“Always On Duty”
Maybe it’s because of graduation season or because I
want to escape the present by retreating into the past, but lately I have been
thinking a lot about my days as a teacher.
A couple of weeks ago I shared a memory from when I
taught at St. Vincent Academy in Newark. I was young when I taught there but it
was not my first teaching position. A couple of years earlier, when I had graduated
from college I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do with my life, so I decided I
would teach for a little while until I figured things out. I don’t know why I
thought I could teach, except that I had spent most of life sitting in
classrooms, taught by teachers I judged to be effective, or not so much. Maybe
because I really didn’t know what else to do, I managed to convince myself that
I knew how to do this!
The only problem was I couldn’t convince anyone else
and so by the end of the summer I was desperate. Fortunately, someone else was
maybe almost as desperate. With the school year just about to start, the principal
of Our Lady of Mt. Carmel School in Bayonne had a strong incentive to fill one
last teaching position and I can only assume that during my interview she
decided that I looked and sounded presentable enough to solve her problem. She
hired me on the spot and handed me the teacher’s editions of the textbooks I
would be using. And so, I began my adult life teaching Math (the less said
about this, the better) and Social Studies to seventh and eighth graders.
Much stricter and more old-fashioned than what I had
experienced in my own Catholic grammar school, Mt. Carmel was actually an
excellent place to begin to learn how to teach. Freed from worrying too much
about maintaining discipline, I could focus on teaching my lessons and gaining
confidence as an educator, and as someone who could make his own way in the
world. Although the job paid peanuts, at the start of my second year I took a
big step into adulthood by moving out of my family’s house and into a studio
apartment in Bayonne, just a couple of blocks from the school.
Back then anyway, living in Bayonne felt like living
in a small town. Sure enough, I quickly discovered that I would run into many
of my students and their parents all the time. Walking along
Broadway. Riding the bus. Eating in a restaurant. And, yes, shopping in Shop
Rite. No surprise, these encounters were
usually at least somewhat awkward. Frankly, there were times I just wanted to
be left alone. And, sometimes my students and their parents were a little
disoriented to bump into me outside of my classroom habitat, dressed more
casually than my teacher “uniform” of jacket and tie. And, then there was my
favorite moment: if we ran into each other in the supermarket, students and
parents could never resist looking down to check out the apparently interesting
items in my shopping cart! What does Mr. Murphy eat? Well, now we know!
Although, of course, everyone is entitled to a
private life and times of rest, I came to understand that, whether I liked it
or not, I was a teacher not only when I was in school but whenever and wherever
I went out in the community. In a sense, I was always “on duty.” The same is
even truer now for my life as a priest. And, I would argue, the same is true
for all of us who seek to follow Jesus. We can’t “compartmentalize” our faith,
trying to pack it into the time we spend in church (or, these days, when we
join a service on Facebook or over the phone). We are Christians when we walk
down the street, ride the bus, eat in a restaurant, and, yes, even when we make
our way up and down supermarket aisles.
No question, the past few months have been very
difficult – and, unfortunately, we are not yet out of the woods. But, since God
never misses an opportunity to create and nurture new life, there have been
abundant blessings, too. More of us have been praying and worshiping. More of
us have been reaching out to each other, especially checking on those who are
ill or lonely. And, I believe that the forced exile from our beautiful church
building can remind us that as Christians we are always “on duty.” We cannot –
must not – compartmentalize our faith.
I got to thinking about all of this because the
leaders of Jersey City Together have begun reading and reflecting on The Cross and the Lynching Tree by the
great theologian, The Rev. Dr. James Cone. In this book, Dr. Cone draws what should have been an obvious parallel
between the brutal execution of Jesus long ago and the bloody lynching of black
people in our country. He writes:
“The lynching tree – so strikingly similar to the
cross on Golgotha – should have a prominent place in American images of death.
But it does not. In fact, the lynching tree has no place in American
theological reflections about Jesus’ cross or in the proclamation of Christian
churches about his Passion.”
It is sobering indeed to remember that most, if not
all, of the people responsible for lynching, and those bystanders who were
happy to watch and cheer, were self-described Christians. How is it possible to
follow Jesus of Nazareth and his call to love our neighbors – to love our enemies,
even – and then to hate and terrorize and kill people? It seems to me that this
diabolical disconnect only becomes possible when we try to compartmentalize our
faith, when there are certain times that we think we can go “off duty.”
Those white Christians should have been able to see
and hear the face and voice of the Crucified Christ in the black people they
hated and terrorized and killed - just as we should see and hear Jesus each
Good Friday when we make our way to places in our city stained by violence - just
as we should see and hear Jesus in that horrible moment when George Floyd
gasps, “I can’t breathe…”
If we white people try to console ourselves by
saying that we would certainly never do anything so cruel and terrible,
it’s important to remember that the people gathered at the foot of the lynching
trees would have surely seen themselves – and would have been judged by their
white neighbors - as good, upstanding people. And, while what we do or don’t do
in the world is certainly important, we would be wise to remember that Jesus was
particularly concerned about what’s going on in our hearts.
And, you know, whenever I’m tempted to think that I
don’t benefit so much from my own whiteness, I’m going to think back to that
long-ago job interview and try to remember that a black person with the same
lack of qualifications (or, probably, even with more experience) would almost
certainly never have been considered for that teaching position – the
opportunity that set in motion the rest of my life. Talk about white privilege!
So, this time of forced exile from our church
building is a blessed opportunity to ask God to heal our hearts – to help us to
see Jesus in the suffering people all around us, especially our black sisters
and brothers who still, even after everything, still have to insist that
their lives matter. This
difficult time is a holy opportunity to strive to be a Christian wherever we go
- yes, even the supermarket. This would be an especially good time to finally knock
down our “compartments” and remain on duty, in faithful service to the Prince
of Peace.
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