Because He First Loved Us...

Okay, I'm still a little AWOL with classes and grading, but I want to keep the conversation going. To do that, I'm going to ask that we reflect on scripture for a day, and then really begin our conversation about justice. The scripture I'm looking at come from 1 John 4:19-21:

We love because he first loved us. Those who say, 'I love God', and then hate their brothers and sisters, are liars; for those who do not love a brother or sister whom they have seen, cannot love God whom they have not seen. The commandment we have from him is this: those who love God must also love their brothers and sisters.

1 John is referring to the double commandment from Mark 12:

One of the scribes came near and heard them disputing with one another, and seeing that he answered them well, he asked him, "Which commandment is the first of all?" Jesus answered, "The first is, 'Hear, O Israel: the Lord our God, the Lord is one; you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength.' The second is this, 'You shall love your neighbor as yourself.' There is no other commandment greater than these." Then the scribe said to him, "You are right, Teacher; you have truly said that 'he is one, and besides him there is no other'; and 'to love him with all the heart, and with all the understanding, and with all the strength,' and 'to love one's neighbor as oneself,' — this is much more important than all whole burnt offerings and sacrifices." When Jesus saw that he answered wisely, he said to him, "You are not far from the kingdom of God."-- Mark 12: 28-34

So let's take a day and pray on that -- what does God have to say to us through these passages about how we are to relate to one another in our lives? How does God's love for us influence our love of others? Reflecting on the different institutions we participate in (our work, school, church, social groups, etc.), where does God bring our minds when we ask how we do or no not love our neighbor as ourself? What does it mean to love our brothers and sisters?

Here's how we do it:

1. Get your watch so you know when your ten minutes are up (it's your security blanket!).
2. Read back over these two passages.
3. Read them again. Reading outloud is always nice if you're in a private place.
   
4. What word or image (maybe a memory?) comes to mind when reading back over the passage? For me, it's how my grandpa used to let people come and glean from his farm.
   
5. Read the passages a third time.
6. Ask, in your life today (November 28, 2005) what would God have you take from these passages? What is God's message for you in your life? Ask God that question, and let your mind reflect back on the scripture. Your mind will go in a particular direction, and just let it. If you start thinking about emails or your Christmas list, no worries, just ask God again to speak to you through the Word, and you're back on track. (I always keep a pad and pen by me when I do this b/c my mind wanders like crazy! I just write the thoughts down and get back on track).
7. When your time is up, thank God for sharing with you.
   

We'll talk about what that means for how we organize just social structures tomorrow.

Love you guys,

Becky

It Won't Be Easy. It Will Be Worth It.

Happy Thanksgiving!

We’ve been talking about nurturing just and righteous relationships with the people we know – in particular, we’ve been focusing on coming to really see the people we come in contact with every day: To know them and accept them as they really are, not as we might want them to be.

Tuesday I wrote about treating the people we know with humility, acceptance and respect, and I encouraged us to continue praying for God to lead us to the people in our lives we haven’t been approaching humbly or respectfully. I’m going to move onto a different topic on this blog (still on the topic of justice, but I’m going to look at social justice for a little while), but I don’t want us to forget about integrity in our personal relationships. If we lack that, what hope do we have of building just relationships in the world at large?

So I suggest we keep practicing building whole relationships over the Advent (Christmas) season. It’s manageable – we’ve got about 5 weeks until New Years. That’s not long enough to build a real pattern of behavior (I think that takes three months), but it’s long enough to get us started. To review what we’ve been talking about, that means that from now until January 1st we’re going to keep:

1. reading scripture and praying (http://www.biblegateway.com/ -- seriously, I’m not kidding. Five minutes to read the chapter of their verse-of-the-day and five minutes to ask God what you might learn from the passage. It will change your life like nothing else you will ever do. And if you read something you don’t understand or that troubles you, email me and I’ll see what I can do to help you understand. I mean it. Do it now!);
2. reminding ourselves to really see the people we come in contact with for who they are, not how they might serve (or inconvenience) us. This is going to be hard with the stress of the holidays, but if we can do it, I think our holidays will be less stressful overall anyway – we’ll be focusing on what’s important instead of getting caught up in the hurry of the season. We just have to remember to do it;
3. accepting people for who and where they are, even when their agendas, needs, and ideas conflict radically with our own;
4. remaining vigilant to put other people’s needs before our own (and not thinking of it as our giving something up so much as it is our giving something to the other person. We’re serving, and that’s joyful – even when it hurts).

We are committing to nurture whole relationships for the next six weeks (well, I am committing – if anyone wants to come along, great! If you post a comment that you’re doing this too, I’ll write you back and we can all do it together!). Here’s the thing: It won’t be easy, and we probably won’t do a very good job at it. But don’t give up. The goal is not perfection in every encounter we have with people. The goal is our persistence in trying to build whole relationships. We’ll get better at it, and it will get easier over time.

Here is what Thomas Merton writes:

“Do not depend on the hope of results… you may have to face the fact that your work will be apparently worthless and even achieve no result at all, if not perhaps results opposite to what you expect. As you get used to this idea, you start more and more to concentrate not on the results, but on the value, the rightness, the truth of the work itself. . . . You gradually struggle less and less for an idea and more and more for specific people… In the end, it is the reality of personal relationship that saves everything.”

We can be as accepting, humble, and respectful as we can be, and the people we know can treat us like trash. But we’re not treating them with respect so that they’ll reciprocate (that would mean that we’re doing it to get goodies in return!). We’re treating them with respect, humility, and acceptance because that’s what they deserve. Period. Remember the thing about our being equal? That’s why we do it. So don’t be discouraged when your good behavior isn’t rewarded.

Regardless of how the people we know respond to our behavior, our behavior does benefit us. Paul writes to the early Roman church:

“…we also boast in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not disappoint us, because God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us.” – Romans 5: 3-5

Let’s not delude ourselves – the kind of behavior we’re talking about will not be easy. Most of us aren’t wired this way (how many truly selfless people do you know?), and our culture does not reward selflessness. But if we stick with it, despite how other people respond to us, we grow stronger and more whole. And that strength and wholeness can’t help but touch those we come in contact with. God's love is in us, that it will not be denied. That’s how justice and righteousness spread. Not quickly, not superficially, but inevitably. We just have to stick with it. Who’s with me? :)

Love you guys,

Becky

You give...and we receive

A little slammed this morning finishing some grading before my students leave for break, so I am sharing a prayer by Walter Brueggemann. Brueggemann is an Old Testament scholar and a beautiful poet. Happy early Thanksgiving!

You give... and we receive

We are your people...like Mother Hannah
We come with our several eating disorders,

trembling lips,
needy hands,
fallen faces,
quiet in despair.

Because we do not have what we need by ourselves --
to make a future. And so we ask.

And you give! Generously, abundantly, inexplicably.
You give more than we ask or think or need,

enough for all our futures,
enough for joy,
enough for well-being beyond our trembling neediness.

You give... and we receive.

We receive and sometimes we covet and own and possess.
We receive and imagine it is our purchase.
We receive your goods like property.
We receive and want more.

You give... and we receive...

Sometimes we only thank in amazement,
Sometimes we yield in gratitude.
Sometimes we turn our joy into sacrifice and give back.
Sometimes we become more fully yours
in obedience and gladness.

Now is some such sometime. We pray in thanks. Amen.

(From Awed to Heaven, Rooted in Earth: Prayers of Walter Brueggemann, Fortress Press, Minneapolis, 2003).

A Humble Heart

From the comments I got yesterday (and certainly in my own experience!) our struggle with humility and empathy impede our ability to nurture whole relationships. I’m going to bet that these struggles are harder with people we know than with random folks we encounter (but again, maybe I’m reading more of my own experience into it…). So let’s talk about what it means to humble ourselves the people we love. Tomorrow we’ll talk about humbling ourselves to people we don’t actually know.

Our goal is to build just and righteous relationships (relationships where people have a say in the decisions that affect them and where the people in those relationships put others’ needs before their own). This week we’re focusing on being more aware of those people we don’t even really see. If we don’t see them, we don’t include them and we certainly don’t put their needs before our own.

The thing is, we’re just as likely to do that with a loved on as with a stranger.

How do we humble ourselves? I said yesterday we do it by remembering that everyone’s broken – we are no better or no more messed up than anyone else. Some of us may have better armor, and some of us may be more intentional about ferreting out our own weakness, but at the end of the day, none of us has found the joy and peace God intends to govern our lives. All of us have areas where we don’t live up to our potential – where we’re side tracked by pettiness, greed, fear, or insecurity.

Humility is not beating ourselves up for these weaknesses: Humility is recognizing we have them (just like everyone else) and that God loves us (and them) all the same. We don’t ever have to be good enough for God to love us. We are lovable just as we are, and so are the other people we encounter. If we can't earn God's love (because we already have it), then no one is better or worse than anyone else. No one is more deserving. We're all equally lovable. We are humble when we accept that equality. To put it in positive terms, true humility is a recognition of our common humanity.

Humility is also recognizing there are limits to us as people. We can’t fix other people’s problems (no matter how convinced we are we could, if only so-and-so would listen to us!), and we can’t fix ourselves. But God can transform our hearts, just like God can heal others. To be clear – God doesn’t do it to us. God does it with us.

If we want to partner with God to develop a humble heart, what would that mean for our relationships with the people we love? First (and most importantly), we would have to accept that they get to live their own lives and don’t have to live in any way that is particularly pleasing to us. The first step of humility in our close relations is respect. And not the vapid definition of respect that translates loosely as admiration, but the hard definition of respect that requires us to honor another’s ideas and convictions as being as worthy as our own, no matter how much we reject them personally.

The second step in humility is not keeping score. Actually, the second step is not needing to keep score. Maybe other people get their way more often than we do – if you’re stuck in a co-dependent relationship and your sense of self-worth is bound up in the other person’s acceptance so you roll every time there’s disagreement, then ignore what I’m about to say – So? If you truly love someone, you want her happiness before your own. It doesn’t matter if she gets her way more often than you. We’re taught to be competitive (and we're taught to demand respect, which gets translated as getting our way), and we bring that to our relationships, but it’s entirely destructive. Humility is not concerned with coming out on top.

Third, recognize the absolute freedom that comes with not exerting your power over someone else. In most relationships with people we love the actual power is pretty equal (again, accept for those with dependency issues, or parent-child relationships). But we can certainly exert power over those we love through guilt, anger, cajoling, and many other kinds of emotional manipulation. When we do these things, we’re not respecting the other person’s right to do things we don’t like, and we’re trying to get them to change their behavior so it’s pleasing to us (we’re trying to win). We’re telling ourselves and the other person that we know better than he does, that our needs (or often, our whims and desires) are more valuable than his, and that we don’t accept him as an equal with an equal say in the joint decisions that inform our relationship and exclusive say in the individual decisions that inform his own life. Nasty.

Humble people walk away from power struggles – they don’t need them. And here’s the thing, none of this is hard (to honor others’ ideas and convictions as being as worthy as our own, to let go of the need to ‘win’ in relationships, and to stop trying to exert power over the people we’re in relationship with). It’s just that most of us have been trained to live differently. That’s no big deal; we just need to retrain ourselves!

This is how I suggest we go about it: we’re praying for God to help us understand who it is we don’t see right now. Let’s also pray for humble hearts so that as we come to recognize the people we love who we’ve been ignoring, we can approach them as our equals.

And let’s practice humility this way: be attentive to people telling you things you don’t want to hear (I’ve got a lot of that going on in my relationships right now, so I don’t think I’ll have to wait long to start practicing!). Then, as you start to feel angry, upset, defensive, hurt, whatever, remind yourself that this person gets to live her own life, and that while you can’t control how you feel, you can certainly control how you act. Then ask yourself whether it is more important for you to express your disagreement (anger, hurt, upset, whatever) or for you to honor the other person as your equal. I know, it's annoying that you won't be able to stay mad, but I bet that while you'll still want to express your disagreement so the other person will know exactly how she's offended you, you won't be able to bring yourself to do it. Why? Because if you've read this far, you really do want to humble yourself -- even if that means not getting your way.

In some situations where the other person has legitimately caused you harm, you should express that – I’m not saying humility is letting people steamroll you. But if you’re just unhappy with what the person is telling you, then you have the chance to practice humility by letting that person tell you something you find disagreeable without your retaliating.

Remember how I told you biblegateway.com has a verse of the day? Today’s verse is Colossians 3:15 – “And let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, to which indeed you were called in the one body. And be thankful.” The entire paragraph is instructive for us today, so I will end with it. Humility becomes natural if we follow Paul’s advice:

As God's chosen ones, holy and beloved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience. Bear with one another and, if anyone has a complaint against another, forgive each other; just as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive. Above all, clothe yourselves with love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony. And let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, to which indeed you were called in the one body. And be thankful. Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly; teach and admonish one another in all wisdom; and with gratitude in your hearts sing psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs to God. And whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him. – Colossians 3: 12-17

Love,

Becky

Goodbye Alfred Anderson

Just read that the last survivor of the Christmas Truce of World War I passed away in Scotland today (CNN's got the story). For those of you who aren't big history buffs, the Christmas Truce occurred Christmas 1914, when soldiers for the Allied and Central powers spontaneously decided to stop fighting; exchanged 'gifts' of tobacco, candy, or whatever else they had; sang songs; and retrieved their dead.

The story has always touched me because it shows so powerfully that in the midst of chaos, fear, and death our bonds of humanity cannot be extinguished. We may see one another as enemies, but we still depend on one another to be fully human. For a few hours on Christmas morning in 1914, World War I ground to halt along 500 miles of battle because soldiers from opposing sides wanted to celebrate the birth of Christ (and take a break from killing each other).

I also love this story because it just happened -- no one planned for a cease fire or called in orders to lay down weapons. Soldiers just hollered across the divide between them. The people on the other side were trying to kill them, and they wished them a Merry Christmas. It astounds me how incapable we seem to be at reaching similar truces in our own lives when the stakes are profoundly lower.

Love,

Becky

Open the Eyes of My Heart

Unfortunately, fundamental change rarely comes quickly; even more rarely does it come easily (sure, it happens sometimes, but I don’t think it’s something to bank on). If we want to change our hearts so that we are devoted to creating and nurturing just and righteous relationships, it will take time and practice. And it’s going to take God’s help.

Since the beginning of time, many who have acknowledged their faith in God have done things to cultivate an ever-closer relationship with their Creator-Deliverer-Redeemer (depending on the timeframe, God has been characterized as all three and more!). The recognition is that God is vast and incomprehensible, so it takes some effort on our part to stay close – the world around us is distracting (Carl Jung once wrote that “Hurry is not of the Devil; it is the Devil.” Amen that!); God isn’t always in our face, and is therefore easy to neglect; and the every day slog of relationship building can be dull. Look at the relationships we have with people we see every day – our relationship with God is no different; we just don’t see God staring back at us from across the breakfast table.

But if we want the strength, courage, motivation, and desire to nurture justice and righteousness we need to be able to see God staring back at us – certainly from the faces of the people we know and love, but more importantly from the faces of the people we don’t even see.

For me, they’re the folks I pass on the street, anyone who wants my attention if I’m in a hurry or if my mind is focused somewhere else, people I meet when I’m cranky or tired. I might have a conversation with the person (probably I won’t), but I won’t hear a thing and I certainly won’t see the person as God’s creation or my brother/sister in God’s humanity.

We’ll talk about systemic injustices and how we can affect them on a large scale later this week (maybe next week?), but for now, I want to focus on how we relate to the people we come in contact with every day. Think of it as training to tackle large-scale injustice. We're walking before we run. . .

So, how do we reach the point where we can see God staring back at us from others? And how does seeing God in others help us to build whole relationships? I think we take the first question today and the second question tomorrow. Seeing God in others takes five steps:

1. Learn What God Looks Like: You learn this by reading scripture, so you get a feel for how God works in the world; and praying, so you get a feel for how God communicates with you. As this relationship become stronger, the rest of it becomes easier. I know you don’t believe me, but I promise it’s true! Just take 5 minutes over lunch, go to www.biblegateway.com and read their passage of the day. I always read the whole chapter to get more context; but just read it and ask yourself what God would have you learn from that passage on this particular day. Seriously, it takes 5 minutes;
2. Talk to God: Ask for God to keep you attentive and receptive to seeing others. I’m going to do this every morning when I’m out walking my dog, and then again at lunch – just so I remember. I have to admit, I’m going to put it in my Palm Pilot so I don’t forget!;
3. Do a Little Self-Examination: Identify your own ‘blind spots’ (who don’t you see?) This a great thing to pray about – if you ask God who is invisible to you, God will direct your thoughts to those people;
4. Practice a Little Humility: Accept that while you are distinct (and absolutely perfect in your uniqueness), you are just like everyone else, including those people you never see. I am just as needy as the folks who come up asking me for things; I am just as scared and insecure as the rude person who lashes out at me for no good reason; etc.
5. Practice Empathy: Accept people where they are. No one has to please us or meet our standards to be okay. People get to be who they are, and they get to suffer through whatever pain and hardship they’re facing. If we can accept that, we can accept them. Then we don’t see what we don’t like about people anymore; we just see people. Then it’s just a small skip to move from seeing a person to seeing a child of God.

I suggest we concentrate on these five actions to get our hearts right for building whole relationships. They’re not bad ideas just for life in general, but we’re going to focus on how they relate to our seeing the people we ignore. And here’s the thing – the goal is not perfection. The goal is persistence. If we beat ourselves up every time we don’t get it exactly right, we’re just spending a lot of time tearing ourselves down. That’s counter-productive. Rather, let’s spend some of our time in prayer asking God why we slipped and what we can do the next time. Then let’s just keep plugging. I would be surprised if there were any monumental changes overnight, so let’s just focus on building the pattern.

Here is some scripture we can focus on today:

Do not judge, and you will not be judged; do not condemn, and you will not be condemned. Forgive, and you will be forgiven; give, and it will be given to you. A good measure, pressed down, shaken together, running over, will be put into your lap; for the measure you give will be the measure you get back. Luke 6: 37-38

Now remember, Jesus isn’t saying ‘do good and God will give you goodies’. Jesus is saying that whole relationships are mutually nurturing – you put another person’s needs before your own and you help build a culture where others put your needs before their own. Don’t read this scripture through materialistic eyes; read through the eyes of one who seeks wholeness in creation.

[Quick note: I made a commitment to my Bible study friends that I would post 5 times a week during Advent – thinking about this stuff is how I’m staying focused on God each day. I trust that staying focused will help me to see God in the people I meet. So you guys better be reading to make sure I’m doing it!].

Love,

Becky

"Let Justice Roll down like Waters..."

I’m one of those nuts who think every day is a good day to read scripture. I also know I am not in the majority! But it’s my blog, so we’re going to look at scripture on this beautiful Sunday morning. One of the best-known biblical writings on justice comes from Amos. Amos was a prophet in the northern kingdom of Israel during the 8th century BCE (Judah was the southern kingdom. The two kingdoms were unified by King David in roughly 1000 BCE and then split after Solomon’s death in 928 BCE).

Amos grew up in the South, but went to Bethel in Israel (a little north of Jerusalem) to prophesy. His prophecy centered on Israel’s hypocrisy: They were called to be God’s chosen people, yet they were acting just like everyone else – ignoring the poor, exploiting the vulnerable, and worshipping with dead hearts. God says through Amos:

I hate, I despise your festivals, and I take no delight in your solemn assemblies. Even though you offer me your burnt offerings and grain offerings, I will not accept them; and the offerings of well-being of your fatted animals I will not look upon. Take away from me the noise of your songs; I will not listen to the melody of your harps. But let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream. – Amos 5: 21-24

God doesn’t want our ritual. God wants justice and righteousness.

‘Justice’ is a translation from the Hebrew word mishpat (which, depending on context, also translates as judgment). Mishpat is a juridical term that refers to individuals’ rights to participate in community and the relationship between that participation and the integrity of the social order. Those who violate that integrity experience judgment. Those who are denied their integrity are promised justice. We are just to the extent we ensure all people and their well-being are regarded in the structures of society.

‘Righteousness’ translates from the Hebrew word tsadeqah. Tsadeqah is a relational term that refers to creating wholeness in a particular relationship by focusing on the well-being of the others in that relationship. We are righteous to the extent that we create whole relationships by putting others first and taking care of their needs before our own – recognizing that they are doing the same for us.

[Editorial Note: I love this understanding of righteousness! We can never be righteous on our own; our own righteousness comes from the wholeness of our relationships. Beautiful. So all you ‘self-righteous’ people out there with your ‘self-righteous indignation’: You might think about spending some time in prayer asking God to give you the desire and strength to focus on building whole relationships instead of feeling self-satisfied that you get to be right while the folks who disagree with you are wrong. Okay, that’s enough editorializing!]

Though the terms are distinct, we often see them together in Hebrew scripture – the integrity of and participation in a given community cannot come if each member of the community fails to look out for the other members. Likewise, people are often denied their ability (and certainly often their motivation) to put first the needs of those who systematically deny their right to participate in community. On the flip side, as particular individuals and groups are increasingly excluded from participating, it becomes easier for those who do still get to participate to overlook (not necessarily maliciously) the needs and even existence of those they no longer ‘see’.

Amos tells the Israelites that they have the wrong focus. They have become caught up in thinking that devotion to God meant following the rituals of worship – offerings, incense, and prayer. What they need is to:

Seek good and not evil, that you may live; and so the LORD, the God of hosts, will be with you, just as you have said. Hate evil and love good, and establish justice in the gate; it may be that the LORD, the God of hosts, will be gracious to the remnant of Joseph. – Amos 5:14-15

Like Thurman in Jesus and the Disinherited, this isn’t simply a change in the Israelites’ sentiment (any more than it is a change in ours); it is a disciplined change in behavior. That discipline, coupled with a sincere desire for God to change our hearts to long for justice and righteousness, is what transforms empty ritual into true devotion.

My friends have often heard me say that at the end of the day, people do what they want to do. Folks who tell you they "can't" do something -- 10 times out of 10 -- are really telling you they don't want to do it. If they really wanted to, they would. Now here's the thing: In order to be disciplined in ensuring participation and wholeness in community, we have to want it (in that "nothing's going to stop me, so don't start giving me excuses" way). It's not easy and it means that there are times when we have to give up what we want to satisfy the needs of others.

It's doubtful we can live that way on our own, but God wants us to live fully, so we can be assured that if we ask to develop the desire for justice and righteousness into our hearts, God will help us. Then, we’ll actually want it. Then no number of excuses will stop us from working for it. The key is that we can’t sit around and wait to want it; we act and we pray at the same time.

And that’s what we’ll focus on this week. Tomorrow we’ll look at the spiritual discipline of hospitality (not the flimsy understanding of hospitality we have been taught by Miss Manners, but the gritty, tough understanding of hospitality that implies personal sacrifice) and spend the rest of the week thinking about how we can move from where we are today to the fullness of community God wills for us all.

Action for today: Today let's pray for God to change our hearts so we want everyone to participate in the decisions that shape their lives and we want people to have their needs met more than we want our own needs to be met. Take 5 minutes, right now, maybe play some music if that helps your brain get quiet, ask God to help you want to live justly and righteously, and then ask God to show you what that looks like in your life. God might move your thoughts to a particular relationship that could use some tending, or a specific person or group of people you know directly who are excluded. That's it for today -- we're going to start getting our hearts right. We'll keep praying some variant of this all week as we start changing our actions too, but the prayer part is critical. Seriously, it's just five minutes out of your day. The goal is to spend more of that time listening to God (where God takes your thoughts once you ask for guidance) than you spend asking God for guidance. So maybe one minute asking and four minutes letting God direct your thoughts.

Be well,

Becky

Jesus and the Disinherited

I’ve just finished reading Howard Thurman’s Jesus and the Disinherited. Thurman was a 20th century theologian who wrote about racial injustice and the affinities between Christ and blacks living in segregated America. Jesus and the Disinherited was published in 1949, but easily reads as if it had been written today. I would recommend the book strongly (it’s barely 100 pages, but is not something you can rush through and will certainly shake you up). Thurman moves through three effects of injustice – fear, deception, and hate – to conclude with a chapter on Christ’s love as our model for moving beyond injustice to living in love with one another. I have a hunch I’ll be writing on this for a while, so I figure I should start by sharing Thurman’s thoughts.

For Thurman, we overcome injustice when “Each person meets the other where he is and there treats him as if he were where he ought to be” (105). He draws from the biblical example of Christ found in John 8: 1-11. A group of men brought an adulterous woman to Christ to test him – the law stated clearly that she should be stoned for her crime, and if Jesus said differently, they could catch him for violating Jewish law. This is how Thurman depicts the encounter, starting with the question from the scribes and Pharisees:

“What is your judgment?” was their searching question. To them the woman was not a woman, or even a person, but an adulteress, stripped of her essential dignity and worth. Said Jesus: “He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone.” After that, he implied, any person may throw. The quiet words exploded the situation, and in the piercing glare each man saw himself in his literal substance. In that moment each was not a judge of another’s deeds, but of his own. In the same glare the adulteress saw herself merely as a woman involved in the meshes of a struggle with her own elemental passion (105).

We know how the story ends. The accusers, knowing their sins, leave one by one until Jesus is left alone with the woman. He asks her, "Woman, where are they? Has no one condemned you?" She said, "No one, sir." And Jesus said, "Neither do I condemn you. Go your way, and from now on do not sin again" (John 8: 10-11).

Thurman responds:

This is how Jesus demonstrated reverence for personality. He met the woman where she was, and treated her as if she were already now where she willed to be. In dealing with her he “believed” her into the fulfillment of her possibilities. He stirred her confidence into activity. He placed a crown on her head which for the rest of her life she would keep trying to grow tall enough to wear (106).

For Thurman, justice is more than sentiment, and it is surely not an abstract concept. He warns that “merely preaching love of one’s enemies” will never realize change. Rather, he points to “a core of painstaking discipline” each person must choose to adopt that compels us to model Christ’s example every time we encounter someone different from ourselves. Laws may change structures of injustice, but only our behavior, as the sincere expression of our humbled hearts, will bring justice itself.

I might write next about the relationship between our own repentance (and need for Christ’s forgiveness) and our ability to ‘do justice’, though I also think Old Testament teachings on the subject are both beautiful and instructive. And, there’s no point writing about this if we don’t also think very practically about how we meet others where they are, and what we do when they don’t meet us in return (we won’t change the world if we’re Pollyanna about it!).

Be well,

Becky

The Starfish Story

I have to admit, the starfish story is pretty cheesy, but the man who told it to me is the motivation for this blog (maybe I should have called it 'Jym'?). A group of young adults from my church, Mount Olivet UMC, went down to Petersburg, VA in May to work with an organization called Petersburg Urban Ministries. We were gutting an old Safeway that is going to be their new offices (anyone with some spare change? Send it to PUM -- they are good people doing amazing work for low-income teens and young adults in Petersburg, VA. Their new center will have child care so the youth in their program can work and go to school w/o worrying about their kids; physical and mental health care facilities for the folks who come; a cafe so folks get a hot meal. It is truly beautiful, and could absolutely use more money!).

A core of PUM's mission is to run the local YouthBuild -- a national program that allows youth from 16-24 to work toward their GED while learning job skills by building houses that are sold below market value to low-income home buyers. Participants in YouthBuild also learn interviewing skills, nutrition, interpersonal skills, all the sorts of things young adults need to survive in the workforce.

One of the construction managers from YouthBuild, Jym, stayed with us at the old Safeway to oversee our efforts and make sure we didn't hurt ourselves (We tore down every internal wall in the place!). One day at lunch, one of the women with us asked Jym why he works for YouthBuild. He's an accomplished carpenter and could make really good money in construction (I'll say it one more time: PUM is incredible, but they are poor! Have an extra $10? Send it their way). Jym answered by telling the starfish story:

A man was walking down the beach one day and came across a stretch that was littered with starfish. They had swept ashore at the last high tide and were now stuck. He saw a woman flinging them back into the ocean, and gently informed her that her efforts were futile – there were too many starfish for her to save them all. The woman reached down, picked up a starfish, looked him in the eye, and said, "Tell it to that starfish" as she tossed it back into the water. Then she picked up another starfish, chucked it in, and said, "tell it to that starfish."

Jym said something I believe in my heart but find very hard to live: We can't solve all the world's problems, but that's no excuse not to do what we can. He knows he won't help every poor kid in Petersburg, VA make a good life for themselves, but he can help some. He just has to do it. That's what we're going to talk about here -- how do we live lives of service to each other without succumbing to the defeatist notion that what we're doing can never be enough?

Have any thoughts you'd like to share? Post them as comments, or send them to becky at thatstarfish.com.

And hey, Jonas? Thanks.

All the best!