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Proper 16, Year C

Isaiah 58:9b-14
Luke 13:10-17

Mercy.

Such a powerful word. Spoken alone, such a powerful sentence, a powerful plea.

Mercy.

And so often we find so many other words, so many other calls, more compelling -- or at least loud enough to drown out calls for mercy.

On vacation in our little cabin, my partner was reading a book that offered a quiz on religious literacy, one of the questions being, "Name the Ten Commandments." (And hurrah for the book for recognizing that Jews, Roman Catholics, and Protestants actually don't have identical lists; we divide the passage that contains them differently, so any courtroom or classroom that posts one list of them will be choosing one tradition's version.) I'm a little embarrassed to say that off the top of my head, I only named nine. I forgot to include honoring the sabbath. In a way, it's not surprising; very few of us keep any day at all as sabbath, let alone THE sabbath (and it's not Sunday -- that's the day of Jesus' resurrection, and worth honoring, but it's not the sabbath day).

Many of our cultures in the West don't place much value on observing sabbath, and so I often hear passages such as this Sunday's gospel as a story of Jesus saying, "Look at all of these stupid rules you have. Just GET OVER IT!" But that's not the point at all. Jesus doesn't talk about exercising mercy on the sabbath because keeping sabbath is such a silly, arbitrary, or unnecessary thing. He picks it up because it's an ancient commandment. It's a central commandment -- one that God Herself honored in creation. The prophetic book of Isaiah speaks of honoring the sabbath in the same breath as honoring our sisters and brothers with our words, with offering our own food to the hungry and serving those in need.

Jesus doesn't talk about the sabbath in this Sunday's gospel because he thinks it's to be lightly tossed aside, let alone to suggest (in the way too many do, tinged with antisemitism) that those who keep it are foolish or universally hypocritical.

He talks about it in this particular context because it IS important. The weight of what Jesus is saying DEPENDS upon the importance of keeping sabbath. That's where the impact comes from when he says that as important as that is, exercising mercy is just as important and often more urgent -- indeed, that extending mercy -- God's mercy -- can be a way of keeping sabbath.

I thought about that a bit today, on my way to a doctor's appointment and walking past four men begging on the five blocks between the office and my home. I know a bit about what it's like in their shoes, so as I walked by, even though I wasn't going to give money, I offered eye contact and conversation. Not much -- just the sort that neighbors have on the corner on a warm day, not ending with "No," or "Sorry, no change," but continuing with "Sure is hot this morning," "Stay cool," "God bless."

I thought about it earlier this week, when I read a Salon.com advice columnist's response when a reader asked him about whether the church group serving breakfast to the homeless might better sit down to eat with those they served than go out to a hotel brunch afterward. I'm going to quote him (Cary Tennis) at length here, because I think he says it well, though not in the words I'd choose:

... as humans we seek integration of the vast, many-faceted pattern that is our being. And the parts of us that we don't fully understand, or that are buried or undeveloped, signal us in primitive ways, through signs and encounters, through instinct, through happenstance and mishap and magic. In the struggle for integration of the self we proceed by signs. Sometimes it's moving too fast to work out on paper. A highly intuitive person, for instance, may see in a flash that his place is alongside the poor, not in the hotel with the mimosas. He may see it all in a flash and have to go with it. There's no time to explain! Just stay here! Really, though. There's no time to explain! Really ...

The thing is, what you may not have considered is that while you think you're the one who holds all the cards, the topsy-turvy truth is that these people at the homeless shelter have a lot to offer you. You already know how to drink mimosas. But do you know how to stay dry in the rain? Have you ever known hunger? It is a good thing to know, what hunger feels like. It is good to know the terror of finding yourself alone on the street with no food and no money and no idea where you are, knowing no one, having no phone numbers to call, having no sister or brother to drive and pick you up, having no parents to call upon, no children to call upon, no friends, no employers, no agencies. That's a good thing to know. It is a good thing to know what it feels like to wait and wait on a corner until you finally just fall asleep there on the cold, hard sidewalk. It's good to know when was the first time you realized you didn't have an address. These are things you might talk about as you eat [with those at the soup kitchen]. ... I think it is a revolutionary consciousness that can be expressed in a quiet, humble, Christian way, just by sitting down and sharing food with people.

It's a plea worth hearing, I think: There's no time to explain! Just stay here! It's a striking combination of phrases, and I think an apt one. There are so many concerns, so many headlines, so many self-help and parenting and retirement financing and other gurus who scream for attention, who want us to believe that we must do one thing or another urgently or we're in dreadful danger -- and the urgent thing in question is rarely if ever, among the central concerns that provide the tension in the gospel story we tell this Sunday.

I live in a culture in which a fitness chain advertises exercise clubs with the slogan, "You can rest when you're dead." Who ever says, "There's no time to explain! Just stay here!"? Who says, "Don't just do something -- stand there!"? Who -- other than the Spirit whose fruit includes peace -- says, "If you're that stressed about all you have to do, can you afford NOT to breathe?" And who -- other than God's love whispering to our hearts -- says, "Times are tough -- we can't afford to skimp on compassion"?

I've listened to countless people over the past decade or so wonder aloud how it is that they work more and more and are increasingly exhausted, and yet the harder they work, the more they feel behind. The last thing most of us need to hear is that keeping sabbath is a triviality and we should pack more charitable exertion into any spare hour, and that's not what Jesus is saying either. It's that keeping sabbath is important, AND that reaching out to participate in God's bringing healing, freedom, joy, and peace to those in need is an appropriate, rejuvenating path to experiencing those things more fully in our own lives.

Folks who have read this blog for a while know that one of hunches about how our minds work is that we often avoid looking at length and with open hearts in the eye of those who are very old or very young without others to care for them, the homeless and those ill or in pain, those who are lonely, angry, or grieving, because their vulnerability reminds us of our own. "Compassion fatigue" and just plain fatigue sometimes spring from a common root: we will not feel peace or be at rest when we are frantically running away from something.

So this week as we're reflecting on the gospel, it might do us some good to linger where Jesus lingers, to begin in a moment of sabbath, to start from a quiet place within, and meet with God's compassion the gaze of someone who is suffering -- someone in the news, someone on the street, someone in our memory -- and to remind ourselves ('reminding' involving a state of mindfulness!) of the dignity, the freedom, the blessing that is God's desire for this person as God's child.

We may be moved to act. I often am, and it can be tempting in that moment to act in a way designed more to put this person and the vulnerability s/he represents out of mind. But listen! There's no time to explain -- just stay here! And if we can stay with the pain we see and reach out from that quiet place within, it's my experience that God's compassion will flow in ways that will transform us as well as our world.

Thanks be to God!

August 24, 2007 in Healing, Isaiah, Luke, ONE campaign/Millennium Development Goals, Year C | Permalink

Comments

This is a good one, Dylan. Thanks. :-)
(I don't read all the time, but sometimes when I'm stuck I wind up here... you're helping me out, this week!)

Posted by: Miranda Hassett | Aug 17, 2010 3:13:25 PM

Glad you found it helpful -- thanks for letting me know!

Posted by: Sarah Dylan Breuer | Aug 17, 2010 9:34:24 PM

Dear Sarah, I read you every week, from over on the far side of the pond. You always, always, stretch my thinking, and it's high time I thanked you, and thanked God for your e-ministry.

Posted by: David Robinson | Aug 19, 2013 3:10:38 PM

The comments to this entry are closed.

 
Dylan's lectionary blog: Proper 16, Year C

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Proper 16, Year C

Isaiah 58:9b-14
Luke 13:10-17

Mercy.

Such a powerful word. Spoken alone, such a powerful sentence, a powerful plea.

Mercy.

And so often we find so many other words, so many other calls, more compelling -- or at least loud enough to drown out calls for mercy.

On vacation in our little cabin, my partner was reading a book that offered a quiz on religious literacy, one of the questions being, "Name the Ten Commandments." (And hurrah for the book for recognizing that Jews, Roman Catholics, and Protestants actually don't have identical lists; we divide the passage that contains them differently, so any courtroom or classroom that posts one list of them will be choosing one tradition's version.) I'm a little embarrassed to say that off the top of my head, I only named nine. I forgot to include honoring the sabbath. In a way, it's not surprising; very few of us keep any day at all as sabbath, let alone THE sabbath (and it's not Sunday -- that's the day of Jesus' resurrection, and worth honoring, but it's not the sabbath day).

Many of our cultures in the West don't place much value on observing sabbath, and so I often hear passages such as this Sunday's gospel as a story of Jesus saying, "Look at all of these stupid rules you have. Just GET OVER IT!" But that's not the point at all. Jesus doesn't talk about exercising mercy on the sabbath because keeping sabbath is such a silly, arbitrary, or unnecessary thing. He picks it up because it's an ancient commandment. It's a central commandment -- one that God Herself honored in creation. The prophetic book of Isaiah speaks of honoring the sabbath in the same breath as honoring our sisters and brothers with our words, with offering our own food to the hungry and serving those in need.

Jesus doesn't talk about the sabbath in this Sunday's gospel because he thinks it's to be lightly tossed aside, let alone to suggest (in the way too many do, tinged with antisemitism) that those who keep it are foolish or universally hypocritical.

He talks about it in this particular context because it IS important. The weight of what Jesus is saying DEPENDS upon the importance of keeping sabbath. That's where the impact comes from when he says that as important as that is, exercising mercy is just as important and often more urgent -- indeed, that extending mercy -- God's mercy -- can be a way of keeping sabbath.

I thought about that a bit today, on my way to a doctor's appointment and walking past four men begging on the five blocks between the office and my home. I know a bit about what it's like in their shoes, so as I walked by, even though I wasn't going to give money, I offered eye contact and conversation. Not much -- just the sort that neighbors have on the corner on a warm day, not ending with "No," or "Sorry, no change," but continuing with "Sure is hot this morning," "Stay cool," "God bless."

I thought about it earlier this week, when I read a Salon.com advice columnist's response when a reader asked him about whether the church group serving breakfast to the homeless might better sit down to eat with those they served than go out to a hotel brunch afterward. I'm going to quote him (Cary Tennis) at length here, because I think he says it well, though not in the words I'd choose:

... as humans we seek integration of the vast, many-faceted pattern that is our being. And the parts of us that we don't fully understand, or that are buried or undeveloped, signal us in primitive ways, through signs and encounters, through instinct, through happenstance and mishap and magic. In the struggle for integration of the self we proceed by signs. Sometimes it's moving too fast to work out on paper. A highly intuitive person, for instance, may see in a flash that his place is alongside the poor, not in the hotel with the mimosas. He may see it all in a flash and have to go with it. There's no time to explain! Just stay here! Really, though. There's no time to explain! Really ...

The thing is, what you may not have considered is that while you think you're the one who holds all the cards, the topsy-turvy truth is that these people at the homeless shelter have a lot to offer you. You already know how to drink mimosas. But do you know how to stay dry in the rain? Have you ever known hunger? It is a good thing to know, what hunger feels like. It is good to know the terror of finding yourself alone on the street with no food and no money and no idea where you are, knowing no one, having no phone numbers to call, having no sister or brother to drive and pick you up, having no parents to call upon, no children to call upon, no friends, no employers, no agencies. That's a good thing to know. It is a good thing to know what it feels like to wait and wait on a corner until you finally just fall asleep there on the cold, hard sidewalk. It's good to know when was the first time you realized you didn't have an address. These are things you might talk about as you eat [with those at the soup kitchen]. ... I think it is a revolutionary consciousness that can be expressed in a quiet, humble, Christian way, just by sitting down and sharing food with people.

It's a plea worth hearing, I think: There's no time to explain! Just stay here! It's a striking combination of phrases, and I think an apt one. There are so many concerns, so many headlines, so many self-help and parenting and retirement financing and other gurus who scream for attention, who want us to believe that we must do one thing or another urgently or we're in dreadful danger -- and the urgent thing in question is rarely if ever, among the central concerns that provide the tension in the gospel story we tell this Sunday.

I live in a culture in which a fitness chain advertises exercise clubs with the slogan, "You can rest when you're dead." Who ever says, "There's no time to explain! Just stay here!"? Who says, "Don't just do something -- stand there!"? Who -- other than the Spirit whose fruit includes peace -- says, "If you're that stressed about all you have to do, can you afford NOT to breathe?" And who -- other than God's love whispering to our hearts -- says, "Times are tough -- we can't afford to skimp on compassion"?

I've listened to countless people over the past decade or so wonder aloud how it is that they work more and more and are increasingly exhausted, and yet the harder they work, the more they feel behind. The last thing most of us need to hear is that keeping sabbath is a triviality and we should pack more charitable exertion into any spare hour, and that's not what Jesus is saying either. It's that keeping sabbath is important, AND that reaching out to participate in God's bringing healing, freedom, joy, and peace to those in need is an appropriate, rejuvenating path to experiencing those things more fully in our own lives.

Folks who have read this blog for a while know that one of hunches about how our minds work is that we often avoid looking at length and with open hearts in the eye of those who are very old or very young without others to care for them, the homeless and those ill or in pain, those who are lonely, angry, or grieving, because their vulnerability reminds us of our own. "Compassion fatigue" and just plain fatigue sometimes spring from a common root: we will not feel peace or be at rest when we are frantically running away from something.

So this week as we're reflecting on the gospel, it might do us some good to linger where Jesus lingers, to begin in a moment of sabbath, to start from a quiet place within, and meet with God's compassion the gaze of someone who is suffering -- someone in the news, someone on the street, someone in our memory -- and to remind ourselves ('reminding' involving a state of mindfulness!) of the dignity, the freedom, the blessing that is God's desire for this person as God's child.

We may be moved to act. I often am, and it can be tempting in that moment to act in a way designed more to put this person and the vulnerability s/he represents out of mind. But listen! There's no time to explain -- just stay here! And if we can stay with the pain we see and reach out from that quiet place within, it's my experience that God's compassion will flow in ways that will transform us as well as our world.

Thanks be to God!

August 24, 2007 in Healing, Isaiah, Luke, ONE campaign/Millennium Development Goals, Year C | Permalink

Comments

The comments to this entry are closed.