Who belongs?

And as [Jesus] reclined at table in his house, many tax collectors and sinners were reclining with Jesus and his disciples, for there were many who followed him. And the scribes of the Pharisees, when they saw that he was eating with sinners and tax collectors, said to his disciples, “Why does he eat with tax collectors and sinners?” (Mark 2:15-16)

I heard it long ago and many times since: ‘If you draw a circle to define who’s in and who’s out, be assured Jesus is on the outside looking back at you.’

It’s a cliché, a bit tired. But perhaps it fits today amid the brutal question roiling the soul of America: Who belongs? How big should the circle be? Differences of opinion are currently being played out on the streets of Minneapolis.

Christians have a dog in this fight. At the heart of a truly Christian consciousness, lies the love of Christ, who is constantly seeking to restore human community to a fullness of love and belonging, where graces are shared and every human soul knows its worth.

There is something in the Christian heart that hates walls that divide, a desire to welcome every willing soul into the respect and warmth of human community.

It is well accepted that nations need borders, and no nation can or should be expected to accommodate all who want to enter. But the faith of the church leans toward welcome, toward mercy, toward compassion, shaped as it is by Jesus, who so regularly stood outside circles of exclusion, erasing lines of division drawn by the privileged, the fearful and the self-righteous.

There’s nothing more telling in this regard than Jesus’ meal practice. Take the quote above.

Most translations have Jesus sitting at table with a group of outcasts and social disasters whose behavior has placed them well outside community acceptability. But he doesn’t sit. He reclines, along with everyone else enjoying the meal.

Lying on his left elbow, the typical practice of his time and place, he reaches with his right arm for bits of food or to take a cup. The picture is one of relaxation, familiarity, comfort, ease, savoring the pleasure of food, drink and human presence with people who were regularly reminded they didn’t belong, except here, with Jesus.

It is impossible to think of this without imagining a smile of satisfaction tugging at the corners of his mouth. Lord knows, I feel his joy as I imagine him there, creating his own circle of acceptance into which his critics would have been welcome had they been willing.

This after all was his purpose, to regather and restore the people of Israel to their true spiritual vocation of being ‘a light to the nations,’ where the Lord ‘will make for all peoples a feast of rich food, a feast of well-aged wines’—the fullness of human existence, as the prophet Isaiah proclaimed.

Something of this hope and vocation, ‘a light to the nations,’ is deeply embedded not only in the hearts of those who cherish the boundary-breaking joy of Jesus’ witness, but also in the American dream of many peoples becoming one for the good of all.

This dream and vocation are daily attacked on the streets of our nation by those who draw narrow, exclusive circles because they have replaced the vision of America with arrogant delusions of their superiority.

Even more troubling, many American Christians have lost or never knew and felt the gracious vision of Jesus reclining with his excluded friends. Seduced by the rhetoric of fear and falsehood, they fail to know the joyful mission to which they are called. But Jesus doesn’t forget. He is still there, inviting all of us to come home and share the feast of welcome.

Perhaps this is why I cherish the demonstrations of Christians singing in the streets of Minneapolis, so much more than the bitter vitriol (however understandable) that merely mimics the brutality of ICE. The singers seem to know Jesus.

David L. Miller

Staying human amid the mess

 

Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me; for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls (Matthew 11:29)

We took the Christmas tree down today. The tree is artificial; the emotions were not.

The process follows a decades-old pattern. I remove the ornaments and give them to Dixie, who packs them away until next year when we will bring them out of storage and tell stories about where this one or that came from, or who gave it to us, and how it is connected to the life of our family.

Dixie is better at remembering these stories. She was paying closer attention to what most matters through the years, so she reminds me as we put away the tatted angels and glistening stars, olive wood mangers and the artisan acorn our daughter, Rachel, reclaimed from my mother’s house after she absconded with it.

‘I suppose this is silly,’ Dixie says, as she slips ornaments into protective boxes and bags they don’t necessarily require.

‘No, it’s not,’ I reply without thinking. ‘Its gentle and respectful and reverent,’ which is what I see as I watch her eyes and hands guide each item into its bag or tiny box until it is safely ensconced, her pulling a draw string or sealing the top of a Glad bag, ensuring it is safely home.  

Gentle, respectful and reverent, the words came without prior consideration. They crossed my lips before I knew what I was saying, which doesn’t make them less true, only more so. The words are, in fact, a prayer of my sad and troubled heart. In this case, they are an answered prayer, for which I am doubly thankful.

My mind and heart have been absorbed in the news where gentleness, respect and reverence were killed once again, this time by a bullet piercing the head of a Minneapolis mother and wounding the hearts of all who still believe every human being is a precious and irreplaceable image of the God who is Love.

Unfortunately, the federal government of our nation is now led by men and women who lack this reverence for life, regardless of what pieties they may spout. Their hearts are wed to power without principle, and their words demonize, their actions brutalize, any who get in their way.

A woman is shot, and they immediately blame her, undisturbed by the agent who called her a ‘fucking bitch’ as he holstered his gun and just … walked away … after killing her, his words and actions an apt metaphor for the dark heart of the Trump administration—if not also for the loss of transcendent values at the heart of post-modern secularity.

It is hard, no, impossible, for me to navigate the vertiginous distance between the nihilistic barbarity of our times and the preciousness of life I felt as Dixie and I carefully stored Christmas away until the happy day, we, God willing, do it all again.

What happened in our living room seems insignificant amid the fury of recent events. But I know it is one more thing that keeps me human. It softens my heart, eases my sadness and protects me from the rage that swells within at the malignant malevolence of ICE, which, unchecked, would make me a mirror image of that which I hate.

Holding the image of those hands slipping ornaments safely away, my heart is healed by the gentleness, respect and reverence that is the heart of my Lord in the heart of my beloved.

David L. Miller

Becoming Simeon

Guided by the Spirit, Simeon came into the temple; and when the parents brought in the child Jesus, to do for him what was customary under the law, Simeon took him in his arms and praised God, saying, ‘Master, now you are dismissing your servant in peace, according to your word; for my eyes have seen your salvation. (Luke 2:27-30)

Stories rise and fall in memories’ store. Floating beneath the horizon of consciousness, they wait their time, suddenly appearing in vivid contour when touched by other tales, to show us who we are and what we need.

In ancient story, an old man wanders into the temple as he has for years, there to pray and watch and wait, biding time, hoping to touch the meaning of all time. Enter a couple with an infant, coming to pray and make an offering for the gift of the child.

And he knows. I don’t know how. But he knows the mysterious way the heart knows love and beauty and kindness and other things that most matter. This is the one, his old heart says. This is the child, the light God promised he’d see before death closed his eyes.

Taking the child in his arms, he raises his tired eyes to heaven to pray his thanks, and suddenly I don’t see an old man in an ancient land. I see Bob, an old man who lived down the street when I was a boy.

He stands there, holding the child. But I know the child he is holding is me, the way he held my life with gentleness when I was 10 or 11, taking me fishing in his old green Studebaker, showing me how to dig potatoes and pick beans in his garden, letting me come along as he walked to St. Anne’s down the street to caulk a worn window, repair a door hinge or do whatever the priest needed.

I was there, my heart held, though I knew it not, at least not as now.

Now, I see. Bob was Simeon, holding the life of Christ yet sleeping within the hidden depths of my boyhood, waiting to be awakened to unveil the beauty within that we each bear … and each are.

Today, I am about as old as Bob was then, and I want to be Simeon, too, filled with gratitude and praise and wonder for the lives my heart and hands have been privileged to hold.

I can see the whole of life, all that I am, all that I see and do through Simeon’s eyes and with his heart. Like him, I am called to hold the mystery of the Christ-life hidden in the hearts of every face I meet. The beauty of Christ lies asleep in the hearts of many, waiting to be warmed and awakened by whatever love and kindness I have to share, that the Lord’s beauty may be known in human flesh once more.

Being Simeon is a whole way of life; a gracious way filled with gratitude for the privilege of holding the beauty of Christ, not only within ourselves, but in our care for the Christ-life hidden in the hearts of every human soul we shall ever know, see or touch.

In the communion of Saints, as we dwell in union with those who have gone before us, I hope Bob can hear the thanks of my heart for being Simeon for me, one of several. But then, as I hold the precious lives of those most dear, I realize, no thanks are needed.

David L. Miller