What, then, should we do? — Stephen Crippen

“What, then, should we do?”

This is an excellent question.

But notice who’s asking it. That’s excellent too: not just the general crowd, but specifically the tax collectors and soldiers, the people who prop up the unjust economy of the empire. They’re all asking John the Baptizer, “What, then, should we do?”

And John’s answers — they’re also excellent, if ordinary-sounding and straightforward: share food; be ethical with money; build a just society. A just society: not only you and I being just, but all of us joining with countless others to lift up everyone, and remake the whole land as a peaceable dominion, with God’s help.

This is all to the good.

But I want to go back a bit. I want to go back to the moment just before everyone asks the Excellent Question — that little moment, barely a second long, when they are drawing breath, about to speak. In that little moment, I wonder: what are they thinking and feeling? What is motivating them to ask the Excellent Question?

Are they motivated by fear, or defensiveness? Maybe John just startled or offended them (he called them a pile of snakes…), so maybe they’re just freaking out. If you confront me with something I did wrong, and I begin to see how much trouble I’m in, then in my distress I might just cry out, “What, then, should I do??!”

But my hope is that they are motivated by something else, something deeper, something better, even something lovely. My hope is that they are motivated by healthy, holy remorse.

Now, healthy, holy remorse may not exactly be fun, but it is not shame. It is not self-flagellation. Shame is most often the cluster of emotional symptoms a person suffers when they have been abused. Or even worse, shame can be a grim, dreary form of self-centeredness. Whatever it is, shame is not of God. Shame is harmful and useless. Let’s cast it aside.

But healthy, holy remorse! Now that is something else again. Healthy, holy remorse moves the human spirit to ask excellent questions, questions like, “What, then, should we do?”

Last year, as we have discussed many times now, about sixty Grace members participated in the Episcopal Church’s Sacred Ground curriculum, a program of videos, readings, and discussions that helps people with white privilege learn about, reflect on, and then act on the centuries-long history of racialized genocide, forced migration, chattel slavery, redlining, Jim Crow, and more. Sacred Ground helps people with white privilege learn how these problems have damaged countless humans for centuries, including the people who benefit from the injustice. It is all too tempting, when encountering all this awfulness, to react in anxiety and blurt out, “What, then, should we do?”

But we should be careful how we ask that, and the Sacred Ground materials flag this danger. As excellent as this question is, it’s rarely helpful to ask it reactively and fearfully. If we rush to ask the question, it’s likely we are just recoiling from the hot flame of the awful truth, and not really engaging in healthy, holy remorse.

So, take a breath. Sit with the awful truth for a while. You and me, most of us at Grace, everyone who has a damaging privilege of one kind or another: we have all participated in an unjust society, and benefited from it. That’s the awful truth.

As you breathe, start to notice your feelings. (My therapist likes to ask me, “Where is your feeling?”, as in, where in my body. In yesterday morning’s session I asked him, “I’m sorry, but how do other people answer that question? Like, do they say ‘the feeling is in my chest,’ or are they more abstract?” He waited for me to relax and just answer his question. Finally I said, “Okay… the feeling is in my face, my face and neck. The feeling is like a flat wall in front of my face.”)

So: where are your feelings? When John the Baptizer confronts you with the awful truth of all that is wrong with the world, are your feelings … in your gut? Your heart? Maybe they’re in your tense shoulders and neck.

Once you’ve checked in with yourself, then take another good, deep breath, and then go ahead and ask the Excellent Question, “What, then, should we do?”

If we like, we can choose one of John’s answers to the question. We can just go out and do acts of justice and mercy. There are a thousand things we can do. But I think there’s another good answer to the question, “What, then, should we do?” It is offered to us today by Paul, in his warm and loving letter to the Philippians.

What, then, should we do, you ask? Paul’s reply is this: we should rejoice. “Rejoice in the Lord always,” Paul says (or really Paul sings, for this passage is glorious poetry). Then he repeats the command: “Again I will say, rejoice.” Direct justice work flows out of the rejoicing.

We have more than one reason to rejoice, but one reason is that healthy and holy remorse is not anything like shame; it is our lovely and even exhilarating response to the movement of the Spirit within us. The Spirit moves us to recognize our path of destruction, and then turn from the old ways that have damaged us, damaged our neighbors, and damaged the earth. When the Spirit moves us in this way, we respond with healthy, holy remorse. We are not only ready to turn back toward God, we are eager to do so.

So: we rejoice first. We rejoice because our remorse is going to help mend the world.

Then, in Paul’s plan of action, our rejoicing flows into gentleness for everyone. We practice kindness. We stay awake and responsive to other people. We listen. We give. We lend a hand. Here is a lovely paradox: this gentleness is fierce, because it disrupts the systems of injustice. Holy gentleness has the power to transform the world.

Then Paul says, “The Lord is near.” I hear this as an encouragement: to encourage means to strengthen the heart of someone. Paul strengthens our hearts with the glad news that the Lord is near.

Next: “Do not worry about anything, but in everything, by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God.” So: we stop worrying, because like shame, worry is a dead-end emotion. And in all things, we pray with thanksgiving, because we already know that whatever happens next, the Lord is already near, and the Spirit is already moving, and we are already rejoicing, and we are already helping mend the world, and whatever further requests we have of God will be met or not met, but no matter what, God is with us, now and in the future.

And finally, Paul gives us the best news of all: “And the peace of God that surpasses all understanding will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.” This is true peace, the peace that comes to us only in the presence of justice.

Our world is a lot like it was when Jesus of Nazareth lived, died, and was raised: crisis erupts everywhere; grief is close at hand; and our fears often get the better of us. So, take a breath. Notice your feelings. Find your center. Draw another breath. Ask the question. And then … rejoice. Be gentle. Pray. Give thanks. And know the peace of Christ.

But hey, if Paul is not exactly your speed, hear this Good News from someone in our own time. His name is Steven Charleston. He is a former bishop of Alaska, and as a member of the Choctaw nation, he is all too aware of the many injustices that plague our world. But Bishop Charleston does not despair. When we ask what we should do, he tells us we should sing. Everyone should sing, beginning with those who have suffered the most, and continuing with those who have done harm, filled with holy relief that God’s grace has turned us from that path of destruction. We should all sing with praise and thanksgiving; we should all sing with lament and sorrow; we should all sing with glad relief and rejoicing, because even now God is coming into this troubled world, into our lives, and even now, all is being made new.

Here is how Bishop Charleston says it:

“There is no reason we should not sing. Standing here, among all the broken pieces of what we expected, what we thought should have happened, the way it was supposed to be, here in the empty places of our lives, here in the shadow of our own mortality, looking out into the unseen tomorrow. There is no reason we should not sing, and keep singing, until the flowers start to grow, until the mind begins to clear, until the heart of a thousand children beats ever so much stronger, and the angels in far off heaven stop and smile, thinking: they are at it again, they are still singing, all will be well, as long as they can keep singing.”

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Preached on the Third Sunday of Advent (Year C), December 12, 2021, at Grace Episcopal Church, Bainbridge Island, Washington.

Zephaniah 3:14-20
Isaiah 12:2-6
Philippians 4:4-7
Luke 3:7-18