Rae’Jonn is now held by Clinton Police on $100,000 bail,
which he certainly will not be able to meet. Therefore he will sit in jail
awaiting the conclusion of the investigation that will certainly lead to more
arrests and will miss the graduation that he was so excited to experience. It
is as though one stupid decision, a prank, has dissolved all of the work that
he and I have done this semester.
For a little context, let me explain the situation at the
Clinton Alternative School. Many public school districts have an alternative
education program that meets the needs of the district in educating students in
need of remediation and in situations when certain students will do better
academically if they are in a much smaller class or separated from their peers.
Our school provides both of those services.
Our faculty is composed of the most patient, resourceful,
and nurturing teachers in the district. At any given time one of my fellow
educators could be responsible for a class of students working in many
different courses. For example, at one point in my regular day, I have a class
of eight students, three of whom are in Algebra 1, one working on Geometry, two
practicing Algebra 2, and two studying Transitions to Algebra. Each gets a
lesson and assignments, and each is expected to make significant progress each
week toward completing their course.
Of course there is more to it than just small,
mixed-discipline classes. At the heart of the Alternative School is the student
body, which is composed of those who have fallen behind for various reasons,
those who have been incarcerated, those who are otherwise unable to learn in a
traditional classroom, and those who are transitioning into the district
mid-year. One of the great ministries of our school is our participation with
the Methodist Children’s Home. Several MCH residents have attended our school
to become acclimated to Clinton Public Schools and have then transitioned into
their appropriate campus. I’m very proud of the work we’re able to do with
these students.
The summary of this context is this: in our building we are
all ministers, counselors, experts in our disciplines, and, above all,
conveyors of human dignity. Ours are the students who need the most care, the
most patience, and the most attention. Ours is the task of the long-suffering
teacher who must find appropriate expectations for these students and work and
work and work to see them succeed. Above all, we are a faculty established on
hope.
As I consider the circumstances of Rae’Jonn’s prank call
that has landed him in jail facing federal charges, I’m caught between the hope
that is inherent in the mission of our school and the disappointment of the
reality of many of our students, especially Rae’Jonn.
The Scriptures declare that hope is one of the three great
features of the Gospel[1],
and that hope is instrumental in the Christian understanding of faith itself.[2] We
often trumpet hope as the great ally of the believer in the face of trial or
suffering. We sing about how our hope is built on nothing less than Jesus’
blood and righteousness. We hope for glory[3]
and even for salvation.[4]
The Church, then, trades on hope; in the midst of a world groaning under the
weight of sin and need for salvation the Church stands as a witness to the hope
that all is not lost.
I think, though, that believers should practice a little
hope-as-protest.
Hope is defiant. It is contrary. Hope is against the status
quo and keeps one eye on the horizon. Hope is the realist’s impression of
events painted with colors that seem more cheerful than they need be. Hope is
having 40 acres of the worst land in the state and sowing seed anyway.
Hope is not impervious, though, at least in the human heart.
Disappointment is one manifestation of the many things that combat hope in my
soul, much like grief and pessimism do. Disappointment is the substitution of
an unexpected reality in the place of a well-constructed optimism. It is the
pouring in of our time, effort, and prayers for a student who is a hair’s
breadth away from graduating against all odds only to have that opportunity
snatched away by that same student’s foolhardy choices.
I am disappointed. I love Rae’Jonn and the rest of my
students, and I earnestly pray for them daily. We have seen so many students
fall away from their academic path this year; those who remain are like those
soldiers who have survived a firefight and are almost home again.
Can the Christian honestly feel disappointment and hold to
faith, hope, and love simultaneously? Yes. I am personally caught in the
tension between those two poles, knowing that there is nothing I can do to
bring Rae’Jonn back to school and also hoping for him and praying for his success
and that he encounters the living God.
I think of the story of Jesus raising Lazarus from the dead.[5] In
that narrative we can feel the tension between disappointment and hope laid out
for us as plain as day. We learn that Jesus wasn’t far from the dying Lazarus.[6]
Further, Martha, sister to the dead Lazarus, passively blames Jesus for
allowing her brother to die.[7] In
that moment between Jesus promising Martha that her “brother will rise again…I
am the Resurrection and the Life; he who believes in me will live even if he
dies, and everyone who lives and believes in me will never die”[8]
and Lazarus actually stumbling out of his four-day-old tomb, Martha must have
experienced the soul-stretching doublethink that hope and disappointment can
synthesize.
We must find a way to protest against the darkness with hope as though we were participating in a spiritual sit-in. Hope is found in that moment when our work has evaporated and we yet persist in our prayer and faith. Hope is a rallying cry in the face of folly at the federal level. Hope as protest lives in the tension between reality and our Spirit-enabled vision of the way things could be.
That’s where I am today; caught between hope and hell. God have mercy.
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