Texts: Micah 6; Matthew 25
The Ghost of Tom Joad, Revisited
Today I’d like to share a story about something that happened here at the church several weeks ago. It’s a story that has implications concerning some of the hard truths we’re being forced to confront in our country, about the treatment of immigrants, about the camps that many have been subjected to, about the dream of freedom we’ll commemorate several days from now, and about the Gospel itself, the good news that Jesus preached and proclaimed. I’ll get to that story in due time, but I’d like to lay some groundwork before I do, by saying just a little about cathedrals, highways, and what it all has to do with the song that Dan sang during the offertory, “The Ghost of Tom Joad.”
First, cathedrals and highways. Years ago, I had the opportunity to tour the Los Angeles Cathedral, a beautiful postmodern structure perched just to the side of Highway 101, one of those ten lane LA highways that, these days, is jammed with cars most times of the day or night. At one point in the tour, someone asked about why that particular site had been selected for the cathedral. Wouldn’t something a little quieter, a little more removed, have been more appropriate, the person asked. The tour guide responded that actually, the site had been selected quite intentionally, with the freeway in mind. Just as the Seine outside of Notre Dame was once an artery conducting all manner of travelers past the doors of that medieval structure, the architect and planners of the LA Cathedral thought of the 101 as akin to that river, an artery conducting pilgrims and travelers past the walls of that magnificent structure. “We think of the highway as an invitation to prayer,” the guide said, “a call to remember those who make their way along that road. It’s not picturesque or romantic, like in Paris, but neither was the River Seine in the 16th century. We try to imagine some of the stories of the people who flow past this place, and when we do, we pray for them.”
It was a wonderful response, one I think about every now and then here in Old Lyme, perched as we are just off I-95. Most of the time, it’s just a road – noisy, crowded, a means to get somewhere else. But what if it was the source of stories? What if we imagined the lives of those who hurtle past the on and off ramps at exit 70? There are the people engaged in commerce, for sure – the truck drivers and delivery vehicles. There are the commuters and these days, there are the vacationers. There are the locals, using a portion of the road for errands and appointments.
But there are others as well. They’re the ones who are out there in search of something more elemental – a place to stay, a job, a helping hand. They’re not always visible or apparent to the naked eye, but they’re out there – the lonely and the scared, the aching and the lost. What I’d like to suggest is that they’re latter day versions of the pilgrims that none other than John Steinbeck wrote about in The Grapes of Wrath, his novel about migration during the Great Depression. Those barely visible travelers out there on the interstate are contemporary examples of the ones Bruce Springsteen immortalized back in 1995 in what, to me, is his most powerful song – “The Ghost of Tom Joad.” As sure as all those 18-wheelers with the Amazon logo roll by, so too do those looking for a place of refuge.
Most nights around this time of year, we sleep with the windows open. And I can hear the tires singing out there on the highway. There are nights that I recall the LA cathedral, and the river of cars rushing past it, and the prayers that arise for those travelers. Sometimes, I say my own prayer, and usually Springsteen’s song finds its way into my head, especially that refrain…
(Dan Stevens: “The highway is alive tonight…where it’s headed everybody knows…I’m sitting down here in the campfire light…waitin’ on the ghost of Tom Joad.”)
Who is Tom Joad, exactly, and why is the singer waiting on him? He’s a kind of patron saint of hard luck cases, a reminder of the dignity and value that accrue to every human life, especially those who suffer the worst forms of indignity.
Most of you know the story of The Grapes of Wrath, even if it’s only half remembered, from high school, or college. The Joad family are internal refugees, displaced by the Dust Bowl and the Great Depression. And so they make their way toward California, drawn, like all migrants, by the prospect of decent wages and a safe place to call home. They suffer immensely throughout their sojourn. When they arrive, the scene is predictable – the jobs are all gone, and the locals want the migrants gone as well.
It’s Tom Joad, the eldest son in the family, who becomes the hero of the novel, inspired by the work of a preacher named Jim Casey, one who drank deeply from the wells of the social gospel movement. Casey dies helping those migrants receive the dignity, humanity, and resources that they deserve. Tom witnesses the killing, and it galvanizes him, much the way the earliest followers of Jesus were galvanized by that first century execution so long ago. Tom’s resolution at the end of the story, rendered so vividly in Springsteen’s song, is to throw himself into the work of protecting those made vulnerable by forces beyond their control, those cast out on the highways of life to make their way. Here are the words of Tom Joad’s resolution:
(Dan Stevens sings:)
Wherever there’s a cop beating a guy
Wherever a hungry newborn baby cries
Where there’s a fight against the blood and hatred in the air
Look for me, Ma, I’ll be there.
Wherever somebody’s fighting for a place to stand
Or a decent job or a helping hand
Wherever somebody’s struggling to be free
Look in their eyes, Ma, and you’ll see me.
Those words are a paraphrase of Matthew 25, that all too familiar passage where Jesus instructs his followers on how to find him after he is gone. Look in the eyes of the prisoner, the malnourished, or the exhausted pilgrim, and you’ll see me, Jesus says. It’s what the 20th century philosopher Emmanuel Levinas has called the ethics of the face, where one’s eyes or lips, one’s crease lines or smile somehow obligate us to one another, revealing the bottomless depths of one another’s humanity, depths that for Jesus, Levinas, or Tom Joad alike, reveal a glimpse of the sacred. For all of them, to gaze at the face of another is to witness something of what we know as God. Or at least, it is to witness the trace of God, lingering in the eyes, lingering in the upturned corners of a mouth, lingering in the creases of worry that can sometimes cover a human face. If God is to be found in the cruelty of the world, Jesus says, it will be in the ability to gaze upon a face, any face, and to feel oneself obligated by those eyes, those creases, those lines, chiseled on the face of the prisoner, written in flesh upon the malnourished. “When you train your gaze in such a way,” Jesus says, “I will be there.” Tom Joad takes up the refrain in a similar way: “Look in their eyes, Ma, and you’ll see me.”
And so who is the ghost of Tom Joad, and why is the singer waiting on him? The ghost of Tom Joad is the manifestation of an elusive ethic where the most fragile human lives – especially those who are in transit, on the road, on the way – are offered dignity, respect, and care. He’s a latter day incarnation of that ancient vision voiced by Jesus, where every human life bears an imprint of the divine trace, a trace that melts what cruelty or indifference may exist into something softer, something merciful, something tender. For the singer, it’s little more than a dream to cling to. It’s but a wild and fervent hope, no more realistic or plausible than the dream that all men were created equal. And yet, out there on the highway or sitting beneath the underpass, it’s a dream worth having, a song worth singing.
(Dan Stevens: “The highway is alive tonight…I’m sittin down here in the campfire light, waitin on the ghost of Tom Joad.”)
It was a few weeks ago, in the early days of June, that one such group of travelers exited the interstate, and found their way here, to FCCOL. It was about 5:00, and I was sitting across the street at the dining room table helping my son Augie do some homework. Then I got a call from Mary Tomassetti, who was here in the building, sorting through and organizing Sunday School materials. She let me know that a family had shown up at the church, and that they wanted to speak to a minister. And so I walked across the street to meet them, unsure of what I’d find.
There was a father and a mother, somewhere in their early 30’s I would guess. Their faces looked tired, worried, burdened. They had two very young children, both still in diapers, both close in age to the children that we baptize from time to time during our services. Parked out on Ferry Rd., they had a Toyota minivan that, from the looks of it, had seen some miles. I introduced myself and together, Mary and I tried to learn what had brought them to us. But it was difficult. For starters, they were nervous about sharing their story, because they knew that exposing themselves to the wrong people could have profound consequences. The task was made still more difficult by their limited English. But they were also desperate. And so the father began to speak in broken sentences. “Please,” he said. “We are from Romania, but we don’t have papers. We live here for some time, but now we try go Texas. I have cousin there and he take us in.”
It didn’t really make sense, not yet. “OK,” I said, “but, why are you going all the way down there?” At that point, the father lifted up his arm, which was malformed in a number of places, the result of bones that had been broken without being properly reset. “I work construction, but then I got hurt,” he said. “And so I don’t have a job anymore. So…we ran out of money, and then we can’t pay our rent. And we can’t go to anyone for help. Maybe they put us in jail. Maybe they take kids. We see what they do here to people like us. So we go to Texas, where my cousin lives. We stay with him, and then we figure out what to do.”
I’ve had some practice by now with sorting through the scams and the cons that do sometimes come our way. But this wasn’t that. This was a genuine plea, coupled with genuine fear about an America not unlike the one found in The Grapes of Wrath, only now the highway is alive with Romanians and God only knows who else, scared out of their wits by the images of camps and prisons that they’ve seen, that we’ve all seen. They were simply trying to get to Texas with as few interactions as possible, because each interaction raised the stakes of their family being shattered. And yet they trusted us. They found their way to FCCOL, no doubt because of our work sheltering immigrants and refugees.
When we asked if they’d like to spend the night, or if they’d like a hotel room, they responded that the best thing for them was just to keep moving, so that they could finally get to a place where they knew they’d be safe. So Mary and I did some quick calculations, estimating what it might cost for gas and for food if you were pushing through 36 hours of interstate driving. Then we asked if they could wait for a little bit while we gathered some things. Mary raided the food pantry, putting together a care package of snacks and diapers that would get them through the next several days. Meanwhile, I went to the Big Y and picked up a few gift cards that they could use along the way for gas, or for food, or, if they needed it, for a motel. And then a few minutes later, we reconvened back in Mary’s office. One of the kids was crawling around on the floor. The other was using markers to draw pictures. The parents were simply waiting, doing their best to keep their kids occupied.
We gave them what we had, and then we walked them to their car, helping to load it up. After that, we exchanged hugs. They thanked us profusely. It felt right somehow to offer up a kind of blessing for these four travelers, and so I said a few words. And then they were gone, back out on the highway, on their precarious odyssey through a precarious American moment.
Mary and I just stood around for a while, letting the fullness and implications of their story sink in. We knew we would likely never learn how the story ended. We knew we would likely never see that family again. And yet we felt grateful to have met them, even if briefly, and grateful at the very least to have sent them on their way with enough to get them through – or so we hoped. Still, there was a profound uneasiness that we felt as we imagined what that family faced on their journey. And then we wondered: how many people are traveling the highways with similar stories? How many people are just trying to get to the next destination, their lives made impossible by a system of legal traps just waiting to be sprung? How many cars pass us on the interstate, their occupants living in fear of detention, or of having their children taken from them? How many? Is it one every hour? Every half hour? Every ten minutes? God only knows, but they’re out there.
Who is the ghost of Tom Joad? I think ultimately it’s each and every one of us. Or at least, I think it can be. I don’t mean that in a smug or self satisfied way. I only mean to say that when we gaze at the face of a stranger, in all of their fullness, and allow ourselves to be shaped by the eyes, the lips, the creases, and wrinkles that compose that face, we encounter something of the divine. It’s where Jesus lives. And it’s where Tom Joad resides as well.
If you think of it, say a prayer for all those travelers out there. They’re all of them searching for the ghost of Tom Joad. Say a prayer for them all. Because the highway is alive tonight.
(Dan Stevens: The highway is alive tonight. And where it’s headed, everybody knows…I’m sitting down here in the campfire light…waiting on the ghost of Tom Joad. 2x.)
For our closing hymn, we’ll sing Julia Ward Howe’s Mine Eyes Have Seen the Glory, the song from which Steinbeck drew his title. It’s hard to sing it without irony. But when it’s placed alongside “The Ghost of Tom Joad,” I wonder if it comes to have a new meaning. Or rather, I wonder if we’re allowed to return to its original meaning. What is the glory that the songwriter discovered? What is the judgment of God’s terrible swift sword, and upon whom does the judgment fall? And what is the truth that is marching on? I leave it to you to discern answers to those questions, but I’d also like to suggest that it all has something to do with recognizing the humanity that we all share together, the humanity that we too often deny to whole categories of people. What judgments await when we fail to grant others their full humanity? It’s worth it to consider such truths just now, and on the holiday we’ll soon celebrate. Let’s sing Mine Eyes Have Seen the Glory together.
