More Than the Sum of Our Adjectives

More Than The Sum of Our Adjectives—November 3, 2017

“When he returned to Capernaum after some days, it was reported that he was at home. So many gathered around that there was no longer room for them, not even in front of the door; and he was speaking the word to them. Then some people came, bringing to him a paralyzed man, carried by four of them. And when they could not bring him to Jesus because of the crowd, they removed the roof above him; and after having dug through it, they let down the mat on which the paralytic lay. When Jesus saw their faith, he said to the paralytic, ‘Son, your sins are forgiven.’ No some of the scribes were sitting there, questioning in their hearts, ‘Why does this fellow speak in this way? It is blasphemy! Who can forgive sins but God alone?’ At once Jesus perceived in his spirit that they were discussing these questions among themselves; and he said to them, ‘Why do you raise such questions in your hearts? Which is easier, to say to the paralytic, Your sins are forgiven, or to say, Stand up and take your mat and walk? But so that you may know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins’—he said to the paralytic—‘I say to you, stand up, take your mat and go to your home.’ And he stood up, and immediately took the mat and went out before all of them; so that they were all amazed and glorified God, saying, ‘We have never seen anything like this!’”

This could have been so simple… but Jesus makes it complicated.

And I am glad he did.

A friend of mine told me a story not long ago about being in an inner-city neighborhood and crossing paths with a man who was homeless.  He said he felt some compulsion to do… something for this stranger, but was torn about what to do.  Some part of him kept nagging at him just to make it quick and get it over with—give the man with the shopping cart and bags a five dollar bill and walk on, or something like that.  You know--the kind of interaction that lets us comfortably affluent people sleep at night without feeling too much guilt, but not ever having to really go out of our way. 

(It’s funny, really—we Protestants are commemorating the 500^th anniversary of criticizing the practice of church indulgences that let people pay money to be absolved of guilt… and yet, when it comes to the homeless person on the street or the recovering addicts seeking recovery, we jump at the chance to give money to feel ok with ourselves so that we can walk the other way and not think about them again.  We have just re-invented indulgences without a pope to authorize it.) 

Anyway, this friend finally made the decision to go beyond just throwing money at this stranger and walking away, and instead, he approached the man--talking to him like an actual person, no less!—and he actually invited this man to lunch.  They walked to the McDonald's at the end of the block, and not only did the man get a hot meal, but my friend treated him like a human being.  And he discovered a lot--the man had been a college professor, had a background in all sorts of interesting subjects, and of course had a lot of interesting things to say.  He was, in other words, a real person.  And by taking the time to actually sit down with this real person, my friend got to a deeper hurt than just a lack of hamburgers.  He got down to the way this man had been treated with a lack of humanity.

We have a way of reducing people to a single trait, a single adjective, or especially a single diagnosis, don't we?  Instead of Fred, the professor of macroeconomics, it's just "Oh, that's a homeless person."  Instead of Julie, it's just, "Oh, she's just the depressed lady I know from work."  Instead of John, it's just, "That's the cancer patient." The lonely person. The harsh personality.  The struggling alcoholic who can't hide his trembling hands.  The out-of-touch liberal, and the narrow-minded conservative.  The man who never got over his wife's death. The woman who never got over her kids moving out. The old high school acquaintance who never got married or had children.  The cast of one-dimensional characters goes on and on.

We do this, reducing one another down to observable problems or flaws, both so that we can keep each other at arm's length, and so that we can keep things... simpler.  I remember seeing a t-shirt once that ironically proclaimed, "Stereotypes are a real time saver."  Well, yeah.  I don't have to get involved or immersed in all the many strands of who you are if I only reduce you down to one trait, or one label.  I don't have to see you as a complex, and sometimes contradictory, mix of well and wounded, hopefulness and heartache, confident and cowardly, compassionate and closed-minded, sinner and saint.  I don't have to actually get to know you in all of your "you-ness" if I just define you by your diagnosis, and you don't have to bother getting into all the particularities of me if you can reduce me down to a single category, for good or for ill.  Whether I reduce you down to something ostensibly positive, "Oh, she's the confident, headstrong achiever at work!" or something seemingly negative, "Oh, he's the one who cheated on his wife..." I am avoiding having to deal with you as you really are, in all the mix of contradictions and all the mess of what makes you... you.  If I am reduced to a cancer diagnosis in other people's eyes, no one will have to deal with the fact that I may also be wonderfully talented in some areas, but also terribly bigoted in some other area... or, if I am just a formerly homeless person, other people can avoid having to get to know what skills or intelligence I have, or on the other hand, what struggles I have with judging other people.  Each one of us is a mess--necessarily so, because we are complex beings rather than cardboard cut-outs--but taking the time to enter into the mess of all that I am takes additional time, and effort, and love.

That's one of the things I have come to love about this story from the gospels about four friends who lower their friend through a hole in the roof to bring him to Jesus.  It's the way Jesus digs deeper than just a surface evaluation.  He doesn't look at this person and simply say, "Oh, that's the paralyzed guy," before only offering a physical healing for his paralysis.  Jesus sees deeper into the mess and sees that the deeper need is for forgiveness.  He isn't just his diagnosis.  He isn't just "Anonymous Paralyzed Man," there to be a prop for Jesus' messianic sideshow.  He is a real person--a complicated, real, messy person.  And for all of us who are a tangled up ball of contradictions (which again, is every last one of us), part of what we need is forgiveness for the ways we have hurt one another, jabbed at each other with our rough and jagged edges, and reduced one another to one-dimensional traits.  Before I am "just the guy with diabetes" or "just the homeless man on the street" or "just the divorced parent estranged from my kids" or whatever else anyone might be, I am someone deeply in need of Mercy's embrace.  So is the man lowered through the roof.  So Jesus refuses to treat him as just a single adjective.  

This is the life we are called into as well, we followers of Jesus. Mercy moves us into the mess--the mess of one another.  It is so easy in this world to see someone and reduce them to one adjective, and then to determine what "one thing" you are supposed to do to "fix" them.  Guy comes down from the ceiling on a stretcher?  Aha--of course, he must be "the town crippled person" that you treat as just a medical condition, rather than a face.  But that's not how Jesus does things, and so it is not how we are called to do things.  Following Jesus' pattern, we are called to see one another in the very real tangle of good, bad, weak, strong, and everything else that makes up each one of us.  Following Jesus' way, we do not break the world down into neat and tidy "us" or "them," "saints" or "sinners," "insiders" or "outsiders," "acceptable" or "unacceptable," but rather to see one another and the face in the mirror as all of the above, all at once.  That will allow us to see past just the surface level one-dimensional traits we used to settle for, and to meet one another's needs right where we are.  

There is probably someone you know who is dealing with a medical condition--but who most deeply really wants to know that she is forgiven.  There is probably someone you know living with a diagnosis, but who longs more than anything first to hear that he is beloved.  There is probably someone you know who has been pegged by the world into one category, one trait, one label--and the calling of Mercy is to see deeper by getting beyond the surface into the messiness of real human lives.

That's what we are called to be about today.  Don't settle for scratching the surface.  Don't stop at the one-dimensional cardboard cutout. Every one of us human beings is more than the sum of our adjectives. Let mercy move us into the mess.

Lord Jesus, enable us to see one another in all of our fullness, complications, and messiness, and to know your love meets us there.