Promises, Promises...

On the 4th of July I conducted the marriage ceremony of a young medical doctor, a dear friend whom I knew from the time he was born. He's the kind of a person who is ever involved in some worthwhile cause. Even his wedding invitation included an appeal for a donation to an organization working for peace in the Middle East. In his correspondence with me prior to the wedding, he suggested that I include something in the ceremony which "discusses the power in keeping promises". It got me thinking, not only about the promises in marriage, but the promises in all aspects of our lives.

There are promises made that are contractual: "I promise to do this if you will do that." These are honorable, but the noblest promises are not contractual, a 'deal', but those which arise from one's own sense of worth and genuine love for another without any expectation of reward.

Certain kinds of promises are formalized in various life-careers. Doctors take the Hippocratic Oath to treat patients according to ethical standards under any conditions; those in public office, or in the military, take oaths to preserve the rights of the people they are serving. Nothing so enrages people as the betrayal of the promises of public servants. That in itself indicates the universal belief that there is something powerful and sacred in a promise.

PROMISES OF LOVE

The promises which are most revered are those embodied in the marriage vows - universally expressed in our culture by the words: "I promise to be true to you. I will love you and honor you all the days of my life."

In this, or similar promises of love, there is an empowering of the person who makes them. Rather than a diminishing of one's self, there is an ennobling, an enriching because this is moving from a self-centeredness to a genuine concern for the other. Eric Fromm in his classic work "The Art of Loving" puts it this way: "...while one is consciously afraid of not being loved, the real, though usually unconscious fear is that of loving. To love means to commit oneself without guarantee, to give oneself completely in the hope that our love will produce love in the loved person. Love is an act of faith, and whoever is of little faith is also of little love."

A powerful and touching example of this empowering is recorded in Victor Frankl's book "Man's Search For Meaning". He describes his experience in a Nazi Concentration Camp being marched out in the cold dark early morning to the work site, being kicked and cursed, stumbling over stones and through puddles. A colleague whispers: "If our wives could see us now!"....Frankl says: "that brought thoughts of my own wife to mind. And as we stumbled on for miles, slipping on icy spots, supporting each other time and again, dragging one another up and onward, nothing was said, but we both knew: each of us was thinking of his wife....My mind clung to my wife's image, imagining it with an uncanny acuteness. I heard her answering me, saw her smile, her frank and encouraging look. Real or not, her look was then more luminous than the sun which was beginning to rise.

"A thought transfixed me: for the first time in my life I saw the truth as it is set into song by so many poets, proclaimed as the final wisdom by so many thinkers. The Truth - that love is the ultimate and highest goal to which one can aspire. Then I grasped the meaning of the greatest secret that human poetry and human thought and belief have to impart: the salvation of anyone is through love and in love."

PROMISES AND LOVE IN OUR COUNTRY

As I drove away from the wedding ceremony on the long trip from Philadelphia to Chicago, I put aside all the foregoing thoughts, turned on the radio to get into the festivities of the 100th anniversary of the 'Lady in the Harbor' celebrations on the same day But in listening to the interviews and commentaries, my mind was turned again to the power of promises motivated by love: the love of liberty, the love of freedom of religion, the love of justice, etc. All of which was incarnated in our Constitution....This indeed brought millions of immigrants to these shores, and heightened that appreciation of promise...and the keeping of promises.

Along with everyone else tuned in to this event, I felt pride in our country had good feelings about all that was taking place, and the positive aspects of the celebration, reflecting on the struggles of my own Irish and German forebears and the blessings which I and my family have enjoyed. However, as time wore on, it became too much of a canonization. I became a bit weary of the unalleviated praise. As the hours went by, with example after example of immigrants testifying to the benefits of the U.S. and the glories of our country, I began to wonder why there were no acts of contrition for our monumental failures. After all, all of us know that those promises have not beer evenly fulfilled, are not yet, and will not be unless our citizenry renews the promise - a promise out of love, not out of personal benefit.

When I stopped for supper in Ohio, I picked up a New York Times, and over my spaghetti and meatballs I discovered two sobering articles which tempered the exaggerated self praise and euphoria. Feature writer Tom Wicker called to mind that the largest body of immigrants who came here long before the hordes of our European ancestors, were black people from Africa, not the "huddled masses longing to breathe free", but chained masses, violently seized and uprooted from the freedom of their own countries, torturously brought into exile and forced into slavery. Their lives, even after the Emancipation Proclamation, remained a quasi-slavery condition until the Supreme Court Decision in 1954 struck down segregation. Even with that, it took many more years of organized protest and martyrs of the cause to get the 1963 Civil Rights Act enacted.

This brought to mind the fact that even before, and after the U.S. was established, there was the exploitation and persecution of the Native American who were here before Columbus and the Pilgrims, and who today are still being treated as aliens.

The other article was entitled: "Let the Torch Cast True Light on Our Immigrant Story", by Alfred Fried, professor of history at the State University 0 New York. He wrote that while Miss Liberty's torch symbolizes the ineffable dream that guided the immigrants' destinies, and is a success story nonpareil we would do well to remind ourselves of facts that have been overlooked or omitted in the retelling. "They discovered that forming communities could be as difficult as preserving them and that what cost them years to build. could disintegrate overnight. For its victims, unregulated economic liberty - the pitiless laws of the market - could be as destructive as any natural calamity. He goes on to say how they adjusted, "spoke up on their own behalf, protested and resisted... These struggles, communal in every instance, helped redeem the democratic promise that inspired them."

REDEEMING THE PROMISE

As I resumed my ride, and tuned in again to the New York celebration, that phrase 'Redeeming the Promise' haunted me. The great 'redeemers' in our history, such as 3efferson, Lincoln and Martin Luther King were receiving their well-deserved accolades for redeeming America's promises, but I thought of the hundreds and thousands of others, little known or completely unknown, who have struggled, and are still struggling, out of love, for the promises yet to be realized in the lives of the underclassed Americans: the homeless, estimated in the wealthiest country in the world, to be in millions; those who are disabled, one out of every eight persons; the new refugees, fleeing poverty and oppression seeking sanctuary; the factory workers and the farmers who have lost their means of livelihood; the Native Americans, the Blacks and the Hispanics still ghettoized in squalid living conditions; women seeking equality; and those other unsung redeemers raising our consciousness on the evils of nuclear war, pollution, and the destruction of our ecological systems. These 'redeemers', often pilloried for their efforts, are those who most love the promise and are willing to go to jail, or die for it so that the United States and all its citizens will be able to celebrate more authentically in the century to come.

GOD REDEEMING THE PROMISES

The next day, after arriving back at CTU in Chicago, sitting in our chapel, I was haunted again by that phrase 'Redeeming the Promise', Redeeming being such a sacred and meaning-packed word in our Judeo-Christian culture. That led me to reflect on the fact that that is what God is always about: redeeming promises. Later, I got my hands on some Biblical Commentaries and found more precious material about God and Promises.

I was reminded anew that the Bible has been called a Book of Promises - promise and fulfillment being a key theme of the Jewish-Christian traditions, and it is God's fidelity which is the model of our own fidelity to promises. Another example of the wonder of being made in the image and likeness of God!

It is in God's own way of promising, in the certitude which God possesses of never deceiving, that God's own greatness and love is revealed. God is not a creature whose word is broken, nor can God's mind be changed. For God, to promise is already to give.

THE HEBREW SCRIPTURES

Judaism forever stresses confidence in the Power of God's promises, and the history of the Jewish people confirms that confidence in what they have suffered and survived. To them, God reveals the power of divine love and never deceives. "God is not one to break his word, nor a child of Adam that he changes his mind." (Num. 23, 19).

For God, to promise is already to give. The Jews are a People of Promises. In them the promises are the key to the history of salvation: "I will bless you abundantly and make your descendants as countless as the stars of the sky...and in your descendants all the nations of the earth shall find blessing." (Gen. 22, 17-18)

It so happens on the day of this writing, our Scriptural reading is from the book of Hosea the Prophet.(Chap. 11) This book portrays an unfortunate marriage - Hosea's wife being an adulteress. It is figurative, describing the sometimes unfaithful relationship between God and Israel, which, in a wider sense includes all humanity. Despite the infidelities, God promises:

"How could I give you up, 0 Ephralm, Or deliver you up, 0 Israel? My heart is overwhelmed, my pity is stirred. I will not give vent to my blazing anger... For I am god and not a human, The Holy One present among you; I will not let the flame: consume you."

THE CHRISTIAN SCRIPTURES

Jesus, in Christian belief, is the Promise Personified. "Whatever promises God has made have been fulfilled in him," writes Paul the Apostle in 2 Cor.1, 20.

The Infancy narratives illustrate this. Mary, the Mother of Jesus proclaims: "He has...raised the lowly to high places...the hungry he has given every good thing...he has upheld Israel his servant, even as he Promised to our ancestors." (Lk. 1, 52-55)

At the outset of his ministry, Jesus identified himself as the one who fulfills the messianic promises: "The spirit of the Lord is upon me. Therefore God has anointed me. He has sent me to. bring glad tidings to the poor; to proclaim liberty to the captives; recovery of sight to the blind; release to prisoners, and to announce a year of favor." (Lk. 4, 18-19)

He begins his preaching with the announcement that the reign of God is at hand, which he promises in the Beatitudes - the blessedness of the poor and the persecuted; promises the eternal kingdom to his followers; he makes his own the promises of the Jewish Testament. Faithful to his promises, he dies a torturous death in defense of them. His Resurrection from death is God's vindication of Jesus' promises, his life and death.

AMERICA THE BEAUTIFUL

How true that hymn is! How true the words "God shed his grace on thee", but the "Crowning good of Brotherhood" must be better realized if we are to respond to that grace.

That hymn speaks of the beauty and significance of our land, and happily in my musing I came across a marvelous book entitled "The Land" by scripture scholar Walter Brueggeman, whose thesis is that the 'land' is the object of Israel's hope and of God's promises. The land, in a full sense of the word, is a gift from God for all. It is a matter of justice. Possession of the land is a central impulse of the Bible. Thus it relates very much to the conditions of so many people in our country who are not sharing in the "American Dream". The following quotations from his work are pertinent.

"The sense of being lost, displaced and homeless is pervasive in contemporary culture. The yearning to belong somewhere, to have a home, to be in a safe place, is a deep and moving pursuit....The same sense of loss and the same yearning for place are much in evidence among those whom the world perceives as being well rooted and belonging, the whole middle-class at the peak of success and productivity.

"The Bible itself is primarily concerned with the issue of being displaced and yearning for a place. Indeed the Bible Promises precisely what the world denies....The 'Land' is used to refer to 'actual earthly turf' where people can be safe and secure, where meaning and well-being are enjoyed without pressure or coercion....The 'Land' is also used in a symbolic sense as the Bible uses it, to express the wholeness of joy and well-being characterized by social coherence and personal ease in prosperity, security and freedom.

"...Land is never simply physical dirt but is always dirt freighted with social meanings derived from historical experience.

"Spiritual Christianity, by refusing to face the land question, has served to sanction existing inequities."

This morning, reading my Breviary, I was distracted by the thought that I had to get this Notebook done today. I was suddenly brought to attention and uplifted by this passage. "0 my people! I will put my spirit in you that you may live, and I will settle you upon your land; thus you shall know that I am the Lord. I have promised, and I will do it, says the Lord." (Ez. 37, 14).