Stephen
Terry, Director
Living
the Gospel
Commentary
for the September 7, 2019 Sabbath School Lesson
"When
he saw the crowds, he had compassion on them, because they were harassed and
helpless, like sheep without a shepherd." "Matthew 9:36, NIV
As I write this commentary, the news is filled with
tales of disaster. Dorian, a category 5 hurricane, is swirling over the Bahamas
taking lives and destroying personal property and infrastructure. Every few
days, someone seems to go berserk and simply begin killing people. In the
United States, they are called mass shootings because the weapon of choice is
often a rifle designed to inflict as much death and destruction as is legally
possible. But even when such weapons are not available, those with murderous
intent seem to be only minimally inconvenienced as crowded conditions in many
of our cities put numerous victims within easy reach of even knife-wielding
murderers as was recently seen in a subway station near Lyon, France. If this
were not enough to produce anxiety in the hearts of people, large swaths of the
Amazon rain forest are being put to the torch in a direct challenge to the
claim of many climatologists that the Amazon jungle is essential for
maintaining a healthy environment on this little blue marble spinning through
space. Sometimes we can feel like the proverbial Dutch boy with his finger in
the dike trying to prevent the deluge. But as problems multiply, we are running
out of fingers. Nonetheless, too few seem inclined to step forward to provide
the extra fingers needed to defuse impending disaster.
A very few wealthy individuals seem intent on ravaging
the earth for plunder and profit to add to already obscene levels of wealth.
They do this far beyond any reasonable need, at the expense of those struggling
to maintain a handhold while chaos swirls around them. Wars, famines and the
greed of the wealthy drive them from their homes, leaving them without secure
food, water, shelter or medical assistance. Too often, they are stigmatized as
the enemy by those who hold the reins of power tightly in their clenched fists.
Driven to despair by the lack of compassion and justice they have experienced
and for lack of any other options, they may respond with violence to the
violence and oppression they have felt for years. However, violence feeds on
violence and the cycle, which may have had clear issues at the beginning,
perpetuates itself until no one really remembers what started it all. They only
know that the other is the enemy and survival somehow depends on destroying
that foe. So much blood now waters the ground; the earth itself must weep and
stagger with the impact of so much unrelenting evil.
What is to be done? Where can we find the answer? We are
inundated with those who claim to know. The National Rifle Association, perhaps
influenced by the weapons manufacturers, claims that more guns are the answer.
Movies and television back that up. Keanu Reeves as John Wick and Liam Neeson
in the "Taken" series are among many who assure us that guns and violence
are the only possible answers for dealing with an enemy. Violent actors like
Chuck Norris and Sylvester Stallone have become stereotypes of the proverbial "good
guy with a gun" that will save us all. Such heroic stories are nothing
new. Even the Bible offers justice at the point of a sword, or from stones in a
sling in the case of David versus Goliath. What is perhaps unique to our time
is that people are abandoning any other possible option in droves as weapons
sales soar and individuals stock pile guns, ammunition and supplies as they fear
so many weapons in the hands of everyone else could cause society to explode
into an apocalyptic, post civilization, every-man-for-himself scenario. Once
again the entertainment industry has fed those fears and capitalized on them
with movies like "The Road" and series like "The Walking
Dead." Perhaps it should be no surprise that many then feel "harassed
and helpless" like puppets on tethers that someone, somewhere, is
constantly pulling to shift society into darkness when it would normally seek
light.
Although evil was not as technologically refined as it
is today, two millennia ago, many struggled with survival. Right up until the
20th century many children did not survive long after birth, due to
inadequate sanitation, nutrition, and other basic needs not being fulfilled. We
now have a minimal social safety net, but that safety net is constantly under
assault as the wealthy have waged an unceasing battle to convince society that
tolerating the poor is what destroys happiness for everyone. The wealthy are
like the friend who takes nine of our ten cookies for himself while convincing
us that the real enemy is the poor person who might come and take our remaining
cookie. When we point out to the wealthy man that he has taken almost all of
the cookies himself, he nonchalantly assures us that he did so in our best
interest and that doing so will assure us of eventual prosperity just like his.
In the meantime, naive and gullible, we do his bidding and vilify the poor,
depriving them of even minimal essentials, believing that someday that ghost ship
of prosperity will sail into our port with its phantasmal wealth. As a result
we have created a society where most beat down but never beat up. We oppress
those who we feel are below us, the poor and the powerless, while providing
those above us with our service as the loyal sycophants they so desperately
need. The only thing that might bring such a system crashing down is if the wealthy
become so greedy they no longer are willing to provide even token rewards to those
who stand in the gap between them and the abject poor. With a global population
now over seven and a half billion and a finite number of resources being
concentrated in fewer and fewer hands, that scenario may not be so difficult to
envision as it once was. I fear what could happen should that day ever arise
for a society that has glorified guns and violence as this one has.
All of this would be a depressing outcome much like the
movies portray with their dark, post-apocalyptic societies if the earth were an
isolated biosphere, alone in the ether. But two thousand years ago, in Bethlehem,
we were reminded that this is not the case. Our blue globe is only a very tiny,
minuscule planet, morally adrift in the vast panoply of the universe. I cannot
help but feel that as our planet, with its taint of darkness, chugs through the
universe, we appear to the rest like a diesel truck "rolling coal"
through the neighborhood where everyone has just hung their clean white sheets
out to dry after washing the linens. Whether intentionally or not, we have
certainly drawn the attention of the universe, and an ephemeral God[i] incarnated to intervene.
He didn't just drop by for a brief visit. He experienced childhood and the
prime of adulthood which likely allowed him to clearly see what we are all
dealing with.[ii]
As a result, he saw the many errors we were laboring under. He desired to open
our eyes both literally and metaphorically. All the darkness we are being
constantly fed obscures that there is light also. He tried to show us that
there is greater power in light than in darkness. The smallest, tiniest light
is adequate to penetrate the deepest darkness. He urged us to once again make
light the focus of our lives as we were once created to do.[iii] This not only enlightens
us. It allows others to see through our example that there is not only darkness
in the world. There is light.
A natural thing happens when we are in a dark place, and
we see a light. We move toward it. Once Jesus brought light into our world, we
were drawn to him.[iv]
Then as we took in his light, we became beacons drawing others to the light.
But evil is of the darkness, literally and metaphorically. Criminals love the
cover of darkness to commit their crimes and darkness is a metaphor for hidden
agendas and opaqueness. Whether individuals or institutions, those who practice
such things are of darkness no matter how much they may protest otherwise. Those,
who because of their criminality and greed could not allow light to illuminate their
true intent, pursued Jesus relentlessly, finally putting him to death. They
thought that would extinguish the light that was exposing their evil intent.
But they failed to see the bigger picture. Earth is not a universe unto itself.
It is only a bit player that is stumbling to remember even that small part.
Caught up in its own corporeal perspective, the power players with their hidden
agendas could not understand that they do not have the tools to kill, much less
control, the Spirit of God. Not only did they fail to extinguish the light,
they established the uniqueness of its source through the events surrounding
Christ's death and resurrection.
The importance of all of this is to achieve
understanding that guns, violence and more darkness are not the answer to the
illness that afflicts our planet. As Jesus demonstrated repeatedly, compassion
and justice are what is required. Healing the sick, feeding the hungry, carrying
one another's burdens, and justice tempered with mercy are the ways that light
enters into the darkness and dispels it. If we receive the light of God's
Spirit into our lives, we will begin to do those very things, and by our
example, others will come to the light as well, and they, in turn, will do the
same. Darkness will oppose the light, for that is its nature, but it cannot
overcome it, no matter how vicious and nasty it may try to make itself appear.
The power remains with the light.
