No Strings

If the person is poor, you shall not sleep in the garment given you as the pledge. You shall give the pledge back by sunset, so that your neighbor may sleep in the cloak and bless you. (Deuteronomy 24.12-13)

While we exult in Advent’s time of expectation, for many it is a season of dark dread. Even as we read this, countless people are suffocating with anxiety because they have no means of celebrating the Feast of the Nativity or placing gifts under the tree—if they have a tree at all. We rally around these folks and do everything we can to lift their burden. Yet in our giving we should be wary that it comes with no strings attached—without pity, without prejudice, without any expectation of reward or praise, and most of all, without any sense we are somehow superior (or “more blessed”) than those in need.

We are culturally predisposed to divide and separate the well off from the less fortunate, the haves from the have-nots. Of this supposition, Dorothy Day wrote:

The poor, it seems, have no right to beauty, to order. Poverty must be squalor, filth, ugliness, to be deemed poverty. But this is destitution, and it was usually from such destitution that our family had “come up in the world.”

It should humble us to realize our families have been where those we help presently are. A journey back through our histories land us at a point where we too faced poverty and its stigmas. Yet someone saw to our needs because making our families strong strengthened the community at large.

In the Hebrew Bible, provision for the poor is consistently framed in the context of community. It is for the common good that those having much are expected to give to those having little. In Deuteronomy, we see one method of how this works. When poor people need help, it is offered in the guise of a loan to protect the recipient from being disparaged as a freeloader. The “lender” takes the “borrower’s” cloak as collateral, presumably to be held until the “debt” is paid. Before the day ends, however, the cloak is returned to ensure the needy person can sleep comfortably through the cold night. The leverage to demand payment is removed so the poor person’s anxieties are quelled and he/she doesn’t lose respect. This is the same principle that Jesus cites when saying, “If someone asks for your coat, offer your shirt as well.”

As we go about our seasonal giving to those in need, let us take care to honor their dignity as valuable members of our communities. It’s not about feeling good about what we do to help out. It’s not about feeling sorry for those who need our help. It’s about easing their anxieties and keeping them warm and safe during a time when circumstance threatens their capacity to care for their own.

Walk With Them

Ruth said, “Do not press me to leave you or turn back from following you! Where you go, I will go; Where you lodge, I will lodge; your people shall be my people, and your God my God.” (Ruth 1.16)

The Compassion Principle

Not long ago I heard an illuminating talk about compassion. The speaker began by breaking down the word’s Latin roots, pointing out that it literally means, “shared suffering.” Then she said the best definition of compassion she’d ever heard came from a Benedictine nun, who told her to be compassionate is to walk beside people in trouble—actively participating in their journey, meeting them where they are, and supporting their efforts to move ahead. Thus, compassion is an intentional work of grace that collapses the distance and differences between those in need and us. It is not sympathy, which attempts to provide solace from a polite remove. Nor is it empathy, which professes to know and understand another’s situation. Compassion surpasses feeling and transpires in the doing. Our sorrow for others means nothing if it stops short of investing our all to alleviate it. Without committing to walk with them in their distress—to make their suffering our own—we’re merely well-wishers, sympathetic viewers from the sidelines.

The more we study God’s Word, the more we mature in our faith, the more convinced we are that compassion is the core Christian value. This belief is inherited from our Jewish forebears, who filled Hebrew scripture with texts extolling compassion as one of God’s defining traits. Numerous times the writers link God’s compassion with divine faithfulness, as we see in Nehemiah 9.17: “You are a forgiving God, gracious and compassionate, slow to anger and abounding in love. Therefore You did not desert them.” Compassion becomes the central theme in Jesus’s message as well, not only in His depiction of God, but also in the expectations He sets for us. Most famously, Jesus marries compassion for others to love for God in the Great Commandment, which we hear in Sunday’s Gospel: “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,” followed by, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” (Mark 12.30-31) Then, in Galatians 6.2, Paul underscores compassion’s centrality to our faith when he writes, “Bear one another’s burdens, and in this way you will fulfill the law of Christ.” Bearing the burdens of others, sharing in their suffering, walking beside them, meeting them in their need—we cannot misconstrue the compassion principle as a call for kindness that keeps its distance. It is the law of Christ that places very specific demands on our attitudes and behaviors toward one another. Compassion, first and foremost, is an act of obedience.

Relentless

There’s a relentless aspect of compassion that we all too often—and easily—overlook. Compassion is an act of faith we carry out by faith, ignoring conventional wisdom, social mores and taboos, and political expediencies that would advise against walking with others. We see the full extent of compassion in God’s unyielding covenant to love and accept us despite our failures and deficits. But we also observe its relentless nature in dozens of biblical characters who are moved to bear the burdens of people around them. None of these examples is more vivid than Ruth’s. Here is a woman dealing with extraordinary loss, whose future is anything but certain, and who stands to lose everything she treasures if she embraces another’s sufferings as her own. Yet that’s precisely what Ruth does. She’s relentless in her compassion for Naomi, the mother of her recently deceased husband, and commits herself—despite her mother-in-law’s protests—to walk with Naomi, to bear her burdens, and to face life’s uncertainties alongside her.

Ruth’s story is familiar to most of us. Yet we risk undervaluing its gravity by underestimating its complexity. Sunday’s Old Testament text (Ruth 1.1-18) introduces her saga with a detailed background that brings Ruth’s dilemma into sharp focus. Ruth and Orpah are two Moabite women who marry the sons of a Jewish couple who relocate to Moab after famine descends on their home in Bethlehem. Despite ethnic, religious, and cultural differences, both marriages prosper. Then the father-in-law dies, as do both sons, leaving three widows with no viable means of support. With no blood relatives to provide for her, Naomi has no choice but to return to her extended family in Bethlehem. Going home is no guarantee she’ll be accepted. Her sons’ marriages to pagan women casts shadows over her and her return no doubt will give rise to resentments about having to care for a woman who’s not contributed to the family coffers for many years. Ruth and Orpah do have a way out, however. They can return to their families and resume the lives they knew before marriage. It won’t be easy. They too will confront prejudices and disdain for marrying outsiders. But they’ll have a safe home and provisions to ensure they won’t starve.

Reluctantly, Orpah assents to Naomi’s wishes. Ruth refuses. It’s inconceivable to her that Naomi should return to Bethlehem alone. So profound is her compassion that she voluntarily severs family, cultural, and religious ties to walk beside Naomi into a strange world, to live among strangers who despise her, to adopt strange customs, to speak a strange language, to worship a strange God. Ruth has absolutely nothing to gain by bearing Naomi’s burdens. That’s why the compassion conveyed in her resolve takes our breath away. “Do not press me to leave you or turn back from following you!” she insists. “Where you go, I will go; Where you lodge, I will lodge; your people shall be my people, and your God my God. Where you die, I will die—there I will be buried. May the LORD do thus and so to me, and more as well, if even death parts me from you.” (Ruth 1.16-17) There’s no pause to consider what’s “appropriate” or “feasible.” There’s no lengthy hug, followed by a tender fare-thee-well and reminders to “call if you need anything.” Ruth doesn’t promise, “I’ll be there for you.” Ruth is there and refuses to be anywhere but there. Ruth is relentless.

Admonishments and Promises

Stripped of relentlessness, compassion is reduced to sentiment—an affect that has little effect in a harsh world. As believers who seek to reflect God’s nature in all we do and followers of Christ compelled to honor Christ’s commands, we are wise to take Ruth’s example to heart. And that begins by removing the filter of self from our eyes. Especially for American Christians participating in our national elections, this passage comes at a critical time. We cannot of good conscience enter the voting booth alone. We must take those we walk beside with us—those presently struggling with poverty, hunger, homelessness, violence, broken families, and every other form of social neglect. Beyond what may be best for us, we must consider what’s best for them and, if necessary, place their needs above our wants. We must subvert conventional wisdom, social mores and taboos, and political expediencies—many of them endorsed by religious leaders—to demonstrate true compassion in all of its relentless glory.

In Psalm 112.1-5 we read, “Blessed are those who fear the LORD, who find great delight in God’s commands. Their children will be mighty in the land; the generation of the upright will be blessed. Wealth and riches are in their houses, and their righteousness endures forever. Even in darkness light dawns for the upright, for those who are gracious and compassionate and righteous. Good will come to those who are generous and lend freely, who conduct their affairs with justice.” (NIV) May we listen closely to these admonishments and promises, and like Ruth, trust God above all else in our commitment to walk beside those in need.

Compassion goes beyond promising to be there. It is there and refuses to be anywhere but there, walking beside those in need, bearing their burdens, and sharing in their suffering.

Love the Stranger

For the LORD your God is God of gods and Lord of lords… Who loves the strangers, providing them food and clothing. You shall also love the stranger, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt. (Deuteronomy 10.17-19)

When I was a kid, I’d visit classmates whose grandparents lived with them. That felt rather odd to me, as the idea of an extended family living under one roof was foreign to my Southern roots. “Our people”—as we called kinfolk—tended to live in close proximity to one another, yet seldom in the same house. If a relative needed a place to stay, they were always welcome. But it was understood these arrangements were temporary; the whole point of welcoming them into the house was getting them back on their feet to make it on their own. So the concept of multiple generations living together was a real curiosity. What’s more, most of my friends’ grandparents came from “the old country,” a euphemism for their homelands. They spoke little, if any, English and always seemed distant from everyday American life. Yet these strange people who neither spoke America’s language nor understood its customs were revered in our community. They were heroes who left the world they knew, often at great sacrifice, to provide something better, richer, and more promising for their children. They were living proof of what America—the “land of opportunity”—was all about.

Getting to America was tough. Being allowed to stay was even tougher. The immigration maze was nearly impossible to navigate. The bureaucratic indifference was disheartening. And the overt hostility many new immigrants encountered while trying to carve out new lives was terrifying. They persevered. But they didn’t do it alone. Everyone rallied around them, driven by a common sentiment that permeated American life—the sense that we were building a new kind of nation where ethnicity and class were irrelevant. In my youth, this was the “American dream”—E pluribus unum, “one out of many”—not the fantasy of personal wealth and social advantage that many mistake it for today.

By and large this dream was made possible by a deeply religious commitment to honor Old and New Testament doctrines of welcoming the stranger. Embracing immigrants was seen as a sacred American and Christian value in response to passages like Deuteronomy 10.17-19: “For the LORD your God is God of gods and Lord of lords, the great God, mighty and awesome, Who is not partial and takes no bribe, Who executes justice for the orphan and the widow, and Who loves the strangers, providing them food and clothing. You shall also love the stranger, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt.” As second- and third-generation Americans, we could relate to the Exodus saga. We understood the Promised Land in palpable ways, as many of our ancestors had sought refuge from oppressive European regimes, with African-Americans struggling to shake the chains of slavery within our borders.

Times have changed. European dictatorships are no more. Racial progress has weakened America’s connection with its shameful past. New waves of immigrants cross our borders and light on our shores, fleeing the injustices of Latin American, Asian, African, and Middle Eastern tyranny. Like their European predecessors, they don’t speak our language. They don’t understand our culture. And they too are confronted with a labyrinthine process made nigh unto impossible to satisfy. Many don’t succeed and more than a few don’t even try. It’s all too easy to demonize them—forgetting the sacrifices they’ve made to reach for the promise we call America—and ignore our scriptural obligation to love the stranger. If we do as God asks, we will see their problems as our own, and press our leaders to find mutually beneficial ways to welcome them. Constructing walls and construing more stringent immigration policies most assuredly will reduce their numbers and may ease the burden of integrating them into American society. Yet we whose lives are governed by God’s Word must never overlook the immigration edict it issues over and over. God loves the strangers, providing them food and clothing, Deuteronomy says, charging us to do likewise. Immigration is a problem we can fix, provided we do it with love.

Right Religious

Religion that is pure and undefiled before God, the Father, is this: to care for orphans and widows in their distress, and to keep oneself unstained by the world. (James 1.27)

In the month preceding the US elections, Straight-Friendly will offer brief reflections on what God requires of us, in hopes that we can enter the polls fully confident that our candidates of choice will promote policies that align with our personal convictions. Nothing here should be misconstrued as an endorsement of one candidate over another. It is simply meant to remind us of our responsibilities as faithful believers and citizens.

Every time we vote we make a vow, a personal pledge to care for our nation and its people. Every election presents us with a sacred moment, when we’re deeded the opportunity to look beyond ourselves—our immediate needs and long-held dreams—so that we can consider the needs and desires of others. Voting is the ultimate expression of community, a concept that we, as people of faith, inherently understand. And we know how community works because Jesus taught us a new way of building one. Community building (a concept that, sadly, has been ridiculed by many religious) reverses human “me-first” logic: “Whoever wants to be first must be last of all and servant of all,” Jesus says in Mark 9.35. So, as Christians, we enter the voting booth at the end of a very long line of people we must serve. Their needs come first, their dreams above our own.

In case we’re unsure who these first-comers and preferred dreamers are, James spells it out. They are “widows and orphans in their distress”—the bereaved and abandoned, the easily blamed, readily overlooked social and economic casualties among us who are struggling to survive. And we should be very clear: they are not the lay-abouts and system-abusers that so many paint them to be. (We’ll discuss the indolent and parasites in a future post.) The people James calls us to care for are genuinely in distress due to misfortune. They are the homeless, the hungry, the sick, the disowned, and the defeated—the ones who inevitably find themselves at the end of the line. It is our duty as Christ’s followers to interrupt the social order and put them first, giving them our place and taking theirs. The world doesn’t see it that way, of course. But we we seek a higher plane that lifts us above the world’s ways. Right religion begins with honoring Christ’s community-building principle. Anything less stains us with the ugly sinfulness of a faithless world.

Every vote is a vow—to God, our nation, and every citizen in distress—a promise to care for all in need. Every election is a sacred right to live out the teachings of our Savior and advance God’s kingdom in very real and tangible ways.

Say "Yes" to the Yes

He answered, “It is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.” She said, “Yes, Lord, yet even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their master’s table.” Then Jesus answered her, “Woman, great is your faith!” (Matthew 15.26-28)

Not His Kind

Today, Gay Pride is traditionally observed around the world, marking the 43^rd anniversary of the Stonewall Riots that gave birth to the LGBT rights movement. While many communities opt to celebrate Pride on other dates throughout the year, the last weekend in June touches a global nerve. With or without parades and festivals, we pause to consider how far we’ve come together and the distance we’ve yet to go.

In light of today’s celebrations, we’re going to break from the Sunday lectionary to consider a truly amazing event in Jesus’s life and ministry. In fact, it’s one of very few times when we witness two altogether extraordinary things: someone whose needs are too great to countenance rejection and Jesus, the Great Teacher, learning an invaluable lesson that changes how He sees and thinks. The story, told in Matthew 15.21-28, is deceptively simple. A mother, whose daughter is tormented by an evil spirit, seeks Jesus out. Expecting to be ignored, she makes a ferocious squall that disturbs the disciples. They urge Jesus to send her away. He agrees, not because she’s too loud and obnoxious to merit attention. Jesus wants nothing to do with her because she’s not His kind. She’s a Canaanite from the pagan tribe Israel conquered to claim the Promised Land. “I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel,” Jesus says matter-of-factly—as if the woman should know better than to ask Him for anything.

Unimaginable

The Canaanite woman will not be ignored. She kneels before Jesus and prays, “Lord, help me.” We imagine her desperation and humility will touch Jesus. Given the racially charged climate of her day, she is, after all, making a fool of herself to prevail on the kindness of a Jew. But Jesus’s reaction is unimaginable to us. He rejects the woman’s plea in a most degrading fashion. “It’s not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs,” he says. For all practical purposes, He tells the woman she’s worse than a beggar; she’s a thief, an ill-mannered mongrel trying to steal what doesn’t belong to her. Where is the love that Jesus is so famous for? Where are the compassion and acceptance He’s always talking about?

Surely the insult wounds this woman to the core. Surely her hopes crumble and the pain of hearing her daughter won’t be helped slices her in two. Still, in the face of outright bigotry, she refuses to be refused. She grants Jesus His point. Her request is unorthodox and, in the eyes of Jewish traditionalists, indefensible. She really has no right to ask, or expect, Jesus to intervene. But none of it matters. Her need is too urgent, her agony too real. So she absorbs the insult and then turns it on its head. “Yes, Lord,” she says. “Yet even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their masters’ table.” Her simple statement takes Jesus aback and compels Him to rethink His position. He’s stunned into a new understanding of what God requires of Him, and everything God wants to do through Him to eradicate religious, social, and cultural boundaries that deny God’s grace to all but a select few. Suddenly Jesus is moved on a level far more profound than merely accommodating an anguished mother’s request. The woman’s belief that Jesus will help her constrains Jesus’s belief that He must. He declares, “Woman, great is your faith! Let it be done for you as you wish.” Matthew finishes by informing us, “Her daughter was healed instantly.”

All-Inclusive

This is the Gospel in action—the good news of God’s kingdom that calls us to repent from narrow-mindedness that seeks to limit God’s grace to people of a certain kind, namely, our kind. And our astonishment with this episode springs from witnessing Jesus repent from the exclusionary mindset of His faith tradition. God vests the Canaanite woman with holy boldness to teach Jesus that God’s grace is too big for labels and boundaries. The time for religious bigotry and rejection has ended. God is doing something new that debunks members-only myths about faith and acceptance. Up to this point in Matthew, Jesus has been pushing the envelope by healing Jewish outcasts and performing miracles on the Sabbath. But this precious Canaanite mother presses Him to go all the way—to ignore all the rules and include her among those whose lives are forever changed by His power. And perhaps the most thrilling aspect of this event emerges in Jesus’s immediate response. He doesn’t tell the woman to come back after He’s had time to consider whether or not He should honor her request. He doesn’t consult the religious establishment about what’s “right.” He doesn’t poll His followers to see if they’ll be comfortable with His decision to help the woman. He answers her prayer with an all-inclusive “Yes.”

Christ’s all-inclusive “Yes” is the Canaanite mother’s legacy to us. And she has much to teach us about laying claim to it. We may have to come to Jesus in a big way, making a lot of noise that disturbs His inner circle. We may have to endure social and religious humiliation caused by our insistence that Jesus take notice of us. We will have to humble ourselves before Christ and beseech Him to help us. But God vests each of us with holy boldness to believe that God’s grace is too big for labels and boundaries. Great is our faith—so great that Jesus will reward it without hesitation. Jesus will never ask us to come back after He’s considered our worthiness. No traditions or powers need be consulted to ensure our acceptance. Christ will never poll His followers to get their approval of His decision to hear us and do amazing things in our lives. Regardless who we are, where we come from, and how others label us, Jesus answers us with an all-inclusive yes.

On this Pride Sunday, I pray that LGBT and alienated believers everywhere will summon the courage to overturn every hindrance and boundary attempting to deny their right to believe. I pray that we all will say, “Yes” to the Yes.

Christ’s all-inclusive “Yes” is the Canaanite mother’s legacy to us.

Podcast link: http://straightfriendly.podbean.com/2012/06/23/say-yes-to-the-yes/