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that had little to do with religious ideals as they get
turned, by some, into intensely guiding principles: sec-
ular minds unable to fathom the workings (the assump-
tions, the yearnings, the expectations, and, yes, the wor-
ries and fears) of a mind tied significantly to the sacred.
I believe that Bonhoeffer did, indeed, leap over nine-
teen hundred years, embrace those desert wanderers
who belonged to, not a church, an institution, a sect,
but a community of kindred souls; and in a way I only
began to understand what happened to him in the
Delta of Mississippi in 1964, during the height of the
civil rights struggle, when I was working in a so-called
Freedom House in Canton, and talking with, among
others, a black man, Joseph Gaines, who had wanted for
years to be a minister, but who was, instead, a tenant
farmer. Moreover, he was no mean critic of the very
church life he sought out so hungrily on Sundays, as he
once let me know in this way: I ll be praying to Jesus,
and I ll feel Him right beside me. No, He s inside me,
that s it. I think the church people, they want you to
come visit them, and that way you meet the Lord, and
32
IN THE BIBLICAL TRADITION
His Boy, His Son. The trouble is, you leave, and the
Lord and Jesus stay they don t go with you. You go
back to being yourself, in the state of Mississippi, in the
United States of America, and it s 1964, and you ve got
the bills to pay, and you ve got the church to pay, too
a donation every Sunday, yes sir! So, I say to myself: be
on your own with God He can be your friend all the
time, not just Sunday morning. Come Monday and
Tuesday and through the week to meet Him in church,
or go find Him some other place He s everywhere, if
you ll only want to look. If you live with Him long and
hard, you re carrying His spirit; if you think of Him but
once a week you re just another I guess you be an-
other Mississippian!
I d like to be a minister, so I could know the Bible,
and preach it to other folks. But in my heart, I don t
believe the Lord wants me preaching on Sundays; He
wants me living His way all the days of the week. I recall
being little, and I asked my Pa [his grandfather] why it
was that Jesus lived so long ago, and here we are, so far
from where He was, the distance away, and the time,
too. Joe, he said, you got it all wrong. He is here, right
near you, right inside you if you want Him to be.
Sure, I said; you bet, I said; wow, yes sir, I said I
want Him as near as can be. But Pa told me not so fast,
young one; he told me that He s with you if you earn
the right for Him to be there, and if you don t, then
He s not, and you can go to church and put money in
the basket and pray your head off and sing your voice
out until it s gone and said good-bye, and still He won t
be paying you mind, because that s it! you re not
paying Him any mind, and it s a two-way street, sure is.
33
CHAPTER I
On a good day, when I ve remembered Jesus, by the
way I am with my family and friends, then I m sure
He s smiling and saying, you re with Me, yes sir; on a
bad day, when I m all pouty and mean in my manners,
then He s gone on to find the good souls to keep com-
pany with, and I m just here, alone, figuring out how I
can take care of mister Me, and not caring about others,
and isn t that the first stop on the bus headed for hell!
As I heard those words, I remembered Reinhold Nie-
buhr and David Roberts telling us students that when
Bonhoeffer was at Union Theological Seminary (like Si-
mone Weil when she was in New York), he went to
Harlem to church not in order to try to be of help to
the poor, to people long humiliated, but in the con-
viction that Jesus was to be found there, rather than at
the seminary, or the churches in the fancy parts of Man-
hattan. Well, of course, who is to say exactly where God
is to be found? Yet, as that humble yeoman was trying
to suggest, the Lord may indeed be anywhere, every-
where, may have visited people and places at all times.
For some, though, He is a companion, a daily guide,
whereas for others, a presence, a high presence, to be
visited occasionally, be it weekly or on holidays only: a
life bent on passing a kind of constant sacred muster or
a life predominantly secular in its commitments. For
Joseph Gaines, for Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Paul s conver-
sion on the road to Damascus or Jeremiah s furious
lamentations are not at all a far distant moment, re-
ported in Scripture as a part of ancient history, but the
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