First Impressions

2 September 2007
Carolyn L Roberts
Hebrews 13.1-8, 15-16

Remember the running gag in Pirates of the Caribbean: the pirates’ code of conduct isn’t so much a set of rules as guidelines? Or Robert Fulguhm’s All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten? Share everything; put things back where you found them; say you’re sorry when you hurt somebody; flush; when you go out in the world, watch out for traffic, hold hands and stick together. Or today’s reading from the book of Hebrews: show hospitality to strangers; don’t focus your life on the love of money; be content with what you have; do good and share what you have. Even the Ten Commandments, or the seemingly endless minutia in Leviticus, or the pointed proclamations of the prophets, railing against the treatment of the poor, the orphan, the widow, all of these rest on the same foundation. They are concerned with how we live together, how we uphold the common good…whether that good is limited to a band of pirates or to society as a whole.

It’s the same appeal John Kennedy made: remember not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country. In a variety of ways, we are reminded that we are better off, and certainly our community is better off, when we remember that we are part of a larger whole. But as Shakespeare says, “therein lies the rub”: this business of how we live together is deceptively challenging. If it were as natural as breathing, as easy as becoming another year older, we wouldn’t be turning anxiously to Dr. Phil or Ask Amy for perspective on how to do it. Not that our anxiety is confined to advice columns or talks shows. The recent TV program Jericho—which I don’t commend—assumes a hostile environment in which resources are scarce and those with power assume the worst of other individuals and communities. It feeds anxiety.

It’s small consolation that other generations have been equally hard pressed. Whether it’s the early Christian communities under Roman occupation, or Christian congregations during the rise of the Third Reich, or Christian witness during slavery or women’s suffrage or Civil Rights or contemporary issues of marriage equality or immigration, we are not individual islands surrounded by seas of indifference or hostility. We are influenced by our culture and the company we keep, just as we also have an influence. Think about the recent reports concerning the influence of overweight people on their friends. How we live individually has a profound effect on our own personal health and well-being, and how we live individually has a profound effect on our communal health and well-being.

In the wonderful book, Practicing Our Faith, Larry Rasmussen cites the case of the copper plant near Tacoma, Washington. I lived near the smelter of that copper plant the two years I taught in Tacoma, and remember it well. We used to refer to its smokestack as the source of “Tacoma’s aroma.” That was before William Ruckelshaus headed the Environmental Protection Agency. And in 1983, long after I’d left the area, the EPA was charged with resolving the very serious issue of what to do with that copper plant. It was the source of major pollution in the Pacific Northwest, and one often-discussed option was to build the smokestack higher, so that the pollutants would be spread over a wider area. Obviously, the solution didn’t really address the root problem. But the other issue is that the copper plant was a very major employer. In a region already hit hard by the boom and bust cycles of Boeing, the region’s other major employer at the time, sensitivity to the work force and the need to provide for one’s family was especially keen. As a teacher during one of the bust parts of Boeing’s cycle, I can tell you that these patterns hit the local economy in a big way.[1,122-123]

Ruckelshaus had the authority to decide what would happen to the copper plant. But instead of using that authority to dictate the outcome, instead of holding a few hearings for window-dressing, or even instead of gathering the owners of other copper plants behind closed doors to write new regulations, Ruckelshaus involved the community at large in the decision.[1,122-123] “A dispute…arose among [the disciples] as to which…of them was to be…the greatest. But [Jesus] said to them, ‘The kings of the Gentiles lord it over them; and those in authority…are called benefactors. But not so with you; rather the greatest among you must become like the youngest, and the leader like one who serves…I am among you as one who serves.’”[Luke 22.24-27] I don’t know if Ruckelshaus is a Christian, but I do know that he modeled Jesus’ approach. “Jesus tells [his followers] that the shape of authority in his community is different from what they assume.”[1,124] In a quintessentially bureaucratic setting, Ruckelshaus embodied what Ronald Heifitz describes as “creative deviance on the front line.”[1,125]

We know about creative deviance. Turning the other cheek. Facing down water hoses and snarling dogs while praying for those holding the hoses and the dogs. Walking the second mile. Declaring we are all Berliners and airlifting food over the Soviet blockade. Refusing to ride the bus and walking the distance, day after day, month after exhausting month. Creative deviance is living as a community with the common purpose of dignity and justice. Maybe some of the saints among us will come up with this creative deviance all on our own, this common purpose of dignity and justice that is community at its best. But most of us need a little help. We need worship and adult Christian education opportunities such as One Anothering and Saving Jesus and Mind, Body, Spirit to remind us of who we are and whose we are. We need to gather to break the bread and tell our stories. Because it is in these settings that we gain the perspective and the support and the courage and the Spirit to be creative deviants.

And the copper plant in Tacoma? The community decided that Tacoma needed to diversity its economy—and that the smelter’s plant workers must be retrained…. The plant itself was closed in 1985, and its 67 acres, with its high concentrations of arsenic, constitute one of the one of the key Superfund Sites in the Puget Sound area.

Just because the community together was able to come to a creative response does not mean that their solution was pain-free. It does mean that the needs of those impacted most directly were taken into account, and they were provided for. Tacoma’s creative deviation modeled the mutual love the writer of Hebrews speaks of. Like our Thanksgiving tables, our gathering at this table includes warm memories. Our gathering at this table bonds us together as family. But more than that, our gathering at this table feeds us so that we can live in creative deviance with our culture. We need to be fed at this table, because as Robert Fulghum has it: no matter how old you are, when you go out in the world, it is best to hold hands and stick together.

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