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(Read this series from its beginning here.)
No matter how small or how disconnected it may feel to you, no matter how tempted you may be to categorize your present efforts to move this world toward justice, mercy, and peace as futile, our voices, our work, our effort, our love, and solidarity are not in vain. We are building on the changes brought about by those who came before us. Will those who come after us be able to build on our work? As Angela Davis reminds us, “You have to act as if it were possible to radically transform the world. And you have to do it all the time.” This doesn’t mean we should not also take time for self-care. Self-care is part of our work of transforming our world, too. I’m challenged by Davis’ words, especially because of my Christian background. I was raised with the futile belief that nothing I could do could make a difference. John Dominic Crossan challenges this mentality among Christians in his book Rediscovering the Revolutionary Message of the Lord’s Prayer:
“You have been waiting for God, [Jesus] said, while God has been waiting for you. No wonder nothing is happening. You want God’s intervention, he said, while God wants your collaboration. God’s kingdom is here, but only insofar as you accept it, enter it, live it, and thereby establish it.” (The Greatest Prayer: Rediscovering the Revolutionary Message of the Lord’s Prayer, p. 27-28)
Of course, we’ll get discouraged sometimes: Change doesn’t happen overnight and it never happens as quickly as we want. Change happens incrementally as we keep at it. I hope that one day I’ll be able to look back at each chapter of my life and the various justice efforts I’ve participated in and see that we’ve made a difference. Whenever I get discouraged, I remind myself of these words:
“People say, what is the sense of our small effort? They cannot see that we must lay one brick at a time, take one step at a time. A pebble cast into a pond causes ripples that spread in all directions. Each one of our thoughts, words and deeds is like that. No one has a right to sit down and feel hopeless. There is too much work to do.” (Dorothy Day, The Long Loneliness, p. 11)
In the end, Jesus’ concern was not what we must do in order to secure heavenly bliss, but rather, what does the present state of our world here “on earth” require of us, how do we respond to the needs of those being harmed, and how can we participate with them in struggling for a more just world?
“The non-ethical practices and beliefs in historical Christianity nearly all center on the winning of heaven and immortality. On the other hand, the Kingdom of God can be established by nothing except righteous life and action.” (Walter Rauschenbusch, A Theology for the Social Gospel, p. 15)
May our focus be that of Matthew’s Jesus: inheriting the earth and an earth that is worth inheriting. Each day, with the choices we make, we are shaping the kind of earth we want to be part of. May we be able to look back on each of our journeys and see an earth made more just than it would have been without us and our efforts.
Each of us, as Dorothy Day said, are like pebbles cast into a pond.
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