The Person I Love the Least

4AfterEpiphany, January 31, 2016, Sullivan Park Care Center by Annette Fricke

            Last Wednesday, I was privileged to attend one of our cathedral’s Reel Theology.  Reel Theology is a weekly series of movies mean to provoke the mind and behavior beyond the present day fellowship of believers who may become way too focused on the immediate functioning of the building and needs of current members.  Here is a description of the movie last week: “January 27: Born Into Brothels: Calcutta’s Red Light Kids (R) This film is a chronicle of filmmakers Zana Briski and Ross Kauffman’s efforts to show the world of Calcutta’s red light district. To do that, they inspired a special group of children of the prostitutes of the area to photograph the most reluctant subjects of it. As the kids excel in their new found art, the filmmakers struggle to help them have a chance for a better life away from the miserable poverty that threatens to crush their dreams.”  I am happy to report that the reactions of those present did not include what I frequently heard from a fellow choir member. For example, she used to always say to me, “We have plenty of needy people right here in this state.  Why are we investing money way out in Haiti?  We have some very poor people in Yakima.”  There was, however, a woman who pointed out that we have many children like this in Spokane and a man who pointed out this problem in Montana.  How far away children in need live is not the main point, though; just how to go about reaching them is.  How do you help children who live in poverty and worse yet, how do you help those who not only live in poverty but are also the byproduct of prostitution?  How do you reach to the edges of society when they don’t necessarily want your help?  It is a good thing to reach out to places like Haiti that have been ravaged by the forces of nature and have been and continue to be some of the poorest of nations in the world.  It is a good thing to reach out to neighborhoods such as the West Central neighborhood here in our own Spokane.  Not only is it a good thing to do, it is also what Jesus would have us do.  God claims all of us and wants all of us to live and care for each other, even those who have chosen or fallen into a life of self-destructiveness.  God’s children are endowed with many resources and with few.  They are healthy and they are sick.  They feel loved by God and abandoned, filled with hope and wonder as well as crushed in deep, dark depression.

            Jesus speaks gracious words and they all love him, but then he turns the tables. Why are people so upset with what Jesus says to them?  Well, for one, he is pointing out that Judaism was never meant to be an exclusionary way of life.  The Jews were to always care for all people.  He puts it in their faces that God cares even for the foreigner and the enemy of the Jews.  Jesus points out to them that their practice of religion has become closed in on itself in such a way that it is appalling.  His illustrations taken directly from scripture describe that the healing of God extends even to outsiders, desperate for relief from poverty and illness. They are saying among themselves, “Who are you to use our own scriptures against us?”  Jesus is trying to tell them that he is the long awaited Messiah, but they are unable to hear. They can’t comprehend such a message because they are filled with their own notion of what it means to be the chosen people of God. They hear about Jesus speaking in all the surrounding synagogues and his reputation and may have become a bit jealous.  They are asking why he hasn’t yet come to speak to them in his hometown.  Yet when he does, they are not happy.  In fact, they aren’t happy at all and Jesus truly offends them.  He angers them.  He angers them to the point that there is nothing that he can say or do at this point that will change their minds about him.  In no uncertain terms, they hate him. How could this man possibly be the Messiah?  How is it possible that a boy born in such poor estate could speak with such authority?  Why does God choose to heal people outside Judaism while ignoring the chosen people?  How is anyone to make sense of this story when it seems that we have stepped into the middle of a sermon?

            The fact is, we are always truly in the middle of things.  Many people have walked the face of the earth before us and I imagine there will be many after we are gone and the memory of us fades.  But I think there is something attributed to Dorothy Day that brings us back into focus as to what Jesus is trying to tell his audience about the history of Judaism and that would be this, “I really only love God as much as I love the person I love the least.”  The writings we have about Jesus clearly put in his mouth that we are to love the Lord God with all our hearts, our minds, our strength and our neighbors as ourselves.  Jesus clearly meant that our neighbors were those traditionally despised by the Jews.

            This can be our meditation throughout the week, “I really only love God as much as I love the person I love the least.”  That is the real challenge, especially in a world where some of us were taught at a very young age to dislike certain groups of people because they are not like us. Throughout history, people have told their children to hate the Jews, to hate the Blacks, to hate the Mexicans. People tend to hate that which they don’t understand. People tend to group certain people together because of a behavior not common to all in that group, but based on the behavior of some in particular.  And not only that, but this does not allow a person to speak for themselves because they are already labeled.  “Oh, he is Mexican; therefore, he is bad because he is just here because the US government gives him free food stamps.”  “Yeah, he is black.  He is too stupid to know how to work on his own.  That’s why they were slaves.”  “The Jewish people are bad because they killed Jesus.  It says so in the book of John.”  In our own settings, we might look down on the fat aides and think that they are not able to reach us fast enough because they can’t move like the skinny ones.  And I heard that she had a child out of wedlock.  I wonder what happened; did she do that on purpose or did he leave her because he didn’t want the responsibility of raising a child?  Or why would she want to raise a child on her own?  Why would a male want to be an aide or a nurse?  Why would someone want a male aide to give them a shower?  Why don’t you become a nurse?

            All of these statements and questions are taken out of context and are therefore untrue and filled with prejudgment. We can ignore these thoughts and simply tell ourselves that it is none of our business, revel in our own uninformed conclusions, or take the road less traveled.  It is work, and few dare go there, but the answer is to attempt to make connections and open the way for communication with that other person---the one we may have decided is so radically different from us. Sometimes, what we felt was a behavior so off base, we will learn later is really not that different.  We all share in a common humanity.  We are truly in the same boat.  We are sometimes out in the rough seas together with no land in sight.  It is not our job to decide who is worthy of being saved.  We all are.