March 24, 2010

1 Peter 5

Leading and following are good lessons, but what really strikes me (with the same message really) about this chapter is the sign off at the end.

It's so personal, so domestic and simple. This was just a letter to a person once. A person with a name, Silvanus, who though he has a cool name, is the kind of person you ask to kiss your son Mark on your behalf at the end of a letter.

All these things he's said - all the proscriptions and encouragements and theology: they were for a person. And I'm sure with the idea that that person would share it around, at least within the community he shepherded, but it brings up the issue: do we do that with our friends and those we love most? I'd like to think so. I feel like I've had a serious religious discussion at one point or another with all of the people who have meant the most to me, but would I go up to them an tell them that I don't approve of their choices or their treatment of someone?

Again, I'd like to think I'd intervene if they were about to do themselves or another person harm, but would I have the confidence to write a letter censuring and warning them about the state of their souls?

We don't do that these days. We're all about acceptance - and don't get me wrong, I am an aspiring president of the Accept People and Love Them All Society - but what about when it comes to someone who's about to make a mistake - there are precious few people I would tell, for example, that they are jumping into a serious step in a relationship WAY too early. Precious few I would trust myself to correct. I don't know if I would ever say, aloud in words, to a friend of mine what a mistake they were making to stop attending Mass.

Of course, the first is none of my business and the second worked itself out without me making a fuss to argue with him about it - but if we were far away from someone we loved as they were heading down a path we knew had darkness at the end of it, or even just a path that would take them further from God and thus make their life that much harder - would I be able to say something like this?

Who am I? But since when did that matter? I don't know what to say - but now I'm just quoting Moses, and the Burning Bush had an answer for him just as surely.

We are responsible for each other, and we have to stay on top of that all the more in our integrated but also far-flung community now more than ever. Because it's so easy to drift in and out and never catch a glimpse of the pieces as they're falling apart.

But we are responsible for each other - and we are the shepherds of the flock. We are also the flock, so we can and must let other catch and lead us at times, accept their censure and their advice with their support, and we must also be brave enough, trust enough to say to each other all of the precepts and doctrines this book is made of.

To our friends, and somehow end this letter with a request to kiss our son when they greet each other.

So weird. So lovely.