A Tribute for the Brother to a Dragonfly

Today one of the most poignant and outspoken voices of Christianity in the last 50 years was silenced.  The Rev. Will Davis Campbell died today at the age of 88.  He was a “maverick minister,” as the Huffington Post called him this morning; in fact, during the 1950s and 1960s Will was among the most conspicuous white Southerners to speak out for social justice in the era of the civil rights movement, a decision that made him not-so-popular with his Baptist constituents.  Eventually, Will found himself preaching tolerance and love to those who needed to hear it most, by serving as chaplain to the Ku Klux Klan. When it came to people, Will was fond of saying, “If you’re gonna love one, you gotta love ‘em all!” In so many ways he embodied the Gospel of our Lord, and the world is a sadder place with him gone. 

Today I paused to reflect on Will’s life by picking up one of my favorites of his books, Soul Among Lions:  Musings of a Bootleg Preacher.  The book is an especially short read—you could breeze through it in an hour—yet it is full of profound insights.  So for this meditation I've chosen to pick one such insight and sit and meditate on God’s grace and love with you, and with The Rev. Will Campbell.

In the eighteenth musing of the book, Will ponders a question that so many of us are asked more times than we can count:  “What do you do?”  Will says that if he is in a frivolous mood he responds, “What do I do about what?”

What the question means, of course, is what does a person do for money?  What is their area of work?  Will says simply that this isn't important.  Scripture, after all, takes a pretty dim view of money, and Jesus himself calls the stuff filthy.  And speaking of Jesus, he never asked people what they did for money, Will points out.  Jesus’ concern was always, “How do you justify yourself?”  The real question, in Will words, is:  “At the end of a day, or at the end of your life, what have you done to leave the world a little better place than the one you entered?”

This seems an appropriate musing on which to reflect this day, as Will no doubt asked himself that question as he departed this world.  We live in a time that puts so much emphasis on material things:  the job we have, the money we make, the car we drive, the school we attend.  How many of us fret and worry because we don’t make enough money or don’t have an adequate answer for the person who asks, “So what do you do?”  Every single one of us is guilty of this, of placing our hope, our value, and even our own self-worth in those temporal objects.

The truth is, brothers and sisters, we can’t take any of that stuff with us.  Our cars, homes, or toy collections won’t follow us, and Jesus isn't going to be concerned whether we cleaned toilets for a living or were the heads of Fortune 500 companies.  Jesus will only care about how much love we showed for this world that was entrusted to us and how much love we had for the people in it.  At the end of the day, that’s all that really matters. 

So today, as the bootleg preacher takes his seat at the heavenly banquet, may we also pause to reflect on what really matters in our lives.  May we take the time to take stock of WHO we are, not WHAT we are, of what we’re doing for the greater good, not what we’re doing for our paycheck.  And may blessed Will Campbell pray for us.