Flag lapel pins and Crosses - we can do be better than that

Some mornings within my path of retirement I wake up early, make breakfast, and watch Morning Joe. Today, right before I was about to leave the room to head out to the garden and do a little yard work, journalist Sebastian Junger was at the table to discuss the trauma of coming back to the U.S. after being in the wars. In brief, he said they come back from a 'tribal' atmosphere in which people take care of one another - without question. If one is hurt - everyone pitches in to help. When soldiers return to the U.S. there is no community that does that. Soldiers are left alone - or left in the hands of a massive  bureaucracy. That is a simplification of his comments - go to his new book Tribe: On Homecoming and Belonging.

I needed to write today once I heard him make a powerful statement about what our politician (and the rest of us) could do to help soldiers coming home. He said something like: Get the flag pins off suits - then you have to do something substantive rather than relying on a symbol to show your support. I sank back in my chair. I remember all the grief politicians receive if they don't wear a flag pin. During  political races, if you forgot your pin or simply didn't wear one - you will be ridiculed and called un-American. And yet, wearing pins or waving flags does little to help a neighbor or care for the poor or protect the country or support those who have been through traumatic events. A pin is a symbol and like all symbols, they mean nothing if they do not have life behind them. I'm not talking about life a long time ago. I'm talking about that life now - that patriotic life - now - in each member of the tribe.

I needed to write not so much to comment about flags on lapels, but to write about crosses - on necklaces - on long chains - dangling from clergy necks - being carried along public streets on Good Friday - on windshields or bumpers. In the spirit of Junger,tim I might suggest we start saying things like: Get the crosses off our clothes - cars - necks. Then we would have to do something substantive rather than relying on a symbol to show our faithfulness. The decoration does nothing. The life that embodies the way of the cross all that is needed. In fact, it may be then that the followers of Jesus may be more of a light in the world. I know that this is when many will say: Just wait a second. Look at all the good we do through LSS or LWF or this or that church organization or foundation.  

So let me say this. Junger and the others were talking about the Veterans Administration. Yes, it is a good part of the government - but that cannot allow us a a whole people to simply forget about the task we each have to bring our soldiers back into the society with hopefulness and honor. And so it is with we who call ourselves followers of Jesus and yet always point to something beyond ourselves  - some agency - some specialized ministry - to  be how we are followers. Someone out there is doing it  - another group in another place is doing it - we can go over there and do it. What about the simple notion that we be the followers of Jesus in the places in which we find ourselves. How about extending ourselves without the religious t-shirt or being a part of a larger 'show' of solidarity? That may all be good and fine, but too often we have a history of letting the day-to-day nurture and care of neighbors get put onto others.

Could it be that when we take off the flag pins - the crosses - the bumper stickers - t-shirts we may find that we are left with the simple notion of having our lives become the substance behind the symbols so that the world really gets to see what those symbols mean in real life? More and more I have come to see spirituality as those moments within ordinary time that gives a real life face and body to the image of God that empowers such life. Quite like a Jesus who acted in the moment to create the character of God's Reign that so many simply wanted to talk about or worship through rites and rituals and lapel pins.
TRRR