Kings, Behold and Wail

I was a full-time parish priest at a time when we still visited people in their homes. In one congregation, I made a commitment to visit every member my first year. One hundred and fifty families—it was doable. On these visits the conversation might start differently, but I would eventually hear something about the church: questions, complaints, hopes, concerns, suggestions, passionate convictions. I tried to listen, to carry it back with me. It was easy to dismiss some of what was said, but not most. These were Christians; the church was a ­deeply life-giving reality, however they articulated it. It all mattered.

Even so, I couldn’t respond to many of these concerns. The parish goes on, with its vestry, its budget, its bishop, its doctrine, vision, and mission, this ministry or that. Many of those passionate convictions had to be put aside in the ordering of the whole. In a few cases, people left the church because their hopes or perceived needs were not addressed; others bit their tongues. Perhaps they assumed that their opinions were not that crucial anyway, but their sense of not being heard thinned out their sense of belonging. Most carried on, letting “the whole” guide their attitudes, not the other way around. One vestry member noted, “The Kingdom of God may involve leaving the flock in search of one lost sheep; but our church isn’t the Kingdom. Stick with the flock.”

If the parish church is not the Kingdom, at least not in its fullness, then the body politic certainly is not in any respect. If there are aspects of ecclesial life that are unevangelical in their lack of Kingdomlike regard, political action may itself be inherently unevangelical. Politics is necessary, to be sure, but lots of things are necessary that are not congruent with the gospel: killing in self-defense, using usurious credit cards to buy groceries or cover your car repairs, paying taxes knowing that a lot of it is wasted or ethically misdirected. These things are not neutral in relation to the gospel. They are in some respects contrary to it. Yet few would consider it reasonable to avoid them. It is the same with politics. Judgments and decisions must be made for the life of the community: You need politics, just to keep things going, for you, for most people.

But, alas, not for all people. Not for the one lost sheep. That fact has been a major point of theoretical contention in political philosophy. Aristotle was adamant about the communal nature of human existence and hence asserted the essential and even superior good of politics over individual needs. By the twentieth century, social thinkers as diverse as Hannah Arendt, Karol Wojtyła, and Michel Foucault demurred. They argued that a broad embrace of political action—valorizing “society” and “the state”—tends to obliterate persons. People get swallowed up in policy decisions that aim at group trajectories, incentives, aggregates, or corporate solidarity. Call it “political triage.” 

To be sure, behind this swallowing-up of ­individuals lie the best of social motives: strengthening public institutions, extending educational opportunity, mitigating poverty, expanding affordable healthcare, providing accessibility to the disabled, securing physical safety in public spaces, encouraging corporate responsibility. With every refashioning of healthcare comes a lower-middle-class family or single worker who can no longer afford it; with every opening-up of parking for the handicapped comes a small business owner who has to close up shop; with every inclusion of a once-marginalized student or topic in a classroom comes another student who is weighed down by adjustments to the schedule and curriculum. The problem is not unique to the left or right. It’s just what happens when decisions are made for the good of the whole: Something—someone—else gets left behind.

The notion and practice of epieikeia (also ­associated with Aristotle), or, as it generally came to be called, “­equity,” seeks to mitigate or adjust the strict application of political decisions (laws) to take account of the needs of individuals and their particular circumstances: to be fair, not just right. In early modern England, courts such as the Chancery existed to ensure no sheep would be lost as the community pursued its collective good. ­Equity deals with the problems of political triage, when a decision for the good of the whole is made, knowing full well that at least a few will suffer in the process. Yet the application of equity has rarely limited suffering, all the more so in modern times, when the pressures of large populations now define our common life. Large numbers are not abstractions one can easily manipulate; they are massive obstacles to governance that accounts for individuals. They inflate political triage. 

Healthcare is one of the most obvious examples. Everyone knows that what we have (and most nations have) doesn’t work very well. We can’t afford it, it doesn’t do what we say we want it to do, and in the process there are those who are enriching themselves on the backs of sick people who are not getting the care they need. There are many smart people trying to fix healthcare, and I cheer their efforts. Thus far, though, we are outwitted. It seems impossible to find solutions for large numbers of people that account for ­individual needs. Take illegal immigration, a major problem for any nation to address. This problem involves people in my parish whom I serve and love. Even reasonable and just policies will affect them, and therefore me. Those policies, no matter how immaculate in their conception, will dissolve, as it were, the eucharists we share. What to do?  

The obscuring of the person, even his loss in political action, is not simply a matter of incompetence or malice. It is a mark of fallenness. “And the cow and the bear shall feed; their young ones shall lie down together: and the lion shall eat straw like the ox” (Isa. 11:7): That is the Kingdom of God. “Will a lion roar in the forest, when he hath no prey? Will a young lion cry out of his den, if he hath taken nothing?” (Amos 3:4): This is today. The lament for the missing sheep within politics is therefore not a plea for political moderation (though that is rarely a bad thing). It is rather a plea for repentance.   

In this case, politics is a bit like preaching: You always end up blaspheming, even when you try hard to honor God’s Word. Karl Barth is meant to have said, “Every sermon is a heresy.” This happens because our finite efforts invariably focus on only one thing in the face of God’s infinite truth. I had an old priest tell me that, whenever he got up to give a sermon, not only did he begin to tremble, but as he moved along through the homily, he felt a rising sense of trepidation. He was bound to misrepresent God and his Word. By the time he left the pulpit, he was almost in tears with sorrow. “Preaching is my Ash Wednesday,” he said.  

For a long time, I thought that was a bit hyperbolic. But my own years of preaching have confirmed his worries. Not idly does the New Testament refer to the terrible “judgment” that will befall teachers, especially, as Jesus says in Matthew 18:6, those who cause “little ones” to stumble. How I have, over and over, fallen short of speaking well of God! The “Word” is indeed a “burden” (Mal. 1:1). Yet we are called to preach. Hence, the Christian vocation is inherently bound up with trepidation and sorrow, and it should not be pursued unless these attitudes form a part of its achievement. Be careful indeed! “Let not many of you become teachers, my brethren, for you know that we who teach shall be judged with greater strictness” (James 3:1).

And politics? Trepidation and sorrow are necessary and fitting attitudes as well. Christians especially should tremble in the face of politics: Every decision turns its back on some sheep, whom the Lord knows by name (John 10:3). Like preaching, it is not for most of us. Who knows what kind of person we will end up becoming if we take on its burden? The ­eighteenth-century French moralist Nicolas de ­Chamfort said, “If you want to see how far each condition of society corrupts men, examine what they are after they have had its influence for the longest time—that is, in old age. See what an old courtier is like, an old priest, an old judge.”   

I can speak for priests. Many are sorrowing, even bitter, for in their pastoring, their administration, and, alas, their preaching, they vigorously implemented broad systems for the triage of souls. And those who do not sorrow should. We lost sheep as we devoted ourselves to the needs of the flock. I cannot speak for politicians. Herod the Great, many historians now argue, was a great state-builder, Bethlehem’s babies and all. One hopes a Christian politician does better, building states without slaughtering the innocent. But better governance still involves political triage. Even the most just and upright ruler, jurist, and legislator must, on some deep level, look up to his Lord, behold his spurning gaze upon priest and king, and wail (Lam. 2:6).