My problem is with morality. I’ve had morality drummed into my head for as long as I can remember. My problem is creativity; moving from normal to fabulous. When I get in the existential rut and can only see the other as a problem to be fixed and not a neighbor who’s just so fabulous, I am diminished. People’s problems and challenges are more than a hassle; they are an invitation to act like God acts in Jesus Christ. I get to reflect the mercy that I’ve received in the ways that I choose to act in relationship to a person that troubles me. What I DON’T need is a little inner life-coach who tells me what I ought to believe. What I need is the vision of the world that God gives to the whole creation. I get to see people the way that God sees them: as beloved children. I get to love other people as God loves me.
The gift of God in Jesus Christ is enemy-love. I read the Gospels and I see story after story of Jesus sharing his life with folks I try to avoid. Again and again Jesus pours love and life out for people that I prefer to call my enemies. Jesus takes “normal” and messes it all up with Samaritans and bandits and priests and whores and tax collectors. The lawyer in the parable really asks the wrong question. It isn’t just “Who is my neighbor?” The real question is “How far will I go to see that my neighbor is my sister? How much danger will I take on to see that my neighbor is my brother?”
There is spiritual sickness that I suffer from called tolerance. As my old friend Bette first told me, “Tolerance is just hatred mastered.” I want something more than that. I want to act like Jesus who throws his love at his enemies like a drunk sailor throws $20 bills at strippers. I want love that is abnormal and unboundaried. I can’t wait to be healed from my addiction to tolerance, because I want to go as far as I can in the love of Jesus Christ. I want to be limitlessly in love.
None of the categories that we find so adorable make a damned bit of difference to Jesus. The meaning of “neighbor” cannot be restricted. Jesus isn’t original in summarizing the law of God; that he gets from other rabbis. It is the radical redefinition of “neighbor” that makes his teach original. The law commands compassion, but it also limits compassion. The law wants to impose a double bind on people. Only someone who is outside the law – an infidel – can fulfill the law of love that is the original law.
The bottom line is that religion can be bad for your soul. If your beliefs wall out some people, then the fullness of God’s love cannot be experienced. If your system of beliefs says that you have to wall out ______ __________ (please insert the name of your most despised enemy), then you can’t experience the fullness of God’s love.
When God choose the perfect revelation of himself to the world he picked being human. God could have chosen anything else (maybe) but God choose tacky human beings. That means that the image of God is human, and in all humans. So if you want a life that is built on God’s image, then you will have to find it in all humans, not just some humans. Which I guess means that the cure for racism and classism (and all the other isms) is found in really looking at people and knowing them to be revelators of God.
The Samaritan in this story has nothing left to lose. That makes him the perfect follower of Jesus. He has nothing to lose, so he is free to love and to find God in the bodies of people that he is raised to hate, but chooses to love. He is the model of a disciple of Jesus because he cares more for the heart of God than the heart of religion. Jesus says that this is the way to live, not by being normal, but by seeing all people in alive in God’s heart. Then people might just see that same image in you: grace made visible.
1 comments:
paul-- i have loved reading this series of meditations. talk about water in a dry land! thank you so very much for sharing it.
love,
rachel
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