WHY BOTHER?
Rev. Dr. Kathy Fuson Hurt
FBC, April 27, 2008
Scripture: Matthew 25:31-46
I noticed them as we were streaming out with thousands of other people, leaving the Renaissance Fair. Why I noticed them I cannot say, for they were an unremarkable family, husband, wife, and child. The husband kept bumping into the wife, knocking her over a few steps, upsetting her balance. I sometimes play the same game with others while walking, a physical kind of teasing and foolishness, done affectionately.
The little family was moving faster than we were out of the Renaissance Fair grounds, so I lost sight of them until we reached the parking area. Suddenly there they were again, husband and wife and daughter, now in their car, and still playing some sort of game. The husband dangled the car keys out the window. Whenever the wife reached for the keys, the husband pushed her back across the seat. The daughter noticed that I was watching her family. Our eyes met and she ducked down in the car, out of sight—but not before I had seen the look of fear on her face. As we moved past the family’s car, I felt a distinct unease about the interactions I had observed. However, I am first and foremost a polite person, respectful of others’ boundaries, so I continued walking.
We reached our own car, picked our way through the fair’s traffic jam, and headed back towards home. Ahead of us, parked on the roadside, I saw the car of the disturbing, haunting family. All three of them were standing in the grass in front of the car. We drew closer, moving slowly because of the still heavy traffic. We came even with the parked car. And at just that moment, I saw the husband draw back and hit the wife, knocking her into the ditch. Horrified, I kept watching the drama unfold in my rearview mirror, saw the husband head down into the ditch, preparing to strike again, followed by the distraught, frightened daughter. I watched until the tragic little family disappeared from view. And we drove frantically on, trying to come into an area where our cell phone would work, intending to call the police, feeling helpless, not knowing what else to do.
The German language has a useful concept for which there is no English equivalent, called schadenfreude. Literally translated as “joy at hurt,” we are more familiar with schadenfreude as it appears in a common situation. Have you ever happened upon a traffic accident before the police and the medical team have cleaned everything up? Did you notice how so many drivers, perhaps including yourself, slowed down to take a look, despite police efforts to urge them on? This is schadenfreude, joy at hurt—not literally joy at the suffering of the victims of the accident, but curiosity, intense curiosity, about it, coupled with a quick, scarcely acknowledge, sense of relief, that “whew, it wasn’t me this time.” The desire to watch endless video images from natural disasters, to see the ravaged homes and ravaged lives, represents another common instance of schadenfreude, relief at being spared and curiosity about the situation of those who were not so lucky.
Schadenfreude, joy at hurting. It begins with relatively harmless rubbernecking at accidents and disasters. Then one day we read about a crime committed in full view of witnesses, and no one comes to the victim’s aid or calls the police. I sensed violence brewing among the family at the Renaissance Fair; why was I content to watch? Schadenfreude, joy at hurting. Another time we walk along a downtown street and pass a woman carrying all her belongings in a shopping bag, wearing several overcoats, conversing with herself. “There but for the grace of God go I,” we think: schadenfreude, thank God it isn’t me. We are encouraged from every corner of our society, not to see, not to hear, not to speak, not to pay attention to suffering because somehow it would be impolite, an intrusion into another’s life, or we don’t know all the circumstances and our help would be misguided or disrespectful, or even sometimes we assume the other is responsible for his or her situation. And if we learn the lesson well, we become skilled at stepping around the bag lady, the bum, the violent family, the disabled, the poor, the oppressed, the desperate and despairing who block our smooth passage, thinking all the while, “there but for the grace of God go I,” schadenfreude.
Liberal Christians are proud, and justifiably so, of a long tradition of effective, unceasing effort to improve the community, to ease suffering, to achieve a measure of social justice. Somehow we have not learned so well as many others how to ignore the evils around us and have been drawn into action on behalf of the downtrodden again and again. Yet it seems to me that we liberals, too, harbor a spirit of schadenfreude that appears, ironically, in the very moment of our efforts to help.
As a seminary student in Chicago I heard a story which everyone insisted actually happened, though in the telling and re-telling it had undoubtedly been embroidered, mythologized, a good deal. A wealthy Chicago woman, a member of a large progressive congregation, was famous for her vigorous support of programs for social change. She gave money, served on committees, even lobbied her wealthy conservative friends when necessary. One day, while driving from her home to the seminary to talk to students about laity and social action programs, she stopped at a red light in the ghetto neighborhood adjacent to the seminary. Suddenly, a couple of obviously poor, probably black teenagers headed over to her car and tried to get her to open her window. Frightened by what she perceived as a carjacking attempt, the woman sped away, nearly running down her accosters. Word went out about the incident, anger escalated—until somehow it was discovered that the two teenagers had recognized the woman from television news stories as a major donor and benefactor of a marvelous new community center in their neighborhood, and had simply wanted to admire and thank her, not harm her. The students recounting the story concluded by labeling her a “limousine liberal,” a progressive and well-meaning type who is most willing to work for the disadvantaged—provided the disadvantaged never come too close, never force themselves into contact with her. Generous donations, service on boards and task forces are her good deeds, all done from the safety of her limousine.
While some parts of the Christian tradition have always been marked by a preoccupation with matters of sin, both original sin and sin that develops through the course of a lifetime, other parts of the tradition, including our own, moved away from such a focus, claiming instead that each of us, whoever we may be, whatever our circumstances, each of us is a creature of inherent worth and dignity, created in the divine image, capable of discerning spiritual truth, equipped for doing much good. With this step we freed ourselves from endless wallowing in a sense of unworthiness, from hymns of blood and sacrifice, from preachers thundering threats of hell and everlasting punishment, and rose from darkness into light. With this step, however, we also lost something: in setting aside our shadows, we also set aside a good part of our capacity for empathy with those whose lives are made up primarily of shadows. We distanced ourselves from suffering, made of evil a wholly external thing which resides outside the sphere of rationality and competence and goodness that we, the progressive ones, inhabit. As a consequence, our helping gestures, however skillful and well-intentioned they may be, can lack the real empathy that would only result from having been there, from spending time in the darkness ourselves. We become enamored of giving money, of discussing issues, and tend to neglect the opportunity to make contact, literally and emotionally and spiritually make contact, with the very people we seek to help. This church’s own mission trip to Nicaragua each year has to keep explaining why going in person, why sending actual people, is a worthwhile expense when it would be so much simpler to mail a check. Living in the light, holding darkness at arm’s length, out there, our efforts to accomplish social justice can become marred by the spirit of schadenfreude.
The parable from today’s scripture reading is the third in a series of parables Jesus tells as part of an overall theme of teaching about the coming of the kingdom of heaven. In his time, as in our time, people tended to interpret talk of a coming kingdom in literal terms: some heroic individual, a Messiah, would arrive on the scene, engage in warfare against the oppressive and illegitimate empire, win a glorious victory, and establish a new order of justice and peace. A powerful vision—and one that seemed to eliminate the need to care about anyone and anything, since change was about to be accomplished without my having to lift a finger. In our time, this vision can get turned inside out so that it becomes a vision of despair rather than hope: catastrophic changes are coming, changes in climate, changes in governments, that will be so overwhelming as to eliminate the possibility of reversing the tide, so there is no point in trying to accomplish good in such a hopeless situation. How can standing on a streetcorner in a small town for a couple of hours each week possibly bring an end to war? How can sending less than a dozen people to an impoverished country possibly make a dent in poverty? How can making any effort make a difference when the forces of injustice and oppression are so vast and so powerful, when the changes needed are so complex and so expensive?
In Jesus’ time, as in our time, there was a tendency to assume that the best way to end suffering was by eliminating whatever forces were causing the suffering. Revolution, overthrow of oppressors, massive social restructuring, spending colossal sums of money: all methods of ending suffering that rely on power and external forces—and all methods that can seem forever out of reach.
The same methods were assumed to be the best methods in Jesus’ time. But in response to both followers and foes who urged such methods on him or assumed he was preparing to implement such methods, Jesus consistently offered a different way. Throughout his ministry, in teaching and in action, Jesus preferred compassion to all other techniques for accomplishing real social change and relieving suffering. Again and again, presented with individuals needing help and healing, or in teaching about how to help, Jesus identifies with the victims, places himself alongside them in their darkness—however unpleasant that darkness might be. And that contact, literal and emotional and spiritual contact, has a powerful healing effect for those suffering, not through any magical prowess on Jesus’ part, but simply because human contact is healing for anyone standing in darkness, banishing the loneliness that is often the worst part of suffering, restoring a degree of self-esteem. “There but for the grace of God go I,” the schadenfreude stance, is changed in Jesus’ hands to “there go I”: leper, prostitute, beggar, outcast, bag lady, AIDS victim, battering husband, battered wife, abused child, desperate, poor, minority, you: you there, I see you there in the shadows, I am a part of you, there go I.
And it is not only the person we help that we meet in the darkness, not only a human connection that is forged. Jesus takes his parable beyond simply an exhortation to make the work of social justice a work done by persons, in person. “I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you clothed me, I was sick and you visited me, I was in prison and you came to me” (Matt. 25:35-36). The social activists respond, correctly, that they never had any direct encounter with Jesus in their helping work, but he rebuts them: “As you did it to one of the least of these, you did it to me” (Matt. 25:40). Alongside all the other, powerful images of God, Jesus places the image of God as victim, as suffering outcast, in need of human compassion. There go I, in the person of the one suffering—and now, there goes God as well.
Churches always have, and likely always will, struggle with the tension between activism and quietism, between outreach and inreach, between caring for the community and caring for the church members, between doing good and feeling good. It seems to me that these contrasting ways of being are not mutually exclusive possibilities. We can, of course, allow ourselves to get caught in the tension and become paralyzed, or find ourselves forced to choose between spending ourselves for others and keeping more for ourselves. Or we can proceed with the work we have always been called to do and in that work discover how much we receive as we give: to find ourselves fed as we feed the hungry, sheltered as we shelter the homeless, clothed as we clothe the naked, healed as we heal the sick, set free as we visit the prisoners, to step into that darkness where people are in need and find ourselves—and the divine. There but for the grace of God go I; there go I; there goes God.
