Tomorrow I start my new job.  It’s a time of renewal I think.

I’m really, really nervous.

To my neighborhood, I’m officially a gentrifier. Less than 4 days after I moved in, a note addressed to me let it be known that I had been labeled and judged because of the color of my skin. The catalyst of the letter was a parking ticket, but what flowed from the author’s pen over two handwritten pages carried a generation of hurt and pain from a broken world and an unjust society. Growing up in 99% white Appalachian Ohio, I will never completely understand the displacement and race-fueled politics that have shaped the lives of my black and Latino neighbors, but I do believe that God has brought me to this place. Regardless of my naivety, and with God’s grace, I can contribute to the efforts of community development and racial reconciliation around me.

There’s something about this mixture of experiences and education that have been intertwined to prepare me for this particular point in life. Working with my boys at camp, spending a year in community centers in Erie, and somehow stumbling across The Sanctuary while in the Twin Cities - there’s a reason these seemingly separate experiences have fallen into place. There’s a reason that statistics that once could be shrugged off now stick in my gut and weigh on my heart and mind, and why losing an entire generation of black boys presents a call to action, rather than a momentary grief period.

But I’m not here to save the world. It is so easy to take a paternalistic savior approach to service in a community that has been hurt for generations… to believe that I have all the answers and can change the world if people would simply listen and do what I say. There’s a power that comes with that approach that is oh so tempting, but must be prayerfully avoided. The wisdom of the community far outweighs any books or seminars, and a genuine approach of a united community must be taken, rather than the first instinct of trying to be a hero.

Oscar Romero is often attributed with a quote that was actually taken from a homily written by Fr. Ken Untener that challenged the paternalistic overtones that come with serving the poor and oppressed which basically says liberation will only come in realizing that we can’t do everything, even if it means I get to struggle with a feeling of incompleteness.

Great. I love that feeling of incompleteness.

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“Creating the Church of Tomorrow” by Fr. Ken Untener

It helps, now and then, to step back and take a long view.

The Kingdom is not only beyond our efforts,

it is even beyond our vision.

We accomplish in our lifetime only a tiny fraction of the

magnificent enterprise that is God’s work.

Nothing we do is complete,

which is another way of saying that the Kingdom always lies beyond us.

No statement says all that could be said.

No prayer fully expresses our faith.

No confession brings perfection, no pastoral visit brings wholeness.

No program accomplishes the Church’s mission.

No set of goals and objectives includes everything.

This is what we are about.

We plant the seeds that one day will grow.

We water seeds already planted, knowing that they hold future promise.

We lay foundations that will need further development.

We provide yeast that produces effects far beyond our capabilities.

We cannot do everything,

and there is a sense of liberation in realizing that.

This enables us to do something,

and to do it very well.

It may be incomplete, but it is a beginning,

a step along the way,

an opportunity for the Lord’s grace to enter and do the rest.

We may never see the end results, but that is the difference

between the master builder and the worker.

We are workers, not master builders,

ministers, not messiahs.

We are prophets of a future not our own.

Written by Fr. Ken Untener (later Bishop Untener, bishop of Saginaw) for John Cardinal Dearden; given by John Cardinal Dearden as a homily at Blessed Sacrament Cathedral, Detroit, October 25, 1979.