Some mornings when I open up the Scripture and begin reading them, I would like to quickly close the bible and forget what I just read. Today is one of those days! It appears to be just a bit too challenging for me! But, there it is!
James is not mincing words here (JAS 5: 1-6):
“Come now, you rich, weep and wail over your impending miseries…
Behold, the wages you withheld from the workers who harvested your fields are crying aloud; and the cries of the harvesters…
You have lived on earth in luxury and pleasure; you have fattened your hearts for the day of slaughter. You have condemned; you have murdered the righteous one”
Obviously, this Scripture is not about ME! I’m not rich. I don’t live in luxury and pleasure! I don’t have “workers” from whom I have withheld. Who have I condemned or murdered? So, there you have it, what else can I say?
Being materially wealthy can seem to have a relative nature. There are many who would look at the life I live and the “means” that I have as consider it quite extravagant and “rich.” And there are also some who may look at my wealth and consider it quite modest and more a comfortable sufficiency. I’m not sure that James’ strong and caustic description is asking us to assess the level of our wealth as much as asking us to assess our relationships – to ourselves and to everyone and everything else. Some of the words that really jump out at me are “weep and wail,” “luxury and pleasure,” and “condemned.”
When I look out at the world, it sometimes seems like it’s too much. Too much poverty, too much pain, too much hateful behavior. It seems like it’s too much to DO anything about. Where to start? If I dwell here too long, in this way of thinking, it can easily lead to a withdrawal into numbing complacency. And if I start to notice that I am in some way contribute to this or even participate in this scenario, it can go at least one of two ways – self-recrimination or humble response-ability. I think James is aiming for the latter in his letter today.
My experience is that lifestyle changes are only effective if they come from the heart. Real transformation wells up from a heart that has wept and wailed over the realization of the suffering in the world and grows gradually from a slow yet ever emerging awareness that not only do I participate in the poverty in the world, on “my side,” but I’m also on the “other side” too. In other words, not only do my lifestyle choices in some way contribute to how others’ lives are enriched or impoverished, but also contributes to how MY life is enriched or impoverished. The line in the sand gets smeared. The problem is that we don’t cross into each other’s lives. But really, we are already there in each other’s lives, but we’re just not paying attention! As Kathleen Dowling Singh says, “we are on “airplane mode.” We don’t let ourselves see that our lives are connected!
Mother Teresa said it simply and profoundly:
“We think sometimes that poverty is only being hungry, naked and homeless. The poverty of being unwanted, unloved and uncared for is the greatest poverty.”
They’re both the same – poverty is poverty – there is no food, because we isolate ourselves. We are homeless whether we live in a house or a cardboard box. What is keeping us from really seeing this?
In Mark’s Gospel (MK 9: 41-50), Jesus gives us a very visceral picture of the effects of not being conscious of the things (whatever they may be) that prevent us from living in the connection that we all have with one another:
““Whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin, it would be better for him if a great millstone were put around his neck and he were thrown into the sea
.If your hand causes you to sin, cut it off. It is better for you to enter into life maimed than with two hands to go into Gehenna, into the unquenchable fire.”
“Everyone will be salted with fire. Salt is good, but if salt becomes insipid, with what will you restore its flavor? Keep salt in yourselves and you will have peace with one another.”
The list of body parts that should be sacrificed goes on, but again, I find this unsettling description to be speaking to me more about how we are responsible for one another because we belong to one another. Whatever we do or don’t do to others, we are effecting the same upon ourselves. This is the poverty of poverty. But we may miss the positive life-giving side of all this.
It is precisely in our shared poverty, the unalterable connection that we have with one another, where Life and Love dwell! That poverty point of connection is the “salt” that gives our lives flavor and allows us to have peace with one another!
Life is too much! It is too much…too much good, too much love, too much compassion? These seemingly rarely touched or celebrated “too muches” are the abundance of Love’s availability at every point in our lives! We may have to suffer somewhat to see them (lose an “eye”), but they are here! I have experienced them and I look for them. They don’t “rose-color” the other “too muches” (material poverty, hate-isms, etc.) but rather contextualize them so that I can try to respond, to care in connection with others, to hope and receive transformation and try to let the shared poverty flow through me and outward. Like going off “airplane mode.”
A friend recently sent me a prayer taken from Thomas Merton’s writings, which beautifully describes a way of seeing this connection…
“At the center of our being is a point of nothingness which is untouched by sin and by illusion, a point of pure truth, a point of spark which belongs entirely to God… This little point of nothingness and of absolute poverty is the pure glory of God in us…It is like a pure diamond, blazing with the invisible light of heaven. It is in everybody, and if we could see it we would see these billions of points of light coming together in the face and blaze of a sun that would make all the darkness and cruelty of life vanish completely.”
Let’s look for it together!
Peace
Thomas