Things Left Undone--March 7, 2022

Things Left Undone—March 7, 2022

“Anyone, then, who knows the right thing to do and fails to do it, commits sin.” [James 4:17]

The first thing is the diagnosis. A diagnosis is not a cure, but it sure is hard to stumble into healing without an honest and complete diagnosis. And for that, I am thankful to voices like James, and many others like him, who remind us that our diagnosis as people with "sin-sick souls" (as the old hymn puts it) includes the things we fail to do or the words we fail to say, not just actions like stealing, lying, or killing. Our problem is not merely that we periodically do bad things, but that we settle for so much less by failing to do the good we have the opportunity to do.

And, like I say, there are numerous voices in our Christian tradition that help us to see it. I grew up in Lutheran worship services with a confession nearly every week that all of us in the room had sinned both "in what we have done, and in what we have left undone." Later in adulthood I was introduced to the compelling line of Dietrich Bonhoeffer's, which goes, "We are not merely to bandage the wounds of victims beneath the wheels of injustice, we are to drive a spoke into the wheel itself." Or, on the verge of entering into pastoral ministry myself, I first read the novel Gilead by Marilynne Robinson, whose narrator speaks the gorgeous but convicting sentence: "I think there must also be a prevenient courage that allows us to be brave — that is, to acknowledge that there is more beauty than our eyes can bear, that precious things have been put into our hands and to do nothing to honor them is to do great harm."

All of those voices, from the recent to the ancient, so powerfully remind me that the goal of life isn't just to avoid breaking rules or coloring outside of the lines, but to step more fully into the good that is entrusted to me to do.  God's will for me, and for all of us, isn't just a life that avoids transgressing a single commandment, at the cost of never doing anything good either, but a life that take the leap of honoring other people, loving neighbors, making beauty, encouraging the faint-hearted, and stopping what is unjust.  It is instructive, as I think about it, that the old prophet doesn't say, "What does the Lord require of you but to avoid this list of bad actions?" but rather, "Do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly with your God." Those are positive actions we are called not--not merely bad things to avoid to stay on God's "good side."

As helpful as it is to this chorus of voices calling us not to leave good undone in the world when it is our to do it, what gets is me is how mediocre (at best) we Christians--and maybe even especially we Lutheran Christians--do at actually living differently because of it.  Like I say, I grew up in a tradition--and am still a pastor in this same tradition--where, week by week, we all verbally confess that we have sinned in what we left undone and unsaid.  And yet, Lutherans have also often found themselves quite frequently staring at their feet and squirming in awkward passivity when there were wheels of injustice that needed spokes driven through them.  For every Bonhoeffer resisting Hitler's vision and violence, there were ten Respectable Religious Lutheran pastors in Germany all quietly giving their approval to the Reich's idolatrous Christian nationalism and refusing to speak or act to make a difference.  For every Bob and Jeannie Graetz (whose story is awesome if you don't know it) sticking their necks out as the only white pastor and spouse actively and publicly supporting the Montgomery Bus Boycott during the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s, there were countless more scowling Christians (scowling in the name of Religious Respectability, of course), saying that Christians shouldn't make trouble like that.  In every moment, there is the temptation of doing nothing because we think that keeps us from doing the wrong thing.  And even if we have learned to be good at saying that, we still have a long way to go, at least in my tradition, toward actually changing our behavior and doing the good that is ours to do... even when it is good trouble.

But even if we have struggled to take James' message seriously beyond weekly liturgical lip service, let's dare again to hear him in the hopes he might get through to us deeply enough to move us from inaction and apathy.  Like the well-loved hymn of the 20th century has taught us to pray, "Save us from weak resignation to the evils we deplore... grant us wisdom, grant us courage, serving you whom we adore."

May God give us the wisdom to see what good God is placing before us on our path today, and may God give us the courage to step into it.

Lord God, make us brave to do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly where you lead.