The cry of the saints

 You are the light of the world (Matthew 5:14a)

For all the saints, who from their labors rest, Who Thee by faith before the world confessed, Thy Name, O Jesus, be forever blessed. Alleluia. Alleluia. (All Saints Day hymn)

I sang the words to myself in the usual chair where I pray as the sun flowed through the southeast windows of the house. As always, one face came to mind first, my father, Lavern Miller, for whom I’ve now sung this hymn for 24 All Saints Days, since he was delivered from terrible debilitation into light eternal.

I see and feel him there with so many others, who in strength and assurance or in weakness and wavering faith confessed Jesus as Lord of life and death, heaven and earth. Jesus was our hope in those final days when all he could feel was his emptiness and need, as life slipped away.

I still feel the comfort of Jesus’ presence hovering over the scene in his cramped room, holding his hand, enveloped in a cloud of Presence lingering above his bed, waiting for the hour of deliverance.

Whispering in his ear, assuring his trembling heart, Jesus is Lord became my silent cry, a defiant affirmation, a shaking fist in the face of the specter of death and his soul-crushing suffering.

All Saints Day never fails to take me back there, consoling my heart. But the day and it signature hymn also carries me to the streets of the city and suburb where I live, raising a compelling question: What does it me to confess Jesus is Lord here and now?

For 20 centuries, Jesus is Lord has been the confession of all who place their faith and hope in him.

But what does it mean for us to confess Jesus is Lord in a country where government-mandated masked marauders engage in thuggish brutality, shattering the lives and families of immigrants, most of whom have been in the U.S. for years, if not decades, living productive lives?

At the very least, we must listen to the cry in our hearts that shouts, ‘No, this should not be.’ This is the voice of Jesus, our risen Lord, alive within the depth of our being, crying out for kindness and justice for souls created in God’s image, calling us to give ourselves more deeply to God’s work of giving life to the world.

Created in, by and for the love of God, Christ is the center of every human soul. There is no person on earth in whom we should not be prepared to see the presence of Christ.

Today, he is violated on the streets of our cities and suburbs as human beings are hunted down as if they were rabid beasts.

Christ not only suffers in these, mostly brown-skinned people, who are being profiled and targeted. He also suffers in the souls of Donald Trump and Stephen Miller and Kristi Noem and Thomas Homan and all who birthed this diabolic scheme that is brutalizing hearts and splintering families, while fanning the rancid anger and bigotry long present in our nation.  

Christ lies at the center of their souls, too, suffering, grievously wounded, buried deep beneath passions of greed, anger, pride, hate and vanity that plague all of us to one extent or another. But they have become particularly virulent and malignant in this administration.

But we who hear the voice of Christ within us must love and serve him by naming the ways and places he suffers in distressing disguise—especially today in the lives of the poor and in those who face government brutality.

Only so, do we join the cry of the saints of every age, Jesus is Lord.