Commentary: A season to reflect on passion and faith

This is a season for reflection, about ultimate matters of concern for those of us who are of the Jewish or Christian faith, about immediate issues of respect and disrespect for students at Duke, about larger issues of equality and discrimination in our society as a whole. They all come together, historically and in our daily lives, in this moment.

This past Sunday I attended the Duke Chapel's Palm Sunday service. I am not a regular church-goer, although I was a fervent Baptist Youth Fellowship participant earlier in my life and went to seminary for a year. Something told me this was a good time to reconnect. And so my wife and I went to the Chapel this Palm Sunday. We have not done a better thing in years. The service was remarkable for two reasons. First, it highlighted the humanity of Jesus. This was a person who never denied his own humanness. He would not claim immortality or assert his omnipotence. He doubted, asked that this cup be taken from him, pleaded in the Garden of Gesthemane that he be relieved of this burden; but in the end, he said, "Thy will be done." Second, this was a service suffused with the beauty and transcendence of music composed by an African, David Fanshawe, whose Sanctus had blessed the Chapel on Saturday evening, and on Sunday, made all of us supremely conscious of the universality of the human experience, and the insights contributed by believers from all cultures.

As I left the service, a number of thoughts passed through my mind. I recalled first the humanity of Jesus. He was not sure what to do, he did not claim that which was not his to claim. But, as the Gospel of Luke tells us, notwithstanding his anxiety and self-doubt, "He set his face to go to Jerusalem." He knew that trial and death awaited him. But he did what he had to do, consumed by anxiety and doubt, yet committed to the only path he could take and be true to himself.

That realization, in turn, recalled the decision Martin Luther King, Jr. made 33 years ago this month to go to Memphis and fight on behalf of the sanitation workers in that city. King knew that Memphis was a potential disaster. The garbage workers had little standing in the community. Theirs was a losing or marginal cause at best. But King believed that if poor people in America were to stand up, be recognized and be counted, he had to stand by their side, as Jesus had in his parable of the Good Samaritan or as Jesus did in routing the money changers from the Temple. And so King went to Memphis, he marched in support of non-violence, he argued with his staff, as Jesus had with his disciples, about the principles of non-violence and peace, and he too suffered death.

But both men had set their "face to go to Jerusalem." They insisted on doing what had to be done in order to affirm their commitment to justice, to their own fate, to what it is that makes us, as human beings, creatures of courage and nobility.

And all of that made sense to me as a citizen at Duke in the spring of 2001. We too are called to witness to what it means to be human in the face of a community rent by forces of racism and feelings of anger, dis-respect and alienation. We are simultaneously members of a whole community that celebrates the victory of a superb national champion and participants in a broken community, fractured by our failure to remember and honor the responsibility each of us has to respect all those who inhabit our planet and live in this place together.

So we are all called to set our faces toward Jerusalem, to be human, to take the road to Memphis, not to run away from the reality of racism and division in our own community. This is a season for reflection and for thinking of all those things that link us to the season of Passover, the trial and passion of Jesus and the resolute faith of Martin Luther King, Jr. We too are on trial. Will we face our fate, or run away?

William Chafe is dean of the faculty of arts and sciences and vice provost for undergraduate education.