Each In Our Own Small Corner

A week ago I posted a quote here from what has been called "The Romero Prayer." It is named for Salvadoran political martyr, Archbishop Oscar Romero. For those who don't know who he is, this from Wikipedia:

As archbishop, he witnessed ongoing violations of human rights and started a group which spoke out on behalf of the poor and victims of the country's civil war. Chosen as archbishop for his conservatism, once in office he embraced a nonviolent form of liberation theology, a position which led to comparisons with Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King. In 1980, he was assassinated by a right-wing group headed by former major Roberto D'Aubuisson as he held the consecrated host up during a Mass.

The quote last Sunday said:

It helps, now and then,
To step back and take a long view.
The Kingdom is not only beyond our efforts,
it is even beyond our vision.
We accomplish in our lifetime only a tiny fraction
of the magnificent enterprise that is God’s work...

We are workers, not master builders, ministers, not
messiahs. We are prophets of a future not our own.

Well, I stopped and pondered that quote more fully after my good friend Greg humbly commented on his view of the quote. He said that if we make Jesus, God, the Kingdom too far removed from our lives and world, "too rarefied, then it all becomes
a)easier to let ourselves off of the hook for our miserable shortcomings and b) all beside the point."

That came from a view that I never even saw. I should have since many people do use that kind of thinking to sit and do nothing. I have heard people use a famous AA passage on acceptance as a way to become victims or ignore injustice and the like. Yes, give us humans the chance and it is easy (softer and easier?) to do nothing, to acquiesce to cruelty, to throw up our hands in despair and give up.

That view is often based, sadly, in looking at the world from a perspective of finding what I can get out of it. I know I have used that approach, for example, to attract people to go on mission trips. You know the line, "You won't believe how much you will get out of it. You will get more than you give." That approach often works better than guilt. It appeals to our own self-interest.

So, if as the prayer seems to suggest that the Kingdom and its benefits in this world are beyond us, we won't see the benefits of it, or even that our vision of it is too narrow, well, why bother?

Which is where the greater vision needs to be presented. It takes a moment of honesty to admit that The Kingdom is far beyond our ability. It is even far beyond our limited human power to imagine and envision. I am grateful that others did not let this stop them.

People like Martin Luther King and Gandhi and the Dali Lama. People like George Washington and Thomas Jefferson and Nelson Mandela. People like Jesus and Moses and the Buddha. They had long-term vision. They had an understanding that no single generation can finish the work. We are not the first generation to do great things- nor are we the first to do awful things. We are simply this generation.

I once heard a famous preacher ask an audience "What is the greatest time in which to preach the Gospel?" His answer was obvious- it is this one because it is the only one we have.

That's where the long and short views can merge. I can wish that I had done something differently in the past that did not highlight my incredibly miserable shortcomings. I can sit back in apathy since these things will always be around and I'm just one person. Or I can learn from the past, apply the vision of the future and then figure out what it is I can do in my way to do something that moves us a slight bit closer to that vision. Or as has been said in fine bumper-sticker fashion- Think Globally-Act Locally.

Which brings me around to the post about Eric Clapton the other day and the hymn he quoted. It says the same thing as I have been trying to say- and as is so often the case with music and lyrics - says it far more succinctly than I can.

Jesus bids us shine with a clear, pure light,
Like a little candle burning in the night;
In this world of darkness, we must shine,
You in your small corner, and I in mine.

All together this reminds me that I do have a place to shine- it is where I live and who I meet and who I touch with my hopefully helpful actions. I couldn't do my job if I didn't think I could do this. No preacher would get into the pulpit if she didn't have this in mind.

So go, shine. Be a light.