Saturday, September 24, 2011

Ridiculous!



When you live in the Bible Lands (and no, I don’t mean the Bible Belt—I did that 20 years ago!) or rather, the Holy Land, it is not surprising that biblical phrases rattle around in your head a little more than, say, when I live in the mid-west.

So in this last week—where a class of mine misbehaved, and the world watched Mahmoud Abbas address the United Nations—I had a strange commandment from the apostle Paul rattling around in my head. “You owe no one anything … except to love them.” That is pretty good, actually. Let’s repeat it—“You owe no one anything … except to love them.” Can I get an Amen?

It has been a pretty long time since a class of mine misbehaved. Frankly, they kind of know what they are in for when they sign up for AP Art History. But last Thursday, the last class of the school week, it was hot in my classroom (now there is nothing abnormal about how hot it is…) and they just weren’t terribly interested in the art of ancient China. Pity—it really is great and moving art. But several times I asked them calmly to pay better attention—you know you can always level them with, “We have a test coming up and you need to be prepared for this!” But they weren’t having any of that last Thursday. So about 10 minutes before the end of class, I pulled the plug on the laptop, quietly said, “I’m done. You may go.” And I proceeded to unplug the powerpoint projector and clean up. They were all of a sudden totally silent. As I reached the door, I turned and said, “You may go. I’m finished for the day.” And I left the class early. I think I may have done that three times ever in 23 years of teaching!

When I returned to my apartment after visiting Lubna in the gym after the disappointing class, I found a note under my door. I don’t know if it was the work of one student or more (it was signed from “D-Block”) but it was a genuine apology note. It was well-written and very thoughtful. The writer said, “We are all ashamed of ourselves for what we have done. You treat us like adults and today we abused it. We honestly know what we have done is wrong and we will not do it again. You deserve the best and utmost respect. You inspire us with your art and we cannot explain how sorry we are. Again we owe you our sincerest apologies.” Wow. The note blew me away.

Over the next day or so I watched a number of news sources, from Arabic news to BBC to CNN to ABC, all comparing the coverage of the Abbas speech and the impending vote in the UN on the status of Palestine. I am interested for a number of reasons—first of all I live here, and the recognition could not be more important for these Palestinian friends of mine. It reminds me of how important it was to Germany and Austria when I lived there in 1985 when Ronald Reagan visited there and “forgave” them (kind of, but at least diplomatically) for World War II. I also teach offspring of two of the speakers this week, the son of the King of Jordan, and the grand-daughter of Mahmoud Abbas. It is also important to me since this is a subject of which I used to know almost nothing until I moved here.

But back to Paul—I kept having that commandment rattle around in my head. Paul, the man who spouts more rules in his writings than anyone else, the one obsessed with right conduct and right living, here tells the Romans and you and me that all of those rules and guidelines about how we are to live with one another really all boil down to love. Love fulfills all of the law in regards to one another, Paul says. Love is the only thing we owe one another. It is the thing we are called upon to extend to family, friend, neighbor, stranger, teacher, student, ally and enemy alike.

We think we know about love, and yet, I wonder how often we think deeply about or explore it closely. Exactly what love is. In the midst of the brokenness of this world, where pain, suffering, injustice and scandal seem to be the norm, we somehow seem to still trust that we know what love is, what it means and how to give and receive it.

Julian Barnes wrote a stunning book entitled A History of the World in 10 ½ Chapters. Each of the 10 Chapters covers the reality of life and its consequences—how trouble seems to be intertwined with living. Now the witty, sarcastic, dry and hilarious Barnes may be among the last people I can imagine grabbing a burger with Paul, but what he says about love, though, is something I think Paul would raise a glass to.

It is in that half of a chapter, named “Parenthesis,” stuck between chapters 8 and 9 that Barnes writes about the single most important thing in the history of world. He says that human history is and I quote Barnes “ridiculous without it.” That one thing of course is love. Barnes writes that love is essential precisely because it is unnecessary. He says that love does not guarantee that either you or the object of your love will be happy—love in no way makes everything alright. Barnes reminds us that we can build damns like the beaver without love, we can organize complex societies like the bee without love, we can travel long distances like the albatross without love, we can put our head in the sand like the ostrich without love, and, if we are not careful, we can even die out as a species like the dodo did without love. Love is not necessary, but it is essential. Without love, the world, Barnes claims, becomes brutally self important.

Barnes argues you cannot love someone without imaginative sympathy. You cannot love someone without beginning to see the world from another point of view. It is love, Barnes writes, that “moves us beyond ourselves.” Without love the history of the world is ridiculous. And the future … well it is meaningless … a long slide into self absorption and decay.

Love is essential according to both Barnes and Paul because love is generative. Paul grabs our attention and focuses it directly on right living. But rather than talking about all the thou shalt nots, Paul turns our focus and imagination toward the generative power of love. Because Paul knows love is a power that can never, ever be content with status quo. Love is a force that builds upon itself and one that binds us together. Hmmmm…

It is interesting to live a life of faith here at the contested crossroads of our world and to try and engage in service and justice making. I am privileged to be part of a “taskforce” that has been charged to wrestle with how we may live our way into that kind of life. This taskforce, or rather, this school, has been charged to get this community not just to think about, but to get involved directly with acts of kindness, justice, compassion, service and learning.

His Majesty created this school as a place to be synonymous with mercy and with justice. Yet mercy without love descends into pity. And justice without love? Well, the great Reinhold Neibhur said this, “Any justice which is only justice soon disintegrates into something less than justice.” As I look at the world, I believe we need that passage from Paul to be engraved on our hearts, for we are called not just to serve the world but to engage in love making with our world. We owe the people of the world nothing … except to love them.

Without love even the greatest of actions we might conceive of would be nothing more than clanging gongs or noisy cymbals … they would be ridiculous! But bathed in love the work we are being called to undertake becomes ways of co-loving this world with God. Bathed in love they not only affirm that all human beings are already God’s beloved, they suggest that each of us is a being capable of as yet unimagined possibilities. Each of us is God’s love song waiting to be sung. Service without love is meaningless ... Justice without love is ridiculous.

If we do our work at the crossroads right, we cannot love the world without encountering it and seeing this place and our world and ourselves through a whole new set of eyes. As we look at the differences of the people we encounter through the eyes of love we will end up seeing our own differences through their own eyes. As we love their differences we will have the chance to love our own. And when, through love, we see the unimagined possibilities that God has placed within them, we will have the chance through their eyes to see our own unrealized and unrecognized potential in ways we never could on our own. The truth is we could never be who God has dreamed we might be unless we love others and gain the eyes to see who we might be. So if we are to engage in love making with the world, we will miraculously discover that we will end up saying the exact same thing to those we meet at the crossroads, “You make such a difference in my life that I would not be the same person with you.” Bathed in love, our actions of service and justice will tether us to our brothers and sisters in ways that unleash God’s design for our lives. That is the first miracle of love making.

The second miracle is this—if we truly love the world we will not just give love away—we will create it. As human beings are loved, we have a natural tendency to return love to those who love us. It is a great gift of our creator, it is a tendency hard wired into who we are. Sure, people can and do refuse to return love. Each of us bears the scars to prove it. But that refusal goes against our very created natures as God’s beloved. When we infuse justice with love we cannot help but to foster it in those who we love. Love is a generative thing. We owe the world nothing but to love them.

In the end, Paul says it all comes down to love and Julian Barnes would certainly raise a glass to that notion. Barnes concludes his half of a chapter, that one stuck between chapters 8 and 9, with this observation: “How you cuddle in the dark, governs how you see the history of the world.” How you embrace love in the quiet and stillness of the night affects how you live into the morning.

There will be a vote in the UN as to whether or not there is a new dawn for the Palestinians. But either way the vote goes, I will crawl out of bed tomorrow and face the world in all its beauty and all its pain. Remember: Owe no one anything … except to love one another because love fulfills the law, love brings us closer to God’s dream for us, and without love, the whole world and anything we might do, even in the name of God would be ridiculous. Can I get an Amen?

1 comment:

Neal Hitch said...

John, This was a great blog, really a great piece of writing. You are often insightful, but I really like seeing through your words how your adventure continues to shape and change you. I remember, years ago now, how we talked about what impact YOU could have in this region, I guess we never thought about the flip side of that...

Neal