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[Back to index of May/June 2009 articles] Prayer Without Action Is Simply Poetry By Bishop John Bryson Chane
Distance, time and space during my early years growing up in the small town of Winchester, Mass., were breached primarily by radio and not television. There was no internet, no personal computers, no laptops, no Global Positioning Devices, no telecommunications satellites, no blogs or chat rooms, no Facebook, no Google, no cell phones or iPhones, no Blackberrys, no cablevision. The “Information Highway” consisted of Life and Look magazines and the Sears catalogue. Calling on the telephone was a rather simple process; you picked up the receiver, a real live operator asked you for the number you were calling and then cheerfully connected you. If you called a business, a doctor’s office or a government agency you always had your call answered by a real person, not some digital robot that spewed out a menu of options and numbers to press to get to another recorded voice that said: “please hold, we are serving other customers at the moment. Your call will be answered in the order in which it was received.” There were no credit cards, only bank checks and cash for transactions. There were no CDs or iPods. Life then was a whole lot slower and simpler. Standing in an apple orchard near my home at dusk, I looked up to the heavens and saw the moon, stars and planets that seemed, and were, so far away, unreachable by the technology of that time. The only rockets I heard about were flown by Tom Corbett and his space cadets and Captain Video. Beyond the radio, our daily news came from the printed pages of the Boston Globe, the Herald Traveler, the Record American and the Christian Science Monitor; newspapers I delivered on my daily paper route. In retrospect, it now seems as if Thornton Wilder wrote about my life in Winchester in his play Our Town, where everyone knew everyone else and where the big city of Boston was far, far away. The rest of the world was so distant that it almost didn’t seem to exist. In retrospect the places so much in the news today, Jerusalem, Bethlehem, the state of Israel and Palestine were so far away that they existed only in Bible stories or in the movie Exodus. In my life I have flown around the world many times, and have the frequent flier miles to prove it. An important part of these travels has been my visits to the Diocese of Washington’s mission partners in Mozambique, South Africa and Swaziland as well as my work in interfaith dialogue, which has taken me to Qatar, Oslo, Geneva, Tehran, Jordan, Israel, Jerusalem, Lebanon and Palestinian Gaza. Because of modern jet aircraft, the internet and wireless communication, our friends, fellow bishops and colleagues in these countries seem as close to me as my next door neighbors were more than 50 years ago in Winchester. Technology has married us as a nation with nations and people from around the globe in such a way that I can now communicate directly anywhere in the world in three seconds or less. Much of what I have learned is heartbreaking. In Swaziland, the visual impact of a kingdom ravaged by HIV/AIDS where almost 48 percent of the adult population is infected and where, by the end of this decade, more than 175,000 children will become AIDS orphans is emotionally overwhelming. By last count over 3.5 million people a year globally die of AIDS and over a half a million of those deaths are children. In Mozambique, malaria is the child killer and visiting villages in areas of high mosquito infestation will break your heart, as children burning up with fever are not able to access doctors and hospital care, and their only earthly journey will most likely be to the grave. Malaria kills over a million people a year; 75 percent of those deaths occurring in African children. All of those deaths are preventable! In Dukathole, a shanty town outside of Johannesburg, South Africa, I wandered down alleys between shacks and shanties where raw sewage collected in puddles along the way. Visiting the sick and dying there defined a community beset by poverty, disease, hopelessness and filth. That memory will remain with me forever as an unforgivable crime against humanity. And in truth, our own cities in many ways resemble smaller Africas, where failing public education, inadequate health care, drugs, poverty, disease, gang violence and teenage deaths by firearms are daily headlines in most newspapers. How does anyone get a handle on the horrors of poverty and oppression that daily affect the lives of over two-thirds of the world’s population? How does one engage one’s faith in public life with all that swirls about the global community? As a Christian I often find my mind engaging the core teachings of Jesus and what my responsibilities are to my brothers and sisters near and far whose suffering must make God weep. I believe that Jesus would not sit idly by today in a world fraught with human misery, but would mobilize the natural and human resources available to bring relief. Would not Jesus engage in the great healing that must be undertaken if we are to live through the challenges of globalization that enrich a few and impoverish so many? What do the Gospels say about engaging one’s faith in public life? The earth has been desecrated by those who are interested in how much can be mined, refined, produced, marketed and sold, and who have no concern for the toll their practices take on the environment and its human inhabitants. Jesus would remind us that above all things we have been given stewardship over the earth, the seas and oceans and all that inhabit them. What do the Gospel’s say about engaging one’s faith in public life? Jesus would remind us that the earth is now a very small planet and that all of us who live on it must understand that we share a common heritage regardless of our distinctive race, language and religion; and that common heritage defines us as being linked together in one human family as brothers and sisters. And it is only through the other that we honestly understand who we really are. And it is looking into the eyes of another that we can see the very presence of God. The great challenge facing globalization in the emerging 21st century is for people of faith to put their faith into action for the common good. Nations that have been blessed with abundance must share that abundance with those who have yet to receive the fruits of their labors and who live in stinging poverty with the specters of disease, illiteracy, violence and hopelessness haunting their every step. When the crowds asked Jesus “what shall we do?” Jesus replied, “Whoever has two coats must share with anyone who has none; and whoever has food must do likewise.” (Luke 3:10-11) In referencing the “Great Judgment,” the Gospel of Matthew declares the following: “Then the King will say to those at his right hand, ‘Come, you that are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundations of the world; for I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you gave me clothing, I was sick and you took care of me, I was in prison and you visited me.’ Then the righteous will answer him, ‘Lord, when was it that we saw you hungry and gave you food, or thirsty and gave you something to drink? And when was it that we saw you a stranger and welcomed you, or naked and gave you clothing? And when was it that we saw you sick and in prison and visited you? And the king will answer them, ‘truly I tell you, Just as you have done it to one of the least of these who are members of my family, you did it to me.” (Matthew 25: 31-40) [Back to index of May/June 2009 articles]
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