The
Road to Jericho
Introduction
We are to follow Christ. But that in itself has almost no meaning for us unless we ask, “To where is it that he wants us to follow him? In what direction is he calling us? What is it that he wants from us? That question is asked of every age, and every age answers it in a somewhat different manner, depending on its own peculiar context.
What is it that Christ wants from us, who have just now left the Twentieth Century and have entered the Third Millennium? What does he want from us, who have just now opened the Holy Doors of Jubilee? What is it he is calling us to enter? What does the following of Christ mean for us who stand at this point of history? What is our own peculiar context that fleshes out for us what the following of Christ means today?
From where: from humanity lost:
In healthcare
To where does he want us to follow him? Well, we ask, “From where have we just now come?” The answer will suggest to us where it is that we should be going. From where have we just now come? We have come from the Second Millennium in which we human beings have lost our humanity. (That’s a rather sweeping indictment but unfortunately it is true.)
We come from a millennium which has lost its humanity in its healthcare system. The goal of the present system, it seems, is to prevent as many as possible to enter healthcare, and to cast out as quickly as possible all those who are in it. Healthcare is much more than “industry;” it is personal sacred ground because sickness, healing and dying are personal sacred ground.
In entertainment
From where have we Christians just now come? We come from an old millennium which has lost its humanity in the entertainment industry. Its chief product is often nothing more than purely gratuitous violence. The Christian conscience formed by the scriptures of the New Testament has always agonized over “the question of pacifism”: Is violence lawful, even that which is directed against violence? Our couch potato kids, watching TV and playing their Intendo games for hours upon hours, eventually lose the demarcation between real and virtual reality. Their virtual violence carries no pain at all, so it’s not very difficult to go to school one day and shoot up a whole class-room. Our children are light years away from pacifism: not only is violence lawful, it is also fun
In communication
Yes, we come from an old millennium which has lost its humanity even in this “great age of communication,” in which we no longer speak to each other. We speak now to machines which have no ears to hear our needs and pleas, and they in turn speak to us though they have no lips nor vocal cords. And while they rote out a message that “Your call is very important to us,” they don’t have the least idea of who we are or what we want. And they couldn’t careless that we are sixty-five and older, and don’t know what you mean by the “pound number,” and have always thought that “menu” meant something you eat.
In politics
We come from a millennium which has lost its humanity in the whole area of politics. In the “noble” Halls of Congress, civility and respect for the dignity of each other’s person have disappeared into the atmosphere of the day. Those ignoble Halls are now electrified by a “Culture of Conflict,” and civilized public discourse has been poisoned by a very ugly mean-spiritedness. That “respectable” violence, up there in high places where “role models” are supposed to dwell, “trickles down” (unlike the economics) to our kids. Again, should they go to school one day and turn it into a killing field, we, their “role models,” should not stand hypocritically aghast at that. After all, they have learned from us.
From where have we Christians just now come? We have come from an old millennium in which we humans lost our humanity in a very singular and utterly incredible event. I speak of the Jewish Holocaust: that Event which overshadowed every other event of the Second Millennium, and which brought upon the world a new dark age which turns the old one into bright day. The Holocaust is the height, the depth, the zenith, the peak, the summation of the Second Millennium’s very worst evils.
In the school massacres
From where have we Christians just now come? We come from an old millennium that has lost its humanity not only in such great historic events like the Holocaust but also in a whole slew of petty events perpetrated by petty but immensely inhumane human beings. We come from the bombing of the Federal Building in Oklahoma City and the World Trade Center in New York City. We come from the hate crime that beat to a pulp a gay student from Wyoming State U, and reduced him to a mangled scarecrow chained to a fence-post out in the country somewhere where he died bathed in his blood and tears. And we come from the hate crime that beheaded a black man in Jasper Texas, as two petty “skin heads” dragged him behind their pickup.
And oh, yes, we come from the school massacres in West Padukah, KT and Jonesboro, ARK and Columbine High School in Littleton, CO. I guess here we’ve saved the worst for last, the bitter fruits of all the above.
Everyone’s problem
We remind ourselves that school massacres like to take place in the suburbs. That their perpetrators don’t bear Afro-American names or Latino names, but clean lily-white suburban names like Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold who lived not in the heart of Chicago or New York City or Houston, but in the Denver suburb of Littleton. The school massacres remind suburbanites especially that violence has finally caught up to all of us, and is now everyone’s problem.
From their own mouths
Speaking of suburbanites, twenty-five years ago I officiated at the wedding of a couple. The good vibes of that occasion has made us lasting friends, and down through the years the family has made it a custom to visit me every year on Christmas Eve. They have a son and a daughter who are now young adults, so we can now do some adult talking. Something still sticks in my mind about this year’s visit. The daughter said, “You have no idea how mean and ugly we (she and her peers) can be toward each other. If someone isn’t so good-looking or isn’t a jock or doesn’t dress the right way or is simply different -- let me tell you,” she said, “they really get it from us.” Get what? The inhumanity of their peers. The daughter admitted that she, at one time, was one of them And the son, first year college, added: “And the boys are much more inhuman than the girls.”
We always speak about the many victims in school massacre in Littleton, CO. Very few of us number among those victims the two perpetrators of that horror. But the secret is out that they were constantly victimized in all subtle ways by their peers in Columbine High School. Time magazine featured the two on its front page and labeled them: The Monsters Next Door. But there were and are really more monsters than those two in Columbine High, if by “monster” we mean people who have not become the human being they were created to be, but are, instead, non-human or subhuman or inhuman. The full truth about Littleton, CO., and all the other massacres, might just well be that we are coming from a culture that is raising a whole slew of sons and daughters who are not rising up to the full human being they were created to be. That there is a whole slew of monsters out there. That might be somewhat strong language, but let it be.
To Where
In summary of all the above, from where have we come? We come from an old millennium that has bequeathed a cultural crisis, which Franciscan priest Father Leonardo Boff characterizes as, “The terrifying lack of compassion and care that has settled in upon us all.”
We remind ourselves we are speaking about the following of Christ. In the context of all the above, to what does that following invite us today, this year of 2000 (Y2K)? Into what does the Holy Door of Jubilee invite us to enter?
It invites all of us to enter into our humanity; to take possession of it; to become the full beautiful humane human being we were created to be. It invites us to raise children who are not just successful doctors, lawyers, space scientist, technicians, etc., but who are, also and above all, successful human beings. It invites us to raise children who have risen up -- not just to the almighty bottom-line, but, also and above all, who have risen up to the full beautiful humane human being they were created to be: compassionate and caring.
Conclusion
Often the New Testament bids us, “Listen to the gospel (the Good News), and convert your lives” (Mk1:15). Convert our lives from what? Instead of us all immediately thinking about our sex lives, let us think especially about our lost humanity. Let us think especially about “the terrifying lack of compassion and care that has settled in upon us all.”
And what is the gospel, that piece of Good News we are to listen to? It’s this Gospel: “Once upon a time a man was going from Jerusalem to Jericho and he fell in with robbers who waylaid him, beat him to a pulp, tied to a fence-post out there in the country, and left him half-dead. Along came a Jewish priest who, filled with “a terrifying lack of compassion and care,” passed him by. Along came a levite; he too, filled with “a terrifying lack of compassion and care,” passed him by. Finally along came Samaritan who, having risen to the full beautiful humane human being he was created to be, stopped and poured the oil of compassion into the poor man’s wounds, then gently seated him on his beast of burden and carried him off to the nearest inn, where he dug deeply into his pocket, and pulled out the cost of caring for an unfortunate brother.”
We are to follow Christ. But to where is it that he leads us? He leads us on the road from Jerusalem to Jericho, where he invites us (we and our children) to lay hold of our lost humanity. He invites us to follow him on the road to Jericho where the half-dead man who was carried off to the nearest inn is Christ himself (“Whatsoever you do to the least of my brothers….”). And where we meet a Samaritan whose name is Christopher, which, translated means: ”He who carries Christ.” He invites us to take the road to Jericho, and there to dig deeply into our pockets and to pull out of them the cost of following Jesus. Let’s go to Jericho.