Oppression

Gospel Reading: Matthew 10.40-42
(Click HERE for last Sunday's readings)

When we were in Seattle, one item on my son Alden's agenda was the acquisition of a Mariners baseball cap. We wandered into a few of the shops that line the street leading to Safeco Field until we found the right hat at the right price.

It's a little curious, if you think about it, to include part of a uniform in your casual wardrobe - a cap, a jersey, a pair of combat boots. Sometimes it's the irony itself that drives the fashion choice. My cousin Matt's band, Gas Huffer, dressed in coveralls on their "Janitors of Tomorrow" record. And the irony rests on the way we signify our roles and our realms of authority by wearing uniforms.

Oppressors quite often wear uniforms - military, religious, or, as in the case of the Seattle Mariners, athletic. Having the worst record in baseball I'm guessing pretty much everybody in a major league uniform looks like an oppressor to the M's this year. But in spite of this reality, a certain playfulness about uniforms seems healthy to me.

If you started walking around in what I wear in church on Sundays, I would be concerned. But that would have more to do with your fashion sense than anything else. Taking uniforms seriously but not too seriously reminds us that we are constantly moving among different realms of authority. And we need to be careful about how we wield the authority we're given.

Jesus talked about welcoming prophets, righteous people, and little ones in the gospel Sunday. He tells us to welcome each of these people as they are. And I'm wondering if the risk of my becoming an oppressor increases as I become more obsessed with my own uniform and less with that of others?

We all have the power to respond to one another. And our relative authority is one component of that power. Jesus seemed comfortable with his authority. He didn't pretend it didn't exist. But he also exercised it on behalf of the people he thought needed it most. He paid attention to the other.

Kathleen Norris's story about a massacre of Christians by Buddhist, Confucian, and Shinto oppressors reminds us that no religion, no system of authority is beyond the possibility of oppression. So we can't take solace in whatever our particular uniform or lack of one might be. Maybe we have to keep asking why we wear it, and for whose sake we exercise our authority.

So what's your uniform? We need to be nimble as we move in and out of the different places and relationships in which we're granted power. No matter our uniform - baseball cap, badge, golfing shoes, chasuble, t-shirt and cutoffs, or whatever tells us our place - we're called to be stewards of the influence we're given. Honest attention to the people around us may be the first step back from oppression, and a step toward actually being useful to someone besides myself.

After all, what good is the authority to redirect the Mississippi if the person in front of us just needs a cup of water?