An education system or institution, which is unresponsive to the voice of the young, is doomed to failure.
Naaman was a powerful man. (2 Kings 5:1-17). What he wanted he got and I am sure that he had sought out all the latest knowledge and information regarding his illness, yet nothing had worked. His leprosy remained and he saw himself as less than a complete man. Despite all his success, and he was indeed extremely successful, he was still a leper.
I would also suggest he was a good man. Not just those who benefited from his prowess but also those who had suffered by it, held him in esteem. In his own home not just his family respected him but by those who served him – slaves accrued through his many victorious campaigns.
His desperation for healing was known by all, including the little house girl who served his wife. She had heard the discussions, arguments and despair, and felt for them both.
She had also heard the stories coming from the homeland about Elisha the prophet and how he was a proficient healer. She had never lost her faith in the God of her heritage and knew that if only Naaman would go there he would be healed.
One has to marvel at her courage. She spoke up and shared her simple faith and her special knowledge. That was courage. She was in a foreign country, under the control of a superior culture in every sense, and yet she spoke up about what may have been seen as a superstition, or at best, a substandard understanding of the world.
And yet not only did her mistress listen and pass the knowledge onto her husband, Naaman seems to have taken it seriously enough to take it to his king and ask permission to seek out this prophet. And the King agreed.
Naaman goes off and encounters Elisha. Elisha does not act as Naaman expected him to. He didn’t come out and greet the great man and he did not suggest the type of grandiose healing event Naaman thought his situation deserved. He was simply asked to go and wash in a dirty, insipid river, the Jordan, unlike any of the great rivers where he lived.
Naaman may have been desperate, but not that desperate. It takes the input of his servants once again to remind him that if he had been asked to undertake some great feat would he have done it? Of course. Then why not just do as you are asked and see what happens?
Grumpily he did, and he was healed.
This story is about simplicity – the simplicity of a child. It is this simplicity that we must appropriate in our relationship with those we teach and serve in this and other schools.
Many times over in my life I have watched and experienced the simplicity in which children challenge, learn, explore and grow.
Daniel O’Leary says: ‘Maybe only children and saints want to be nobody else’. Like the roses in our garden they are simply content to be themselves and, out of that security of being, ask much of us if we could but hear them. St Francis said when once looking at a rose, ‘I hear you. Stop shouting.’
It is this simplicity which was heard by Naaman and resulted in his healing. He nearly stuffed it up as we often do. We revert to our program, our way of teaching, our role as teacher and miss the learning inherent in the people, places and things around us.
Here we witness simplicity in 3 ways:
Simplicity of the servant girls’ wisdom – she understood what was possible for her Master and shared that simple information. It wasn’t fancy. She hadn’t been educated or studied under some great teacher. It was obvious – Elisha healed people and could do so here.
Simplicity of the ordinary acts of life. Naaman was asked to take on the simple faith of the young girl and partake in seemingly absurd acts way below his station as a leader, as an educated person or as a wealthy property owner. Yet all the trappings of success and education was of little help. He had to become as a little child to be healed.
Simplicity of the faith of a child. Keep it simple stupid seems to be one of God’s favourite adages. Yet for us humans simple is not something we do well. Faith is also not something we do well either. To trust another, in this case Elisha’s directions or to trust in God to care for us, as in the Gospel reading, seems just too illogical, too hard for our reasoning brains. Instead of saying yes, we like Naaman argue with God and those who represent him in the circumstances of our lives. Often we simply ignore those who bring us good information, like the young people we teach.
I learnt long ago that the one who challenges me is my friend, my teacher and my guide. So over the years I have learnt much of what I know from my challenging those who taught me and from those who in turn have challenged me, directly or indirectly.
In the Salvation Army Training College Commissioner Hubert Scotney an esteemed biblical and doctrine scholar, endured hours of questioning and debate from myself. I challenged almost everything he said and wanted to know, if this is so, why? He was an amazing man who was well into his 70’s when I studied under him, he never wearied, and through this vigorous debate taught me more than I would have learnt if he simply reverted to his role as the all knowing teacher.
All the programs I have developed for working with youth and children have come primarily from those I was commissioned to work with. It was their stories, their needs, their questioning which resulted in the shape, colour and style of programs we ran.
My understanding of the depth of racism and race equality was taught to me by a young indigenous boy who at the age of ten filled up a tub with bleach and sat in it so that he could be the same colour as the other kids and get a fair go at school and from the police. It didn’t work.
My understanding of the hopelessness of poverty for children came from a 7 year old girl who has dirty, unkempt and difficult, but who went home of a night time and cooked meals for her family. One day a teacher threatened to refer her to the authorities, she put both hands on hips and said, “That’s right, put me the too hard basket and let some else deal with me.” We didn’t.
Just recently a student came to me with an A4 page of queries, questions and criticisms about the role of religion and church in the world and in the school. We spent an exciting and invigorating hour or so working through her list. It was wonderful, for she asked me for evidence of my faith and my understanding of that faith in a way few others could. It wasn’t ideological, it was simple, honest exploration of her journey, and it challenged what and how I believed as well. It left neither of us unchanged. It was education at its very best.
The challenge for us, and this educational institution, is how we listen not speak, how we learn not teach, how we model rightbehaviour not demand it, and how we open ourselves to those we engage everyday. It is how we give away the power to those around us to explore their journey in reason and faith which is so important.
e.e.cummings wrote:
“…..you open always petal by petal myself as Spring opens
(touching skilfully, mysteriously) her first rose….
…nobody, not even the rain has such small hands.”
It is our light touch they need so we will recognise their light touch when it brushes up against us.
And that’s the challenge of simplicity in life long learning for all of us.
Showing posts with label powerful. Show all posts
Showing posts with label powerful. Show all posts
Sunday, 4 July 2010
Saturday, 5 June 2010
The Power of Living Non-Violence
Luke 7:14
14Then he came forward and touched the bier, and the bearers stood still. And he said, “Young man, I say to you, rise!”
The Tank Man of Tiananmen Square June 5, 1989 held up 4 powerful Chinese army tanks by simply standing in the way. Nothing extraordinary about what he did at one level, at another it was extraordinary.
Extraordinary because he defied the culture and the custom of the autocratic society in which he lived. Extraordinary because from the beginning of the student uprisings 14th April 1989, somewhere between 4,000 and 10, 000 people died and some 30,000 injured. He stood out by standing up – it wasn’t anything he said, just what he did. He confronted death, and became a symbol for life.
While it received international focus, most Chinese students didn’t and still don’t know about it. It is suggested that both the Tank Man and the Tank Driver were executed the former for his defiance, the second for failing to drive over the Tank man, but their feate is unsure.
Here we were faced with the type of non-violent response to violence, both rare and desperately needed in our society.
Readings: (1 Kings 17:8-24, Galatians 1:11-24, Luke 7:11-24)
In our readings we are reminded of the intricate relationship between death and life and how that is played out in the lives of those who have little in the way of resources and resistance to the forces responsible for death – poverty. In these readings Elijah and Jesus exemplify the power of non-violence to overcome the violence of death and those who promote death as a way of life for others.
Elijah obeys God and is confronted by the inevitability of poverty (the widow only has enough for her son and herself). Despite sharing her last meal with the prophet she faces the inevitability of death connected to a life of poverty – it is stark and real. Despite doing the right things in God’s name, both the widow and her son, and Elijah cannot avoid the reality of life.
Jesus re-enacts this scene, although in a slightly different environment, not one of drought and famine, but of the colonial (Romans in power) and cultural (the religious law) oppression that continued to impact on the poorest of the poor – widows and their families.
"The stories of Elisha and Elijah and Jesus suggest that radical change requires (non-violent) passion and compassion for our political and personal and religious enemies. (This type of) compassion isn’t formulaic or predictable or tidy or even rational—yet it is perhaps the only thing that can save us." Debbie Blue
Jesus crossed path with a funeral procession and this very ordinary event touched Jesus. It seems Jesus was deeply affected by death. In a violent society he had not become inured to it and felt it deeply. He confronted it in others and was aware of the consequences he himself would face as a result of the style of life he was living and exemplifying. –
He touched the bier. "In the midst of the complexity of human need is hope and the possibility of renewal and life." William Loader
Jesus’ act fulfils Loaders call in three ways:
• It was a non-violent protest that was powerful.
Jesus reached out almost casually but with purpose and love. Almost immediately, the procession stopped, stopped in its tracks. All present turned their focus on this teacher who had dared to touch the funeral bier.
And the procession buzzed with:
‘What is about to happen?’
‘Why would a religious teacher purposefully make himself unclean?”
“What is he going to do now!”
His act, so innocuous and ordinary, was anything but. He made himself ritually unclean by the every act of touching. He placed himself outside the religious respectable and became an outsider, as poor and as broken as the widow herself. He broke the religious rules to show that love gives life.
He was not interested in the myth of an anaemic popular form of love prevalent in our society, but a deep compassionate love that stops a funeral bier at great personal cost and sends a clear and undeniable message to the political and religious powers within his society.
• It was an act where the ordinary met the extraordinary
Death is the prevalent image in our society as it was in Jesus’ time. Fo those in Jesus time colonial and religious oppression brought with it death by separating those who were righteous from those who were not and, for those who were placed on the outside, this hastened death
In our culture we only have to look at:
Television programming:
Murder and murder investigation shows
Reality shows which are little more than a profitable way to publicly humiliate and destroy others in the name of entertainment (and money)
TV news and documentaries
Computer games
Modern music
Government policies on issues such as indigenous, refugee, gender or environmental issues which focus on political expediency as against justice and compassion. Death is our dominant fear and preoccupation.
Jesus confronts the fear of death by touching the bier. By doing so he is saying death is not to be feared, death is in fact just another face of life and, if embraced as part of life, leads to renewal. Luke is also saying boldly that Jesus is more than just a prophet by placing him in the tradition of Elisha and Elijah as one who has life giving power over death, a fact that is confirmed by his death and resurrection.
• It was an act that asks us to get our hands dirty.
Compassion speaks of being at one with another, having a love which sees the other as yourself and by doing so being prepared to meet the other in their pain and poverty. It is the whole meaning of the good news of Jesus – God became man to know what it means to be human. Jesus acts and indentifies fully by becoming ritually unclean, overcoming death through compassion.
‘He was his mother’s only son, and she was a widow; and with her was a large crowd from the town. 13When the Lord saw her, he had compassion for her’
Compassion for the widow who was now all alone – outcast – destined to a life of poverty. Compassion included the son, but not as the initiator of the compassion. That was the identification with the one who was now poorer than poor.
For a religious teacher who had a reputation for being confronting, this ups the ante. It was no longer simply good enough to be good, you can’t hide behind it at all. Like the Good Samaritan story Jesus acts foolishly with his compassion, risking his life and his reputation, and asks us to do the same.
Unfortunately like most of Jesus’ teaching this is not formulaic – it isn’t a clear and precise set of actions we can know and follow. How and where we show this non-violent form of love, compassion, is not spelt out for us, except that it is to be how we live our ordinary life within the ordinary events of human life.
Like the Tank Man of Tiannamen Square, Elijah in the famine and Jesus on the road, it will be seen how we respond to others in everything we do. For Jesus Compassion, love, is the hardest commandment, to love God yourself and others is all that matters.
14Then he came forward and touched the bier, and the bearers stood still. And he said, “Young man, I say to you, rise!”
The Tank Man of Tiananmen Square June 5, 1989 held up 4 powerful Chinese army tanks by simply standing in the way. Nothing extraordinary about what he did at one level, at another it was extraordinary.
Extraordinary because he defied the culture and the custom of the autocratic society in which he lived. Extraordinary because from the beginning of the student uprisings 14th April 1989, somewhere between 4,000 and 10, 000 people died and some 30,000 injured. He stood out by standing up – it wasn’t anything he said, just what he did. He confronted death, and became a symbol for life.
While it received international focus, most Chinese students didn’t and still don’t know about it. It is suggested that both the Tank Man and the Tank Driver were executed the former for his defiance, the second for failing to drive over the Tank man, but their feate is unsure.
Here we were faced with the type of non-violent response to violence, both rare and desperately needed in our society.
Readings: (1 Kings 17:8-24, Galatians 1:11-24, Luke 7:11-24)
In our readings we are reminded of the intricate relationship between death and life and how that is played out in the lives of those who have little in the way of resources and resistance to the forces responsible for death – poverty. In these readings Elijah and Jesus exemplify the power of non-violence to overcome the violence of death and those who promote death as a way of life for others.
Elijah obeys God and is confronted by the inevitability of poverty (the widow only has enough for her son and herself). Despite sharing her last meal with the prophet she faces the inevitability of death connected to a life of poverty – it is stark and real. Despite doing the right things in God’s name, both the widow and her son, and Elijah cannot avoid the reality of life.
Jesus re-enacts this scene, although in a slightly different environment, not one of drought and famine, but of the colonial (Romans in power) and cultural (the religious law) oppression that continued to impact on the poorest of the poor – widows and their families.
"The stories of Elisha and Elijah and Jesus suggest that radical change requires (non-violent) passion and compassion for our political and personal and religious enemies. (This type of) compassion isn’t formulaic or predictable or tidy or even rational—yet it is perhaps the only thing that can save us." Debbie Blue
Jesus crossed path with a funeral procession and this very ordinary event touched Jesus. It seems Jesus was deeply affected by death. In a violent society he had not become inured to it and felt it deeply. He confronted it in others and was aware of the consequences he himself would face as a result of the style of life he was living and exemplifying. –
He touched the bier. "In the midst of the complexity of human need is hope and the possibility of renewal and life." William Loader
Jesus’ act fulfils Loaders call in three ways:
• It was a non-violent protest that was powerful.
Jesus reached out almost casually but with purpose and love. Almost immediately, the procession stopped, stopped in its tracks. All present turned their focus on this teacher who had dared to touch the funeral bier.
And the procession buzzed with:
‘What is about to happen?’
‘Why would a religious teacher purposefully make himself unclean?”
“What is he going to do now!”
His act, so innocuous and ordinary, was anything but. He made himself ritually unclean by the every act of touching. He placed himself outside the religious respectable and became an outsider, as poor and as broken as the widow herself. He broke the religious rules to show that love gives life.
He was not interested in the myth of an anaemic popular form of love prevalent in our society, but a deep compassionate love that stops a funeral bier at great personal cost and sends a clear and undeniable message to the political and religious powers within his society.
• It was an act where the ordinary met the extraordinary
Death is the prevalent image in our society as it was in Jesus’ time. Fo those in Jesus time colonial and religious oppression brought with it death by separating those who were righteous from those who were not and, for those who were placed on the outside, this hastened death
In our culture we only have to look at:
Television programming:
Murder and murder investigation shows
Reality shows which are little more than a profitable way to publicly humiliate and destroy others in the name of entertainment (and money)
TV news and documentaries
Computer games
Modern music
Government policies on issues such as indigenous, refugee, gender or environmental issues which focus on political expediency as against justice and compassion. Death is our dominant fear and preoccupation.
Jesus confronts the fear of death by touching the bier. By doing so he is saying death is not to be feared, death is in fact just another face of life and, if embraced as part of life, leads to renewal. Luke is also saying boldly that Jesus is more than just a prophet by placing him in the tradition of Elisha and Elijah as one who has life giving power over death, a fact that is confirmed by his death and resurrection.
• It was an act that asks us to get our hands dirty.
Compassion speaks of being at one with another, having a love which sees the other as yourself and by doing so being prepared to meet the other in their pain and poverty. It is the whole meaning of the good news of Jesus – God became man to know what it means to be human. Jesus acts and indentifies fully by becoming ritually unclean, overcoming death through compassion.
‘He was his mother’s only son, and she was a widow; and with her was a large crowd from the town. 13When the Lord saw her, he had compassion for her’
Compassion for the widow who was now all alone – outcast – destined to a life of poverty. Compassion included the son, but not as the initiator of the compassion. That was the identification with the one who was now poorer than poor.
For a religious teacher who had a reputation for being confronting, this ups the ante. It was no longer simply good enough to be good, you can’t hide behind it at all. Like the Good Samaritan story Jesus acts foolishly with his compassion, risking his life and his reputation, and asks us to do the same.
Unfortunately like most of Jesus’ teaching this is not formulaic – it isn’t a clear and precise set of actions we can know and follow. How and where we show this non-violent form of love, compassion, is not spelt out for us, except that it is to be how we live our ordinary life within the ordinary events of human life.
Like the Tank Man of Tiannamen Square, Elijah in the famine and Jesus on the road, it will be seen how we respond to others in everything we do. For Jesus Compassion, love, is the hardest commandment, to love God yourself and others is all that matters.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)