Of Mercy and Banana Peels – Luke 18:9-14

 

I suspect that Jesus would have liked slapstick comedy. You know, the Laurel and Hardy sort of humor. Remember? Laurel will be eating a banana and throw the peel on the ground. And you know, as soon as you see Hardy walking up the road what’s going to happen. It’s the pratfall, the trip, the rug pulled out from under your feet, the banana peel in the way.

Jesus seems to have had a liking for that sort of thing, continually pulling the rug out from under our feet or tossing banana peels in our path. His parables are often like banana peels tossed on the pathway of our moral self-satisfaction.

This morning’s parable, in particular, is such a banana peel. It’s a familiar story – the Pharisee and the Tax Collector praying at the temple. In fact, it’s so familiar it has lost some of its edge for us. We already know who is the good guy and who the bad guy.

Jesus’ original hearers would not have been so sure. The Pharisees were not known as necessarily self-righteous or righteous in any other way than the way we all hope to be righteous. The Pharisees were part of movement of lay people who had a passion for seeking after God’s heart, for living according to the Torah – for living faithfully so that all Israel might be redeemed. If anything, Jesus had much in common with the Pharisees

Tax Collectors, on the other hand, everyone knew and no one liked. Even under the best of circumstances few people are excited when they see the tax man coming. But in a time when you are occupied and oppressed by a foreign nation, tax collectors are even worse. Not only are they taking some of your money to run the government, but the government they are taking money to run is a foreign occupier. Tax collectors would have been seen as the collaborators with the enemy, with the oppressor. The last thing you would want your son to grow up to be would be a tax collector.

And so in this parable we have the Pharisee and the Tax Collector. The Pharisee prays to God, recounting all the good things that he has done – good things that everybody would have recognized as good things. He fasts. He tithes. He is a regular worshipper. All the things that we hope to be ourselves.

Of course, as he is praying and recounting all the good things, he has one eye open to those around him. The Pharisee prays with peripheral vision, looking to either side at those who might not quite measure up to his standards: all the rogues, the prostitutes, thieves, adulterers, and, maybe even especially, this tax collector (we all know what sorts of people they are). The Pharisee is confident that he is on the right track, that he is dotting all the i’s and crossing all the t’s. Not like so many other people.

The Tax Collector, on the other hand, as everyone would have known, is all undotted i's and uncrossed t's. And he knows it. He prays the only honest prayer he can pray, “God have mercy on me, a sinner.”

The Pharisee is a moral, upright person. He is on the straight and narrow. But it is on that straight and narrow that Jesus tosses his banana peel, and the Pharisee who has every reason to think that he is right with God slips on the peel and falls. Meanwhile, the Tax Collector who has every reason to think that he is out of sorts with God goes home justified.

And I suspect those who heard Jesus tell this parable slipped on the banana peel as well. What kind of a morally uplifting story is that? Not the kind of story you want to tell your children. They might take it seriously. The just person is condemned and the contemptible person is justified? Jesus doesn’t even suggest that the Tax Collector went home to live differently. He only throws himself on God’s mercy.

The point is not that being a tax collecting collaborator is a matter of indifference to Jesus. The point is that the Pharisee is in as much need of God’s mercy as is the Tax Collector. As are we all. And, of course, we all get that now. Don’t we? Don’t we?

There is a third person implied in this parable. This person is praying as well, and watching both the Pharisee and the tax collector. We are the third person. If we’re not careful, there is a banana peel in our path as well. How often do we see this parable and say, “Thank you, God, that I am not self-righteous, like that Pharisee"?

We all slip on the banana peel sooner or later. We measure ourselves against others. Whether it is the righteous and the unrighteous, the holy or the unholy, the mature or the immature, the sophisticated or the unsophisticated, the just and the unjust.We all fall into the trap of keeping score. Thank God I am not like that liberal. Thank God I am not like that conservative.Thank God I am not like that fundamentalist. One way or another, we are usually pretty sure that we are the ones who get it. We are the ones who are superior. We are the ones who are on the side of the angels.

Again and again Jesus tosses a banana peel on our path to moral superiority, our own exalted opinion of ourselves. We are reminded that we don’t know as much as we think we do. We are reminded that we are not as good as we like to think we are. We are reminded that our perspective is not God’s. We are reminded that we often slip into our own version of the Pharisee in this parable. We slip and land on our moral backsides.

By God's grace we are humbled and reminded, yet again, that our only honest prayer is, “God, have mercy on me a sinner.” In fact, the only prayer that is anything other than stammering, and the only deed that is anything other than stumbling, is the one that begins and ends with, “Have mercy on me, a sinner.”

Have heard the story of the man who dies and goes to the Pearly Gates where he is met by St. Peter?

Peter says, “Before you get in, you have to pass this little test. You have to make sure you have scored enough points to get in. You have to get one hundred points.”

The man thinks that should not be too hard because he has, after all, led a very good life. So he says to St. Peter, “Well, first of all, I was married for 57 years to one woman and was faithful from the very beginning until the very end.

Peter says, “That’s impressive. Three points.”

Then the man says, “Well, I also was a regular at church, Sunday in and Sunday out."

Peter gives him another point.

The man tries again, “I tithed. I gave 10% of everything I earned to the church and to the poor

Peter says, “Well, good for you. That’s another three points.”

“Did you know that I also volunteered for the youth group for five years? Do you know how many lock-ins that is!?”

“Four points.”

“I was politically active and always voted for the right candidate”

“Another point.”

The points are not adding up very fast. The man begins to despair. He says, “Well, how about this?” “What about that?” But his score remains distressingly low.

Finally, the man beats his breast in despair and cries out, “At this rate the only way that I’ll get into Heaven is by the mercy of God!”

Peter smiles and says “One hundred points!”

The first word for Christians is grace The last word for Christians is grace; and every day, along the way, is grace, grace, grace.

That’s not good news for the Pharisee in us who wants to keep score. It is very good news for the Tax Collector in us who can only pray,

“God have mercy on me, a sinner.”

Watch out for those banana peels.

Mercy – The Highest Honor

Casper ten Boom

I talk a lot about the Church being a people of God's mercy and delight. Here is another example of what that looks like:

Corrie ten Boom (1892-1983) was devout Dutch Christian who worked to rescue Jews during the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands. She recounts an attempt to recruit a pastor to assist in offering refuge to those trying to escape the Holocaust:

Back in the dining room I pulled the coverlet from the baby’s face. There was a long silence. The man leaned forward, his hand in spite of himself reaching for the tiny fist curled around the blanket. For a moment I saw compassion and fear struggle in his face. The he straightened. “Definitely not. We could lose our lives for this Jewish child!” Unseen by either of us, Father had appeared in the doorway. “Give the child to me, Corrie,” he said. Father held the baby, his white beard brushing the little face. . . . At last he looked up at the pastor. “You say we could lose our lives for this child. I would consider that the highest honor that could come to my family.”

– The Hiding Place

As it happened, Corrie’s father, Caspar ten Boom and other members of her family died in Nazi prison camps thereby receiving the honor of lying down their lives for the sake of the lives of others.

The ten Booms delighted in God and all other human beings, including those in whom it was inconvenient or even dangerous to delight, and thus they were prepared to extend mercy to those whose lives were threatened – even at the risk of their own safety and security. This is what it means to be a people of God’s mercy and delight. I pray that I and other Christians might more and more become such a people. I wonder how we might better form such a people.

Mercy – A Booklist

I've been posting regular thoughts and quotes on mercy which I think is at the heart of the life and message Jesus Christ and what it means to be a Christian, a Jesus-follower. I expect to occasionally post more on the topic, but I am going to take a break so I can focus on some other things. In case you are interested in reading more on mercy, here is a booklist:

Dives in Miseriacordia (Rich in Mercy) 

– Pope John Paul II

Mercy,The Essence of the Gospel and the Key to Christian Life 

– Walter Kasper

The Name of God Is Mercy 

– Pope Francis

The Wisdom of Tenderness: What Happens When God's Fierce Mercy Transforms Our Lives 

– Brennan Manning

The Relentless Tenderness of Jesus 

– Brennan Manning

The Power and Meaning of Love 

– Thomas Merton

The Primacy of Love, An Introduction to the Ethics of Thomas Aquinas 

– Paul Wadell

The Jesus Prayer: The Ancient Desert Prayer that Tunes the Heart to God 

– Frederica Mathewes-Green

Where God Happens: Discovering Christ in One Another

– Rowan Williams

To Love as God Loves, Conversations with the Early Church

– Roberta Bondi

The Philokalia

– Collected writings of early Christians

On Ascetical Life

– Isaac the Syrian

The Wisdom of Saint Isaac the Syrian

– Isaac the Syrian

The Spiritual World Of Isaac The Syrian 

– Hilarion Alfeyev

The Gospels

Finally, there is this from Sister Faustina, a Roman Catholic saint of the 20th century:

Help me, O Lord, that my eyes may be merciful, so that I may never suspect or judge from appearances, but look for what is beautiful in my neighbors’ souls and come to their rescue.

Help me, O Lord, that my ears may be merciful, so that I may give heed to my neighbors’ needs and not be indifferent to their pains and moanings.

Help me, O Lord, that my tongue may be merciful, so that I should never speak negatively of my neighbor, but have a word of comfort and forgiveness for all.

Help me, O Lord, that my hands may be merciful, and filled with good deeds, so that I might do only good to my neighbors and take upon myself the more difficult and toilsome tasks.

Help me, O Lord, that my feet may be merciful, so that may hurry to assist my neighbor, overcoming my own fatigue and weariness. My true rest is in the service of my neighbor.

Help me, O Lord, that my heart may be merciful so that I myself may feel all the sufferings of my neighbor. I will refuse my heart to no one. I will be sincere even with those who I know will abuse my kindness. And I will lock myself up in the merciful Heart of Jesus. May your mercy, O Lord, rest upon me.

You Yourself command me to exercise the three degrees of mercy. The first: the act of mercy, of whatever kind. The second: the word of mercy – if I cannot carry ourt a work of mercy, I will assist by my words. The third: prayer – if I cannot show mercy by my deeds or words, I can always do so by prayer.My prayer reaches out even there where I cannot reach out physically.

O my Jesus, transform me into Yourself, for You can do all things.

Becoming a People of God's Mercy and Delight, Part 1

Becoming a People of God's Mercy and Delight, Part 2

More Mercy and Delight

Mercy – Vulnerable in Love

“To read the biblical narratives is to encounter a God who is, first of all, love (1 John 4:8). Love involves a willingness to put oneself at risk, and God is in fact vulnerable in love, vulnerable even to great suffering. God’s self-revelation is Jesus Christ, and, as readers encounter him in the biblical stories, he wanders with nowhere to place his head, washes the feet of his disciples like a servant, and suffers and dies on a cross–condemned by the authorities of his time, undergoing great pain, “despised and rejected by others; a man of suffering and acquainted with infirmity” (Isaiah 53:3). Just this Jesus is the human face of God, not merely a messenger or a prophet but God’s own self come as self-revelation to humankind. If God becomes human in just this way, moreover, then that tells us something of how we might seek our own fullest humanity–not in quests of power and wealth and fame but in service, solidarity with the despised and rejected, and willingness to be vulnerable in love.“

– Wiliam Placher, Narratives of a Vulnerable God

All this took place to fulfil what had been spoken by the Lord through the prophet:

 ‘Look, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son,

   and they shall name him Emmanuel’,

which means, ‘God is with us.’

(Matthew 1:22-23

Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus,

 who, though he was in the form of God,

   did not regard equality with God

   as something to be exploited,

 but emptied himself,

   taking the form of a slave,

   being born in human likeness.

And being found in human form,

   he humbled himself

   and became obedient to the point of death—

   even death on a cross.

(Philippians 2:5-8)

Becoming a People of God's Mercy and Delight, Part 1

Becoming a People of God's Mercy and Delight, Part 2

More Mercy and Delight

Mercy – Greater love has no one than this

Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.

– Jesus (John 15:13)

Indeed, rarely will anyone die for a righteous person—though perhaps for a good person someone might actually dare to die. But God proves his love for us in that while we still were sinners Christ died for us.

– Paul (Romans 5:8)

Beloved, never avenge yourselves, but leave room for the wrath of God; for it is written, ‘Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord.’ No, ‘if your enemies are hungry, feed them; if they are thirsty, give them something to drink; for by doing this you will heap burning coals on their heads.’ Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.

– Paul (Romans 12:19-21)

The following story is famous among Mennonites. It comes from the scandalous era when Christians were killing Christians. Even so, it demonstrates what it looks like to take Jesus seriously on the way to mercy.

Dirk Willems was captured and imprisoned in his home town of Asperen in the Netherlands. Knowing that his fate would be death if he remained in prison, Dirk made a rope of strips of cloth and slid down it over the prison wall. A guard chased him.

Frost had covered a nearby pond with a thin layer of ice. Dirk risked a dash across it. He made it to safety, but the ice broke under his pursuer who cried for help. Dirk believed the Scripture that a man should help his enemies. He immediately turned back and pulled the floundering man from the frigid water.

In gratitude for his life, the man would have let Dirk escape, but a Burgomaster (chief magistrate) standing on the shore sternly ordered him to arrest Dirk and bring him back, reminding him of the oath he had sworn as an officer of the peace.

Back to prison went Dirk. He was condemned to death for being re-baptized, allowing secret church services in his home and letting others be baptized there.

Dirk was burned to death on May 16, 1569. The wind blew the flame away from him so that his death was long and miserable. Time and again Dirk cried out to God. Finally, one of the authorities could not bear to see him suffer any longer and ordered an underling to end his torment with a quick death.
(adapted from DirkWillem Burned after Rescuing Pursuer by Dan Graves)

One thing to note is that Dirk Willems did try to escape. The way of mercy dose not require that one to seek martyrdom. One need not stay in an abusive relationship, for example. 

But following Jesus does mean being prepared to forgive even those who wish us harm. It requires risking our own safety to help those in need, including those who we perceive to be a threat.

Would I go back over the ice to rescue my enemy? Would you? Are we willing to risk our own safety by practicing the radical mercy of God (Matthew 5:43-48)? Who might be in need of that mercy now?

Becoming a People of God's Mercy and Delight, Part 1

Becoming a People of God's Mercy and Delight, Part 2

More Mercy and Delight

Mercy – Being by nature born in sinne (or Why Original Sin is a Goodly Doctrine)

In the Gospel lesson assigned for this Sunday, we will hear John the Baptist proclaiming, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near.” The call to repentance, set against the paradigm of the kingdom of God, indicates that John thinks there is something fundamentally wrong with the way things are. Jesus repeats the call to repentance in the context of God’s kingdom (Matthew 4:17,  Mark 1:14-15). We will also hear on Sunday Isaiah’s prophetic image of that kingdom. The need for repentance points to our failure to live into God's goodness. It points to the need for change – in our hearts and in how we engage one another. It indicates that there is something wrong with us. We need mercy.

It is the Christian witness that there is something dreadfully wrong with us and the world and that we cannot finally change ourselves. We require deliverance from beyond ourselves. We require salvation from sin which radically infects our hearts and pervades our thoughts and actions. This is the uncomfortable realization that the traditional teaching of “original sin” gets at.

The tendency among some Christians to minimize the radical nature of sin is not very helpful. Nor is it reflective of what Christianity in the Anglican tradition has taught:

Question.

What is the inward and spirituall grace [of baptism]?

Answer.

A death unto sinne, and a new birth unto righteousness: for being by nature born in sinne, and the children of wrath, we are hereby made the children of grace.

That is from the Catechism of the Scottish Prayer Book of 1637. It was according to that Prayer Book that Samuel Seabury, the first bishop of the Episcopal Church in the United States, was ordained. It is the Prayer Book on which our Book of Common Prayer is based. The same Catechism is found in the 1559 Book of Common Prayer (the Elizabethan Prayer Book used by Her Majesty as well as Lancelot Andrewes, Richard Hooker, John Donne, and others of the formative period of Anglicanism).

The great Anglican preacher and poet, John Donne, did not hesitate to point to the radical nature of sin. Read A HYMN TO GOD THE FATHER.

William Temple, Anglican theologian and Archbishop of Canterbury during World War 2, wrote,

. . . reason itself as it exists in us in vitiated. We wrongly estimate the ends of life, and give preference to those which should be subordinate, because they have a stronger appeal to our actual, empirical selves . . . It is the spirit which is evil; it is reason which is perverted; it is aspiration itself which is corrupt.

– Nature,Man, and God

Acknowledging the radical pervasiveness of sin is part of the Anglican tradition.

But, a sort of good news is hidden in the Christian doctrine of sin – even that "awful" doctrine of original sin. Original sin indicates that the way things are is not the way things are meant to be. It affirms that violence, selfishness, and “will to power” are not "natural," but aberrations of God's original intent and goal which precede our fall into complicity with evil. Original sin is a hopeful doctrine because it declares that the way the world is and the way we are is not the way the world or we are meant to be. Though it infects our very nature, sin is not the truest thing about us. And we are not stuck with the sinfulness of our egotism, greed, violence, and unlove. We can become "children of grace." We can repent. Through the mercy of God, forgiveness is possible. Change is possible.

In Advent we celebrate the coming of that change in the person of Jesus and the promise of God’s kingdom coming. Isaiah and John the Baptist prepare us to welcome Jesus and the change his coming promises. Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near.

Becoming a People of God's Mercy and Delight, Part 1

Becoming a People of God's Mercy and Delight, Part 2

More Mercy and Delight

Mercy - Small acts of mercy

In his novel, All Hallows’ Eve, Charles Williams has a scene in which a pompous and demanding woman is putting her daughter on the train.

Lady Wallingsford said, “Get in, Betty. You ride first class as far as Laughton, you know.” She added to a porter, “This part is for York?” The porter, having just called out, “Grantham, Doncaster, York,” exercised a glorious self-restraint, and said, Yes, lady.” He spoke perhaps from habit, but here habit was full of all its past and all its patience and its patience was the thunder of the passage of a god dominant, miraculous and yet recurrent. Golden-thighed Endurance, sun-shrouded Justice, were in him and his face was the deep confluence of the City [the New Jerusalem]. He said again, “Yes, lady,” and his voice was echoed in the recesses of the station and thrown out beyond it. It was held in the air and dropped, and some other phrase caught up and held. There was no smallest point in all the place that was not redeemed into beauty and good–except Lady Wallingsford’s eyes . . .

It is a bit overwrought perhaps, but I think he is onto something. If at the heart of everything is an All-merciful Love this might be what we should expect. If we are created to reflect and participate in that Love, every act of affection or mercy, however insignificant it might seem, reverberates with an awesome and eternal significance. In this case the porter’s seemingly small act of patience when he might have responded with some expression of exasperation. But, that small act of patience reverberated spiritually throughout the train station with beauty and goodness.

There are times when the grand gesture is called for – violence, injustice, falsehood to be resisted. But, everyday acts of mercy – patience, gentleness, kindness, peace-making, endurance, courage, forgiveness, forbearance, self-control, the sharp word or gesture withheld, speaking up on behalf of another – these are more important than we might think. Maybe, whether anyone else recognizes it or whether the one doing is even completely aware they have done it, every small act of mercy is celebrated in heaven.

As Gandalf says in The Hobbit Movie

Some believe it is only great power that can hold evil in check, but that is not what I have found.  It is the small everyday deeds of ordinary folk that keep the darkness at bay. Small acts of kindness and love.

In a world where rancor ricochets all around, maybe part of the Christian vocation is to be “shock-absorbers” practiced in defusing and deescalating. In a world grown callous and snarky, a world where the witty put-down is celebrated, the Christian vocation is to speak the truth in love (Ephesians 4:15), with gentleness and revernce (1 Peter 3:15). This is what it means to “walk in love as Christ loved us and gave himself for us a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God” (Ephesians 5:2). We are to be the fragranc of that sacrificial love..

As we have seen before in this series, this sounds nice, but is not easy. Dorothy Day reflected that being patient in little things takes a heroic virtue. In his book on forgiveness, Williams compares a life of patient endurance with the singular act of self-sacrificial martyrdom and suggests the former might actually be harder.

We are told the porter’s heroic act of patience and glorious restraint might have come from habit. By practice, with the Holy Spirit working in us, we can hope that day by day, moment by moment, we might develop the habit of doing our small part to keep the darkness at bay and see the world redeemed into beauty and good.

Here are some others who have said something similar:

Becoming a People of God's Mercy and Delight, Part 1

Becoming a People of God's Mercy and Delight, Part 2

More Mercy and Delight

Mercy – Resolve to understand every person fully

A version of this post was already planned for today. It seems even more pertinent now. There has been a good deal of consternation following the recent Presidential election in the United States. One common refrain has been that the election has revealed just how deep and wide are the political/cultural divisions in America. We do not seem to understand one another. Often enough it seems we do not really care to understand one another. But this is not new. And it is not unique to America.

Brother Roger, the founder of the Taize Community in France, wrote this reflection about a decision he made as a young man in the wake of the hatred and violence of the 1930's and 40's:

When I was a young man, at a time when Europe was torn apart by so many conflicts, I kept on asking myself. Why all these confrontations? Why do so many people, even Christians, condemn one another out of hand? And I wondered, is there, on this earth, a way of reaching complete understanding of others?

Then came a day – I can still remember the date, and I could describe the place: the subdued light of a late summer evening, darkness settling over the countryside – a day when I made a decision. I said to myself, if this way exists, begin with yourself and resolve to understand every person fully. That day, I was certain the vow I made was for life. It involved nothing less than returning again and again, my whole life long, to this irrevocable decision: seek to understand all, rather than to be understood. 
– The Wonder of a Love

Resolve to understand every person fully. What might that look like? Here are three other quotes that I think begin to point the way:

If we are to love our neighbors, before doing anything else we must see our neighbors. With our imagination as well as our eyes, that is to say, like artists, we must see not just their faces but the life behind and within their faces. Here it is love that is the frame we see them in.

– Frederick Buechner, Whistling in the Dark

The beginning of love is the will to let those we love be perfectly themselves, the resolution not to twist them to fit our own image. If in loving them we do not love what they are, but only their potential likeness to ourselves, then we do not love them: we only love the reflection of ourselves we find in them.

– Thomas Merton, No Man Is an Island

Peace will only begin to be possible when we try to do justice to the side with which we do not feel sympathy, and earnestly try to call up in our imagination the sorrows we have not suffered and the angers we do not feel.

– G. K. Chesterton, London Illustrate News June 25, 1932

This requires a degree of self-denial. Before I can see my neighbor, before I can love the other as they are, I need to get myself out of the way. I need to make peace with the discomforting challenge their difference presents to me. I need to let go of my own prejudices and convictions that incline me to interpret the other on my terms rather than on their terms. In order to give the other the benefit of the doubt, I need to be willing to doubt my own assumptions and certainties. I need to entertain the possibility that I am wrong and/or have something to learn from the other. I need to die to myself in order to make space for the other, to imaginatively get inside the other’s skin.

It might also mean that I need to take care how I think and talk about others, what I post on Facebook and Twitter about them. It is so tempting, isn't it, to assume the worst about those with whom we disagree or who we find it hard tro understand. It is easy to roll our eyes when they are mentioned. It is easy to jump to conclusions about them that are less than generous.

This does not mean that we give people a pass for words and actions that are hurtful or violent. It does not mean that in the end everyone is OK just the way they are. It does not mean we do not challenge one another. It does mean that before I can challenge another, I need to take care that I truly understand them as they understand themselves rather than how it is convenient and comfortable for me to understand them.

How might I commit to getting to know others as they understand themselves? Muslims? Evangelical Christians? Liberal Christians? People in the rural heartland? People in coastal cities? Gays, lesbians and transgendered? Conservatives? Liberals? Immigrants? The other person in front of me right now? It begins by learning the story they tell about themselves rather than resorting to the often more comforting stories others – particularly their opponents – tell about them. I can invite others who I find it hard to understand to tell their story and listen carefully, patiently, and non-defensively.

In my experience, this is much harder than it sounds.  But, with Brother Roger, I am convinced it is part of what it means to live into the way of mercy that is the cost of following Jesus. It means making this irrevocable decision: seek to understand all, rather than to be understood.

Related posts:

Interpreting One Another with Charity

On Not Bearing False Witness

Becoming a People of God's Mercy and Delight, Part 1

Becoming a People of God's Mercy and Delight, Part 2

More Mercy and Delight

Mercy – The Geometry of the Kingdom of God

I have posted before on this blog about Dorotheos of Gaza (see We fall down and we get up and What is more grievous than the sin of condemning one's neighbour?).

Dorotheos preached a sermon once to the other monks in his monastery.  It seems many of the monks were grumbling.  They were unable to love and worship God properly because they had to put up with one another’s shortcomings.  There was so much hypocrisy, so much gossiping, so much petty jealousy and backbiting.  In other words, it was church as usual.  Or family as usual, business as usual, politics as usual. It was people as usual. How can you love God when you have to put up with other people’s ordinary, irritating presence, let alone those who we find extraordinarily offensive or threatening?  “No,” Dorotheos told the monks.  You don’t understand.

Here is the ending of a sermon, On Refusal to Judge our Neighbor:

Each one according to his means should take care to be at one with everyone else, for the more one is united to his neighbor the more he is united to God.

And now I give you an example from the Fathers. Suppose we were to take a compass and insert the point and draw an outline of a circle. The center point is the same distance from any point on the circumference. Now concentrate your minds on what is to be said! Let us consider that this circle is the world and that God himself is the center; the straight lines drawn from the circumference to the center are the lives of men. To the extent that the saints enter into the things of the spirit, they desire to come near to God; and in proportion to their progress in the things of the spirit, they do indeed come close to God and to their neighbor. The closer they are to God, the closer they become to one another; and the closer they are to one another the closer they become to God.

Now consider in the same context the question of separation; for when they stand away from God and turn to external things, it is clear that the more they recede and become distant from God, the more they become distant from one another. See! This is the very nature of love. The more we are turned away from and do not love God, the greater the distance that separates us from our neighbor. If we were to love God more, we should be closer to God, and through love of him we should be more united in love to our neighbor; and the more we are united to our neighbor the more we are united to God.

May God make us worthy to listen to what is fitting for us and do it. For in the measure that we pay attention and take care to carry out what we hear, God will always enlighten us and make us understand his will.

Discourses & Sayings, Desert Humor & Humility, p. 138-139

I have found Dorotheos’ image of the circle of love to be particularly fruitful and inspiring. It helps me understand Jesus’ Summary of the Law, "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the great and foremost commandment. The second is like it: You shall love you neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend the whole Law and the Prophets." (Matthew 22:37-40). It helps me understand the Church as the school of that twofold love.

It also reminds me of Dorothy Day’s saying, “I really only love God as much as the person I love the least.” That is the axiom of the geometry of the kingdom of God. Jesus is the proof. And that is the challenge of serious Christian discipleship.

Becoming a People of God's Mercy and Delight, Part 1

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Mercy – The only work that matters in the end

Frederick Buechner is a favorite of mine. His memoirs, essays, sermons, and novels have been an inspiration to me. If you are looking for a good read, I recommend, Brendan, a novel about the sixth century Irish saint.

Toward the end of the novel, Brendan has been talking with another saintly man named Gildas. At the end of the conversation, Gildas begins to stand. Then, Buechner has the narrator, Finn, recount:

Pushing down hard with his fists on the tabletop, [Gildas] heaved himself up to where he was standing. For the first time we saw he wanted one leg. It was gone from the knee joint down. He was hopping sideways to reach for his stick in the corner when he lost his balance. He would have fallen in a heap if Brendan hadn’t leaped forward and caught him.

“I’m crippled as the dark world,” Gildas said.

“If it comes to that, which one of us isn’t, my dear?” Brendan said.

Gildas with his but one leg, Brendan sure he’d misspent his whole life entirely. Me that had left my wife to follow him and buried our only boy. The truth of what Brendan said stopped all our mouths. We was cripples all of us. For a moment or two there was no sound but the bees.

“To lend each other a hand when we’re falling,” Brendan said, “Perhaps that’s the only work that matters in the end.”

– Brendan, p. 217

If it comes to it, we are – all of us – cripples in one way or another. Each of us limps. Some limp physically, but all of us limp emotionally or spiritually. We carry emotional wounds. Some wounds are more profound than others. Some are less able to hide their limping. We might want to pretend otherwise. But, all of us limp. Each of us stumbles or falls from time to time. To lend each other a hand when we’re falling, Perhaps that’s the only work that matters in the end.

Becoming a People of God's Mercy and Delight, Part 1

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Mercy – Making Spiritual Progress

We have seen in previous posts that the radical mercy Jesus embodies and demands of his followers is hard. Love your enemies (here and here), be about forgiveness (here), care for the poor (here), bear the burden of those who persecute you (here), risk hospitality to the stranger (here).

But, to paraphrase a question posed in response to one of those previous posts, what if one just doesn't have the fortitude to live this kind of mercy? Are we failures?

Jesus does call us to a radical, vulnerable, self-sacrificial love that is as completely merciful to all as the mercy of the One Jesus called Father. That is part of what it means to take up the way of the cross. That said, the harm some people inflict is real, some wounds inflicted are profound, and some people are more burdensome than others. The weight of the cross can seem too much to bear. To be merciful is to be vulnerable and to be vulnerable is to risk pain and loss.

Only God is fully able to be fully merciful. Only God is infinitely vulnerable and able to bear the burden of all the pain and hate and violence and fear of the world. We are not God and not infinitely vulnerable. Most of us need to step back sometimes lest we be overwhelmed. That is not necessarily failure. God knows that “we are but dust.” It is good to remember that even our pursuit to become more like Jesus is lived under the Mercy. But, the goal has still been set before us. Sometimes we take two steps forward and one step back. Sometimes we just inch along. The Saints are those who have gone further toward that goal. That is why they stand out.That is why they provoke and inspire us.

Jesus promises that we do not bear the burden alone. He gives the Holy Spirit to bear the cross with us. And we are called into the community of the Church where others can help bear the load.

Our progress in the way of Jesus is likely to be a herky-jerky affair. The healing of our hearts is a frustratingly slow process. But, we still hope for progress and transformation – under the Mercy.

Here is some wisdom from Bono of the rock band, U2:

I have heard of people having life-changing, miraculous turn-arounds, people set free from addiction after a single prayer, relationships saved when both parties "let go, and let God". But it was not like that for me. For all that "I was lost, I am found," it is probably more accurate to say, "I was really lost, I’m a little less so at the moment." And then a little less and a little less again. That to me is the spiritual life. The slow reworking and rebooting of a computer at regular intervals, reading the small print of the service manual. It has slowly rebuilt me in a better image. It has taken years though, and it is not over yet.

– U2 BY U2, p. 6

And here are a couple of pertinent quotes from John Newton, the author of Amazing Grace:

I am not what I ought to be, I am not what I want to be, I am not what I hope to be in another world; but still I am not what I once used to be, and by the grace of God I am what I am.

Although my memory's fading, I remember two things very clearly: I am a great sinner and Christ is a mighty Savior.

Becoming a People of God's Mercy and Delight, Part 1

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Mercy – Love your enemies 2: more C. S. Lewis & some Charles Williams

The most radical and distinctive thing Jesus demanded of his followers was that they love their enemies (Matthew 5:43-48, Luke 6:35-36). There is nothing sentimental about that. Jesus and the people he was talking to had real enemies. Their country had been invaded and was occupied by oppressive foreigners–the Romans. Jesus and his followers also had enemies among their own people who ultimately would collaborate with the Romans to have him tortured and killed, a fate many of his disciples eventually shared. It is a hard teaching.  But, the extent to which we practice it determines the extent to which we are faithful to the radical, demanding mercy of Jesus

Two weeks ago, I shared a couple of quotes from C. S. Lewis in which he explained some of what that looks like in practice. Here is another quote from Lewis from a letter he wrote to his brother, September 10, 1939 at the beginning of World War 2:

In the Litany this morning we had some extra petitions, one of which was, ‘Prosper, oh Lord, our righteous cause’. Assuming that it was the work of the bishop or someone higher up, when I met Bleiben [the vicar] in the porch, I ventured to protest against the audacity of informing God that our cause was righteous – a point on which he has his own views . . . I hope it is quite like ours, of course, but one never knows with him.

– The Collected Letters of C. S. Lewis, Volume 2

And here is something from Lewis' friend, Charles Williams, also written in the midst of WW 2 (1942):

The conversion, where it is demanded, of the wild justice of revenge to the civil justice of the Divine City is the precise operation of the Holy Spirit towards Christ. All we need to do is attend to the goodwill, to the civility; the justice (in the personal relation) can be left to Christ. ‘Vengeance is mine; I will repay, sayeth the Lord.’ It is perhaps desirable to notice that the repayment is not limited to our enemy. We shall be unfortunate if we forget the trespasses, the debts, which our enemies desire to repay with their wild justice and are content to leave to his promise. It is important that we should be ready to forgive the Germans; it is not unimportant to recognize that many Germans (including Herr Hitler? Possibly; we do not very well know) may feel that they have much to forgive us. Many reconciliations have unfortunately broken down because both parties have come prepared to forgive but unprepared to be forgiven. Instruction is as badly needed in this as in many other less vital things; that holy light which we call humility has an exact power of illumination all its own. – The Forgiveness of Sins, p. 113

A couple of things strike me in the above quotes. Both Lewis and Williams refuse to get caught up in nationalistic rhetoric that assumes that “God is with us” or that their country is particularly blessed by God. Even in the midst of war, they were compelled by their Christian convictions to accept the possibility that their nation could be wrong and that their enemies might well have grievances of their own. If that is the faithful Christian attitude in the midst of war – and I believe it is – how much more so in times of (relative) peace? It raises questions about the ease with which Americans blend God-talk and patriotism in ways that smack of syncretism. It raises questions about the rhetoric of American exceptionalism.

I am also struck with the fundamental humility expressed by Lewis and Williams. Both demonstrate an admirable reticence to claim to know overmuch about God's mind or to assume their side is necessarily God's. Both recognize that all humans are fundamentally bound to one another in a relational web and all humans are caught in the sin that infects that web. We should thus be wary of presuming our own innocence or consigning only blame to others – both are awe-full things to contemplate if we recognize that we are all live under the awesome gaze of God's love and judgment.

Neither Lewis nor Williams would advocate anything like a posture of moral equivalency or neutrality. Neither was a pacifist. But, what both do seem to advocate is a deep humility and reticence to assume their enemies and opponents are completely wrong and their side simply in the right. And I find that refreshing.

If all this could be said in the midst of WW 2 where the right and wrong seemed so clear, might such things be said in other contexts? In the secular setting, if we adopted Lewis' and Williams' attitude would we engage our political opponents differently? What about in work, school, family, or other personal contexts? Are we willing to acknowledge that those who irritate or frustrate us might have as much or more cause for grievance against us?

For our enemies and those who wish us harm, and for all whom we have injured or offended, we pray to you, O Lord.  Lord, have mercy.

Becoming a People of God's Mercy and Delight, Part 1

Becoming a People of God's Mercy and Delight, Part 2

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