Amish Grace: Simple as Doves, Shrewd as Serpents

The gospel for tomorrow is both challenging and consoling. In case you have not seen it yet, it is Matthew's account of Jesus' counsel about needing to be gentle as doves and shrewd as serpents in a situation which is literally tearing Matthew's community asunder. When (not if) people are brought before political and religious leaders Matthew reminds them of Jesus' teaching, "Do not worry about how you are to speak or what you are to say. You will be given at that moment what you are to say. For it will not be you that speak but the Spirit of your Father speaking through you." Jesus then tells them that Brother will hand over brother to death, and the father his child, children will rise up against parents and have them put to death. You will be hated by all because of my name (my powerful presence), but whoever endures to the end will be saved.

Now I have heard homilists and others trivialize what is being taught in this reading. One deacon I know (not in my parish!) once said he never prepared homilies because of this text; he preferred to allow the Holy Spirit to speak through him! Years ago I heard an undergraduate theology student try to use this text as a justification for his un-prepared presentation on the meaning of a text. It didn't go over very well. Nor should it. The readings from Hosea and the Psalms, but especially Psalm 51 reminds us that speaking rightly with the power of the Holy Spirit comes only after long experience of God's compassion and forgiveness. It is only God who can teach us wisdom in our inmost being, only God who can create a clean heart in us, only God who can put a steadfast spirit within us, only God who can open our lips so that our mouths may proclaim his praise. This doesn't happen in a day. It comes only after more extended time spent in the desert (for instance) listening to the Word of God, allowing it to become our story as well, grappling with the demons we find there while we come to terms with and really consolidate our identities as daughters and sons of God in Christ.

I recently heard a story that illustrates the dynamics of Matt's gospel. Though it is not a recent story (sometimes being a hermit means I don't hear these things when they happen), in it people are asked to confess their inmost hearts as they are brought face to face with a world which sometimes seeks to destroy them. Matthew describes this in his gospel. In such a confrontation Jesus asks us be simple as doves and shrewd as serpents. He asks us to have to have done the long, demanding heart work that prepares us to be prophets and mediators of the Holy Spirit --- people with a heart of compassion and forgiveness intimately acquainted with the mercy and love of God and committed to being one through whom God speaks to change the world and bring the Kingdom. This is not about not doing our homework or being presumptuous; it is about becoming the people Jesus sends with pure hearts and a shrewdness which disarms --- like turning the other cheek, walking the extra mile, and so forth would have done in Jesus' day. (cf Notes From Stillsong Hermitage: Clever as Serpents, Gentle as Doves)

The story is that of the Amish school massacre in Nickel Mines, PA. I would ask that you check out the following video as Bill Moyers tells the story. [[Released from anger and bitterness, but not from pain. Forgiveness is a journey. You need help from others. . .to not become a hostage to hostility.]]

The responses to the story, as Moyers notes, were diverse. Mainly people were awed, some thought such forgiveness could only be a kind of planned show and other suggested the church told the Amish to do this rather than accepting it as the natural expression of a deeply ingrained and authentic spirituality. Others who had failed to draw the important distinction between forgiveness and pardon or release from consequences, argued the forgiveness was undeserved, illegitimate, and imprudent. (cf Jacoby, "Undeserved Forgiveness." Jacoby has another, similar op ed article on Cardinal Bernadin's decision to minister to a serial killer when Bernadin had only 6 mos time left because of the cancer he struggled with.)

What Moyer's account indicates but is unable to detail sufficiently in the above brief video is the extent of the acts of forgiveness and the real reconciliation that occurred as the Robert's family were repeatedly visited by Amish and in turn came to assist with the injured children (who in fact asked why they had not yet visited their families!). (One child continues to be very severely disabled and Roberts' mother comes each week to read to her, sing to her, and sometimes bathe her. The Amish remark on the blessing her presence has been, and of course it has served similarly for her.) At every level Amish and English (especially Roberts' own family) worked to rebuild relationships and shared their mutual grief. Forgiveness, real forgiveness recreated a community that had been shattered by the killings. It was not naive and did not simply avoid or suppress emotions but it made the painful and healing process of moving forward into a "new normal" possible for everyone. The Amish had prepared, not for the tragedies themselves exactly, but for the hard work of reconciliation by long habits of the heart, as Bill Moyers affirmed. But the picture they also give us is one of people who are indeed simple as doves and shrewd as serpents --- just as Christians are called and empowered to be.

If you haven't read the book, Amish Grace, please do so. I admit I read it last night and was in tears practically the whole evening. I don't think I can remember another book or story that has so broken or broken open my own heart nor convinced me how elemental our desire and need for forgiveness or for being people who truly hand on the ministry of reconciliation we are called to be (2 Cor 5:17-21) really is.

Immaculee Ilibagiza, Author of Left to Tell at Saint Mary's College, Moraga CA

This evening I was able to attend a talk by Immaculee Ilibagiza, the author of Left to Tell, Led By Faith, et al, and the survivor of the Rwandan genocide who is most associated with her three month vigil of terror and prayer in a neighbor's 3' by 4' bathroom. (The neighbor was a Christian pastor and friend of the family and belonged to the Hutu tribe which was murdering Tutsis like Immaculee; there were seven other women including a seven year old child in that bathroom!!) More, she is known for her forgiveness of those who murdered nearly her entire family and most of her neighbors, her best friend, etc. Her story reminds me very much of the story of Eva Moses Kor (cf links for most popular posts in the right hand column) and her own forgiveness of Dr Mengele who committed atrocities involving Eva, her Sister, and other twins, as well as other Nazis involved in the holocaust during WWII. Both of these women discovered a tremendous freedom in their graced ability to forgive and both discovered a commission by God to make this call real for the world.

In fact, one of the stories Immaculee told this evening in explaining why she was going places to talk about her story was about having met a holocaust survivor at one of her own talks. The aged holocaust survivor thanked Immaculee and expressed a kind of relief and peace that now she could die in peace because someone else had taken on the same message from a similar experience of torture, terror, grace, transformation and forgiveness. I wondered at the time if it might not have been Eva Moses Kor whom Immaculee had met that night. I would have given a great deal to have witnessed such a meeting first hand. There is something so inspiring in the forgiveness these women have "achieved"; not only have they forgiven the killers who took their families and changed their lives forever, but both have met with those persons among us who insist the genocides they survived and witness to never occurred at all!

I have read Left to Tell and it was riveting and terrifying. It was also inspiring and personally challenging. I am reading Led by Faith right now, and one of the things I have been most taken by are the descriptions of Immaculee's prayer. They are compelling and I had the sense in reading them that Immaculee is a true mystic. Labels aside, Led by Faith deepens the portrait of this young woman's faith and prayer in significant ways which make it completely credible and compelling. Tonight, one of the most powerful parts of Ms Ilibagiza's presentation were the moments when, in the midst of reflecting on a truly horrifying and horrific story, she spoke of the way her own prayer had developed and did so with an amazing transparency and humor. These moments were like sparks of fire in the darkness. It was a truly humble presentation of her struggle to come to faith, and to move from faith to faith in relation to and relationship with an inescapable God she discovered dwelling in her own heart!

If you have not read either of these books I recommend them both. Start with Left to Tell and move from there to Led by Faith. The subtitle of tonight's presentation was, "Surviving the Rwandan Genocide." The picture one gets from these two books is first the story of the narrower meaning of this subtitle --- surviving the immediate bloodbath --- and secondly, the broader and perhaps more difficult bit of "survival" which is necessary, namely, becoming whole human beings capable of loving, forgiving and otherwise moving out through our own pain, woundedness, and loss to bring hope to a world that needs it badly. Many of us are survivors of various traumas and tragedies as both Immaculee and Eva Kor were, that is, survivors in the narrower sense of the term --- even if those traumas do not seem as extreme to us. The challenge both Immaculee and Eva (and of course, Jesus!) present us with is that of moving with the grace of God beyond survival in an immediate sense to survival in the broader sense of a grateful, forgiving life in abundance and true freedom. In the process of coming to forgiveness, one ceases in fact to be a victim and becomes a victor while assuming the mantle of prophet and healer in a somewhat lost and undoubtedly broken world. It seems to me that on a solemnity like All Saints (today's Feast) it is important to hear stories of living saints who inspire us to embrace such a calling and commission. Both Immaculee Ilibagiza and Eva Moses Kor are such persons, but for Christians today, Immaculee speaks with a special poignancy and urgent contemporaneity.

Jesus and John the Baptist: Two Approaches to Repentance and Forgiveness

Gospel Reading for Friday, 2nd Week of Advent: Matthew 11:16-19

Recently I watched story of a woman (Eva Moses Kor) who survived the holocaust. She was one of a pair of twins experimented on by Dr Mengele. Both she and her sister (Miriam) survived the camp but her sister's health was ruined and years later she later died from long term complications. Mrs Kor forgave Mengele and did so as part of her own healing. She encouraged others to act similarly so they would no longer be victims in the same way they were without forgiveness and she became to some extent despised by a number of other survivors. What struck me was the fact that Eva had come implicitly to Jesus' own notion of forgiveness and justice (where her own healing is paramount and brings about changes in others and the fabric of reality more than other notions of justice) while others clung to the Jewish teaching which states that amendment and restitution (signs of true repentance but more than this as well) must be made before forgiveness is granted. 

What also struck me was that she was, indeed, freer and less a victim in subjective terms than those who refused to forgive saying they had no right, for instance. Further, her forgiveness and freedom freed others (including another doctor at the camp (Dr Hans Munch) who had, until he met Eva and heard of her own stance towards Mengele, been unable to forgive himself) --- though it also pointed up the terrible bondage of either refusal or inability to forgive which other survivors experienced, especially as this became complicated by their newfound anger with Eva.

Today's Gospel reminds me of this video (and vice versa) because of the close linkage of John Bp and Jesus, and so of two very different (though still-related) approaches to repentance and forgiveness. On the one hand, a strictly ascetic John the Baptist preaches what John Meier describes as a "fierce call to repentance, stiffened with dire warnings of fiery judgment soon to come." (A Marginal Jew, vol 2, pp 148-49) In general John's preaching is dismissed and John himself is treated contemptuously as being mad or possessed by a demon. In the language of the parable John piped a funeral dirge and people refused to mourn.

On the other hand we have Jesus of Nazareth preaching the arrival of the Kingdom of God and offering "an easy, joyous way into [that] Kingdom" by welcoming the religious outcasts and sinners to a place in table fellowship with himself. Meier characterizes the response to THIS call to repentance in terms of the parable, [[With a sudden burst of puritanism, this generation felt that no hallowed prophet sent from God would adopt such a free-wheeling, pleasure-seeking lifestyle, hobnobbing with religious lowlifes and offering assurances of God's forgiveness without demanding the proper process for reintegration into Jewish religious society. How could this Jesus be a true prophet and reformer when he was a glutton and a drunkard, a close companion at meals with people who robbed their fellow Jews . . .or who sinned willfully and heinously, yet refused to repent. . .?]] In other words, in terms of tomorrow's parable Jesus piped a joyful tune, a wedding tune, and people refused to join in the celebration and dismissed Jesus himself as a terrible sinner, worthy of death.

There is wisdom in both approaches to repentance and forgiveness. Both are part of the Judeo-Christian heritage. Both approaches are rejected by "this generation" --- as Jesus calls those who refuse to believe in him. Both lead to greater freedom. But it is Jesus' model which leads to the kind of freedom Eva Moses Kor discovered and which is supposed to mark our own approach to repentance and forgiveness. After all repentance is truly a celebration of God's love and mercy, and these we well know are inexhaustible. Still, entering the celebration is not necessarily easy for us, and we may wonder as some of the other survivors wondered about Eva's forgiveness of Mengele: do we have the right to forgive? Is it wise to act in this way towards someone who has not repented and asked for our forgiveness? Isn't this a form of "cheap grace" so ably castigated by Dietrich Bonhoeffer --- also a victim of the Nazi death machine? (cf The Cost of Discipleship) Where does forgiveness become enabling and does it demean others who have also been harmed? What about tough love: isn't John Bp's approach the better one? Am I really supposed to simply welcome serious sinners into my home? Into our sacred meal? To membership in the Church? To my circle of friends?

And the simple answer to most of these questions is yes, this is what we are called to do. The Kingdom of God is at hand and Jesus' example is the one we follow. It is this example which leads to the freedom of the Kingdom, this example that made Christians of us and will in time transform our world. In particular, it is this example which sets the tone for Advent joy and festivity and allows the future to take hold of our lives and hearts. It is not merely that we have the right to forgive in this way, but that we have been commissioned to do so. It is an expression of our own vocations to embody or incarnate the unconditional mercy of God in Christ.

Most of us will find ourselves caught between the prophetic example of John the Baptist and the Messianic example of Jesus' meal fellowship with sinners. We have great empathy both for the approach of Eva Moses Kor AND those survivors who could not forgive Mengele --- often because they felt that doing so was contrary to justice as spelled out in the Scriptures and elaborated in rabbinical tradition, as well as because it demeaned his victims. Today's Gospel underscores our own position between worlds and kingdoms, and it may cause us to recognize that there was a deep suspicion of Jesus' table fellowship which was grounded in more than envy or fear. We may see clearly that the Jewish leadership of Jesus' day had serious and justified concerns about the wisdom of Jesus' actions and praxis. Even so, it is also clear regarding which model of repentance and forgiveness we are to choose, which model represents the freedom of the Kingdom of God, and which model allows us to be Christ for others. As Matthew's version of this parable also affirms, the wisdom of this approach will be found in its fruit --- if only we can be patient and trust in the wisdom of Jesus, the glutton, drunkard, and libertine who consorted with serious sinners.

Peter, Do you Love Me? Part 1

Spending time with Friday's Gospel (May 21th, John 21:15-19) marked one of those unexpected moments for me when the Holy Spirit empowers one to hear something completely new, and when the text takes on a new sound, a new perspective and lesson. Throughout the Easter season I had at least implicitly heard the question Jesus posed to Peter in this lection again. Partly this was because we read the Gospel of John and the command to love God and one another turns up again and again with this question tacitly embedded within it. Partly it was because of people who modelled such love for me again and again and were central to this year's Easter season -- not least Ann and Don and their family. Partly, I suppose it is the natural question of one who desires to love God and others but continually falls short.

Like most people I have always heard Jesus' questions to Peter merely as a kind of test. Clearly they follow Peter's triple denial of Jesus on the night he was arrested, and Peter's own affirmations serve to counter those. Perhaps Jesus really asked Peter these questions in precisely this way and this is a simple record of that; perhaps the questioning is a literary device constructed by the evangelist in order to mark Peter's renewed commitment to the Risen Christ as adequate to offset his denials and justify his leadership role in the nascent Church; perhaps there were three questions, or perhaps Peter heard this question in his heart dozens of times as he encountered Jesus after the resurrection (or maybe both of these are true!), but however the historical details shake out, I know that like most people I heard these questions as a test posed by Jesus to Peter, or to myself. Until last week that is.

In living with this text for those few days and sensing a climax to what I had been experiencing during Easter, I began to see instead what Jesus was doing with these questions, and testing Peter was not what he was about, at least not in the common sense. Instead he is attempting to move Peter past the denials on the night of his arrest, serious as those were, and put Peter in touch with the deeper truth, the truth which is more foundational for him than his fear, his self-centeredness, his drive for self-preservation and the like. It is a way of rehabilitating Peter and commissioning him for something more as well. It put him in touch with the truth which is life for him, the truth of his bond with Jesus which is deeper even than Peter's denials because God dwells within us, and because "Nothing can separate us from the love of God". At the same time the questions move Peter from his own certainty in himself (and about himself!) and an attitude of (perhaps defensive) self-assertion to a more secure place altogether: the point of humble submission to Jesus' knowledge of who Peter is, Jesus' certainty about Peter's capacities and constitution, Jesus' judgment of the nature, worth, and measure of his life and his plan FOR that life.

The element I was not paying enough (or appropriate) attention to was Jesus's commissioning of Peter and the way this commissioning functions in Peter's life. If I attended to these statements at all it was as a reward for answering correctly, "Yes, Lord, I love you!" In my mind I read the text this way: "Answer the question correctly, Peter, and Jesus will entrust you with great responsibility. Answer incorrectly, and he will not!" Now, there is a seed of truth in this --- Jesus entrusts those who love him with a great deal --- but Jesus's commissioning is not a reward for the right answers. It is instead a way of creating a future, for Peter, for the Church, for Jesus' life here among us. It is the way Jesus forgives, and it is an effective forgiveness which changes who Peter is in less essential ways and also builds on who Peter is most deeply and essentially, and so too then, the way Peter sees himself. It is a challenging forgiveness which empowers Peter to see himself as Jesus does, trust himself as Jesus does, embrace and live up to the vocation Jesus knows him to have and makes him, with God's grace, to be capable of.

These questions put to Peter by Jesus function similarly to Jesus' parables. They create a new future by allowing the one hearing and responding to them to opt for reality as Jesus defines it. Far from simply testing Peter, they are meant to encourage him -- though by challenging him to measure up to what is deepest in himself, what is truest and most real. In monastic life this is what it means to be addressed as one's true self and to heal and transcend his false self. Rather than questioning whether Peter loves him, Jesus uses these questions to remind Peter of the truth of his loving union with Jesus just as they remind him that this is the reality God sees in us beyond the sin, selfishness, fear, cowardice, etc which so often marks our lives.

It is significant then that when Jesus poses his question the first two times he uses the appropriate grammatical form of agape --- that quality of love which transcends all individual expressions of it, that form of love which is the principle of unity and wholeness in all forms or qualities of love (eros, bios, philia, etc), that form which points directly to God and the Spirit which inspires it within us. Only once Jesus has reminded Peter twice of this deep ground of all love and heard Peter's affirmations, does he ask him the third time if he loves him in the more particular form of philia. Peter is reconciled with Jesus. In dialogue with Jesus he comes to certainty about who he really is, and what moves him most deeply. He affirms himself and he affirms who Jesus is for him.

As a result or consequence (NOT as a reward!) Peter is commissioned to "feed my sheep". In accepting this commission he accepts his truest identity; in accepting his truest identity he experiences and accepts this commission. And this Peter will do because above all he has recommitted himself to loving, that is, to acting on what is truest and most real within himself in ways which will naturally affirm what is truest and most real in others.