Proper 18 | Ordinary Time 23
Preaching
Lectionary Preaching Workbook
Series VIII, Cycle B
Revised Common
Proverbs 22:1-2, 8-9, 22-23 or Isaiah 35:4-7a3
James 2:1-10 (11-13) 14-17
Mark 7:24-37
Roman Catholic
Isaiah 35:4-7a
James 2:1-5
Mark 7:31-37
Episcopal
Isaiah 35:4-7a
James 1:17-27
Mark 7:31-37
Theme For The Day
The good news of Jesus Christ is for all people.
Old Testament Lesson
Proverbs 22:1-2, 8-9, 22-23
Wise Living
This section of the book of Proverbs straddles the boundary between two principal divisions of the book. The first two sub-sections of today's lectionary selection, verses 1-2 and 8-9, belong to the collection titled "The Proverbs of Solomon" (10:1). The third, verses 22-23, belongs to the collection titled "The Words of the Wise" (22:17). Not that this matters tremendously to preaching this text, because the proverbial material in both these collections is an assortment of wisdom sayings that are mostly unconnected with each other. The attribution to Solomon attached to the first portion (10:1--22:16) does not necessarily mean Solomon is the author. It means these proverbs were compiled under the patronage of the royal house of David. The varied sayings included in this week's lectionary selection have to do with: the value of a good name (v. 1); rich and poor being equal before God (v. 2); "Whoever sows injustice will reap calamity" (v. 8); the generous who share with the poor being blessed (v. 9); and an injunction against abusing the poor, because the Lord protects them (vv. 22-23). There seems to be an assumption in many of these sayings that the audience is made up primarily of people of means, perhaps young men of the priestly class and / or the royal court -- hence, the many admonitions to care for the poor. There is a tone of courtly chivalry echoing through many of these epigrams, that would not have made sense if the destitute were included among its intended audience. Verses 17-21 (omitted from this week's lectionary selection) are a sort of introduction to the second collection, and tell of the editor's purpose in compiling it.
Alternate Old Testament Lesson
Isaiah 35:4-7a
The Lord Will Redeem
Scholars have long remarked over the similarities between Isaiah 35 and the work of Second Isaiah (chs. 40-55). Chapter 35 contains both similar imagery and the same sort of hopeful theme, looking to the Lord to redeem the long-suffering Israel. This passage's imagery of the coming of a cosmically powerful God who will save and redeem the people (v. 4), along with miraculous signs such as the healing of physical disabilities (vv. 5-6) and water in the desert (v. 7), all have their counterparts in Second Isaiah. This passage can be the foundation for a sermon on hope, one that encourages believers in trying times to rely on God for redemption and help.
New Testament Lesson
James 2:1-10 (11-13) 14-17
Faith By Itself, Without Works, Is Dead
Chapter 2 of James continues the didactic tone of the first chapter, advising Christians to focus on doing good works that give glory to God. There is specific advice here for the ordering of the Christian community's life. Preferential seating for the rich is to be abolished (vv. 1-7), for to do otherwise is to betray the intent of one of Jesus' greatest teachings, to "love your neighbor as yourself" (v. 10a). The Law of God is a unity, and cannot be followed selectively: "whoever keeps the whole law but fails in one point has become accountable for all of it" (v. 10b). The optional verse 13 extols the virtue of mercy, and of avoiding judgment of others: "judgment will be without mercy to anyone who has shown no mercy; mercy triumphs over judgment." Verses 14-17 are the first part of a general philosophical discussion about the inseparability of faith and works. Although many Protestants (including Luther) have responded with horror to verse 17 ("faith by itself, if it has no works, is dead"), if the qualifier "by itself" is not overlooked, it will become clear that James is holding out for a both / and approach, rather than either / or.
The Gospel
Mark 7:24-37
Jesus And The Syrophoenician Woman
This is the story of two healings. The first is an exceedingly difficult passage, because of Jesus' remark in verse 27 which makes him sound like a racist. Jesus is out of Israelite territory, near the Phoenician port city of Tyre, and is hoping -- for the moment -- to remain incognito. A woman of the region discovers he is there, and calls on him in the house where he is staying, asking him to exorcise a demon from her daughter. Jesus' remark certainly sounds like a callous rejection: "Let the children be fed first, for it is not fair to take the children's food and throw it to the dogs" (v. 27). Dogs, in Jesus' society, are not cherished house pets, but are considered a particularly low form of animal life. This plucky woman gives it right back to him: "Sir, even the dogs under the table eat the children's crumbs" (v. 28). Jesus softens at this, declaring to her that the demon has left her daughter -- which, as she discovers upon returning home, is exactly the case (vv. 29-30). It is possible that Jesus' remark about not throwing food to the dogs was spoken with a certain degree of irony, perhaps even joking -- it's what most everyone would expect him to say, given the feelings of hostility between the two cultures -- but the fact that he very quickly heals the girl indicates that this is not, in fact, his personal view. The second healing, verses 31-37, is that of a deaf-mute man. It is a more conventional healing story than the one we have just examined. Notable here is the detailed physical description of Jesus' treatment, including putting his fingers into the man's ears, spitting, and touching his tongue. The man is healed, and the people are delighted, saying, "He has done everything well" (v. 37).
Preaching Possibilities
How ridiculous prejudice is -- and yet, sadly, how commonplace! From the earliest days that men and women have walked the earth, we have had this disturbing tendency to build walls, to separate people one from another. Be they barriers of race, nationality, religion, or economic status, all of us can claim a share of guilt for building and maintaining those walls -- walls that separate us from brothers and sisters who share this planet. In today's Gospel Lesson, we hear of a woman who has the courage to scale the walls of prejudice.
Jesus and his disciples have crossed over into a foreign country: the Phoenician lands around the city of Tyre (that's present-day Lebanon). Mark doesn't tell us why they've travelled so far out of their way, but it's just possible that Jesus and his friends have gone on a sort of vacation or retreat. Exhausted from the demands of ministry -- the crowds that won't leave them alone, the ceaseless harassment of the scribes and the Pharisees -- they may just want to get away from it all. (Who could blame them?)
But there is no rest for the weary -- not even in Gentile lands. A Syrophoenician woman seeks Jesus out, begging him to heal her daughter. Now that may not seem at all unusual -- after all, healing people is Jesus' stock in trade -- but remember who this women is. She's not a Jew, but a Gentile. She falls to her knees in front of Jesus, and begs him to help her. The worry etched on her face tells all the story anyone needs to hear: her daughter is sick, and she has nowhere else to turn. This woman will pay any price, will do anything, to see her well again.
Remarkably, Jesus' response to her is lukewarm -- even rude. He seems to want nothing to do with the woman. Without even answering her plea, Jesus says to her, "Let the children be fed first, for it is not fair to take the children's food and throw it to the dogs." To our ears that sounds harsh, even cruel -- but to understand what's happening here, we have to try to think like a first-century Jew. To a faithful Jew of that day, Jesus' response to the woman is hardly out of the ordinary -- it is, in fact, exactly what a rabbi is expected to say. Virtuous women of that society do not approach male strangers and speak to them; and more than that, this woman belongs to an unclean race, the Gentiles. There is no rabbi alive who'd give such a woman the time of day!
In speaking to her at all -- in the context of that culture -- Jesus is paying her a high honor. He is providing her an opening: allowing her to engage with him in theological debate, as his equal. Jesus is giving her an opportunity to make a theological case for the healing of her daughter. The woman is more than up to Jesus' challenge. In a clever comeback, she responds, "Sir, even the dogs under the table eat the children's crumbs." With that, he tells the woman her daughter is healed: and when she returns home, she embraces a little girl who is herself again.
For whoever is there to witness this encounter, Jesus is teaching an important lesson. Just prior to this passage, Jesus has been explaining to the disciples that the scribes' and Pharisees' idea of ritual uncleanliness is nonsense. It is not what goes into the mouth that makes a person unclean, but what comes out of it. It is not our adherence to the intricacies of the law that God notices, but how we treat other people. According to the minimal requirements of the law, Jesus would have done the right thing by ignoring the woman. Instead, he shows the absurdity of the Pharisees' position by arguing it himself -- and allowing the Syrophoenician woman to argue the side of justice and understanding. In engaging her in debate, Jesus honors her for her faith -- and at the same time demonstrates to the disciples that all people are equally deserving in the eyes of God.
All of us could stand to hear that same lesson from time to time. It is all too easy for us to grow complacent about the walls of discrimination that are still so prevalent in our society.
Prejudice exacts a heavy toll on those who practice it -- just as it does on its victims. How many of us suffer from a sudden twinge of unreasoning fear as we pass a person of another race on a deserted sidewalk? Or how many of us wonder what that person who looks a little different from most others in our neighborhood is doing here, and whether he or she is up to no good? Many are the unconscious judgments we make each day: about fellow human beings, who, like us, are equally made in God's image!
Prayer For The Day
Lord, they pass us in the crowd: the anonymous faces. Some faces resemble our own. Others look different: in color, complexion, bone structure, the pattern of lines that are the remnant of smiles and frowns. Beneath the skin of each face run tiny capillaries, filled with life-giving blood by a beating heart just like our own. Each one was created by you, in your image. Each one is precious to you. Why, O Lord, do we continue to behave as though it were different? Amen.
To Illustrate
There's a famous poem by Robert Frost about the walls we build in life. "Something there is that doesn't love a wall," he writes, looking over at his New England farmer neighbor, who's heaving yet another stone upon the wall that runs between their two properties. The poet asks his neighbor why the wall is necessary:
My apple trees will never get across
And eat the cones under his pines, I tell him.
He only says, "Good fences make good neighbors."
But then the poet is led to wonder,
Before I built a wall I'd ask to know
What I was walling in or walling out.
When you and I build walls between ourselves and others, it is truly an open question whether we are walling the other out, or walling ourselves in!
-- "Mending Wall," The Poetry of Robert Frost, Edward Connery Lathem, ed. (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1979)
***
Sometimes it takes an experience of struggle to shake us out of our prejudices.
That's the way it was for a Dutchman by the name of Ren? SchŠfer. SchŠfer was a prisoner of war in Japan during World War II. His captors had sentenced him to forced labor in a shipyard in the city of Hiroshima. Through years of harsh captivity, SchŠfer had learned to hate his guards with a white-hot passion. He used to pray to God every night that the Americans would attack the city and destroy it, exacting revenge for his years of suffering.
In August 1945, SchŠfer's prayer was answered. Hearing an air-raid siren one day, he dove into a ditch. A moment later, he heard the noise, saw the flash -- and felt the unearthly heat -- of the world's first nuclear weapon used in war. In the darkness and confusion that followed, SchŠfer was amazed to find himself helping not only his fellow POWs who had been burned or blinded, but also his guards. Years later, he had this to say:
From the moment the bomb went off, you see, there was no hate left. It was a strange experience -- how hate can be turned to pity by a single bomb. There was even no difference for me between the Japanese victims and my friends. I felt myself a victim among other victims, not a Dutchman among Japanese. The bomb had killed all hate.
How sad that it took an atom bomb to blast away the walls of hate, to erase the dividing line between this man and his captors! But that's the way it is with prejudice -- the walls between "us" and "them" are not breached very easily.
***
There was an old Native American sheep farmer whose neighbor's dogs were always killing his sheep. It got so bad that he knew he had to do something. As he saw it, he had three options. The first, in true American tradition, was to sue: he could bring a lawsuit and take his neighbor to court. His second option was to build a stronger and higher fence so his neighbor's dogs could not get in. But he discovered a third option. He gave two lambs to his neighbor's children. In due time, the lambs grew into sheep and had other sheep and then the neighbor and his children got to see the sheep not as a impersonal herd, but as something warm and fuzzy, something personal with individual traits and a history and names. They soon penned in their dogs.
Unless you live and eat and sleep with the sheep, almost become one like them, then they will never be unique. They will all look alike. It is the same with us. Unless we get to know others as persons, as individuals, then they are just members of a certain group or class of people. Then they look just like everyone else in the crowd. It is an interesting aspect of prejudice that as soon as someone gets to know another person who belongs to a group against whom they are prejudiced, they do not change their perception of the group. They remove the person they like from the group. If you were to ask them about that little trick of the mind, they would probably say something like: "Oh, they're not like the rest of their kind." Curious, isn't it?
The basis of prejudice and racism, rejection and persecution, is this: reducing people to categories, making them abstractions, not knowing their names, not calling them by name. This depersonalizes them. In order to overcome prejudice, we must see people as individuals with a name and a history.
-- Adapted from a sermon by Silverius Galvan, April 23, 1999,
***
"It's not so much the things we don't know that get us into trouble. It's the things we know just ain't so."
-- Artemus Ward
***
Businessman Chris Kim was inspired to act by listening to the story of a fourteen-year-old African-American boy. The boy stole a pair of pants from the clothing store Chris ran in his mini-mall in a poor south Seattle neighborhood. Chris and another Korean store owner grabbed him, called the police, and were ready to press charges. Then Chris thought about Christ's message of responding with forgiveness, not retribution. He decided to talk with the boy and his parents. "We always say we love our neighbors, but we never do it and risk something that belongs to us. He was a teenager, a young kid. It could have been anyone in a desperate situation, even one of my kids. I thought I should try and understand, not just turn him over to the police."
After Chris and the boy talked, the boy apologized, and said what he really wanted was a job. Chris hesitated briefly, then hired him as a clerk. The boy's mother sent Chris a note saying his compassion had changed her view both of Koreans and her son's life. Moved by the experience, Chris started working with local organizations that educate black youth. "Through my lifetime," Chris admitted, "I didn't have a good feeling about black people. It wasn't from direct experiences, but you hear so much in the media, about all the violence. So I tried to treat this kid as another human being, like myself, my family, my friends. I wanted to be part of solving the problems."
Chris' involvement was supported by an existing foundation of belief, in this case his Christian faith. But it took a direct connection with the boy and his world to induce Chris to put those beliefs into practice. It took a willingness to exercise his moral imagination, to expand his sphere of concern to include someone from a completely different background.
As a result of wrestling with this responsibility to the boy, Chris began questioning himself, especially his business practices. He consulted local neighborhood leaders, brought in new African-American shops to his mini-mall, and sponsored an annual neighborhood festival. He tried to make the mall a place where people of all races and ages would feel welcome. It still felt strange staking his money and time to try to help people who, as he says, "aren't even my own race of Koreans. But I'd wanted to set an example for my children. Once you start to share with others, it gets easier. What I did wasn't anything fancy. But I felt such a priceless taste of love coming back. I got closer to some other human beings who I'd never have gotten to know. Once I've done something like that, I can't go back to what I was before."
-- Adapted from Paul Rogat Loeb, Soul of a Citizen: Living with Conviction in a Cynical Time (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1999)
Proverbs 22:1-2, 8-9, 22-23 or Isaiah 35:4-7a3
James 2:1-10 (11-13) 14-17
Mark 7:24-37
Roman Catholic
Isaiah 35:4-7a
James 2:1-5
Mark 7:31-37
Episcopal
Isaiah 35:4-7a
James 1:17-27
Mark 7:31-37
Theme For The Day
The good news of Jesus Christ is for all people.
Old Testament Lesson
Proverbs 22:1-2, 8-9, 22-23
Wise Living
This section of the book of Proverbs straddles the boundary between two principal divisions of the book. The first two sub-sections of today's lectionary selection, verses 1-2 and 8-9, belong to the collection titled "The Proverbs of Solomon" (10:1). The third, verses 22-23, belongs to the collection titled "The Words of the Wise" (22:17). Not that this matters tremendously to preaching this text, because the proverbial material in both these collections is an assortment of wisdom sayings that are mostly unconnected with each other. The attribution to Solomon attached to the first portion (10:1--22:16) does not necessarily mean Solomon is the author. It means these proverbs were compiled under the patronage of the royal house of David. The varied sayings included in this week's lectionary selection have to do with: the value of a good name (v. 1); rich and poor being equal before God (v. 2); "Whoever sows injustice will reap calamity" (v. 8); the generous who share with the poor being blessed (v. 9); and an injunction against abusing the poor, because the Lord protects them (vv. 22-23). There seems to be an assumption in many of these sayings that the audience is made up primarily of people of means, perhaps young men of the priestly class and / or the royal court -- hence, the many admonitions to care for the poor. There is a tone of courtly chivalry echoing through many of these epigrams, that would not have made sense if the destitute were included among its intended audience. Verses 17-21 (omitted from this week's lectionary selection) are a sort of introduction to the second collection, and tell of the editor's purpose in compiling it.
Alternate Old Testament Lesson
Isaiah 35:4-7a
The Lord Will Redeem
Scholars have long remarked over the similarities between Isaiah 35 and the work of Second Isaiah (chs. 40-55). Chapter 35 contains both similar imagery and the same sort of hopeful theme, looking to the Lord to redeem the long-suffering Israel. This passage's imagery of the coming of a cosmically powerful God who will save and redeem the people (v. 4), along with miraculous signs such as the healing of physical disabilities (vv. 5-6) and water in the desert (v. 7), all have their counterparts in Second Isaiah. This passage can be the foundation for a sermon on hope, one that encourages believers in trying times to rely on God for redemption and help.
New Testament Lesson
James 2:1-10 (11-13) 14-17
Faith By Itself, Without Works, Is Dead
Chapter 2 of James continues the didactic tone of the first chapter, advising Christians to focus on doing good works that give glory to God. There is specific advice here for the ordering of the Christian community's life. Preferential seating for the rich is to be abolished (vv. 1-7), for to do otherwise is to betray the intent of one of Jesus' greatest teachings, to "love your neighbor as yourself" (v. 10a). The Law of God is a unity, and cannot be followed selectively: "whoever keeps the whole law but fails in one point has become accountable for all of it" (v. 10b). The optional verse 13 extols the virtue of mercy, and of avoiding judgment of others: "judgment will be without mercy to anyone who has shown no mercy; mercy triumphs over judgment." Verses 14-17 are the first part of a general philosophical discussion about the inseparability of faith and works. Although many Protestants (including Luther) have responded with horror to verse 17 ("faith by itself, if it has no works, is dead"), if the qualifier "by itself" is not overlooked, it will become clear that James is holding out for a both / and approach, rather than either / or.
The Gospel
Mark 7:24-37
Jesus And The Syrophoenician Woman
This is the story of two healings. The first is an exceedingly difficult passage, because of Jesus' remark in verse 27 which makes him sound like a racist. Jesus is out of Israelite territory, near the Phoenician port city of Tyre, and is hoping -- for the moment -- to remain incognito. A woman of the region discovers he is there, and calls on him in the house where he is staying, asking him to exorcise a demon from her daughter. Jesus' remark certainly sounds like a callous rejection: "Let the children be fed first, for it is not fair to take the children's food and throw it to the dogs" (v. 27). Dogs, in Jesus' society, are not cherished house pets, but are considered a particularly low form of animal life. This plucky woman gives it right back to him: "Sir, even the dogs under the table eat the children's crumbs" (v. 28). Jesus softens at this, declaring to her that the demon has left her daughter -- which, as she discovers upon returning home, is exactly the case (vv. 29-30). It is possible that Jesus' remark about not throwing food to the dogs was spoken with a certain degree of irony, perhaps even joking -- it's what most everyone would expect him to say, given the feelings of hostility between the two cultures -- but the fact that he very quickly heals the girl indicates that this is not, in fact, his personal view. The second healing, verses 31-37, is that of a deaf-mute man. It is a more conventional healing story than the one we have just examined. Notable here is the detailed physical description of Jesus' treatment, including putting his fingers into the man's ears, spitting, and touching his tongue. The man is healed, and the people are delighted, saying, "He has done everything well" (v. 37).
Preaching Possibilities
How ridiculous prejudice is -- and yet, sadly, how commonplace! From the earliest days that men and women have walked the earth, we have had this disturbing tendency to build walls, to separate people one from another. Be they barriers of race, nationality, religion, or economic status, all of us can claim a share of guilt for building and maintaining those walls -- walls that separate us from brothers and sisters who share this planet. In today's Gospel Lesson, we hear of a woman who has the courage to scale the walls of prejudice.
Jesus and his disciples have crossed over into a foreign country: the Phoenician lands around the city of Tyre (that's present-day Lebanon). Mark doesn't tell us why they've travelled so far out of their way, but it's just possible that Jesus and his friends have gone on a sort of vacation or retreat. Exhausted from the demands of ministry -- the crowds that won't leave them alone, the ceaseless harassment of the scribes and the Pharisees -- they may just want to get away from it all. (Who could blame them?)
But there is no rest for the weary -- not even in Gentile lands. A Syrophoenician woman seeks Jesus out, begging him to heal her daughter. Now that may not seem at all unusual -- after all, healing people is Jesus' stock in trade -- but remember who this women is. She's not a Jew, but a Gentile. She falls to her knees in front of Jesus, and begs him to help her. The worry etched on her face tells all the story anyone needs to hear: her daughter is sick, and she has nowhere else to turn. This woman will pay any price, will do anything, to see her well again.
Remarkably, Jesus' response to her is lukewarm -- even rude. He seems to want nothing to do with the woman. Without even answering her plea, Jesus says to her, "Let the children be fed first, for it is not fair to take the children's food and throw it to the dogs." To our ears that sounds harsh, even cruel -- but to understand what's happening here, we have to try to think like a first-century Jew. To a faithful Jew of that day, Jesus' response to the woman is hardly out of the ordinary -- it is, in fact, exactly what a rabbi is expected to say. Virtuous women of that society do not approach male strangers and speak to them; and more than that, this woman belongs to an unclean race, the Gentiles. There is no rabbi alive who'd give such a woman the time of day!
In speaking to her at all -- in the context of that culture -- Jesus is paying her a high honor. He is providing her an opening: allowing her to engage with him in theological debate, as his equal. Jesus is giving her an opportunity to make a theological case for the healing of her daughter. The woman is more than up to Jesus' challenge. In a clever comeback, she responds, "Sir, even the dogs under the table eat the children's crumbs." With that, he tells the woman her daughter is healed: and when she returns home, she embraces a little girl who is herself again.
For whoever is there to witness this encounter, Jesus is teaching an important lesson. Just prior to this passage, Jesus has been explaining to the disciples that the scribes' and Pharisees' idea of ritual uncleanliness is nonsense. It is not what goes into the mouth that makes a person unclean, but what comes out of it. It is not our adherence to the intricacies of the law that God notices, but how we treat other people. According to the minimal requirements of the law, Jesus would have done the right thing by ignoring the woman. Instead, he shows the absurdity of the Pharisees' position by arguing it himself -- and allowing the Syrophoenician woman to argue the side of justice and understanding. In engaging her in debate, Jesus honors her for her faith -- and at the same time demonstrates to the disciples that all people are equally deserving in the eyes of God.
All of us could stand to hear that same lesson from time to time. It is all too easy for us to grow complacent about the walls of discrimination that are still so prevalent in our society.
Prejudice exacts a heavy toll on those who practice it -- just as it does on its victims. How many of us suffer from a sudden twinge of unreasoning fear as we pass a person of another race on a deserted sidewalk? Or how many of us wonder what that person who looks a little different from most others in our neighborhood is doing here, and whether he or she is up to no good? Many are the unconscious judgments we make each day: about fellow human beings, who, like us, are equally made in God's image!
Prayer For The Day
Lord, they pass us in the crowd: the anonymous faces. Some faces resemble our own. Others look different: in color, complexion, bone structure, the pattern of lines that are the remnant of smiles and frowns. Beneath the skin of each face run tiny capillaries, filled with life-giving blood by a beating heart just like our own. Each one was created by you, in your image. Each one is precious to you. Why, O Lord, do we continue to behave as though it were different? Amen.
To Illustrate
There's a famous poem by Robert Frost about the walls we build in life. "Something there is that doesn't love a wall," he writes, looking over at his New England farmer neighbor, who's heaving yet another stone upon the wall that runs between their two properties. The poet asks his neighbor why the wall is necessary:
My apple trees will never get across
And eat the cones under his pines, I tell him.
He only says, "Good fences make good neighbors."
But then the poet is led to wonder,
Before I built a wall I'd ask to know
What I was walling in or walling out.
When you and I build walls between ourselves and others, it is truly an open question whether we are walling the other out, or walling ourselves in!
-- "Mending Wall," The Poetry of Robert Frost, Edward Connery Lathem, ed. (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1979)
***
Sometimes it takes an experience of struggle to shake us out of our prejudices.
That's the way it was for a Dutchman by the name of Ren? SchŠfer. SchŠfer was a prisoner of war in Japan during World War II. His captors had sentenced him to forced labor in a shipyard in the city of Hiroshima. Through years of harsh captivity, SchŠfer had learned to hate his guards with a white-hot passion. He used to pray to God every night that the Americans would attack the city and destroy it, exacting revenge for his years of suffering.
In August 1945, SchŠfer's prayer was answered. Hearing an air-raid siren one day, he dove into a ditch. A moment later, he heard the noise, saw the flash -- and felt the unearthly heat -- of the world's first nuclear weapon used in war. In the darkness and confusion that followed, SchŠfer was amazed to find himself helping not only his fellow POWs who had been burned or blinded, but also his guards. Years later, he had this to say:
From the moment the bomb went off, you see, there was no hate left. It was a strange experience -- how hate can be turned to pity by a single bomb. There was even no difference for me between the Japanese victims and my friends. I felt myself a victim among other victims, not a Dutchman among Japanese. The bomb had killed all hate.
How sad that it took an atom bomb to blast away the walls of hate, to erase the dividing line between this man and his captors! But that's the way it is with prejudice -- the walls between "us" and "them" are not breached very easily.
***
There was an old Native American sheep farmer whose neighbor's dogs were always killing his sheep. It got so bad that he knew he had to do something. As he saw it, he had three options. The first, in true American tradition, was to sue: he could bring a lawsuit and take his neighbor to court. His second option was to build a stronger and higher fence so his neighbor's dogs could not get in. But he discovered a third option. He gave two lambs to his neighbor's children. In due time, the lambs grew into sheep and had other sheep and then the neighbor and his children got to see the sheep not as a impersonal herd, but as something warm and fuzzy, something personal with individual traits and a history and names. They soon penned in their dogs.
Unless you live and eat and sleep with the sheep, almost become one like them, then they will never be unique. They will all look alike. It is the same with us. Unless we get to know others as persons, as individuals, then they are just members of a certain group or class of people. Then they look just like everyone else in the crowd. It is an interesting aspect of prejudice that as soon as someone gets to know another person who belongs to a group against whom they are prejudiced, they do not change their perception of the group. They remove the person they like from the group. If you were to ask them about that little trick of the mind, they would probably say something like: "Oh, they're not like the rest of their kind." Curious, isn't it?
The basis of prejudice and racism, rejection and persecution, is this: reducing people to categories, making them abstractions, not knowing their names, not calling them by name. This depersonalizes them. In order to overcome prejudice, we must see people as individuals with a name and a history.
-- Adapted from a sermon by Silverius Galvan, April 23, 1999,
***
"It's not so much the things we don't know that get us into trouble. It's the things we know just ain't so."
-- Artemus Ward
***
Businessman Chris Kim was inspired to act by listening to the story of a fourteen-year-old African-American boy. The boy stole a pair of pants from the clothing store Chris ran in his mini-mall in a poor south Seattle neighborhood. Chris and another Korean store owner grabbed him, called the police, and were ready to press charges. Then Chris thought about Christ's message of responding with forgiveness, not retribution. He decided to talk with the boy and his parents. "We always say we love our neighbors, but we never do it and risk something that belongs to us. He was a teenager, a young kid. It could have been anyone in a desperate situation, even one of my kids. I thought I should try and understand, not just turn him over to the police."
After Chris and the boy talked, the boy apologized, and said what he really wanted was a job. Chris hesitated briefly, then hired him as a clerk. The boy's mother sent Chris a note saying his compassion had changed her view both of Koreans and her son's life. Moved by the experience, Chris started working with local organizations that educate black youth. "Through my lifetime," Chris admitted, "I didn't have a good feeling about black people. It wasn't from direct experiences, but you hear so much in the media, about all the violence. So I tried to treat this kid as another human being, like myself, my family, my friends. I wanted to be part of solving the problems."
Chris' involvement was supported by an existing foundation of belief, in this case his Christian faith. But it took a direct connection with the boy and his world to induce Chris to put those beliefs into practice. It took a willingness to exercise his moral imagination, to expand his sphere of concern to include someone from a completely different background.
As a result of wrestling with this responsibility to the boy, Chris began questioning himself, especially his business practices. He consulted local neighborhood leaders, brought in new African-American shops to his mini-mall, and sponsored an annual neighborhood festival. He tried to make the mall a place where people of all races and ages would feel welcome. It still felt strange staking his money and time to try to help people who, as he says, "aren't even my own race of Koreans. But I'd wanted to set an example for my children. Once you start to share with others, it gets easier. What I did wasn't anything fancy. But I felt such a priceless taste of love coming back. I got closer to some other human beings who I'd never have gotten to know. Once I've done something like that, I can't go back to what I was before."
-- Adapted from Paul Rogat Loeb, Soul of a Citizen: Living with Conviction in a Cynical Time (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1999)
