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316 ˜ A Work of Hospitality, 1982–2002
he said. I think that’s right and a helpful way to think. In the midst of affluence
there are people living in grinding poverty, and we’re not insulted While the
walls in Berlin are coming down, the walls in the United States between the
haves and the have-nots are going up, and we’re not insulted In this day of hightech
medicine, the infant mortality rate in Atlanta, Georgia, is higher than in El
Salvador. We ought to be insulted! While we yell and scream about Willie Horton,
the most pervasive violence against women and children is in the home. But
we’d rather ignore it. Couldn’t we get insulted We have stockpiles of “surplus”
food, and we have children who are hungry. This week, thirty-six states are cutting
back the Women, Infants, Children program that provides milk, cereal, and
staples for pregnant women, infants, and children. But who’s insulted enough to
stop it There are stockpiles of construction materials and empty buildings in
every city, and yet we have hundreds of thousands of homeless. Why aren’t we
insulted What in God’s name will it take for us to get insulted
Elie Wiesel tells the story of a German woman who was honored in Berlin
several years ago for her work saving Jews during the war. It is obvious what lifethreatening
risks she took. She was asked, says Wiesel, “Why did you do it” Her
answer was superb. She said, “Out of self-respect.” It was possible, Wiesel goes
on, even in those dire circumstances during the war, to save people—to break the
system. It was possible to say, “We are affirming our right to believe in human
dignity.” That possibility also means that those who didn’t act to affirm human
dignity are guilty. They could have acted. This woman, insulted by what the
Nazis were doing to the Jews, put her own life on the line. That separated her
from the many others who might have felt bad about it, but who did nothing.
Now let’s talk about Presbyterians. We Presbyterians are particularly good at
doctrine and right order. We’re not as good at Christianity as a way of life (putting
our bodies where our doctrines are) and at being disorderly when and where
we really ought to be. The weakness this creates is that you can go to church and
confess to all the creeds—new ones and old ones—and at the same time you can
make bombs, plan wars, hate Willie Horton, oppress your workers, beat your
family, and it usually will make no difference to your church membership.
I had a jarring experience of that weakness a few months ago. I sat through
a painful death watch (execution watch) with a man and his family. We sat for
hour after hour in a narrow steel and concrete room passing the time, hoping
for a stay, but basically waiting for Larry’s gruesome and violent death. I was
pained as I sat there, Presbyterian pastor to these folks—my parishioners—to realize
that this man sat on death row because after his confused involvement in a
terrible crime, the decision to aggressively seek a death sentence was made by a
Presbyterian elder. The courtroom prosecutor, who painstakingly explained to
the jury why this man was not worthy of life and who convinced them to kill
him, was a Presbyterian elder. Finally, the sentence was handed down and the
execution date set by a judge who is a Presbyterian elder.