I “attended” two funerals this month: I followed President Jimmy Carter’s funeral service on TV, and a funeral for a two month old infant was held in our church the following week.
Superficially, they could not have been more different. The president’s coffin was ushered in by a military band, every living American president was in attendance, and the numerous eulogies described a world-transforming leader who lived to the age of 100.
The infant was born premature, fought valiantly for two months, and could not sustain his not-fully-formed body. His parents are newcomers from Africa with very few connections in Canada. Our church community, which barely knew them, surrounded them with love, encouragement, grace, and many forms of tangible support.
But both services had this in common: they were rooted in a gospel-saturated awareness of the true meaning of “paying respect.”
I live out the definition of “respect” as to “re-inspect,” or to see something afresh through the eyes of Jesus. Whenever our eyes take something in, they immediately provide an assessment, an evaluation of sorts, and this assessment is based on our assumptions and our auto-defaults for reacting to things. When you think about it, it’s so strange: I’ll glance at a stranger walking past our home and find myself imagining bits of her life story based on a three second glance.
It’s my conviction that ALL justice-seeking is rooted in paying respect: attempting to see every creature in creation through the eyes of Jesus as much as we are able.
By contrast, to respect is to slow way down, to strip away the assumptions and auto-defaults, and begin to see with the eyes of Jesus. That’s what Paul means when he writes in 2 Coronthians 5: “We no longer see anyone from a worldly point of view. If anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation” (vv.16-17).
Why does paying respect matter for Do Justice?
It’s my conviction that ALL justice-seeking is rooted in paying respect: attempting to see every creature in creation through the eyes of Jesus as much as we are able. Paying respect to the lilies of the field, the migrating warblers, the newcomers to Canada, the creation’s groaning under climate change, those who are marginalized for any reason or no reason, the wealthy and powerful (and we could go on) is the foundation for seeking justice. Our manner of seeing guides our manner of acting.
Funerals are very special occasions when paying respect is the central virtue on display. Might funerals be metaphors for our entire lives? Might we be called every day to slow down, “fix” our eyes (see Heb. 12:1), and pay respect in all that we are and do? Might we all be called to cry out with Emily at the end of Thornton Wilder’s Our Town, “Does anyone ever realize life while they live it…every, every minute?” and hear the Stage Manager respond with, “No, Saints and poets, maybe.”
Yes indeed, saints and poets, you and me, paying respect as we “act justly, love mercy, and walk humbly with our God” (Micah 6.87).
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