A Labor Day Meditation

WALKING THE ALLEYS

A Labor Day Meditation

My wife walks alleys. We live in a neighborhood that has alleys. Newer subdivisions mostly don’t have alleys, but in this older part of town alleys are everywhere. If the streets are front doors for the neighborhood, the alleys are back doors. Like back doors everywhere, they are the way the family comes in. The garage is in back, as are the garbage cans. In our neighborhood, old fruit trees lean out into the alleys: apples, pears, and Italian prunes (in my neck of the woods, they are never called “plums”). Blackberry bushes find homes in the alleys. Squirrels run the fences. Deer graze on the leaves of the trees; they look but don’t move as you walk by. Steller’s jays scream at anyone with the temerity to pass them without saying hello. Critters are everywhere. Some houses are neat front and back; others let life spill over into the alley. Alleys are always interesting. My wife, who looks for what others do not see, walks the alleys.

For much of my life, I have tried to walk the alleys of my theological neighborhood. The front yards of my theological neighborhood are neat, nothing out of place, all carefully arranged, systematic, artificial, and dull. It was this theology that was taught in the schools I attended: everything lined up like a just mowed and edged lawn. You won’t find much to look at in the front. The interesting stuff goes on in the back, where the questions spill out into the alleys, where theology becomes homey and real. In my theological neighborhood, the alleys take you past congregations where religious life spills out into the streets, where synods are distant and mostly unwelcome, where neighbors laugh and talk and worship.

It’s for the alleys that I love the church. It’s for the alleys that I love the Bible, the ancient record of God’s congregation. The Bible is full of alleys. Just when you think that biblical wisdom is cut and dried, all do this and don’t do that, you happen on Ecclesiastes, which dares to breathe the truth that “wisdom” is often merely wind. Or you read Joshua, meet the man, all straight and true and brave, and then you discover Joshua’s heirs, people like Ehud and Deborah and Samson. Or you read Mark in the New Testament, the first gospel to be written, and you discover that it ends with a conjunction, which is weird—and wonderful—even in Greek. Or you dip into the book of Revelation, and you find the congregation of heaven worshiping a wounded lamb.

This week’s Old Testament reading in the lectionary was a long passage from Jeremiah 2. In the manner of prophets, it speaks directly to our time.

I brought you into a plentiful land

to eat its fruits and its good things. 

But when you entered you defiled my land 

and made my heritage an abomination. (Jeremiah 2:7; NRSVue)

Much could be said about the many ways we in 21^st century America defile the land and make the heritage of the Lord an abomination, but in his homily the priest at our church pushed on promptly to the next line:

The priests did not say, “Where is the Lord?

In the passage, Jeremiah, speaking in the voice of Yhwh, God of Israel, says that his people have gotten lost. They have wandered into unfamiliar paths, followed strange gods, and the priests, the religious leaders, didn’t even notice. They didn’t ask, “Where is Yhwh?”

Where is Jesus? we might ask. Not, I think in those manicured theological front lawns, where all questions are answered, everything cut and dried: believe this, not that. Nor in synodical statements that try to rule the congregations from the top down. Where is Jesus? In the alleys. If you want to see Jesus, walk the alleys.

On this Labor Day 2025, we should be looking for Jesus in Gaza. Expect to see Jesus in refugee camps. And among migrants in ICE custody. And in those giant factory towns in China and other countries where workers are gathered far from their villages to make the products we buy at bargain prices. Where should we be looking for Jesus? In the alleys of the world.

I mean this is in the starkest theological terms. It’s only when we step away from the familiar and begin to explore the alleys, when our theology engages not just with the answers but with the questions, when we consider not just our comfortable faith but the yearnings of people of other faiths that we meet Jesus. As the writer of Hebrews has it, “Let us then go to him outside the camp . . ..” (Hebrews 13:13). “Outside the camp.” Jesus walked alleys.

So, then, let’s walk the alleys together. There is so much to see, so much to consider. So much joy, so much grief. In the alleys we find some backyards neatly fenced off and others open and welcoming. We find some familiar and others unfamiliar. In the alleys we find God. 

Jesus walked the alleys. So should we.

Clay