Things are changing. Evangelical and orthodox and mainline churches are getting together to care for the unfortunate in their nieghbourhoods.
And it's happening in our own city. Check out the story here.
To my mind this is truly a hopeful sign for the church: One, that different churches are working together, and two, that their collective attention is upon people in need of social care.
For he delivers the needy when they call,
the poor and those who have no helper.
He has pity on the weak and the needy,
and saves the lives of the needy.
From oppression and violence he redeems their life;
and precious is their blood in his sight. (Psalm 71)
We live in a time when our ability to empathize with "victims" comes easily, almost naturally. We don't question this. We think it has always been this way. But doing so discounts two millennia of the leavening effect of the Sermon on the Mount.
In a era where people were at fault for their station in life, in other words, when the question, "Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?", made perfect sense, there probably would not have been something like a Hope Mission.
Identification with, and empathy for, "the victim", is a remarkable thing. And as far as I can tell, biblical revelation is responsible for this. The cross is the cause.
Reading successively through the scriptures, we are slowly but progressively awakened to the suffering of the victim, where finally, everything culminates in Jesus, the innocent victim.
The cross exposes our victimizing ways. Our scapegoating method of making peace through having, "one man die for the people than having the whole nation destroyed."
Now that Christ has exposed this mechanism as an idolatrous lie, we are left with only two options to deal with violence. The first is more violence. The supposed redemptive or sacred or "good" violence, that sets things in order through visiting violence upon violent ones. This only creates victims out of victimizers. And of course, the same old mechanism is at work here. So really, this option is an impossibility. It has been tried ad nauseam and it always leads to more violence–finally apocalyptic violence.
The other option is almost as impossible. It is the renouncing of all violence and vengeance. Our model here is Jesus and all those over these millennia, who in the face of violence, have imitated him.
They were able to imitate Jesus in non-violence because they discovered that they had taken part in his lynching. But then, in some way, perhaps in many different ways over time, they were visited by his forgiving presence. And they were cut to the heart; and the nearly impossible became possible.
The pictures in this post were all taken during my walk to work this morning.
Several weeks ago, Randy Loewen, a Chaplain at Hope Mission happened to mention to me that he enjoyed one of my posts. He said it was fairly observant. (Well, one out of a hundred-plus is not exactly major league, but I’ll take it.)
We talked more and agreed that the attention given to the art of observance was scanty. True, some people are more observant than others. Perhaps more accurately, different people observe different things. And this is a good thing; in fact crucial for community.
But in the broad sweep, we thought that our powers of observation were wanting. Certainly there will be things that always escape us. In fact good filters keep us from information overload. Essential for psychological health, especially in our time.
But this is something other than our waning ability to live within our bodies, present to the moment. I know my own experience is that self-occupation, in all its guises, easily becomes preoccupation and keeps me from engaging the stories, the events, the moments of genuine life going on all around me.
And that’s the thing. So much life goes on around us, and only in pausing do we pick it up. We’re often guilty of having eyes and ears but not seeing or hearing.
I remember becoming wide awake to this. It was ten years ago. I was sitting in a lawn chair, appropriately on the front lawn of our acreage in Stony Plain, reading Thomas Merton’s, "New Seeds of Contemplation". And I remembered several childhood moments as as if I’d been transported through time. My observance of life was strong then. What I didn’t remember was how I lost this.
So for the past decade I’ve tried, with varying degrees of success, to be intentional about observance. And I have placed things in my life that hopefully cultivate this. For example, I have belonged to the same small group for the past six years. Our watchword is, “Come and See“. Also, I continue to read Thomas Merton and authors like him. And my mentor, Father James, always helps bring me back, demonstrates in his own being, that a discipline of observance can become the art of observance.
All these things help me appreciate even a brief and simple moment, standing talking to Chaplain Randy and hearing his own reflection on observance…which woke me up yet again to its importance.
I do not call you servants any longer, because the servant does not know what the master is doing; but I have called you friends, because I have made known to you everything that I have heard from my Father. (John 15)
Sixteen years ago I had a philosophy professor who shifted my view of the world. It wasn't so much the philosophical concepts–which I didn't always grasp anyway–that caused the shift; it was the way I was introduced to ideas, to other ways of thinking. It wasn't the text, it was the teacher that tilted my world. It wasn't the academic information that I first found compelling, it was Vaden House, and his way of engaging the world of ideas that was self-yielding and flexible, without shades of regression on one hand, or gullibility on the other.
There was no power broking with Vaden. If he was sifting through a problem and discovered an untested avenue, or a new idea, or a new formulation of old idea, he would share it. There was no hording of information so as to use it at some opportune time to impress his students. Everything flowed. Everything was open to discussion. And because he had an abiding love for God and a deep faith, things were open to reinterpretation, things were negotiable.
He had no fear of being blind-sided. No fear of being washed off a rock by some rogue-wave. Because he didn't live…tied to a rock. He lived on the water, floating free, with the vertically steadying effect of a sea-anchor–a concept I've taken to heart because it rings true to being a contingent self.
His soul-space was open. Sitting in his office before or after a class was like being in a hyperbaric chamber. The oxygen was denser and the energy this created was never dammed-up. It flowed through him and you felt your own energy responding. Even though Vaden had a superior mind, what he offered me was not a teacher/student relationship, he offered me the friendship of a fellow pilgrim.
It's astonishing that Jesus–Son of God–offers this kind of friendship.
Jesus declines control and passes-up the power inherent in having the special knowledge of a Master. Instead he makes everything known, everything is brought into the open.
But taking away the master/servant arrangement is destabilizing. We servant/slaves don't always want liberation. Much safer to be stuck in place and rag about the conditions, than risk the new thing. On the flip-side, we who are set on being masters, usually won't relinquish power. Much safer, not to mention prestigious, to stay in control by manipulating who gets to know what.
In the confines of a master/servant relationship nothing much new ever grows. But the destabilizing fraternity of friendship is a green-house. Things flourish here. And here is where we find Jesus.
Although we may want to fall back on a Master/servant relationship with Jesus, it is no longer an option. Only, I suppose, a delusional option. Friendship with Jesus, and all that that implies, is the only way ahead. And if, as Christians, we want to help others, modeling this non-manipulative friendship, which is true friendship, is the only thing that will generate the possibility.