Yesterday, a friend sent me a link to Jesmyn Ward’s piece in Vanity Fair. It’s good, and it’s worthy of more attention than I’m giving it. For many reasons, the piece is beyond my ability, and maybe even my right to comment on. Some things should just be read, absorbed, and allowed to reverberate on their own terms. Ward’s story is one of those things. And for the parts of myself that would, in yesterdays or even today, find a reason or excuse to dismiss it, much has already been written that I am still learning to listen to—often learning to even want to hear.
It is not according to the quality of their “spirit” that persons are separated out to the right or the left. Rather, “I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you clothed me, I was sick and you visited me, I was in prison and you came to me.” For “as you did it to one of the least of these my brethren, you did it to me”; and “as you did it not to one of the least of these, you did it not to me” (Matt 25:32–46). The spirit that has value before God is the social spirit. And social help is the way to eternal life. That is not only how Jesus spoke but also how he acted. If one reads the gospels attentively, one can only be amazed at the way it has become possible to make Jesus into a pastor or a teacher whose goal was supposedly to instruct persons about right belief or right conduct. . . .
I think we all have the impression that Jesus was someone quite different than we are. His image stands strangely great and high above us all, socialists and nonsocialists. Precisely for that reason he has something to say to us. Precisely for that reason he can be something for us. Precisely for that reason we touch the living God himself when we touch the hem of his garment. And if we now let our gaze rest upon him, as he goes from century to century in ever-new revelations of his glory, then something is fulfilled in us of the ancient word of promise which could also be written of the movement for social justice in our day: “The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light.”
Karl Barth, “Jesus Christus und die soziale Bewegung,” (1911)