“Walk Humbly”
Psalm 8; I Corinthians 13:4-13
Rev. Dr. Deborah L. Clark
February 12, 2017
“Americans call them hillbillies, rednecks, or white trash. I call them neighbors, friends and family.” So writes J.D. Vance in the introduction to his book, Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis. He goes on to explain why he writes this book: “I want people to know what it feels like to nearly give up on yourself and why you might do it. I want people to understand what happens in the lives of the poor and the psychological impact that spiritual and material poverty has on their children. I want people to understand the American Dream as my family and I encountered it.”
Vance, who calls himself “a Conservative Hillbilly”, is also a Marine veteran and a Yale-educated lawyer living in San Francisco. He describes growing up amidst what he calls “hillbilly culture”–family loyalty that sometimes erupts into violence at perceived slights, a valuing of hard work that doesn’t always play out in daily life, deep patriotism combined with a feeling of being disenfranchised, strong Christian faith with a distrust of all institutions, including churches.
Vance’s grandparents moved from rural Kentucky to urban Ohio to trade Appalachian poverty for good jobs at a factory. Two generations later, the sense of dislocation remains, and now the jobs are gone. Vance tells the story of his grandmother, who liberally used her shotgun to defend her family’s honor and who was also the consistent loving presence he needed as a child. He writes about his birth father who emerged from the hell of substance abuse when he found a church that provided community and stability–a church that also taught that the world was created, literally, in seven days. He describes his confusion, during his law school years, at a dinner with recruiters from major law firms: he had to run into the restroom to call his girlfriend to ask what to do with all the forks and spoons at his place setting.
Through his stories, you hear Vance’s sadness and frustration with the despair, anger, and inertia he sees in his family members and in the Scots-Irish working-class communities of Jefferson, Kentucky and Middleton, Ohio. He describes the ways hopelessness, distrust and alienation are expressed in the political perspectives of his family members–perspectives he sometimes shares and sometimes views as misguided.
Vance admits he doesn’t have solutions to the problems he sees. His refusal to pretend he does helps me resist the instinct to find a quick fix. Instead, I am challenged to honor the story he tells for what it is–a story of flawed and sacred human beings trying to live good lives.
I read Hillbilly Elegy on vacation last month. It was a humbling experience. I take pride in my commitment to learning about people whose lives are different from my own, to listening to their stories. Here, I thought as I read, is an entire community of Americans whose stories I had not heard. Here are people who largely see the world–certainly our national politics–in a completely different way than I do. Reading this book was humbling because it reminded me that, for all the stories I’ve listened to, there will always be more–more perspectives to consider, more complexity when I think I’ve finally got it figured out.
The word “humble” is often used in a negative sense–failing or being taken down a notch. I want to suggest a more positive interpretation. “Humble” means having “humility,” which comes from the Latin “humus,”–earth. The Bible teaches that we are created in the image of God from the dust of the earth. We come from the earth, from the soil that nourishes life. We stand on the earth, which means our perspective is limited. We walk on the same ground as every other human being. Humility means recognizing our connection to dust and our connection with each other, and acknowledging the limits of our perspective. We will never have a God’s-eye view. Our perspective broadens as we recognize that other people have a different angle on the truth, and so we must listen and learn from one another.
“Walk humbly with God.” This is the third part of Micah’s challenge: Do justice, love kindness, walk humbly with God. Walk with God, Micah says, fully aware that you are created from dust. Walk on the earth, remembering that you are connected to the soil and to every creature on it. Walk, knowing that you are not God, acknowledging that no matter how much you know, you don’t know it all.
I’ve always heard this part of Micah’s call as a reminder to turn to God for help. In our current world, I also hear it as a challenge to listen deeply to one another. What would it mean to acknowledge our connection–through our shared earthliness–with someone who brings a dramatically different political perspective? What would it mean to trust that their story is sacred wisdom we need to hear?
It is a daunting challenge. How do we resist the temptation, as we are listening, to start constructing our argument to prove the other person wrong? How do we avoid our instinct to put the other person into a box, and instead experience them as a whole, complex human being? How do we open ourselves to the possibility that hearing another person’s story will challenge our own deeply-rooted beliefs? Even harder, how do we respond when the telling of someone’s story includes language or assumptions we find deeply offensive? When do we say, no, I cannot listen to this?
There are no easy answers to those questions. There is only the promise that when we listen deeply to one another, something changes. We don’t know what shape that change will take, but we can trust that God is in it.
This week, as I have been thinking about humility as a commitment to deep listening, I have come upon multiple examples of people trying to do just that. In response to last week’s sermon, a parishioner sent me a link to an interview with Van Jones, a CNN commentator who has undertaken a number of creative initiatives to bring people together. One is his show called “The Messy Truth,” which includes recorded conversations with ordinary people around the country. Before the election he went to Gettysburg, Pennsylvania–to homes and coffee shops and front porches. Each place, he was honest about his own perspective–as an African-American Democrat who served in the Obama Administration. The people he visited were supporters of Trump, Clinton, Johnson and Sanders. The conversations were eye-openers, pointing out how differently people can perceive reality, unearthing some hidden common ground, modeling that it is possible to disagree and still talk with one another.
Jones’ commitment to bringing people together goes beyond talking. His Dream Corp includes an initiative to teach computer coding to youth in areas like Middleton, Ohio, a bi-partisan effort to reduce our prison population by 50%, and a commitment to bring green energy and green jobs to poor communities.
Closer to home, on Wednesday the Framingham Interfaith Clergy met with Diego Lowe from Metrowest Worker Center, who coordinated the Teach-Out gathering last Sunday. We talked about the stepped-up presence of Immigration officers in Framingham, and how it has created an atmosphere of fear among residents with Latina and Brazilian roots. The new deacon at the Lutheran Church commented that members of her congregation who want stricter immigration enforcement are also afraid.
Her comment helped shape our next event, on Sunday March 5th. The purpose of this gathering is to begin to hear each other’s stories, to take a step toward the trust that can ease fears. It will be a challenge to create a safe space for everyone–a space that will allow us all to be brave.
Last Sunday I talked about the challenge of holding together the first two parts of Micah’s call: do justice, love kindness. Today we expand the challenge. Do justice, acting boldly to repair inequity. Love kindness, showing compassion to allies and opponents alike. Walk humbly with God, listening deeply to other people’s stories.
Micah insists that we devote our whole selves to this calling. To do justice we need to draw upon the analytic side of our brains; we need to use our bodies to march and speak and write; we must be active and bold.
To love kindness, we are called to lead with our hearts, softening them enough to “feel with” someone else’s pain and hope. Lovingkindness is also active, compassion lived out in the words we speak, in the food we share, in the help we offer.
To walk humbly, to listen deeply, we need to pause from our activism in order to be receptive. We use the right side of our brain–the creative, artistic part that can see the whole picture. To walk humbly calls upon our capacity for patience.
Do justice, love kindness, walk humbly with God. This, Micah says, is what God asks of us. God asks us to bring our whole selves to the healing of our world: left brain and right brain–analytical ability and holistic thinking, our heart’s compassion, our curiosity, our impatience and our patience, our activity and our receptivity. God promises that when we give all of who we are, we will be part of bringing God’s healing love to fruition. Thanks be to God. Amen.