Blindness and the Law

              There is a case before the Supreme Court that is trying to argue that corporations have the right to express their own religious beliefs, and not obey the provisions of the Affordable Care Act that provide for contraception for employees.  Lawyers are arguing that the corporation, Hobby Lobby, which was created by evangelical Southern Baptists ought to be able to practice their religious beliefs in the context of the contracts that they have with those who work for them. 

            In many ways, this is the same kind of argument that was used in the Citizen’s United case, when corporations were held to have the same rights as individuals, and were thus able to contribute unlimited amounts to candidates for political office.  This ruling radically changed our electoral spectrum, allowing rich people to have unlimited power to influence elections.  The Citizen’s ruling by the Supreme Court has had a lasting negative effect on our country.  I suspect that this latest case will unleash untold mayhem on our culture, allowing corporations to refuse anything that they don’t like on religious grounds.

            I can imagine that corporations founded by Jehovah’s Witnesses might try to refuse to allow payment for blood transfusions on similar grounds; or perhaps Amish corporations might try to refuse to pay for transportation by other than horse and buggy.  As ridiculous as that sounds, these idle speculations travel the same ground as Hobby Lobby is working in the case currently before the court.

            As described in the 9^th chapter of the Gospel of John, Jesus healed the man born blind on the Sabbath.  This was against the rules that the Pharisees had created for the Jewish people.  Nevertheless, our Lord healed the man on the Sabbath, ultimately causing him to be thrown out of the synagogue.  Rules are at issue.  Should we side with the Pharisees or the blind man?  That doesn’t seem to me to be a difficult choice.  Jesus felt free to be the Son of God, and to further his mission no matter what day it happened to be.  When Jesus saw need, he met it.  He didn’t ask what day it was and tell the person in need to come back when the rules would apply; he simply did what he needed to do, no matter what others might have thought.  I think that is a great example for all of us.

            There are those who hold their religion above all things, regardless of what needs there may be around them.  I have always been appalled at the way that some Christians use their religion to allow or forbid things that the rest of society needs.  Their blindness is what is appalling here.  It ought not to be hard for the Supreme Court to decide this issue; but I suspect that with their extreme conservative bent, it will become a very difficult choice for them indeed.

Jesus and The Samaritan Woman

            When we were in the Holy Land, we stopped at Jacob’s well where Jesus is recorded to have been on his travels, and where he met the Samaritan woman recorded in John’s Gospel in that wonderful story.  He asks her for a drink, and the woman says to him: what, you a Jew are asking me a Samaritan for a drink? It was the custom that Jews and Samaritans never did things for each other, going back to an ancient feud that erupted when Nebuchadnezzar conquered the Northern Kingdom and the population was integrated into the people who followed him and the tribes in the North simply disappeared.  The more or less faithful Jews in the South refused to have anything to do with those who were the people of Samaria in what had been the Northern Kingdom.

             When we stopped at the well, we bought a little ceramic jar with water from the well in it.  I still have it on a shelf in the bedroom.  It always reminds me of the story about that woman.  She and Jesus have an animated discussion that takes them very deep into theology and into her life. 

            Jesus tells her that if she knew who it was who was asking for water, she would ask him for a drink and he would give her living water, and she would never be thirsty again.  She asks him for some of this water and he tells her to go and get her husband.  She replies that she has no husband.  Jesus tells her that she speaks the truth; that she has had five husbands, and the man she is currently living with is not her husband.  She is astonished at this deep insight into her life by this man whom she has just met at the well. 

            What is marvelous about this exchange is how she reacts.  She goes into the town, where there are more people clustered around the town’s well and she tells them to come and see a man who told me everything I have ever done. Jesus has made a believer out of her, simply by having a non-judgemental conversation with her.

            What is wonderful to me about all of this is that the reason that she went all the way out of the town to Jacob’s well is that she didn’t want to be among the other women in the town because of their judgement and their conversation about her.  She got no judgement from Jesus, only love and acceptance for who she is. 

           

            That is a lesson for all of us in this repentant season of Lent when we are all trying to cleanse ourselves of our life’s blemishes in preparation for Easter.  It really isn’t helpful to judge others.  It always brings the reminder that when we judge others, we open ourselves up to judgement also. What continues my amazement is that the people of the town believed what she said and flocked into the desert to see this man that she described.  Her astonishment at him was so apparent that they couldn’t help but be impressed with her, and also with Jesus.  That to me is a profound lesson in evangelism.  Being ourselves is the issue, not what we say, but who we are.  That is how we attract others to the place where we have become comfortable in our faith.  Showing it in our lives is all that we are called to do.  Those who yell their faith the loudest seem to me to make the least difference.  St. Francis told his followers:  Go and preach the Gospel.  Use words if necessary.  That is all that we need to hear.

Our Faith and Our Veterans

            When I was a kid during the Second World War, there was a returned veteran who lived up the street from our house.  He was often seen out on his porch raving at nothing, or at a bunch of us kids who were playing baseball in the field behind his home.  The rumor in the neighborhood was that he had been “shell shocked” in the war and we didn’t think much more about it.  Shell shocked.  That is really how we dealt with post traumatic stress disease back then, and indeed to this present day.  There isn’t really much that we do for the veterans who come back to us having suffered very much in the wars that we have fought in our lifetime; not only the world wars, but also Korea, Viet Nam, Iraq, Afghanistan as well as the “little” wars such as Grenada and Somalia.  War wounds are not only of the flesh, they have taken a terrible toll on the minds of many of our veterans, and we continue to do very little about it.

            When I worked at Western Penitentiary, there was a group of Viet Nam veterans who got together a couple of times a week to deal with their own stress that had been caused by the war.  I became convinced that many of these men were in the prison because of the crimes that they committed after coming home from that unpopular war with their stress and discovering that there was little concern on the part of the general public about their condition.  I know that often it led them into acts that they would have never contemplated before going to war.  Viet Nam was also the last time that we sent draftees in to military engagements.  Being drafted has an involuntary aspect to it.  I was drafted back in the fifties, before Viet Nam, but it still upended my life and my plans.  I certainly recovered from that, and found my time in the army to be a benefit, but I saw no military action and I escaped without stress. 

            I think that caring for one another is one of the basic cornerstones of our faith.  That there are people hurting all around us ought to cause us some concern.  That these hurting people are mostly ignored by the rest of society is a terrible travesty at best.  It is also a cause of a lot of turmoil not only in families, but also in our communities.  The fact that benefits for veterans are cut without thinking very much about it in order to reduce deficit spending is a terrible crime.  If we spent a fraction of what we spent on our military crusades on taking care of our hurting veterans, we could produce a great benefit to them and to our society. 

            When Nicodemus came to Jesus to talk to him about faith, heaven and healing, he got a magnificent response from our Lord, who told him that one could not understand the things of heaven without being born again.  This is a wonderful phrase that has been taken out of context by a lot of religious people and construed to mean that one has to have some kind of emotional religious experience in order to qualify to be one of the elect.  That isn’t what Jesus meant at all.  What he was trying to say to Nicodemus is that one needs to have eyes that look beyond this world in order to see the majesty of Heaven.  According to the scriptures, Nicodemus acquired these eyes.  He was one of those who took Jesus from the cross of his death to the tomb of his resurrection. 

            I think we need to acquire new eyes when we look at our veterans.  We need to see the beauty of who they are and understand the suffering that they have undergone.  When we do that, we can participate in the resurrection of many good people who have suffered for all of us and become heroes, even if we don’t really seem to appreciate it.  That man who lived up the street from us who had come back from the war wasn’t only shell shocked, he was ignored.  That isn’t on him, it is on the rest of us who have let it happen. May God give us the grace to do better for the veterans who live among us at the moment. 

Judging, Power and the Poor

            The hypocrisy of this political age is astounding.  I have heard professed Christians talk about the poor as if they were stealing money from everyone.  They get food stamps that they supposedly use to go to Las Vegas and those who are paying for all of this are the wealthy who are subjected to higher taxes of one sort or another.  These staunch Christians then turn around and refuse to acknowledge that people who are gay have a right to marry, or even in some cases to be served in businesses.  It reminds me sadly of the plight of the African-Americans in the south in the years of the Civil Rights movement when sit-ins at Woolworth lunch counters became newsworthy and brought us to the terrible days of the Selma march when peaceful marchers were set upon by dogs and beaten by police.  These were also Christians who were acting against the marchers, who were probably the most Christian of any of the people involved in this situation. 

            Our Lord told his Pharisee listeners not to judge, because those who judge face judgment themselves.  That is certainly true, and here am I making judgments about the people who have made terrible judgments about others.  Where does all of this come from?

            In the Garden of Eden, we have the wonderful story of the creation of Adam and Eve, who were told to eat freely of anything in the garden, but not to eat of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, because if they ate of its fruit, they would surely die.  The crafty serpent contradicted God and told Eve that she wouldn’t die at all, and that God didn’t want them to eat of this fruit because they would then become like God.  So Eve ate of the fruit and gave some to Adam, and immediately they knew good from evil and knew that they were naked and that wasn’t good.  When God came down to walk in the Garden, he couldn’t find Adam and Eve, who cried out to him that they were naked.  God knew immediately that they had eaten of the fruit, he then banished them from the Garden of Eden and we have the problem that continues to this day.

            We are beginning the season of Lent, when we pay close attention to our sins and how it is that we are not following the precepts laid down by our Lord.  We seek forgiveness from our sins and fervently promise to lead lives that are more in keeping with what God has in mind for this earth.  While we are doing this, others are making political judgments that fly in the face of Christian principle.  We are told to feed the hungry, clothe the naked and give shelter to those with no homes.  Our political leaders fight this kind of thing tooth and nail.  It is necessary that Christians find their voice and make the course of action decreed by our Lord to be our own agenda and not let those who would make poverty even worse than it is.  Finding our voice is not easy.  Political muscle these days depends on lots of money and the wealthy have found ways to accrue power.  That is what is being courted by those who not so subtly demean the poor in favor of those who are wealthy.  

            Finding our voice in this season of Lent ought to focus our prayer and our ministry on taking care of those whom Jesus cared the most about.  He spent little time with the rich and made his work the needs of those who had nothing.  In Matthew 25, Jesus tells his listeners about the sheep and the goats.  To the sheep, he says: when I was hungry, you fed me, when I was naked, you clothed me; when I was in prison, you came and visited me.  They asked him when they had done these things, and he told them, when you did this for the least of my brethren, you did it for me.  

            That needs to be our focus in this time.  To take care of those in need isn’t really that hard.  What is hard is getting the Pharisees to listen.