In some parables Jesus has painted a self portrait. The self-portrait that which fascinates me (Anselm) most is the story of the Good Samaritan. A man is going down from Jerusalem to Jericho. On the way he is attacked by robbers. They steal his clothes, his money and possessions. They half kill him. Doubled up in pain, the man is injured in the dust. A priest is going along the road. “He saw him and passed him by” (Luke 10:32). A Levite does the same thing. A Samaritan, a foreigner, someone who was suspect to the Jews, an “outcast”, sees the man and has compassion on him. He pours oil and wine on his wounds, binds them up and puts him on his donkey, to take him to an inn. In this Samaritan Jesus paints an image of himself.
Jesus is a foreigner. He isn’t the typical pious Jew. He comes from Galilee, which seemed suspect to the Jews. Pagan tribes had also settled in Galilee. They had mixed with the Israelite population and were no longer pure Jews. The Samaritans were despised even more by the Jews than the Galileans were. The Samaritans were the descendants of the Asiatic tribes which had been settled in Samaria after the Israelites had been carried off to exile in Assyria. They had accepted Yahweh religion; however, they didn’t worship Yahweh in the temple in Jerusalem but on Mount Gerizim. Jesus identified with this Samaritan. He comes from another world, not the familiar world of pure Judaism.
In the person – man or woman – who has fallen victim to the robbers and is lying plundered and half dead by the wayside, Jesus paints an image of us. We have been hurt by our life history. We’re full of wounds inflicted by others (even those closest to us). People have robbed us, they have sapped our energy. We have given them everything. Now we’ve nothing but ourselves. We are lying in the dust and cannot get up again.
The Greek word for human being, anthropos, comes from the verb anatre-pein, which means “hold up something, raise something.” Our life has prevented us from walking upright. Now we’re dependent on the compassion of others if we’re to have ground under our feet again. The representative of religion and its cult pass us by. Jesus is the Samaritan, the foreigner, who went down from Jerusalem to Jericho, from the holy city to one of the oldest cities in human history. Luke portrays Jesus for us as the divine wanderer who comes down from heaven to visit us human beings where we live. The Greek word for visit is episkeptein. It means cast an eye on something, look something over, inspect it.
Jesus comes down from heaven to see how things are going with us. He looks at us and views us lying robbed and injured by the wayside. He doesn’t pass me by when I’m wounded, as the priest and Levite did. Full of compassion, he bends over me and pours oil and wine on my wounds.
Jesus the Messiah, the anointed one, anoints our wounds with oil. Oil is the symbol of the healing power of Jesus. The wine is an image of his love. Jesus binds up our wounds, raises us up and puts is on his donkey.
Van Gogh painted a marvellous image of the Good Samaritan. The image quivers with effort. The Samaritan is making a supreme effort to get the wounded man on his donkey. The church fathers interpreted this scene to mean that Jesus lays us and our suffering on his shoulders to raise us to the cross and set us upright. On the cross Jesus dies upright, outstretched. Van Gogh, who himself greatly suffered from his inner divisions, probably understood more than anyone else what it meant for Jesus to raise up the man lying in the dust, to raise him from the dust as it were like Adam, and to create him anew.
Jesus paints a fine self-portrait here. In this portrait Jesus approaches us in his undistorted sensitivity. In the two thousand years since then, countless men and women have made efforts to accept those who have been robbed and injured, those who have been overlooked and are lying on the roadside, to go to them and raise them up. From this image Mother Teresa drew the strength to turn to men and woman lying in the streets of Calcutta, uncared for by the representatives of either state or religion. Within her something of the image of Jesus has shone out in our time.
The image of the Good Samaritan has also asked too much of many people who believed they had to drag the wounded around with them all their lives. But Jesus paints a more humane image. It’s enough to bring the wounded person to the next inn and leave then there. The innkeeper, probably God, will then care for him. Jesus has picked us up and carried to the cross, so raised up there we can go our own way once more. We need bear one another to the next inn. We are not therapists who can heal all wounds. We go part of the way with the wounded and bring them into the saving sphere of God, so that they are healed.
Questions;
Who has wounded you and plundered you? Where are you lying half dead by the wayside? Imagine Jesus coming to you and pouring oil and wine into your wounds. Allow Jesus to raise you up.
Jesus painted the portrait of the Samaritan to invite us to act as he does. Where are the wounded and plundered people lying on the wayside of your life? To whom should you go today?
Friday, October 1, 2010
Thursday, June 24, 2010
THE JESUS WHO REFUSES TO COMPETE (ANSELM GRUEN)
Many rabbis at the time of Jesus laid down rules about how their disciples should live. And often they vied with one another in making commandments of God stricter and challenged one another by ever greater achievements in fulfilling the law. They weren’t interested in social achievements, in work and in political organisations, but in achievements before God. The pious were those who achieved something before God, who fasted regularly, said their prayers every day gave alms and had something to show before God.
Today many people define themselves in their work and in their family life in terms of what they’ve achieved. They want to prove their worth by achievement. Jesus gets off this carousel of “achievers”. He invites people to live. He allows them to be themselves. He tells them there loved unconditionally, even if they have nothing to show in return. He turns in particular to those who have no achievements to show; the sinners and the poor, the despised and those without rights. That infuriates the Pharisees, who are proud of the works that they’ve performed.
Two parables show how Jesus breaks through the spiral of achievement. One the parable of the labourers in the vineyard (Matt. 20:1-6) infuriates many employers. “You can’t deal with workers and their sense of achievement like this, they say. Jesus tells of the owner of the vineyard who hires labourers for his vineyard very early in the morning (6am) and sends them to work immediately. He does the same thing at the third, sixth and ninth hours (9am 12noon and 3pm). Indeed he hires labourers once more at the eleventh hour (5pm), just an hour before the end of work and sends them into his vineyard. When at the twelfth hour he pays the agreed wage, one denarius each, to the labourers he hired last, those labourers who had toiled the whole day expected more. But they too get only the one denarius they had agreed on as wages.
Here the principle of achievement is turned on its head; “So the last shall be first and the first last” (Matt. 10:16). What matters isn’t achievement and recompense, but faithfulness and reliability in what we do. Jesus doesn’t approve of doing nothing. For him work is a sign of a healthy life. But how others assess it isn’t important to him. It isn’t important to prove oneself through work, to accomplish something that one can be proud of; pride in life is a matter of accepting the work that id offered to us and required of us.
In the famous parable of the prodigal son (Luke 15:11-32), the younger brother wants to enjoy life straight away. He takes his share of the inheritance and travels to a distant land – in those days presumably Greece or Italy. There he wants to enjoy life to the full. But in a very short time he’s already squandered all his resources. To survive he has to impose himself on a citizen of the land who sends him to look after the pigs. For Jews, pigs are unclean animals, so this is humiliation for him. Things get worse and worse, so he resolves to return home to his father. (He also believes that the day labourers at home are better off than he is feeding pigs). His father receives him joyfully and gives a party for him, because the son who was dead has come to life, and the one who has lost himself has found himself.
However the older brother who has been going about his duties each day is annoyed about the feast. His anger shows that he hasn’t done his work because he enjoyed it, because he got involved in it, but because he expected reward and recognition from it. He reproaches his father; “I have been working for you these years and I never did anything against your will, yet you never even gave me a kid so that I could feast with my friends!” The older son had motives for working; he wanted to buy his fathers love, his fathers care.
With this parable, Jesus is telling us that we don’t need to buy God’s love with our achievements. That love is already there. God accepts us time and again, no matter what happens. He doesn’t attach any condition to his love, either achievement or conformity. Those who know they are accepted unconditionally can achieve something in freedom. They work because they enjoy it, because the work flows out of them.
Jesus shows this inner freedom towards any achievement. But improbably he achieved a great deal in this freedom. In only three years of his public activity, he addressed countless people, healed many who were sick and above all set in motion a movement which continues even now and spurs on many people to work for a more humane world. Because Jesus didn’t have to prove himself by achieving things, he was free to bring forth fruit a hundredfold, as he himself promises his disciples in a parable. The reason for the hundredfold yield is not achievement but faith. Faith frees us from the pressure which is a burden on us. So an inner spring can well up in us, and from this spring a great deal of energy flows into the world without being exhausted by it. For if we don’t have to achieve, life can flow, creativity and imagination can blossom in us and we can accomplish great things.
Questions:
What do you live by? Do you define your achievements? Does your life consist of proving yourself to others, and even to God, by your achievements? What’s the real motive behind your work, your dedication to others, in your job, in sport, in school, in your community, in your “religious activities”? Does the work flow from the innermost spring in you? Do you enjoy work? Or do you take refuge in work to escape your inner truth, as the older brother in the parable of the prodigal son.
Thanks to Continuum publishing for their permission to use Anselm's material!
Today many people define themselves in their work and in their family life in terms of what they’ve achieved. They want to prove their worth by achievement. Jesus gets off this carousel of “achievers”. He invites people to live. He allows them to be themselves. He tells them there loved unconditionally, even if they have nothing to show in return. He turns in particular to those who have no achievements to show; the sinners and the poor, the despised and those without rights. That infuriates the Pharisees, who are proud of the works that they’ve performed.
Two parables show how Jesus breaks through the spiral of achievement. One the parable of the labourers in the vineyard (Matt. 20:1-6) infuriates many employers. “You can’t deal with workers and their sense of achievement like this, they say. Jesus tells of the owner of the vineyard who hires labourers for his vineyard very early in the morning (6am) and sends them to work immediately. He does the same thing at the third, sixth and ninth hours (9am 12noon and 3pm). Indeed he hires labourers once more at the eleventh hour (5pm), just an hour before the end of work and sends them into his vineyard. When at the twelfth hour he pays the agreed wage, one denarius each, to the labourers he hired last, those labourers who had toiled the whole day expected more. But they too get only the one denarius they had agreed on as wages.
Here the principle of achievement is turned on its head; “So the last shall be first and the first last” (Matt. 10:16). What matters isn’t achievement and recompense, but faithfulness and reliability in what we do. Jesus doesn’t approve of doing nothing. For him work is a sign of a healthy life. But how others assess it isn’t important to him. It isn’t important to prove oneself through work, to accomplish something that one can be proud of; pride in life is a matter of accepting the work that id offered to us and required of us.
In the famous parable of the prodigal son (Luke 15:11-32), the younger brother wants to enjoy life straight away. He takes his share of the inheritance and travels to a distant land – in those days presumably Greece or Italy. There he wants to enjoy life to the full. But in a very short time he’s already squandered all his resources. To survive he has to impose himself on a citizen of the land who sends him to look after the pigs. For Jews, pigs are unclean animals, so this is humiliation for him. Things get worse and worse, so he resolves to return home to his father. (He also believes that the day labourers at home are better off than he is feeding pigs). His father receives him joyfully and gives a party for him, because the son who was dead has come to life, and the one who has lost himself has found himself.
However the older brother who has been going about his duties each day is annoyed about the feast. His anger shows that he hasn’t done his work because he enjoyed it, because he got involved in it, but because he expected reward and recognition from it. He reproaches his father; “I have been working for you these years and I never did anything against your will, yet you never even gave me a kid so that I could feast with my friends!” The older son had motives for working; he wanted to buy his fathers love, his fathers care.
With this parable, Jesus is telling us that we don’t need to buy God’s love with our achievements. That love is already there. God accepts us time and again, no matter what happens. He doesn’t attach any condition to his love, either achievement or conformity. Those who know they are accepted unconditionally can achieve something in freedom. They work because they enjoy it, because the work flows out of them.
Jesus shows this inner freedom towards any achievement. But improbably he achieved a great deal in this freedom. In only three years of his public activity, he addressed countless people, healed many who were sick and above all set in motion a movement which continues even now and spurs on many people to work for a more humane world. Because Jesus didn’t have to prove himself by achieving things, he was free to bring forth fruit a hundredfold, as he himself promises his disciples in a parable. The reason for the hundredfold yield is not achievement but faith. Faith frees us from the pressure which is a burden on us. So an inner spring can well up in us, and from this spring a great deal of energy flows into the world without being exhausted by it. For if we don’t have to achieve, life can flow, creativity and imagination can blossom in us and we can accomplish great things.
Questions:
What do you live by? Do you define your achievements? Does your life consist of proving yourself to others, and even to God, by your achievements? What’s the real motive behind your work, your dedication to others, in your job, in sport, in school, in your community, in your “religious activities”? Does the work flow from the innermost spring in you? Do you enjoy work? Or do you take refuge in work to escape your inner truth, as the older brother in the parable of the prodigal son.
Thanks to Continuum publishing for their permission to use Anselm's material!
Tuesday, May 4, 2010
Hello fellow bloggers!! The Continuum International Publishing Group has kindly given permission to use material from the book “Images of Jesus” written by Anselm Gruen.
Anselm is a Benedictine Monk in Germany and is also the Cellarer of his community.
It is my intention to offer to you different images of Jesus based on Anselm’s thinking and observations. I hope you get something positive from considering Anselm’s words and the questions he poses.
Shalom friends
Stephen
THE JESUS WHO RECONCILES (by ANSLEM GRUEN)
Jesus’ sayings about reconciliation have provoked resistance above all among politicians. The (former) German federal chancellor Helmet Schmidt once famously remarked that the Sermon on the Mount is useless in politics.
I want to look at three provocative sayings from the Sermon on the Mount in which Jesus calls for reconciliation.
“So then if you are bringing your offering to the altar and there remember that your brother has something against you, leave your offering there before the altar, go and be reconciled with your brother first, and then come back and present your offering” (Matthew 5:23).
When I celebrate the liturgy I first have to be clear about my relations with my fellow men and women. If someone has something against me, I must first be prepared for reconciliation. Perhaps I’ve unconsciously hurt the other person. Perhaps that person’s annoyance is based simply on misunderstanding. I must clarify my relations with my fellow human beings before I can come before God. But what am I to do if the other person doesn’t want reconciliation, and is projecting personal problems onto me? I can only do what I can. If others don’t want to be reconciled, that’s their business.
“Come to terms with your opponent in good time while you are still on the way to the court with him, or he may hand you over to the judge and the judge to the officer, and you will be thrown into prison” (Matthew 5:25).
The original Greek text simply reads “as long as you are still on the way”.
As long as I live and move I must be reconciled with my opponent. This means above all my inner opponent, everything that I fight against in myself, everything I cannot accept. As long as I am in the way, I am to be reconciled with my inner opponent. I must attempt to accept my shadow sides, which I would much prefer to detach. If I am not reconciled with my shadow sides, they will bring me before the inner judge, the authority of my own superego. My inner judge will hand me over to the officer, who will torture me with self-accusation and imprison me in my habits. He will throw me into prison, and I will be so shut up in myself that one day it will be too late to break out of this inner prison. As long as I am on the way it’s my task to be reconciled with myself.
“You have heard it said, you will love your neighbour but hate your enemy. But I say this too you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you; so that you may be children of your Father in heaven, for he causes his sun to shine on the bad as well as the good, and sends down rain to fall on the upright and the wicked alike” (Matthew 5:43-5).
In loving their enemies, the disciples are to imitate God, who makes his sun to rise on the good and the bad. Jesus didn’t divide people into the good and the bad. He saw the danger that the good could go bad and he saw the longing for good in the bad. He accepted both kinds of people and showed both of them a way to life. We are capable of loving our enemies only if we first love the enemy in ourselves; if we let the sun of our benevolence shine on the good and bad in us; if we also look gently at those characteristics in us which conflict with our ideal image of ourselves.
Loving our enemies doesn’t mean ignoring everything that others do to us. It primarily means not allowing ourselves to be drawn into enmity. If someone fights against me as an enemy, I mustn’t react in an equally hostile way. Otherwise the enmity of the other person will become my prison.
My first task is to recognise why the other person regards me as an enemy. Perhaps that person is projecting personal problems onto me. Because others can’t accept themselves, they fight against the aspects of my personality they repudiate in themselves. If I can see that, the other person doesn’t become my enemy. I see people longing to be healed and accepted. So I can encounter them in peace. Some people think that loving one’s enemies is a great effort. But for me it is far more of an effort to hate one’s enemy. For then the enemy determines my mood and my attitude. For me, loving my enemy means freedom. I don’t regard the other person as an enemy but as a human being longing for friendship.
Jesus’ saying also has a political dimension. With the command to love one’s enemy he sets out to heal the rift that runs throughout our society and through the nations. Jesus doesn’t leave us in peace with hostile stereotypes. He challenges us to use our imagination and creativity seeking how the different groups in society and peoples at enmity with one another can find a way to get on together. If peoples on both sides keep on adding up the hurts done to them, the result will be a pernicious and endless conflict, as the situation in the Balkans showed. All the accumulated hatred is handed on from generation to generation. No military means can guarantee peace unless the potential of hatred is worked through and replaced by reconciliation. Jesus’ challenge to love one’s enemy seeks to replace the old black- and- white with a summons to new ways of peace and reconciliation.
QUESTIONS
Are you reconciled with yourself? With what inner enemies must you reconcile yourself? What can’t you accept in yourself? Where do you rage against yourself?
Try to see everything that bubbles up inside you and tell yourself, that’s what I am; that’s part of me; things can be as they are; I say yes to them.
What would you like to do in your particular environment to create an atmosphere of reconciliation? Note how you talk, does this divide or reconcile?
Note your thoughts. Are they stamped with reconciliation?
Anselm is a Benedictine Monk in Germany and is also the Cellarer of his community.
It is my intention to offer to you different images of Jesus based on Anselm’s thinking and observations. I hope you get something positive from considering Anselm’s words and the questions he poses.
Shalom friends
Stephen
THE JESUS WHO RECONCILES (by ANSLEM GRUEN)
Jesus’ sayings about reconciliation have provoked resistance above all among politicians. The (former) German federal chancellor Helmet Schmidt once famously remarked that the Sermon on the Mount is useless in politics.
I want to look at three provocative sayings from the Sermon on the Mount in which Jesus calls for reconciliation.
“So then if you are bringing your offering to the altar and there remember that your brother has something against you, leave your offering there before the altar, go and be reconciled with your brother first, and then come back and present your offering” (Matthew 5:23).
When I celebrate the liturgy I first have to be clear about my relations with my fellow men and women. If someone has something against me, I must first be prepared for reconciliation. Perhaps I’ve unconsciously hurt the other person. Perhaps that person’s annoyance is based simply on misunderstanding. I must clarify my relations with my fellow human beings before I can come before God. But what am I to do if the other person doesn’t want reconciliation, and is projecting personal problems onto me? I can only do what I can. If others don’t want to be reconciled, that’s their business.
“Come to terms with your opponent in good time while you are still on the way to the court with him, or he may hand you over to the judge and the judge to the officer, and you will be thrown into prison” (Matthew 5:25).
The original Greek text simply reads “as long as you are still on the way”.
As long as I live and move I must be reconciled with my opponent. This means above all my inner opponent, everything that I fight against in myself, everything I cannot accept. As long as I am in the way, I am to be reconciled with my inner opponent. I must attempt to accept my shadow sides, which I would much prefer to detach. If I am not reconciled with my shadow sides, they will bring me before the inner judge, the authority of my own superego. My inner judge will hand me over to the officer, who will torture me with self-accusation and imprison me in my habits. He will throw me into prison, and I will be so shut up in myself that one day it will be too late to break out of this inner prison. As long as I am on the way it’s my task to be reconciled with myself.
“You have heard it said, you will love your neighbour but hate your enemy. But I say this too you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you; so that you may be children of your Father in heaven, for he causes his sun to shine on the bad as well as the good, and sends down rain to fall on the upright and the wicked alike” (Matthew 5:43-5).
In loving their enemies, the disciples are to imitate God, who makes his sun to rise on the good and the bad. Jesus didn’t divide people into the good and the bad. He saw the danger that the good could go bad and he saw the longing for good in the bad. He accepted both kinds of people and showed both of them a way to life. We are capable of loving our enemies only if we first love the enemy in ourselves; if we let the sun of our benevolence shine on the good and bad in us; if we also look gently at those characteristics in us which conflict with our ideal image of ourselves.
Loving our enemies doesn’t mean ignoring everything that others do to us. It primarily means not allowing ourselves to be drawn into enmity. If someone fights against me as an enemy, I mustn’t react in an equally hostile way. Otherwise the enmity of the other person will become my prison.
My first task is to recognise why the other person regards me as an enemy. Perhaps that person is projecting personal problems onto me. Because others can’t accept themselves, they fight against the aspects of my personality they repudiate in themselves. If I can see that, the other person doesn’t become my enemy. I see people longing to be healed and accepted. So I can encounter them in peace. Some people think that loving one’s enemies is a great effort. But for me it is far more of an effort to hate one’s enemy. For then the enemy determines my mood and my attitude. For me, loving my enemy means freedom. I don’t regard the other person as an enemy but as a human being longing for friendship.
Jesus’ saying also has a political dimension. With the command to love one’s enemy he sets out to heal the rift that runs throughout our society and through the nations. Jesus doesn’t leave us in peace with hostile stereotypes. He challenges us to use our imagination and creativity seeking how the different groups in society and peoples at enmity with one another can find a way to get on together. If peoples on both sides keep on adding up the hurts done to them, the result will be a pernicious and endless conflict, as the situation in the Balkans showed. All the accumulated hatred is handed on from generation to generation. No military means can guarantee peace unless the potential of hatred is worked through and replaced by reconciliation. Jesus’ challenge to love one’s enemy seeks to replace the old black- and- white with a summons to new ways of peace and reconciliation.
QUESTIONS
Are you reconciled with yourself? With what inner enemies must you reconcile yourself? What can’t you accept in yourself? Where do you rage against yourself?
Try to see everything that bubbles up inside you and tell yourself, that’s what I am; that’s part of me; things can be as they are; I say yes to them.
What would you like to do in your particular environment to create an atmosphere of reconciliation? Note how you talk, does this divide or reconcile?
Note your thoughts. Are they stamped with reconciliation?
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