Waiting on the World to Change? Please Stop.

I am fundamentally uncomfortable with being told to wait.  It’s a general statement: I just don’t wait well.   I am not patient – I need to know the ten steps that will be taken to get a task done, I need a clear end goal, a plan, a quantifiable result.  I know that it can be a huge hindrance, especially with a faith that often asks me to wait on God’s call. It’s also what can make me an effective leader and hopefully, in the future, an effective voice for change.

Realizing this about myself goes a long way to explain why I haven’t become involved in the Occupy Wall Street movement. It is a different kind of action, an action of presence and waiting. It is a beautiful way to make a statement, and I admire those who are dedicating themselves to this effort. I am interested to see how this movement sustains and what comes next. Perhaps when they need planners, I’ll be able to lend my help. 

We hear it a lot in this advent season, the idea of waiting and preparing for Christ. Last night’s advent service in Drew’s chapel was an incredible production, with amazing music, skits, dance, liturgy, and the entire sanctuary had been transformed to reflect the theme: Occupy Advent.  They talked about the importance of waiting for God to come and waiting in those moments of oppression for deliverance. 

I left the service annoyed. 

More than annoyed: fundamentally upset.  It was beautiful, and the planners put in incredible work, and every aspect of it was incredibly worshipful.  But I was mad.  After I talked with some people today, I began to realize why. For the most part, we are not representing the oppressed in that room. We are not, at large, the marginalized and silenced. We are educated scholars, which is an incredibly elite designation.  There was mixture of students, staff, faculty, and administration, but we were a part of the institution of Drew. 

The institution of Drew is not oppressed.  We are the oppressors.

We don’t get to wait.

We have to act.

The Occupy Wall Street movement came out of something much bigger. Around the world, people are beginning to recognize that formal political power excludes them.  People are rising up and reclaiming their agency.  They are demanding a voice and realizing that peace cannot exist in a world where money and power is used to silence anyone.  The youth of Egypt took the first step in creating the way and they are showing us, even amidst the violence, the things that make for peace.

 I believe that our faith communities are failing in our support of them. We have seen some faith leaders lead prayer services at Occupy movements in New York, while others open their doors to house displaced occupiers. However, offering worship services and safe places, while important, ignores the much larger work of making the way straight.  Drew Theological has joined the conversation with other theologians, asking how we can support this important movement with our prayers and our presence. 

Drew still doesn't pay all our employees a living wage. 

We still invest through Chase bank, and other institutions whose greed has threatened to ruin our society. 

We still participate, in a million subtle ways, in the oppression of the people we claim to be serving. When will our support of peace become more than just a nice idea that we pray for?  Faith institutions need to realize that spiritual, emotional, physical, economic, and political health are all so intertwined that we can never address just one need. Their support of worldwide movements for change is good, and necessary, but there are tangible tasks that will build the highway upon which God’s peace will return.  Conversations need to move from displays of support to an examination of whom we represent: God’s people, or Babylon itself?

Father Michael Lapsley (read up on him, he’s amazing) spoke at a peace event at the Church Center for the United Nations.  He spoke about Luke 19:41-42 “And when he drew near and saw the city, he wept over it, saying, "Would that you, even you, had known on this day the things that make for peace! But now they are hidden from your eyes. “  Father Lapsley pointed out that after Jesus lamented the state of the world, “he went down into Jerusalem, turned over the money tables, and occupied their wall street.”  He prayed for the people, and then he went down and worked for change.

I spoke today with a student at Union who is very involved with the Occupy Protest Chaplains.  He talked about some of the wonderful work they are doing providing support, guidance, and even counseling when necessary.  He also told me that they are struggling against Union Theological Seminary.  Union wants to lay claim to the Protest Chaplains and talk about it as work of the school, but the students are unwilling allow that to happen, because Union, like Drew, invests heavily with Chase Bank.  The Chaplain movement isn’t willing to compromise their integrity by giving their identity to an institution that is criticizing privilege from their comfortable place of privilege.

The church, the seminaries, and people of faith have a lot of options for what we can do if we care about these causes. We can find ways to change (or overturn, if necessary) the discriminatory institutions.  Or, like Howard Thurman, we can do the work of creating the theological and spiritual base that feeds a movement.  But while we are creating that spiritual base, we cannot be systems that continue to function in unjust ways.  We cannot question the world at large and leave our own policies unquestioned.

The one thing we cannot do anymore is wait.