It’s Christmas time again – how it comes around so quickly – sneaking up on us benignly and full of niceness. Family, babies, furry animals, rotund ho ho’ing Santa Clauses and reindeers with red noses. What a sweet image Christmas has become for us and the marketing gurus.
Cute, Christmas has become cute and saleable, a hedonistic binge with the credit card hangover, and almost irrelevant in terms of meaning.
Yet the event we celebrate as the first Christmas was anything but cute and it was, indeed, full of meaning. There was no hint of the Hallmark Christmas card about it.
It had all the pathos and tragedy of the persecuted and the occupied, of the refugee and the downtrodden, of the forgotten and ostracised, about it.
☺ Take Mary and Joseph.
Here was a couple, one of which Mary, was in her mid-to - late teens caught up in, not only the demands of occupation and bureaucratic name taking and counting, but in the emotional minefield of pregnancy outside a formal marriage, a strange story of an angel announcing the baby was the offspring of the God of Israel and then stuck in an unknown city without accommodation or support.
Joseph had made the very difficult decision to take Mary with him to Bethlehem him because of the problems she would face if left at home and had the baby. The response from the community would have been less than favourable for a mother with a child out of wedlock.
So, even though there was no legal reason for her to be there, Joseph took her with him to safeguard her and the baby from local persecution. They stayed on in Bethlehem after the birth for the same reason but found themselves in a year or so, at odds with the local despot Herod, and fleeing for their lives.
☺ Take the innkeeper.
Compassion mixed with the desire to make a quid may have lead the innkeeper to utilise every square inch of his establishment, even the ground floor space in the inn where he kept his and his customers, animals. Or Mary and Joseph may have found a similar downstairs space in some distant relatives home, there is no clear evidence that it was the shed out the back of the Bethlehem Hilton.
It was, though, a place that smelt anything like the birthplace of a king. Yet it was compassion on the behalf of an unknown individual which made it possible for Jesus to be born undercover and in the midst of representatives of God’s creation. Not a great place but better than a refugee camp, a leaky boat or hiding from those who want to kill you.
☺ Take The Shepherds.
Now these blokes came into town because their sheep had all headed for the hills when the angels arrived and started singing. They came down to get their story straight and to have a gander, a sticky beak, a look, just in case what the angels told them was right. What they made of it, we are not sure, but they are moved enough to show their respects and be present. Whether it changed their lives or not, we will never know. But at least they went and had a look for themselves.
☺ Take The Three Wise Men.
Arriving later than the actual birth, possibly almost 2 years later, the wise men had a profound mixture of intelligence and innocence. They had divined through the stars a king would be born and quite rightly wanted to come and confirm that they were correct. They travelled, depending on where they came from, many thousands of miles to be there. Despite their obvious intellectual abilities they seem not to have been politically savvy and let the cat out of the bag to the tyrant ruler Herod.
Their arrival unleashes further carnage on the people in the area, “Herod slew all the children that were in Bethlehem, and in all the coasts thereof, from two years old and under" (Matt. 2:16). As a result, Joseph and Mary become refugees in a foreign land just so Jesus survives.
As I said before, the story is not cute, it is real. Jesus, God Incarnate, God amongst us, did not avoid the nasty reality of humanity at its worst. He came right in the centre of it. God, being God, could have ordained an entirely different scenario, which was his prerogative. But he didn’t.
He came in the person of a vulnerable baby, to two lost and alone people, estranged from their families, in the midst of violence and powerlessness, and became a refugee fleeing with his family to safety in Egypt.
This is a modern story and it is the modern story we need to embrace. Is our world, the world we live in any different to that in which Jesus found himself? Have we addressed the issues that impacted on Jesus, his family and his people?
I fear not.
A quick glance across the newspapers, the tv news and the internet will confirm those issues are alive and well in the world today.
☺ More than 74,000 Africans, fleeing civil war, political instability, poverty, famine and drought in the Horn of Africa, crossed the Gulf of Aden and the Red Sea on smugglers' boats and reached the shores of Yemen this year. This figure represents a staggering 50 per cent increase over last year's 50,000 arrivals, itself a record.
☺ Livestock farmer flees deadly drought and insecurity in Ethiopia and Somalia only to face climate change-linked flooding in Kenya's Dadaab refugee camps. The climate change which destroyed his livelihood through drought is now destroying his future through flood, alongside the violence of vigilantes and terrorists.
☺ Zimbabwean teenage asylum-seeker learns the high cost of freedom. All 17-year-old Tsitsi wanted to do was go to school and earn a living – but the men transporting her to a better life had other plans for her, they raped her and she now finds herself the mother of an unwanted child, no job and no place to go home to, ostracized by her own family and the society she finds herself in.
Sound familiar? What went wrong? Wasn’t that why Jesus came into the world, to bring peace to all, to make peace possible, to bring about the kingdom of God?
Yes but……..
But it’s a shared kingdom. We have a role in this kingdom as well. Remember the words of the angel, “Glory to God in the highest heaven, and on earth peace among those whom he favours!”
Jesus makes it possible, we make it present.
Ian Cutmore, my Salvation Army Training College principal once said, ‘If it’s not happening where you are, it’s not happening’.
Jesus makes it possible, we make it present!
Jesus makes it possible by his birth, his example as found in the New Testament, by his death on the Cross and by his resurrection.
We make it present by our acceptance of that birth, life, death and resurrection in a way that radically changes how we live and how we relate to others; in how we celebrate Christmas; how we respond to those who are less well placed than ourselves, how we respond to refugees, the poor – how we respond to the other.
It is not about being guilty about how we are, who we are or where we are in this world. Guilt does not lead to the kingdom of God. What leads to the kingdom of God is the honest reflection on how we live on earth as peacemakers, as bringers of hope to others, and ourselves, as people who take seriously our place in this world.
If life was about individuals, if it was all about us, there was no need for Jesus to be born. There was no need for God to come into the world. We could just go on the way we always had.
Yet it is not about you or me as individuals. It is not about us. It is about what we do and become together. It is about how we respond to the carnage of global warming, the violence of the fundamentalist, the appealing lure of possessions and stuff we seek for ourselves – it’s about what we value and what gives us value.
Jesus was born an unlikely revolutionary, a vulnerable baby who survived because others, mostly unknown others, took great risks to ensure that he did.
The measure of our world, and of each of us, is whether we are prepared to take such risks everyday. It’s the only way the Kingdom of God will come.
Showing posts with label do unto otherss. Show all posts
Showing posts with label do unto otherss. Show all posts
Saturday, 26 December 2009
Monday, 15 December 2008
The People Who Walk Upside Down (with apologies to Diane Begant CSA and Joan D Chittister)
Isaiah 61:1-11
When Alice fell through the rabbit-hole into Wonderland, she was convinced that she had fallen right through the earth and was destined to come out where people would be upside down. She referred to such reversals as Antipathies—though she did wonder whether or not that was the right word.
Alice may not have chosen the correct word, but she was on target when it came to identifying the way we feel when our world is turned upside down. That is, of course, when the reversal that we experience resembles the collapse of the stock market, just as we have experienced over the last few months. We would be overcome by entirely different emotions if we had won the lottery. When she finally landed, Alice discovered that the world was not upside down, but it certainly was out of proportion to her size. She had to change, to get smaller in order to enter that mysterious world.
The Third Sunday of Advent invites us into a world of reversals, a world where the captives are freed, where the hungry are filled and where the rich are sent away empty. It is certainly a world where things are turned upside down. From the point of view of social order, such reversals could be considered Antipathies.
But from God's point of view, they are the signs of transformation. In order to appreciate the strength of today's message from Isaiah, we must remember that he was speaking to people who were dispossessed, people in need of a message of hope, a promise of some kind of economic reversal. Not unlike the message people are looking for today.
It is not that God wants to make us unhappy by turning our world upside down. Rather, God offers us the possibility of a new world. The Wonderland to which we are invited is not some mad tea party attended by an array of strange guests.
It is a world established in justice and peace, a world in which all will hear the glad tidings of salvation. It is a world in which everyone can enjoy the happiness of the bride and bridegroom or relish the fruits of the luxurious garden.
The dramatic metaphors that Isaiah employs are not meant simply to be poetic flights of fancy. They capture the essence of what we are experiencing internally far better than straightforward prose can. A wedding is certainly a sign of new and transformative life, just as a sumptuous garden typifies bountiful sustenance.
In order to enter the mysterious new world that lies before us, like Alice, we might have to undergo some kind of change. Paul in his letter to the Christians at Thessalonica is conscious of our need of transformation, for he prays that the God of peace will make us perfectly holy, blameless at the coming of the Lord.
In line with this thinking, the basis of the preaching of John the Baptist is repentance. His message today is the same as it was last week: Make straight the way of the Lord! Get rid of any obstacle that might deter his arrival. Eliminate from your lives the greed that impoverishes others, the arrogance that tries to set you above the rest, the power that makes you abusive, the selfishness that turns you in on your own concerns alone. Today we are all aware of the destructive evil that such attitudes have spawned. We suffer the consequences of their corrosive power. But our faith reminds us that we do not have to remain victims of these forces.
There is a far better way of living in the world, and on this Third Sunday of Advent we stand at its threshold. The question, however, is: Are we willing to step forward? Or are we afraid to have our world turned upside down? Are we the poor who will hear the good news of reversal, or are we the ones responsible for their poverty? Are we the broken-hearted who will be healed, or have we broken their hearts? Are we the captives who will be freed, or are we the captors who have restrained them? On what side of the reversals do we find ourselves?
Verdan Smailovic was a Bosnian. He had been born right in the heart of Sarajevo, the 4th of 5 in a highly musical family, he became a professional musician. At 37 he was the principal cellist of the prestigious Sarajevo Opera.
But this was the bleak and frightening period of 1992 when Bosnia flared into ethnic violence. The opera Theatre lay destroyed. There was no music.
Then, at 4 p.m. on May 27 1992 a long line of starving, helpless people were shelled as they waited in front of he only bakery in Sarajevo which had enough flour to make bread. Twenty to people died as Verdran Smailovic stood in his apartment building window a hundred yards away and watched it happen.
The next day, as hungry people lined up to beg for bread, certain they would die if they didn't come to the bakery again and well aware they could die if they did, Vedran Smailovic, dressed in the black suit and tie in which he played every night until the Opera Theatre was destroyed, arrived carrying his cello and chair.
Smailovic sat down in the square and, surrounded by debris played Albinoni's mournful "Adagio". And, whatever the continuing danger, he came back to the square every day after that for 21 days to do the same. Over and over again, the "Adagio" sounded the memory that there are some things in the human enterprise that simply cannot be suppressed.
Today in the place where he sat there is a monument of a man in a chair playing a cello. But the monument is not to Smailovic's music. It is to his refusal to surrender the hope that beauty could be reborn in the midst of hell, even in the midst of our own private hell, even in the midst of great reversals..[1]
Verdam Smailovics story doesn't end there. He played the "Adagio" throughout America, even at Bill Clinton's inauguration. He was celebrated in David Wilde's cello piece, 'the Cellist of Sarajevo' which Yo-Yo Ma played at the International Cellist Festival in 1994 with Smailovic in the audience. It seems that once released, no matter how difficult or traumatic the birth, hope does indeed soar.
Advent is a time to search our hearts, to discover where, both individually and as a community, we need to change. It is a time of hope, for we are told that there is one who has the power to heal our personal brokenness, to heal our fractured families, to heal our troubled church, to heal our bleeding world. Paul tells us that he is coming; John tells us that he is already in our midst. His presence among us should make us rejoice; the saving power that he brings should give us confidence. If we open our hearts to this saving power, we can indeed transform our society; we can renew our church, we can work toward peace in the world—we can turn our world upside down.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
[1] P108ff Joan D Chittister, 'Scarred by Struggle, Transformed by Hope', Wm. B. Erdmans
When Alice fell through the rabbit-hole into Wonderland, she was convinced that she had fallen right through the earth and was destined to come out where people would be upside down. She referred to such reversals as Antipathies—though she did wonder whether or not that was the right word.
Alice may not have chosen the correct word, but she was on target when it came to identifying the way we feel when our world is turned upside down. That is, of course, when the reversal that we experience resembles the collapse of the stock market, just as we have experienced over the last few months. We would be overcome by entirely different emotions if we had won the lottery. When she finally landed, Alice discovered that the world was not upside down, but it certainly was out of proportion to her size. She had to change, to get smaller in order to enter that mysterious world.
The Third Sunday of Advent invites us into a world of reversals, a world where the captives are freed, where the hungry are filled and where the rich are sent away empty. It is certainly a world where things are turned upside down. From the point of view of social order, such reversals could be considered Antipathies.
But from God's point of view, they are the signs of transformation. In order to appreciate the strength of today's message from Isaiah, we must remember that he was speaking to people who were dispossessed, people in need of a message of hope, a promise of some kind of economic reversal. Not unlike the message people are looking for today.
It is not that God wants to make us unhappy by turning our world upside down. Rather, God offers us the possibility of a new world. The Wonderland to which we are invited is not some mad tea party attended by an array of strange guests.
It is a world established in justice and peace, a world in which all will hear the glad tidings of salvation. It is a world in which everyone can enjoy the happiness of the bride and bridegroom or relish the fruits of the luxurious garden.
The dramatic metaphors that Isaiah employs are not meant simply to be poetic flights of fancy. They capture the essence of what we are experiencing internally far better than straightforward prose can. A wedding is certainly a sign of new and transformative life, just as a sumptuous garden typifies bountiful sustenance.
In order to enter the mysterious new world that lies before us, like Alice, we might have to undergo some kind of change. Paul in his letter to the Christians at Thessalonica is conscious of our need of transformation, for he prays that the God of peace will make us perfectly holy, blameless at the coming of the Lord.
In line with this thinking, the basis of the preaching of John the Baptist is repentance. His message today is the same as it was last week: Make straight the way of the Lord! Get rid of any obstacle that might deter his arrival. Eliminate from your lives the greed that impoverishes others, the arrogance that tries to set you above the rest, the power that makes you abusive, the selfishness that turns you in on your own concerns alone. Today we are all aware of the destructive evil that such attitudes have spawned. We suffer the consequences of their corrosive power. But our faith reminds us that we do not have to remain victims of these forces.
There is a far better way of living in the world, and on this Third Sunday of Advent we stand at its threshold. The question, however, is: Are we willing to step forward? Or are we afraid to have our world turned upside down? Are we the poor who will hear the good news of reversal, or are we the ones responsible for their poverty? Are we the broken-hearted who will be healed, or have we broken their hearts? Are we the captives who will be freed, or are we the captors who have restrained them? On what side of the reversals do we find ourselves?
Verdan Smailovic was a Bosnian. He had been born right in the heart of Sarajevo, the 4th of 5 in a highly musical family, he became a professional musician. At 37 he was the principal cellist of the prestigious Sarajevo Opera.
But this was the bleak and frightening period of 1992 when Bosnia flared into ethnic violence. The opera Theatre lay destroyed. There was no music.
Then, at 4 p.m. on May 27 1992 a long line of starving, helpless people were shelled as they waited in front of he only bakery in Sarajevo which had enough flour to make bread. Twenty to people died as Verdran Smailovic stood in his apartment building window a hundred yards away and watched it happen.
The next day, as hungry people lined up to beg for bread, certain they would die if they didn't come to the bakery again and well aware they could die if they did, Vedran Smailovic, dressed in the black suit and tie in which he played every night until the Opera Theatre was destroyed, arrived carrying his cello and chair.
Smailovic sat down in the square and, surrounded by debris played Albinoni's mournful "Adagio". And, whatever the continuing danger, he came back to the square every day after that for 21 days to do the same. Over and over again, the "Adagio" sounded the memory that there are some things in the human enterprise that simply cannot be suppressed.
Today in the place where he sat there is a monument of a man in a chair playing a cello. But the monument is not to Smailovic's music. It is to his refusal to surrender the hope that beauty could be reborn in the midst of hell, even in the midst of our own private hell, even in the midst of great reversals..[1]
Verdam Smailovics story doesn't end there. He played the "Adagio" throughout America, even at Bill Clinton's inauguration. He was celebrated in David Wilde's cello piece, 'the Cellist of Sarajevo' which Yo-Yo Ma played at the International Cellist Festival in 1994 with Smailovic in the audience. It seems that once released, no matter how difficult or traumatic the birth, hope does indeed soar.
Advent is a time to search our hearts, to discover where, both individually and as a community, we need to change. It is a time of hope, for we are told that there is one who has the power to heal our personal brokenness, to heal our fractured families, to heal our troubled church, to heal our bleeding world. Paul tells us that he is coming; John tells us that he is already in our midst. His presence among us should make us rejoice; the saving power that he brings should give us confidence. If we open our hearts to this saving power, we can indeed transform our society; we can renew our church, we can work toward peace in the world—we can turn our world upside down.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
[1] P108ff Joan D Chittister, 'Scarred by Struggle, Transformed by Hope', Wm. B. Erdmans
Monday, 24 November 2008
How Jesus Judges Us - By What We See
In 1979 there was a riot in the maximum security wing of Bathurst gaol. On the heels of previous riots in the ‘70’s and in the midst of the Vinson prison reforms, Bathurst gaol erupted when staff went on strike. Prisoners destroyed their cells, threw burning mattresses out the windows and more. The walkway into the main entrance down between two cell blocks was a mass of smouldering mattresses, refuse and furniture. To walk down there was to invite vitriol and abuse every step of the way.
It was a walk I took twice daily for the duration of the lockdown. As a chaplain to the prison I had been visiting the place for almost 12 months. I knew the people in the wings. We had talked, shared coffee, worshipped together and played table tennis. Yet for this period I ceased to exist for them. Somehow I became a non-person, just a part of that system which they believed abused and oppressed them.
I was one of a handful of civilians allowed in and my task was to hand out the food at meal times, escorted by 6 or more riot squad police who opened the cell doors and were there to ensure things went smoothly. They didn’t. Consequently I witnessed violence I wished hadn’t occurred. The prisoners didn’t exist as human beings to these men who were, in their mind, simply doing their job.
There was little I could do to bring some sense of belonging and dignity but I did what I could. Smiled as I entered with the food and as I left, often with it all over me; placed my self strategically when I knew things were going badly so as to obstruct and mitigate the violence, and whisper encouragement and hope as I placed trays of food down.
I wanted them to know that, in the midst of this chaos they did exist for someone, that someone cared what was happening and that they were not alone. Sometimes my whispers were returned with a ‘Sorry, it’s not you’. After it was all over I continued to visit. I received lots of apologies from the inmates for their behaviour and had lots of discussions about what had happened to them. We talked about how easy it is too lose your dignity when others seem not recognise your existence, and how we all too easily slip into this blindness to others.
It is not that we purposefully oppress or mistreat others, sometimes we do, but more often it occurs when we perceive others as not being there at all. It is not that we do not see Jesus in them. We simply fail to not see them.
And this is the sense of Jesus words in this morning’s gospel;
34Then the king will say to those at his right hand, ‘Come, you that are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world; 35for I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, 36I was naked and you gave me clothing, I was sick and you took care of me, I was in prison and you visited me.’
It is not so much that we do or do not do something, but that we recognise something needs to be done. That we see.
The action in this passage follows the recognition of need, that something is wrong and needs to be addressed. The actions are not earth shattering or spectacular. They are simple and small. A glass of water, a meal, a piece of clothing. The actions are not mandated by others but an individual’s response to what he or she sees in front of them. It is not something which people seek out and for which you will receive an award, it is insignificant and often unnoticed.
It is an action that has its roots in the identification with the person in need. It is only when we connect to the humanity of the other are we compelled to act. While ever we can find excuses to not recognise them as human, then they do not exist and we do not need to act.
We watch as others challenge perceptions and injustice and nod our approval. We applaud the people who were instrumental in the big ticket moments and who are celebrated in our world, Wilberforce, Martin Luther king Jr., Ghandi and others
Yet how do we do everyday in the little stuff? We may not have the opportunity to be a part of the big ticket action but we are immersed in the ordinary stuff around us. How do we respond to the needs of others, do recognise the call to action or even accept the part we play in maintaining the injustice in our home, community and the world around us? How are we challenged to recognise all people as equals and as deserving of basic human dignity and our attention?
It is easy to look out and see the failure of others but harder to look at our actions and our presence as part of a system which alienates and ignores.
There is a story told about a poker playing English Lord who after losing a particular tense hand spoke badly to his partner. When his partner objected, he apologised by say, ‘Sorry, I forgot I wasn’t playing with my wife.’
How do we overcome this tendency to blindness, blindness of our implication in the sin of the world and our blindness in failing to see those suffering around us. It could be the neighbour next door who is alone and has no access to transport or support, it could be the disabled boy or girl who is ostracised from the playground; it could be the stereotypical response to the plight of an indigenous person, it could be the way we move away from a homeless person who hasn’t showered recently, it could be….. the many different things we do without seeing, the little things we do we are blind to.
Jesus reminds us in this passage that God doesn’t create second rate people. We are all made in his image and just as Jesus was the face of God in this world, so each individual the face of Jesus in this world. He says: ‘just as you did it (or did not do it) to one of the least of these who are members of my family, you did it to me.
William Loader says: ‘Jesus was not the exception to the life of God, but the rule.’ He is the rule by which will be judged. If we look and do not see what is plainly there then God will not see us. It is a daunting prospect, the challenge to be awake to the other in our lives, to others in our family, our community, our workplace and in our everyday interactions.
In the midst of the chaos that was Bathurst Goal the inmates and I were challenged to maintain our dignity and to recognise the dignity, not only in each other but in those deemed to be the villains in this story. In the years since I have learnt while we can often rise to confront a crisis, it is more difficult to do so in the mundane everyday. Jesus challenges us to see and to act with purpose and love in the now. We can only do so if we are mindful of entertaining Jesus in everyone we meet.
It was a walk I took twice daily for the duration of the lockdown. As a chaplain to the prison I had been visiting the place for almost 12 months. I knew the people in the wings. We had talked, shared coffee, worshipped together and played table tennis. Yet for this period I ceased to exist for them. Somehow I became a non-person, just a part of that system which they believed abused and oppressed them.
I was one of a handful of civilians allowed in and my task was to hand out the food at meal times, escorted by 6 or more riot squad police who opened the cell doors and were there to ensure things went smoothly. They didn’t. Consequently I witnessed violence I wished hadn’t occurred. The prisoners didn’t exist as human beings to these men who were, in their mind, simply doing their job.
There was little I could do to bring some sense of belonging and dignity but I did what I could. Smiled as I entered with the food and as I left, often with it all over me; placed my self strategically when I knew things were going badly so as to obstruct and mitigate the violence, and whisper encouragement and hope as I placed trays of food down.
I wanted them to know that, in the midst of this chaos they did exist for someone, that someone cared what was happening and that they were not alone. Sometimes my whispers were returned with a ‘Sorry, it’s not you’. After it was all over I continued to visit. I received lots of apologies from the inmates for their behaviour and had lots of discussions about what had happened to them. We talked about how easy it is too lose your dignity when others seem not recognise your existence, and how we all too easily slip into this blindness to others.
It is not that we purposefully oppress or mistreat others, sometimes we do, but more often it occurs when we perceive others as not being there at all. It is not that we do not see Jesus in them. We simply fail to not see them.
And this is the sense of Jesus words in this morning’s gospel;
34Then the king will say to those at his right hand, ‘Come, you that are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world; 35for I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, 36I was naked and you gave me clothing, I was sick and you took care of me, I was in prison and you visited me.’
It is not so much that we do or do not do something, but that we recognise something needs to be done. That we see.
The action in this passage follows the recognition of need, that something is wrong and needs to be addressed. The actions are not earth shattering or spectacular. They are simple and small. A glass of water, a meal, a piece of clothing. The actions are not mandated by others but an individual’s response to what he or she sees in front of them. It is not something which people seek out and for which you will receive an award, it is insignificant and often unnoticed.
It is an action that has its roots in the identification with the person in need. It is only when we connect to the humanity of the other are we compelled to act. While ever we can find excuses to not recognise them as human, then they do not exist and we do not need to act.
We watch as others challenge perceptions and injustice and nod our approval. We applaud the people who were instrumental in the big ticket moments and who are celebrated in our world, Wilberforce, Martin Luther king Jr., Ghandi and others
Yet how do we do everyday in the little stuff? We may not have the opportunity to be a part of the big ticket action but we are immersed in the ordinary stuff around us. How do we respond to the needs of others, do recognise the call to action or even accept the part we play in maintaining the injustice in our home, community and the world around us? How are we challenged to recognise all people as equals and as deserving of basic human dignity and our attention?
It is easy to look out and see the failure of others but harder to look at our actions and our presence as part of a system which alienates and ignores.
There is a story told about a poker playing English Lord who after losing a particular tense hand spoke badly to his partner. When his partner objected, he apologised by say, ‘Sorry, I forgot I wasn’t playing with my wife.’
How do we overcome this tendency to blindness, blindness of our implication in the sin of the world and our blindness in failing to see those suffering around us. It could be the neighbour next door who is alone and has no access to transport or support, it could be the disabled boy or girl who is ostracised from the playground; it could be the stereotypical response to the plight of an indigenous person, it could be the way we move away from a homeless person who hasn’t showered recently, it could be….. the many different things we do without seeing, the little things we do we are blind to.
Jesus reminds us in this passage that God doesn’t create second rate people. We are all made in his image and just as Jesus was the face of God in this world, so each individual the face of Jesus in this world. He says: ‘just as you did it (or did not do it) to one of the least of these who are members of my family, you did it to me.
William Loader says: ‘Jesus was not the exception to the life of God, but the rule.’ He is the rule by which will be judged. If we look and do not see what is plainly there then God will not see us. It is a daunting prospect, the challenge to be awake to the other in our lives, to others in our family, our community, our workplace and in our everyday interactions.
In the midst of the chaos that was Bathurst Goal the inmates and I were challenged to maintain our dignity and to recognise the dignity, not only in each other but in those deemed to be the villains in this story. In the years since I have learnt while we can often rise to confront a crisis, it is more difficult to do so in the mundane everyday. Jesus challenges us to see and to act with purpose and love in the now. We can only do so if we are mindful of entertaining Jesus in everyone we meet.
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