Review: Simple Spirituality: Learning to See God in a Broken World by Christopher Heuertz
What is this book that ended up on my desk? It is certainly not academic theology, not the kind of book that I normally read. It seems part memoir, though from someone too young to write a memoir, part theological reflection, though simple in its aims, and part guide, though not from someone who has arrived.
The question is not mine, but belongs to Jesus and comes to us through the gospel according to Matthew. Of course, the NRSV renders it slightly differently: "Are you also still without understanding?" Somewhat predictably, I like the more blunt translation: "Are you so dull?"
Jesus, of course, was having a run in with the Pharisees and scribes over why his disciples weren't following their cleanliness rituals. In this case, the issue was hand-washing before eating. Jesus charges them with hypocrisy, using rules to circumvent responsibility. His one-liner: "It is not what goes into the mouth that defiles a person, but it is what comes out of the mouth that defiles." Zing! Disciples scratch their heads and ask Jesus to break it down for them. Jesus verbally rolls his eyes, says that the things that are already inside a person are what defiles them (evil intentions, slander, etc.)...end of story. So much for the start of Matthew 15.
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The world upside down. To refuse to use force may be one thing, but what is this teaching? What does it mean to be full? A wave of questions as the beatitudes invite us into a world made strange, and call us to imagine things otherwise. Hunger and thirst, or what we might call desire, is for something seen as good but not yet attained. If one possesses what one desires, the desire is satiated. Certainly Chrysostom is right to say that hunger and thirst, typically conceived, can easily slide into avarice, into greed. Conventionally, our honor runs in this direction toward those who have acquired power, status, and achievement (and in late capitalism money is often used to measure). So, we are here shown a world upside down, a world where the honored are those who hunger and thirst for justice, who desire to give each their due. Is this simply a social gospel? In a word, yes, but certainly our sociality always includes God. But what does this justice (or righteousness) that is honored in a world turned upside down look like? Said differently, who decides what one is due? The woes of Matthew 23 give a picture of the all too familiar world as normally structured as we "love to have the place of honour at banquets and the best seats." We like "to be greeted with respect" and endeavor to make it so. And yet these questions, questions of where one sits and with whom, haunt the discussion as Jesus tells the crowd and his disciples that his person, his presence, disrupts how honor is normally paid, unsettles how justice is normally accounted, saying you "are not to be called rabbi, for you have one teacher, and you are all students." Often the beatitudes were interpreted as a pathway or as being cumulative, meaning that meekness might be a prerequisite to hungering for justice. Living a life where we avoid using force, where we never demand "Do you know who I am?," may be necessary to being able to engage in the work of justice. Giving each their due can begin by sharing our lives with those perceived to be the least. I remember my first night around the dinner table at L'Arche, sitting amongst those who would soon become friends. One woman with developmental disabilities offered a prayer at the conclusion for the meal for those without homes. Still uneasy being around the differences created by disability, I was shocked that she prayed for others. Others, not herself. By taking a seat (cf. Luke 14.10: "when you are invited, take the lowest place") at unlikely tables, with unlikely people, we come to learn that we can be grateful for those who were previously separated from us whether by class, race, or creed. By inviting those considered the least, those who are outcast from our lives, those with whom we would not usually share a table (Luke's catalogue includes "the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind"), and accepting invitations in return, our lives are opened to a sociality that no longer has use for those things that separate, indeed, our lives become hostile to those structures that would separate us from those we have begun to love. If our lives are ones that hungers for justice, our lives will become full -- full of life, full of lives. Our recognition that there is but 'one teacher' reminds us that to give God what God is due, to worship God alone, pushes us toward human fellowship that might seem strange, but only if we weren't living in a world turned upside down.
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