The Blessing and Command to “Be Better”
Reflecting on the issues confronting our refugee and migrant siblings, I thought of Russ Wallace of blessed memory, an erstwhile parishioner at Holy Trinity Parish, and the last time I saw him. When I left his hospital room, I hugged him and said what I always said to him: “I want to be like you when I grow up.” With tears in his eyes, Russ replied: “Be better.” As he prepared to “shuffle off this mortal coil,”[1] Russ’ final words to me were both blessing and command: “Be better.”
Not merely that I would be a better father, priest, friend, neighbor, or citizen, but that I might ever seek to understand that being Christian is deciding every day to discern how, as a father, priest, friend, neighbor, and citizen, I might cultivate a deeper appreciation of what it means to be truly human and a deeper love for human beings.
Seeking and Serving Christ in Everyone
Russ Wallace was a physician, a healer who practiced his art at home and abroad in Honduras and Haiti. Russ Wallace was a father whose son married an immigrant. Russ Wallace was a man of faith who sought and served Christ in everyone. Everyone. If anyone were to ask Russ why he worked so tirelessly here and across borders, why his heart was so open to his son’s intended, why his great expectation was to meet Christ in the stranger, Russ’ answer was simple: Jesus.
Jesus, the immigrant who experienced displacement. Jesus, whose family fled their home to escape danger. Jesus who saw with his eyes and whose body bore the marks of violence, war, and persecution. Jesus who said, “Come unto me all you who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.”[2] Jesus, whose priestly, prophetic, and kingly mission of atonement reveals our at-one-ment. Russ Wallace’s life pointed to this Jesus.
Affirming Our Sacred Worth
Amid ICE raids and detentions, divisions and scapegoating, protests and policy debates, Russ’ valedictory blessing and command haunts and humbles me. “Be better,” he said. Because “[in] Christ, [God affirms] the sacred worth of human personality; and, therefore, any policy in [government or] business or economics or social relationships, or anything else which has become so obsessed with ideas and prejudices that it is relatively indifferent to the consequences of these policies on human lives, is a repudiation of the spirit of Christ.”[3]
Be better. Blessing. Command. And prayer. Prayer that, instead of litigating status, labeling as ‘illegal alien,’ or scapegoating, in refugees and migrants, who have experienced displacement and are fleeing danger, we might see Jesus. As we covenant to live out and into this prayer, God’s love, a love without condition, exception, or limit, will apprehend us and inspire us to say to our refugee and migrant siblings, “Welcome home.”
[1] Hamlet, Act 3, Scene 1, William Shakespeare.
[2] Matthew 11:28.
[3] Walter Russell Bowie, “Exposition of The Gospel according to St. Luke,” in The Interpreter’s Bible, ed. George Arthur Buttrick and Nolan B. Harmon (Nashville: Abingdon, 1978), 63.
Well said Rhett!