and talkin' faith...

...a life of the Spirit that involves both contemplation and action....a Christianity which is not just theoretical and heady, but is lived out and relevant in our daily lives.

The author of James (who may or may not have been James, the brother of Jesus, we don't really know) was a good theologian and good theologians aren't in the business of writing technical theological treatises to be peer-reviewed by top scholars, bound beautifully in hard cover, and sent off to libraries and bookstores across the country to gather dust.

Good theologians, like the author of James, write to real audiences and address the real issues and struggles that their audiences face in daily life. Good theologians are interested in how the faith we profess plays out in the lives we lead.

This author wrote to a real audience. A real audience of walkin' and talkin' 1st century Palestinian Jewish Christians who were trying to figure out how their lives, the Jewish tradition they inherited, and the new gospel of Jesus Christ they encountered all fit together.

The author was trying to aid them in living out their own walkin' and talkin' faith.

The author encourages his audience to be "doers of the word, and not merely hearers." He further illustrates this idea by arguing that to merely hear the word is like glancing in a mirror, walking away, and forgetting what you look like...

...It's a strange metaphor, but I think he's suggesting that faith is not such a passive, immaterial, and removed experience. Instead, real faith must be persevered, acted out, embodied, a lived reality...A walkin' and talkin' faith.

The author goes on to say that real religion is as simple (and perhaps as difficult) as this: "to care for the orphans and widows in their distress, and to keep oneself unstained by the world."

It's likely that James' original audience was fairly poor and certainly outcasts of Roman society. So, it wouldn't have been difficult for them to know which orphans and widows to care for. Though widows and orphans were commonly understood within Jewish culture to be synonymous with all people in need; there were likely real widows and real orphans in their midst. In the author's view, real religion, a walkin' and talkin' faith, cares for those in need.

This part about keeping oneself "unstained by the world" may make us moderns a little nervous...but what the author is largely concerned about is the temptation to become obsessed with selfish worldly values including power and wealth which usually require the exploitation of people and the exploitation of natural resources to maintain. The author knew what this looked like...it looked like the Roman Empire.

Ok, so...care for those in need...don't be like Rome...got it! Simple, huh?

It's James' practicality and clarity of message that has been the irritation of many a preacher...not a lot of tricky exegesis involved. It's a simple message... a simple message which is often very difficult to carry out.

Not a lot of talkin' is required...but a lot of walkin' is.

But lucky for us there are those who have chosen to live their lives in a way that takes seriously James' message. And, I think we can learn a lot from their example.

It was the early 1900's when Dorothy Day first encountered the working poor. Still in high school, she began to take long walks through Chicago's West Side, purposefully seeking out a glimpse of living conditions she had read about in the works of radical socialist writers such as Upton Sinclair.

She witnessed a strange amalgamation of very poor living and working conditions as well as glimpses of beauty including the small vegetable and flower gardens and life that continued on despite the poverty surrounding them.

Day states that "from then on my life was to be linked to theirs, their interests were to be mine: I had received a call, a vocation, a direction in my life."

Day, who at this point in her life had dabbled in various Christian denominations, was becoming very disillusioned with the church and its seeming disinterest in the plight of the poor. She witnessed a lot of talkin' from the church and very little walkin'.

Day moved to New York City and worked as a reporter for a socialist newspaper, covering workers' meetings and strikes. But by the time WWI had begun, she had lost her job and decided to pursue nursing at a local hospital where she found great satisfaction in caring for the poor and sick.

Dorothy Day's disillusionment with the church continued for quite some time until she moved in with three Catholic women and tried to get her life back in order after 2 failed relationships. In these women she witnessed a model for religious life and the daily practice of spirituality that she had been craving for so long.

It wasn't until quite a few years later that she joined the Catholic Church, after another failed relationship and the birth of her daughter Tamar Teresa. But even then, though she felt at home in the church, she still felt a tension between the liturgy and spirituality which fed her and the institutional church's lack of involvement on behalf of the poor and oppressed in their midst.

It was after the 1932 Hunger March from New York to Washington DC, while the US was in the grip of the Great Depression, that Dorothy Day met the like-minded Peter Maurin and their paper, The Catholic Worker, was born.

This new publication, which sought to join together Catholic social teaching and the everyday struggles of workers, quickly became an outlet for Christian activists to express their concerns and by the end of their first year, they were printing 100,000 copies.

In addition to being a forum for discussion about worker's issues, The Catholic Worker soon had a steady stream of financial donors and a steady stream of requests for financial assistance from those in need.

By 1936, The Catholic Worker was running out of 2 buildings in Chinatown and 34 Catholic Worker hospitality houses (including the first one in New York City) were providing food and shelter for anyone who asked. And in 1937, the New York house alone was feeding 400 people per day.

It's really pretty amazing how fast this new venture took off!

Dorothy Day continued to be active on behalf of the poor and was also a vocal proponent of nonviolence up until her death in 1980. And her legacy lives on to this day through the ongoing work of The Catholic Worker and its hospitality houses.

It seemed to come down to a theology of hospitality for Day. She was after a walkin' and talkin' faith that sought to do, not just hear, the word.

She sought to live out her spirituality in the context of her surroundings. She saw the needs of the poor and she used her gifts and abilities as a reporter, a nurse, and an entrepreneur to work to better the world in whatever ways she could.

She struggled at times to bring together her faith and her call to work on behalf of the poor. They didn't always go together easily and she didn't always feel supported by the institutional church. But nevertheless, she pursued her goals and made a lasting impact.

I don't know about you, but it helps me to remember the work of people like Dorothy Day and many others. Whenever I get frustrated or saddened by the suffering so present in the world, I need a reminder that we all can strive to embody the kind of walkin' and talkin' faith that Day and others like her exemplified.

So this Labor Day weekend, just a little over one year after Hurricane Katrina which still stands as a reminder of the great injustice experienced by so many in our midst and a reminder of work yet to be done, I am encouraging us all to remember the walkin' and talkin' witness of Dorothy Day...

Dorothy Day, who worked tirelessly on behalf of the laborers around her who struggled to make ends meet on minimal wages and amidst poor working conditions and I pray that we may continue her work in both the large and small ways we feel called to in our communities.

I'll leave you this morning with these words of Dorothy Day, first published in The Catholic Worker in 1946: "What we would like to do is change the world - make it a little simpler for people to feed, clothe, and shelter themselves as God intended them to do. And to a certain extent, by fighting for better working conditions, by crying out unceasingly for the rights of the workers, of the poor, of the destitute, we can change the world; we can work for the oasis, the little cell of joy and peace in a harried world. We can throw our pebble in the pond and be confident that its ever-widening circle will reach around the world." Amen.