Dependence Day --some thoughts on Independence

“Do not say to your neighbor: Go away!

Come another time! I will give it to you tomorrow.

If you can give it to him today.”

--Proverbs 3:28

It is the 4^th of July, and here in America we are celebrating what we like to call: Independence Day.  We broke free from England and declared ourselves an independent nation.  But in time, perhaps even from the beginning this declaration of our independence has been something of a two-edged sword; on the one side, we declared ourselves free as a nation, from the reign of a distant king who seemed to rule over his colonies with little concern for the people who lived there.  And we underwent the great experiment of self-rule, became a land ruled by laws and shaped by the consent and will of the citizens.  But the other side of this sword infected our language and our ideals with a kind of cancer also known as independence. Our national mythology became inflamed with a philosophy of self-creation & self-invention; stories of self-made men, rags to riches tales of men and women who rose from “nothing” to become mighty heroes of commerce and industry, politics and economy.  This myth of self-creation is truly a cancer.  It destroys and yet, how often do we (as a nation) conflate the national myth of independence, the ideal of inventing ourselves as a new and independent nation with a personal dream of inventing ourselves as a new and independent person?

But the truth is—we are not independent.  Not as a nation and definitely not as a people.  We were made by God to be in community, to be in communion, to be dependent.  I need you.  You need me.  We need our brothers and sisters of every race and land.  All of them.  All the time. Especially when they come to us asking for help. 

You see, in the myth of independence, they shouldn’t need us.  There is something wrong about their needing us.  Living in our 4-bedroom ranch-style houses with climate controlling AC and wifi extenders and hot-tubs and remote controlled refrigerators full of apple pie and corndogs and mayonnaise, we surely don’t need them!! What’s wrong with them?  Why can’t they grab hold of their own bootstraps and… just go away?  Can’t they see we’re busy celebrating our independence? Come another time!  Maybe, when you have something to offer.

But what if the thing they had to offer us was a truth we can’t find streaming on Netflix? Dependence.  The fact that being made in the image of God means we were made for community, and being made for community means we need each other.  And so when someone comes asking for help and we say: Go away.  Get a job!  Learn how to pay your bills and follow the rules and take care of yourself!  Learn how to be independent! Like me.  We aren’t just being tough, or hard, or cruel, we are being fools.  We are missing out on something glorious and grand, a gift from God: dependence.  We are missing out on the opportunity to become even more dependent. To participate in the interdependence of God’s creation.

Think about this: when you help someone, when you feed the hungry, visit the sick, clothe the naked, you do something for their body, and often they are very grateful, but at the end of the day who lays down feeling more blessed?   Let us greet those who need our help as  not a burden to be avoided, or borne with (though with bitter resentment), but as an opportunity to become more fully who we were made to be. Your need is a gift to me, just as my insufficiency, my brokenness, my need for help, for community, is a gift to you. On this beautiful Fourth of July morning, I ask you to consider taking a moment to celebrate Dependence Day.

Happy Dependence Day. 

Making God Manifest—a meditation on the blind man and the beatitudes

“And His disciples asked Him: Rabbi,

who sinned, this man or his parents, that

he was born blind? Jesus answered:

It was not that this man sinned, or his parents;

but that the works of God might be made

manifest in him.”  --John 9:2-3

When we wonder about suffering, whether in the world art large or at our own particular “ill luck,” or insufficiency, we might want to remember that the suffering isn’t our fault, and it isn’t the fault (or the sin) of our parents.  When some pain or lack in our lives gets too hard to handle, we often seek someone to blame.  We look for some kind of explanation; and it often seems easiest to blame a person—make them the villain of our story.  It feels like a curse has come upon us, and someone has to be at fault; either we have brought this on our self, or someone else is the cause. If we blame bad luck, or fate, or “the world,” then in effect we are actually blaming God (whether we are using a big “G” a little “g”).  But, here in this little story, the Lord seems to be telling us that what feels like a curse (or bad luck) may in fact be a kind of blessing.  Even better, an opportunity for a blessing to be shared: for the “works of God to be made manifest” through us.

In my personal Bible study, I am still reading through the Psalms, and in my work Bible study group we are reading Isaiah, and now for Lent I am rereading a wonderful book by the Orthodox writer Jim Forest, The Ladder of the Beatitudes (Orbis Bks.1999). Which (in turn) sent me in search of John's gospel and this story about a man born blind.   (As the psalmist says: “All doers of evil are scattered…” –and boy am I!)

Anyway, as part of his introduction, Forest devotes a brief chapter to this story from John 9 about a man born blind. And because it seems to have nothing to do with the beatitudes, I almost skipped right over it.  I was too eager to get to the whole "tofu and potatoes" of the poverty and mourning and all that "blessed are" stuff… What does this blind guy have to do with beatitudes, anyway?

Aside:  Let me back up a moment here.  Some people are of the opinion that reading is a linear act… i.e. page 1 is followed by page 2 and then 3 and then 4 and so on until the end is reached (or the book is lost on a bus –whichever comes first).  But I (being a librarian) am a professional and have never felt constrained by things like page numbers and chapter order or plot progression.  To my family’s chagrin and frustration (I fear), I often will begin a book somewhere near the middle and read for several pages (or chapters) before going back and picking up pieces of the earlier action (at random).  It is possible this odd habit of reading a book as if it were a cubist painting is a form of literary dementia, or simply a sign of intellectual instability… Nevertheless, it is true, and I thought I should confess it. 

Back to the story at hand:  Instead of skipping the chapter, for some reason I kept reading; and as I did, I had that wonderful exhilarating sense that something of great import was being said; a truth revealed.  Near the end of his brief chapter, Mr. Forest takes a moment to put himself in the place of the blind man.  He imagines sitting in darkness and hearing people talking; they are asking someone questions (about him!). Whose fault it is that he was born blind (him or his parents)? And with some curiosity, he listens to hear what will be said.  But what he hears catches him off guard. It is someone speaking not about fault or sin or blame, but about making the works of the Lord visible.  Forest imagines the blind man’s confusion; how can his blindness have anything to do with the glory of God?  But then something happens.  The voice comes near and a man puts wet clay on his eyes and tells him to go wash it off.  And when he does, suddenly it is true; the work of God is made manifest in all His glory. 

And that is when I started thinking back to that discussion I was having with my wife the other day. Driving home from work, we were trying to remember all the beatitudes, and wondering what Jesus actually meant by these paradoxical teachings; and how we (personally) might find a blessing in each of them.

Blessed are the poor in spirit, blessed are they who mourn, blessed are the meek, blessed those who hunger and thirst for righteousness… blessed are the persecuted…

And we struggled.  How can one find a blessing in poverty? Where is the blessedness in mourning? How does one find good in being persecuted? To be concrete, how is homelessness a blessing? In the moment, in the experience of it, they all feel like crushing weights, disasters even.  Yet, Jesus tells His apostles that the blindness of this man isn’t a punishment or a disaster, but an opportunity for the work of God to be made known.  Thinking about this, I realize that I too was blind.  I was getting to wrapped up in the darkness of my own anxieties (and habits) to see the truth; I was too busy blindly searching for the “right answer,” to let God’s work be made manifest.  Yet, something stopped my heedless rush, someone slowed me down with a little simple discussion of a seemingly unrelated passage from a different gospel (simple as dirt and spit) and opened my eyes: the beatitudes are not just about us, or about our comfort, they are about making the glory of God manifest to the world. They are about creating opportunities for God’s presence to be revealed.  And where does Jesus promise He will always be: in the hungry, in the naked, in the prisoners (the persecuted)…

Take a moment and read John 9, you can read the whole chapter in less than 5 minutes.  Then open Matthew and read the Beatitudes (5:3-12), and spend a little time praying over it with that blind man in mind. (And maybe pick up a copy of Jim Forest's book.) Anyway, that will be part of my Lenten prayer this year and if I am lucky, I may begin to see my life in a whole new light. 

Anyway, that’s my plan. This Lent, I will be contemplating the beatitudes with the help of Jim Forest.  And my hope is that I can learn something about the blessing of poverty, or mourning, of hunger and thirst, of mercy and peace or… perhaps, I will wait a while to ask for that other one…

Lord,

Let me not be blind to Your presence in all

those who hunger, in all who mourn, in all who

feel persecuted, belittled or forgotten. Open my eyes

to Your glory, Your grace, Your love made manifest

in the needs of others. Stir my heart, that I may greet

all those in need with generosity with love and humility.

Amen