Burdens and Bodhisattvas--October 22, 2020
"Bear one another's burdens, and in this way you will fulfill the law of Christ." [Galatians 6:2]
Quick Bible quiz: Do you know how many times the New Testament instructs Christians to wear a cross necklace?
How about how often Jesus tells his followers to recite a creed or invite him into their hearts and accept him as their savior?
How many times does the Bible instruct the people of God to share a meme on social media with a picture of Jesus on it, and that anyone who doesn't must be ashamed of Christ or not have the "guts" to share it?
If you guessed zero for all three, you're a winner!
But when it comes to consciously choosing to bear the heartaches, the burdens, and pains of others, well, it turns out that is the beating heart of what living faith actually looks like. Like the apostle Paul says, "Bear one another's burdens, and in this way you will fulfill the law of Christ."
I needed us to take this moment for clarity, though, because to tell the truth, looking around at what often passes for the hallmarks of Christianity, you'd think that list of jewelry and social media posts or formulaic faith-statements were the most important thing to following Jesus. But it turns out that Jesus is far less interested in how we "project" the persona of being devout, and far more interested in how we love--and more specifically than that, how we choose the way of suffering rather than our own self-interest or self-indulgence. That's the sine qua non of the Christian life, according to the apostle, rather than our religiously-themed fashion accessories or the pious posts we make on social media.
Following Jesus, quite simply, means the commitment to love, broadly and deeply--and that sort of love means the choice to enter into the sorrows, the troubles, and hurts of others, rather than avoid them. It may even mean we put on hold (permanently, if need be) the distractions and amusements that look like more fun, in order that we can be truly present for one another in our needs and times of weariness.
Simone Weil said much the same quite beautifully; her insight is often translated from the French this way: "The love of our neighbor in all its fullness simply means being able to say to him, 'What are you going through?'" That's it--that's the step that love takes, and therefore that is truly indispensable to following Jesus. It is about love, not simply in the abstract sense of "I will try and be nice to everybody," and not in the emotional sense of willing yourself to "feel" a certain way bout everyone, and not even in the patronizing sense of needing to zoom in to every situation to "fix" other people so you or I get to be the hero, but love in the sense of entering someone else's pains and walking with them in them. It is the conscious choice--which becomes a lifelong commitment, in all honesty--to forgo focusing on our own entertainment, our own goals, our own fun, or our own achievements and awards, so that we can be available for the neighbor. I suppose that is why this sort of love looks so much like Jesus--he was always letting himself be stopped, turned in a different direction, and interrupted to be present for whatever the person or situation in front of him needed. I don't think that was a lack of forethought on Jesus' part--I think it was his intentional choice about his way of life.
We Christians aren't the only ones with an idea like this, of course. Perhaps we could learn from our Buddhist neighbors, for example; in the Mahayana tradition of Buddhism, there is the notion of becoming a bodhisattva--that is, someone who is able to attain the level of enlightenment called nirvana, but chooses to delay doing so out of compassion in order to help and relieve other suffering beings. And rather than getting uncomfortable with the idea that we Christians can learn something like this from a different faith, I want to suggest that seeing this same notion in other faiths can help us to see that the same idea has been speaking to us from the pages of our Scriptures as well. Paul seems to say that bearing the burdens of others is exactly what the "law of Christ," or "the way of Jesus" if you like, looks like. That sounds like the conscious choice to take on more difficulty, more shared sorrow perhaps, more inconvenience, in order to bear the burdens of others, and in the process, we discover that is exactly when and where we are most fully alive. That's the mystery, I suppose--that the life that really is life is found precisely at the point of giving it away, rather than holding on to one's own interests.
It reminds me of a line from Marilynne Robinson's absolutely glorious novel Gilead, where her narrator (who is an old preacher) says, "I heard a man say once that Christians worship sorrow. That is by no means true. But we do believe there is a sacred mystery in it, it's fair to say that." Maybe that is the task of this day, and the calling of the whole rest of our lives--to willingly, intentionally direct the course of our lives along the paths that will take us beside others in their sorrows, not because we have to "save" or "fix" them, and not because we need to wallow in misery for its own sake either, but because in a sacred mystery, Christ is revealed there most powerfully as we share the brokenness and mend the wounds each of us carries. It may mean we make the deliberate choice to forgo other ways our lives could have gone, and other paths we might have taken, but we walk through those valley-of-the-shadow-of-death times with others because paradoxically, we find that we are all brought to life by sharing that journey.
Maybe the Christian life, then, has very little to do with making sure other people know we are religious, and everything to do with knowing that no one is truly whole until we are all truly whole... that my present-moment happiness is a hollow husk until the suffering of all is healed. What will you choose, then, to do with this day that will have been worth spending your hours on? What will you choose to do with the course of your whole life?
Lord Jesus, bring us to life in the full as you lead us to choose to bear the burdens of those who suffer today.
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