A World Sized Heart
“In Christ God is reconciling the world to himself… So we are ambassadors for Christ, God making his appeal through us.”
Englishman John Drinkwater’s iconic, haunting ABRAHAM LINCOLN: A PLAY is nearly a century old. Yet his message is as timely as the last mean Tweet sent or received.
One scene ( p.57) has Mrs. Blow, a White House visitor, asking war weary President Lincoln what are the latest casualty reports.
The President: “They lost twenty-seven hundred men
– we lost eight hundred.”
Mrs. Blow: “How splendid!”
The President: “Thirty five hundred!”
Mrs. Blow: “Oh, but you mustn’t talk like that Mr. President.
There were only eight hundred that mattered.”
The President: “The world is larger than your heart, madam.”
We humans often deal with our insecurity about ourselves and fear of others by carving lines between ‘our kind of people’ and ‘not like us people’. We are pretty good at customizing information to put the worst spin on those ‘not like us’ types – and to put the best spin on the likes of us. Blame others, absolve ourselves. In other words, we are better at confessing other people’s sins, than we are at confessing, even seeing, our own sins.
So, we rationalize our care boundaries: skin color, religion, sexual orientation, gender, social-economic status, citizenship, country of origin, political party, ad infinitum...nauseam. Some, like me, easily draw the line of my care at the Bloviating Egos in media, in the neighborhood, at work, and the various elsewheres of our lives. Takes supernatural grace for me to admit that I see a bit of Mrs. Blow, aka Bloviating Ego, in my shaving mirror.
Even in the exquisite tapestry of the sixty-six books of the Bible, we find places where there appears a toe-hold for an exclusionary approach to life – justification for nationalism, slavery, limited rights for women, etc. Yet the transforming Spirit of the God we know in Jesus enlivens Scripture. That Spirit expresses the great including love God has for his creation, because of which God so loves the world…
God’s inclusionary love is not a dilution of morality but the infusion of the higher ethic of love that ruptures rules long outdated. Such transformational love empowers a greater respect for all people; launches increased tender, tenacious care-full-ness in all our relationships, personal and civic, with intimates and enemies.
We see side taking going on this week of shootings by and of police. The frenzy and frolic of avoiding responsibility, finding someone else to blame, and attempts to scoop politic points with it.
I’ve shared before the concept of ‘critical partisanship’. I learned it in seminary from theologian Peter Hodgson in of all places, a Christology class. In God’s world, we do not have the luxury of being neutral. With courage and humility, we are called to take a stand/position. BUT…we are to be as much or more critical of our side as of the other side. That is, speak up and listen. Do not succumb to being intimidated or intimidating.
On occasion I hear or read the question, ‘what breaks God’s heart?’ One answer is our sclerotic hearts which desperately need radical heart expanding grace. (Enlarged hearts: bad physically; good spiritually.) Almost uncountable casualties abound when we try to live with exclusionary care in a world that God created to be inclusionary. Among them this week: often underemployed black men and underpaid police officers.
God, give us the courage to be your ambassadors of reconciling, aka inclusionary, love. Start us with the guts to see the Mrs. Blow and Mr. Bloviator Ego in the mirror as well as through the window. Amen