Do Not Be Ruled by Fear, but Faith

On April 30, 2016, Catholic peacemaker and activist Daniel Berrigan entered life eternal. He was a teacher and friend to many in the Sojourners community. The following article is adapted from the homily Steve Kelly gave at Dan's May 6 funeral Mass in New York City. Read more reflections on Dan's life and legacy in the August 2016 issue. 

IN THE STORY OF LAZARUS, told in John’s gospel, seemingly Jesus arrives too late. Humanity, doomed like Lazarus, is sealed under two tons of stone. Is this then an inspired picture of how God sees us? Humanity sealed up in death? Death taunting Jesus until Jesus has a visceral reaction? The hand of death moves the chess piece toward checkmate.

The complexity of the lie goes: “Once you are dead, once afraid, how will God guide you?” If afraid, how can one obey the guidance, dependence on the one who sent him?

“Greater love has no one than to lay down one’s life for a friend.” So God does know what it’s like to encounter death’s whiplash version. Always, everywhere, each time, each encounter, risks are included.

Jesus went the distance in this anguishing scene. To see him at work is to see life itself overcoming death, because he, as a human being, cooperated, obeyed the guidance of the one who sent him. He loved, he lays down his life.

Now there is a different moral power in town. God is going to crack death’s veneer, a chink in the armor. Through Jesus’ obedience, the crumbling begins, and the hidden, insipid hold of death is broken.

Just as Jesus’ power over death reaches a peak in our story, there is one final quarter to be heard from. An assent is awaited. Jesus is asking for the nod from friends, our willingness to remove obstacles to faith, a hurdle to overtake. Will the friends of Lazarus allow this? Will they roll away the stone? The first impediment holds up the scene: “You’re gonna embarrass us all with a stench?!”

Jesus insists, to put it mildly: “Believe; do not be ruled by fear, but faith.”

Are we to remain asleep?

What of the faith of Daniel Berrigan? Did he hear in his inner recesses the call to come forth? Did Philip, his brother, another one who awakened to Christ’s voice, help unbind him from the trappings, the ensnarling bonds, the lure of prestige, credibility? I heard it exposited by Phil, 23 years ago, quoting aptly the poet Julia Esquivel: “They have threatened us with Resurrection” for acting on behalf of others.

Daniel, at Fordham in the beginning of the ’80s, reached out with the experience of those embodying plowshares: “We want to test the resurrection in our bones. To see if we might live in hope.”

Daniel and Phil’s lives asked, in their respective ways: Are we to remain in a catatonic stupor, asleep, drunk, unconscious, or in flat-lined existence? In these United States of Amnesia? Will we arrive at perdition, dominion of death, with our freedom never used, intact? What good is it if paralyzed in fear? Liberated, but not loving.

In prophetic diagnosis, and in concert with many faiths, Daniel and Phil exposed the historical alliance of the religious leaders, those appointed pastors, colluding with structures of domination. Bomb-blessing has no place in Jesus’ self-giving.

The imperial power of Pax Romana ran aground on the shoals of Christian steadfastness. But through the centuries, what was an intimate circle of outcasts and martyrs dissembled and gained in ascendancy the power it was meant to resist. The power that had to be faced.

Daniel and Phil untied, illegally, those called forth from out of power’s captivity, power’s confines. They risked the retaliation of those beholden to death’s sway. They touched the idol of the state. Inspired, they, and other draft board raiders, retrieved the place and pre-eminence of the conscientious objector as imitating the love of Christ. In gospel coloring, Phil and Daniel took the inductees’ places.

I’m most interested in Dan and Phil Berrigan as Doctors of the Church, as they retrieved for the people of God a move from preoccupation with orthodoxy to orthopraxis. A great service to us, just sayin’.