Why Francesco matters to me...

Somebody recently asked me, "Why do YOU care about the new Pope?  You're a Protestant so why does it matter?"  Like many of the listeners who reacted negatively to NPR's in-depth reporting about the election of Pope Francesco I - and carped about it in calls, emails and letters - this soul saw no connection between the politics and practices of the Pope in Rome and everyday life.  And, on one level, I suspect that this is sadly true because for many there is no correlation between the life of the spirit - no matter what denomination, religion or spirituality - and what takes place in our businesses, homes, bedrooms and imaginations.  We are wildly free to spend ourselves with abandon and so we do.  In 2013 as in 1860 or 1517, Thoreau was right:  "Most men (and women) lead lives of quiet desperation and go to the grave with the song still in them.”

The wild-eyed Beat poet and Hebrew prophet, Allen Ginsberg, tried to summon our attention in 195   when he cried:

I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by
madness, starving hysterical naked,
dragging themselves through the negro streets at dawn
looking for an angry fix,
angelheaded hipsters burning for the ancient heavenly
connection to the starry dynamo in the machinery of night,
who poverty and tatters and hollow-eyed and high sat
up smoking in the supernatural darkness of
cold-water flats floating across the tops of cities
contemplating jazz...

A generation earlier the more genteel poet, T.S. Eliott, said much the same thing:

“A heap of broken images, where the sun beats,
And the dead tree gives no shelter, the cricket no relief,
And the dry stone no sound of water. Only
There is shadow under this red rock,
(Come in under the shadow of this red rock),
And I will show you something different from either
Your shadow at morning striding behind you
Or your shadow at evening rising to meet you;
I will show you fear in a handful of dust.” 

Post modern but deeply orthodox theologian, Douglas John Hall, is equally passionate when he writes:

The excruciating struggle for survival, which is both physical and spiritual, is often carried on by ordinary people quiet silently, for, especially in our rhetorically upbeat society, there is a strong pressure on individuals to seem content and in charge even when they are decidedly not so. It is said that one in four persons in our comparatively affluent and healthy society is clinically depressed... (he goes on to call attention to the appalling rate of suicide in our land) For behind each of (our) immense social problems are individual men, women and children whose lives cannot be studied objectively or addressed by remedial legislation.  They are bearers of stores that, no matter how common may be the themes and patters of them, are never simply commonplace - never easily nameable as "the human condition" or human nature... the life of the human person is so mysterious, so poignant and so often filled with pathos that biblical faith stands in awe of it.

So let's be clear: one reason I am so concerned with who the new Pope is and what he shall do is the suffering state of my sisters and brothers in the world.  The church - and in this case the Roman Catholic Church - not only ministers to 1.2 billion believers, but also sets the tone by which every other church acts in the world.  We Protestants may not be under legal or spiritual obligation to obey Rome, but the Holy See still defines what the wider Body of Christ considers important.  If it is humility and compassionate justice for the poor, that is good.  Already Pope Francesco I is hinting that such a direction is essential.  If, however, arcane doctrinal purity is Rome's deepest concerns - as was often the case with Benedict - not only does that inhibit all churches from cooperating with Roman Catholics in social justice campaigns, but it also emphasizes what keeps us a part rather than what we share in common.

St. Frederick Buechner put it like this:  There are Baptists, Methodists, Episcopalians.  There are Presbyterians, Lutherans, Congregationalists.  There are Disciples of Christ. There are Seventh-day Adventists and Jehovah's Witnesses. There are Moravians. There are Quakers - and that's only for starters... and while there are some genuine differences between them:

(Think) of all the duplication of effort and waste in human resources. All the confusion about what the Church is, both within the ranks and without.  All the counterproductive competition. All the unnecessarily empty pews and unnecessary expense.  Then add to that picture the Roman Catholic Church, still more divided from the Protestant denominations than they are from each other and by the time you're through, you don't know whether to burst into laughter or into tears.

When Jesus took the bread and said, "This is my body which is broken for you," it's hard to believe that even in his wildest dreams he foresaw the tragic and ludicrous brokenness of the Church as his body.  There's no reason why everyone should be Christian in the same way and every reason to leave room for differences, but if all the competing factions of Christendom were to give as much of themselves to the high calling and holy hope that unites them as they do now to the relative inconsequentialities that divide them, the Church would look more like the Kingdom of God for a change and less like an ungodly mess.

And THAT is why I pay attention - and am concerned - and believe the new Pope matters to me - and the whole Church:  he will set the tone and direction for the present and the future.  It matters to us all that Francesco visited an isolated former priest who chose to be married.  It matters that he paid his own bill for lodging.  It matters that he spoke of being in the street rather than remaining locked in the institution.  It matters that he called out his own when they refused baptism to the children of unwed mothers.  It matters that he kissed the feet of those with HIV/AIDS.

What the Pope does matters - to me, to my congregation and to all people beyond our faith tradition - because the Pope signals either a path of greater mercy or selfishness in the name of the holy.  Today I am quietly hopeful and filled with prayer.