John 9 September 24, 2008
Posted by relsdork in God, bible, christian, church, religion, scripture, struggle.Tags: andre trocme, bible, compassion, God, jesus, john, john 9, le chambon, scripture, sermon
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Hillel, a 1st century Rabbi whom Paul of Tarsus studied under, was once approached by a man who told him: “If you can teach me the whole of the Torah while I stand on one foot, you can make me a Jew.”
Hillel responded: “What is hateful to you, do not do to your neighbor. This is the whole Torah; the rest is commentary. Go and study.”
Think on that… “the rest is commentary. Go and study.”
One of the continuing themes in the Bible is Jesus’ healing on Sabbath days. In all of the gospels, the Pharisees are irritated with Jesus for breaking Sabbath law. If we look in the story of John 9, where Jesus heals the blind man, we see that not only does Jesus give this man the ability to see, he does it in a funny way. Jesus spits, gathers up dirt, rubs it in his hand to make mud, smears it on the man’s eyes, and tells the man to go wash his face.
Why didn’t Jesus just say “abra cadabra” and heal the man?
At this point in the history of Jewish legalism, Sabbath law had become so particular that simple things like molding mud and spitting were considered breaking the law. It had become THAT particular. So why did Jesus spit, gather up dirt, rub it in his hands to make mud, smear it on the man’s eyes, and tell him to go wash his face? Because each of those steps was breaking Sabbath law. Because Jesus was pointing out NOT ONLY how Sabbath law was preventing good works, but also the ridiculousness of how unnecessarily picky Sabbath law had become. He performed the healing in such a way as to rub it in the face of the Pharisees.
Jesus is rubbing his “disobedience” of Sabbath law in the faces of these religious authorities.
If you were standing there that day, wouldn’t you just say, “Oh snap”?
What conclusion do we draw from this story? The easy conclusion to draw from this story is that the law of compassion trumps all other Biblical law. It’s a good conclusion.
I like to think about this in an additional way. I like to see this as a way we should approach religion in general. Stay with me.
“Because God says so” is bad reasoning. I mean, Sabbath law was all about “because God says so.” For a fearful populace that thinks of God like we are ants and God is a human cleaning God’s kitchen, maybe that makes sense. Maybe we should just do what God says so God doesn’t smoosh us. What’s wrong with thinking like that? It’s playing it safe. Jesus was all about playing it safe, right?
…
(the answer is no)
For one thing, within ANY religious tradition, you can say, “it says in scripture that this is the right action,” and there is ALWAYS another passage you can draw from that contradicts that position. ALWAYS. So we can say that the contradictory nature of religious scripture should make clear to us the problem of Biblical literalism.
Well, that’s dispassionate, isn’t it? “Don’t claim God as your reasoning because someone can use your same God to contradict your reasoning.” There’s my dispassionate position.
My passionate reasoning goes more like this: To be compassionate because God says so is cheap. It’s no longer compassion, it’s again adherence to law, and the problem with law is that it imposes boundaries. We should never put boundaries on compassion.
One night, I was driving home… from IHN, actually… with my then-boyfriend. As we were heading down Ellsworth, he exclaimed, “Oh my gosh, I think that guy was hurting that girl.”
“What? Where?” I asked.
“Back there,” he said and motioned. “He had her pinned against that wall.”
I turned the car around.
“What are you doing?” he asked.
I said, “I’m going back.”
“Why? What are you going to do?”
At this point, we see that the couple was merely making out. I didn’t have to figure out what I was going to do. What was I going to do? I don’t know. Call the police? At least shine my headlights and get him to take his hands off her? Invite her into my car? What was I going to do? I don’t know. Not the point.
As we drove away, he asked, “Why do you always do that?”
Of course, he wasn’t referring to some tendency I have to interfere in instances of domestic violence. Thankfully, I don’t often encounter domestic violence. He was referring to the times I’d step in between his friends in bar fights. To the times I’d help out a random girl in a club. To the times I stop and try to talk to someone crying on the street. To the earfuls I’d give to large strangers exhibiting sexism. To the conversations I’d have with homeless people. To the times I’d run outside and break up a cat fight (the kind between cats…). To the everyday small things, sometimes stupid things, I would do. To all the things he’d get irritated with after I did them. Why do those things?
What he meant was, “Why do you always get involved in other people’s business?” And perhaps… “especially when it involves some kind of risk.” It really bothered him. He saw my actions as butting into other people’s lives. If his friends were going to get hit in a bar fight, they deserved it for being stupid. I’m a 110-pound female. How am I going to help?
Well, I like to think that because I am a 110-pound female, a man is unlikely to hit me. It’s maybe a risky bet, but it’s one that I’m willing to make.
But my boyfriend’s question goes unanswered. Why? Why do I do that? Do I do it because it’s what God wants? Because it’s what Jesus taught? Because it says somewhere in the Bible? I say I do it because it’s the way my momma raised me. And my mommy didn’t raise me talking about God or Jesus… or Buddha or the Pope or the Dali Lama…
My mother raised me to take other people’s experiences into my own. She told me not to hurt other people in my words or actions. People don’t like to hurt. “Would you like someone to do that to you?” she would always ask. I avoid hurting people for the same reason I try to help people… because we should be acting with a mentality of Human community. Of course, my mother never said this. Before now, I never have, either.
Why do we try to help people? We just do it. It comes from inside, not from outside. If God told me to help people, God did it from the inside. Not through scripture, through Humanity.
God gave us free will and these beautiful minds that are capable of some extremely complex thought. Why would God do that if God just wanted us to simply surrender our own judgment to authority? It doesn’t really make sense, does it? Why give us these beautiful analytic minds and then say, “everything you need to know should be in Leviticus”? It doesn’t make sense. It doesn’t make sense because God is still speaking.
God gave us a mind and a heart and a moral compass. God gave us these tools with which to learn from scripture, to learn from Life. I think that God’s main guiding tools for us are internal. After all, scripture only has meaning to us BECAUSE of those tools, because of that Spirit of God in all of us.
If God is in me, God is in you, and if God is in MY motivation, God is in yours as well. I should take EVERYONE’S wellbeing into my decision-making. God probably does.
My willingness to stand in between 2 people on the verge of violence is because my mom taught me not only to anticipate MY possible outcomes, but others’ as well.
One of my professors referred once to a book called, Lest Innocent Blood Be Shed by Philip Hallie. The subtitle of this book says it is “The story of the village of Le Chambon and how goodness happened there.” What a funny way to phrase things. The book is about a small village whose center was a small Protestant church. The pastor, Andre Trocme, started housing Jews during the Holocaust. As time went on, his home and church became full of Jews and his hiding them seriously endangered his own life, the lives of his family members and the lives of everyone in their village… but this whole village came together and helped hide these Jews from the military. They all risked their lives for the well-being of complete strangers.
Compassion does not know the boundaries of law or religion or any other boundaries.
Andre Trocme believed that beyond the moral strengths and weaknesses of human beings, there is something much more valuable. In Trocme’s eyes, God showed how valuable each and every Human Life was when he sent Jesus to help us. Trocme believed that every Human life had a “spiritual diamond” that God cherished.
At the time that Hallie wrote his book, Andre Trocme had passed away, but his wife was alive and available to interview. I’d like to share a passage from the book.
“When I asked her why she found it necessary to let those refugees into her house, dragging after them all those dangers and problems, including the necessity of lying to the authorities, she could never fully understand what I was getting at. Her big, round eyes stopped sparkling in that happy face, and she said, “Look. Look. Who else would have taken care of them if we didn’t? They needed our help, and they needed it then.” For her, and for me under the joyous spell she casts over anybody she smiles upon, the spade was turned by hitting against a deep rock: there are no deeper issues than the issue of people needing help then.”
“What is hateful to you, do not do to your neighbor. That is the whole Torah; the rest is commentary.”
How could the people of that small French village let the Jews stay in harm’s way? They recognized the community of Humanity and saw that those lives mattered as much as their own. They took on the struggle of strangers… because those strangers needed help then. When a girl is crying on the street in San Francisco, she probably needs help then. When 2 people are about to break into violence, they need help then. Getting an ice pack 20 minutes later is helping a different problem.
The gospel stories are inspirational and illustrate time and again how compassionate service matters. When Jesus heals the man in front of the Pharisees, he doesn’t say “God told me to.” He just does it. He does it by rolling up his sleeves and getting dirty… quite literally. He doesn’t justify himself in any way and in fact does it in direct contradiction of those rules which are supposed to be moral guidelines. Jesus doesn’t refer to some section of the Torah or wisdom literature to substantiate his reasoning for acting this way. He just does it.
Why do you behave the way you do? Why do I behave the way I do? I try to think about my whys and what I want my whys to be. When someone asks us, “Why do you do that?” hopefully we can say: “it needed to be done, and it needed to be done then.”
bring it on July 9, 2008
Posted by relsdork in Uncategorized.Tags: compassion, pain, passion
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When you’re in the most pain, you realize how beautiful people are. How compassionate. People are only mean to you when they are ignorant of your feelings or when they are having trouble themselves. I believe that.
I am naive. I am a dreamer. I am passionate. I am hopeful. If these are my faults, bring on my tragic ending.
i think i wrote a sermon July 2, 2008
Posted by relsdork in christian, church, religion.Tags: christian, compassion, forgiveness, repentance, sermon
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You know, I used to hate the idea of getting up in front of a huge group of people and saying something. That’s kind of a lie– I still pretty much hate the idea. Mostly because of the “huge group of people” and the “getting up in front of them” parts. The “saying something” part, though? That’s the part I can’t seem to leave behind. I blog obsessively for this reason. I never shut up in class for this reason. And I’m going to try and get over the “standing up in front of a huge group of people” thing for this reason… because I think I have something to say.
I want to tell you a story.
Once upon a time, I decided to go to St. John’s Cemetery, up behind Aragon High School, and put a poem on my grandfather’s grave. I have a routine at St. John’s—certain spots I visit. My routine was interrupted by the presence of someone I REALLY didn’t want to see.
This visit was about a year after the death of my Aunt Cathy, my uncle’s wife, who is also buried at St. John’s. She committed suicide. She was emotionally abused as a child by a member of her family whom I will call “Fred.” Fred let her know that she was a charity case because she was adopted. Perhaps also genetically disadvantaged by her drug-addict biological mother, Cathy became an alcoholic. My original draft included references to tragic events in Cathy’s alcoholism, to help illustrate the extent of her illness. However, the more I thought about it, the more it seemed in poor taste to paint Cathy this way. So I’ll leave out the details and trust that you know people affected by alcoholism and know how it can turn people into scary, tragic things. Cathy’s story is tragic. She left behind my uncle and their then 9-year-old son. She was a beautiful woman, but she was really beyond help. I cannot fault her for her self-destructive behaviors… for a long time, I faulted Fred.My family has made a habit of saying mean things about Fred. For the few years surrounding Cathy’s death, much “drama” circled about her, her health, her marriage to my uncle, the well-being of my cousin, and Fred.
However, seeing him in the cemetery that day, hunched, with a voice box, with his shaky hand holding a hose and watering her grave, his other hand holding the leash of a tiny dog with ribbons in her ears, it seemed to me that he was more weak and cute than horrible and abusive.
Later, speaking to my mother, she told me that he is at her grave every day, at least recently. He brings turf and waters the grass. Every day. I guess one doesn’t expect a horrible, abusive man to water and care for Cathy’s grave every day.
I was nervous about going to speak to him, but Cathy’s grave is a short distance from my grandfather’s and after all, what kind of person am I if I don’t say hello to him as he is watering my aunt’s grave?
He was such a nice little man. He talked to me about my grandfather and told me that I looked like my him (more so than my mother, even). He asked me about school, told me about the ribbons in his dog’s ears… I talked to him for at least 20 minutes and my heart went out to him. He was like any other cute little aged man. Coughing and choking his way through his voice box, he was just grateful for an ear to talk to.
I don’t know what kind of person he was to Cathy, but I know that he loves her. And so it seems to me that sometimes the way people interact with one another shows little about the way they feel. This is apparent in lots of abusive relationships. Some people just aren’t good at loving.
And every common bush afire with God;
But only he who sees, takes off his shoes;
The rest sit round it, and pluck blackberries.
And I thought of Fred, watering Cathy’s grave.
I thought of how wonderful my grandfather was at loving people. He is so fondly remembered by so many people. My grandfather has his own small legacy. He is remembered the way that he is not because he had a doctorate or wrote a book or had a bunch of money or drove a nice car. My grandfather was a gardener and drove a beat up blue Volkswagen bug. But he was so good at loving people.
I used to be mad at Fred for what he had done to my Aunt Cathy, but some people aren’t good at loving. Some people give into the things that get in the way of healthy love. But other people love really well…. and that love is inspiring. It inspires us to be better people and to forgive those who are not so good at loving. If every common bush is afire with God, then surely there is God in all of us to reach out to and love.
Talking to Fred made me see in him his Humanity. In seeing that, I could forgive him. More important than that, though, I was able to see my own flaw in blaming him… I “othered” him and stopped seeing him as a member of the Human family that I claim as my own.
The way that Fred visits and waters Cathy’s grave is illustrative of his form of repentance. This is how he apologizes to her and demonstrates the way his love always existed below his sin of failing to love her better.
For a long time, repentance seemed like a strange idea to me… a cop-out, if you will.
I now think that my failures as a Human being (I drive; I buy food produced in inefficient, irresponsible, and sometimes cruel ways; I spend money on selfish things; I often say things I regret to people I care about; I often make mistakes I can’t undo…)… I now think that my failures as a Human being are my inability to love Humanity/Spirit/God. While these failures are real, they don’t lessen God’s ability to love me. God is good at loving. And so I repent. I repent in the ways I live selflessly and I aspire to imitate the love of God. I aspire to be Human.
If violence breeds violence, can compassion breed compassion? I like to think that it can.
There is a beautiful Buddhist teaching that stems from the idea of reincarnation. Because each being is reborn so many times, every being on this planet has at one time been your mother. If we can look at each individual and see in their eyes our mothers, if we can try to love them and care for their wellbeing as we would our mothers’, perhaps we can finally cultivate in ourselves the kind of compassion that produces radical change.
If I can look at Fred and see that his sin is essentially the same as my own, the inability to love perfectly the manifestations of God in this world, I can love him. I can see his compassion seeping through, finally able to embody the love for Cathy that he was unable to throughout her lifetime.
You know, first century Christians housed the homeless, clothed the naked, and fed the hungry. They recognized the brotherhood of mankind that Jesus preached. If my sister, through some circumstance, had no shoes tomorrow, I certainly would give her shoes. I need to treat the strangers in this world like they are my family. Early Christians were arrested and killed for this type of compassion because they didn’t adhere to the norms of society, because they lived lives of radical compassion that conflicted with the lives of convenience that surrounded them.
One of my professors today, in talking about first century Christianity, repeated a question that he heard during the 70’s Jesus movement. If you were arrested tomorrow for being a Christian, would there be enough evidence to prosecute you? Or would we look like every other Roman for whom homelessness and hunger were simply part of the world?
It should be clearer to us now than ever before in human history that we have the power to shape the world. Humanity has formed an entirely different world out of the one that existed when we first began to walk upright. As carriers of divine manifestation, as carriers of Holy Spirit, how do we utilize this creative power that we have? Do we simply use it to contribute to global warming, or do we roll up our sleeves and cultivate compassion? We can create Life in a test tube. We can create communication networks that enable a message to travel across the planet in a fraction of a second. I truly believe that with enough work, we can bring the Kingdom to Earth.
I don’t want to operate in this system of original sin that presupposes inevitable corruption. If that is my heresy, so be it. I am only a heretic if I chose to operate within that system. In my own system, I am an agent of God. We are agents of God. I want to build up a repertoire of evidence that could be used to prosecute me as a Christian.
In finding a will to forgive a man who wronged my loved ones, I learned how repentance works. I can see that my failures don’t lessen God’s ability to love. As I extended that truth, it seemed clear to me that the way to work as God would have me work is to love as God would have me love. If God’s eyes are open to the needs of every being on this Earth, so my eyes need to be open as well. Only when my eyes are open, only when my heart is open, can I truly embody the compassionate teachings of Christ. And while I may often fail and fall back behind that wall that allows room for convenience, I know that the limitations of my own love are not reflective of the way that God can love.
God has no hands but our hands. Therefore, it is my effort to see with God’s eyes, that I may be an agent of compassion and work toward the transformation of this world into the Kingdom that Christ saw as entirely possible.
Does that mean something to you? Christ saw the Kingdom as entirely possible. That means something to me.
We can cultivate a loving network of Humanity whose primary association is NOT with our failures as a species, but with realization of interconnectedness, sisterhood, brotherhood, and compassion. We can bring God out of ourselves and into the world.
I didn’t quite know how to close this, but then I remembered that having closure often comes from going back to one’s roots. So, if I can close with the words of the dominant prophets of my household, The Beatles, “I am he as you are he as you are me and we are all together.”
