Dear Friends,
Recently, Marianne and I were walking our dog, Todd. We were
clipping along a neighborhood route we’ve used for almost five years. We passed
a house we pass every time we walk that route. Every time. With Todd on the
leash. And he often sniffs and offers a canine “hind salute” to a tree out
front. We’ve never thought about it. We always clean up what shouldn’t stay in
someone else’s yard, and we never think about it when a dog salutes anything in
our yard – a tree, a bush, even our mailbox. Never.
Marianne had Todd, and I was holding “the bag.” When Todd sniffed
and saluted a tree in front of the house, a man strutted out of the garage and
yelled at Marianne: “GET YOUR [DARN]
DOG OFFA MY TREE!”
Because I was about twenty yards behind Marianne, I didn’t
see or hear it all clearly, but I heard Marianne apologize as she kept walking.
Spiteful emotions began to hit me in waves. I imagined all
sorts of scenarios in which I got the best of this guy, humiliated him, beat
him up, beat him down. I wanted to get
even with him. I wanted revenge for his unfriendliness.
Where did all of that come from? Where did his angry curse
come from? Especially at something so petty? More importantly, where did my visceral reaction come from? Who is
that guy inside me who charged from his own garage with a desire to do physical
harm to another person. Whoever he is, he obviously thinks that such actions
are justified and will make a difference.
The
real me knows better. The real me knows that that guy inside me, just like the
guy who cursed at Marianne, never accomplishes anything constructive. In fact, his
actions always leave him holding “the bag.”
The experience reminds me how tender our culture is right
now. Many of us are one straw short of broken backs. We’re hyper-sensitive to
the slightest words or actions. In a climate of anxiety and antagonism, it
doesn’t take much to make folks defensive, or offensive. That makes our work as
disciples of Jesus all the more difficult right now – and all the more crucial.
In our current book study on the Beatitudes, Marjorie
Thompson quotes P.C. Ainsworth who defines righteousness as “the human spirit
recognizing and claiming kinship with God, and seeking all that is involved in
that relationship.”*
Jesus reveals to us God’s own deep hunger and thirst for
righteousness among human beings. The life of Jesus reveals God’s own desire
for us to know and to be in relationship with the image of God within us, God’s
image being that part of us which is
inseparable from God, that part of us
out of which our true life and living arise.
Righteousness,
justice, mercy, meekness, poverty of spirit, peacemaking – all these things are
attributes of true disciples. They are utterly indispensable for us if we
expect to follow Jesus in an age of vengeance, violence, and fear. To learn to
put them into practice is to follow Jesus. It is to bear witness to God’s
redeeming love in and for the world.
Apart
from relationships of compassion, gratitude, and generosity, all of us are left
holding “the bag.”
Peace,
Pastor Allen
*Marjorie J. Thompson and Stephen D. Bryant, The Way of Blessedness (Participant's Book), Upper Room Books, Nashville, 2003. p. 60.
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