Song: Circle of Love | Ted Talk: Calling People In |
Friends,
I ran up to Vermont this past weekend to see my brother and his girlfriend (and play games by candlelight when the power went out.) Then church with my parents.
And the highlight! The Champlain Dinner train from Burlington to Middlebury with a three course dinner. I was there with three high school friends and our spouses. We had a simply lovely time.
-Liz
Unkindness defiles the speaker.
Just before the story of the Canaanite woman, Jesus discussing washing hands. A bit of this is included in the optional portion of this week's lectionary reading.
Jesus says: "But what comes out of the mouth proceeds from the heart, and this is what defiles. For out of the heart come evil intentions, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false witness, slander. These are what defile a person, but to eat with unwashed hands does not defile.” Matthew 15:18-20.
I quote this particular text often, because it is one of the many evidences that people who claim to be biblical literalists are not, in fact, literalists. They wash their hands before eating even though Jesus says (earlier in the text) it's good to not wash your hands. (It's clearer in Mark 7:20 where it says explicitly that Disciples do not wash their hands before eating.)
But rather than arguing about what others believe, I think I'd do better to consider what this text really means to us today. Because we know it is only literally about washing hands.
What comes out of the heart: our words, and our actions, are what can defile us. I think of things people say and do that hurt others, and notice that the point here is that it hurts me to be the bad speaker or bad actor. The emphasis here is how I harm myself, more than that I defile myself before God, by the harmful things I say and do.
In this time and place, the most harmful things I am thinking, saying, and doing, are against people who got voted differently than I did. People who are standing up for white nationalists, for illegal ice arrests, for reductions in food stamps, medicaid funding, who are against fair supports for trans people and for people with disabilities.
I find myself raging and joking and writing about how bad those people are. And the message of this text, heard by me, and people like me, in these times, is that I am hurting myself to be caught in this repeated poking at them.
When we are really frustrated we want to use any language we can to be hurtful. We want to make fun of people because of their body type, their weird name, or their insistence on editing their non-anglo name. We call people stupid, or desperate, or unwilling to look at the facts. We throw around terms like racists, sexist, homophobic. We are saying that another person's very being is not good enough.
Not good enough for what? For God's love? For our love?
All of these behaviors that we, that I, fall into easily, are not helpful in the work to improve our community, nor in our efforts to change the political climate. But Jesus is going further than that, he is suggesting that we are defiling ourselves in God's eyes. We don't really live (yet) in a purity culture, but we are moving ourselves into the impure category.
This is not the response of a good Christian. Somehow we are encouraged to figure out how to stand up for what is right without pushing down any individuals, any groups of people. This idea that we are to love everyone is very hard to figure out.
I don't think it's accidental that this story precedes the story of the Canaanite woman. Jesus tries to set her aside, to identify her as other, as not one of God's elect. But she does not call him names, spit on him, or even walk off muttering. She uses his own story, his own message to insist on being included.
These days, this is described as the work of calling people in. It is the work of hearing harmful things, and seeing violent actions and figuring out how to ask questions. How to listen for the underlying concern. How to see the person as God's child even as they are hurting God's children. How to keep my own body regulated, safe, to keep my anger under control so that I can be really interested in how this person got to this belief system.
I don't promise this will work. I promise only that it will be better for each of us if we don't let their unkind or hateful behavior turn us into someone we don't want to be. We want to remain faithful the gospel of love.
Do you have connections to people you strongly disagree with? How are you handling those relationships? Reply to this email to let me know what's happening.
Here is a framework for Calling People In. I especially like her focus that we can choose different strategies for different people. Calling in is the strategy for people we want to maintain a relationship with.
In the Circle of Love by Tokio Fujiyama. (2:40)
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