25 April 2005

We continue with Walter Brueggemann in "The Prophetic Imagination.

Brueggemann compares Marks notation of Jesus' compassion for the great throng on the shore with Matthew's similar story. But Matthew describes the people as "harassed and helpless."
Those words are polemical, for the people did not get helpless by themselves but were rendered helpless. And to speak of harassment is to suggest that some others are doing the harassing. Thus the Matthean version is much more direct and critical.

Sometimes it is easy to think that people just are as they are because of their own doing. That is the light in which the poor and minorities are cast by so many of us. And yet, their situation is cannot be simply something we say is their own doing. It is much bigger than that. To remember that Jesus is noted as calling them "harassed and helpless" may mean that this is the case due to their life situation but that "situation" includes the systemic "way of life" that tends to favor those who are in power and those who have...but also turns its back on those who are in need of the bare necessities of life. Not only that....those who do not have - those who are "disinherited" are then put through hell - harassed by those of us who have enough and more.

Connection: Can we walk with those who are helpless before we take that move to harass them in one way or another? We may then find that there is less and less for which we would even think to harass them. They may even become as a brother or sister to us.

Peacemaker and Healer of All Life, though it is so easy for us to create division or simply see to its continuation, you call us into relationship. You help us to see the humanity in the ones we attempt to turn into mere objects within our lives. Continue to let your light of holy insight guide us. Amen.