Being a Burden
This is an off the cuff data-dump for some work where I'm thinking through the way we think about disability. Basically I am asking how we live when we feel like we're just a burden, and we can't do the things other people do, we can't contribute, and lots of people are having to do a fair bit to look after us. I must emphasise that I'm very privileged to be talking about this because I'm not quite in this situation yet. But I will be, and I've also been thinking about the subject because I'm getting older much more quickly than I expected or intended and already, it seems to me I'm costing people an awful lot of energy. So it is a real issue for me.
So, to set things in context. I want to take a phrase I saw the other day which was "The importance of being a burden," which I think is a really interesting take on things. I'm going to explore a particular parable from the Gospel of Matthew, which gives us some insight into that, and then look at how we actually be a burden creatively.
Matthew Chapter 25 beginning in Verse 31 is a story which is frequently known as the Parable of the Sheep and the Goats. I'm not too sure that's the best title for it, but that's a discussion for another day!
The interesting thing about this parable is that it is the last pericope before Matthew's Passion Narrative; that is, the narrative of the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus. The aim of Matthew is to make sense of the crucifixion; nobody expected that the Messiah would be crucified, and rise from the dead. What does that mean? How can it work? The gospel up until this last story is priming us to understand what we will read in the Passion.
The literary conventions of the time mean the positioning of this parable at the end of Matthew's very long introduction to the Passion implies that sheep and goats story of judgement is the last thing, the most important thing, to grasp about the meaning of Jesus before we consider his Passion. If we don't understand this, we'll have missed what Jesus is on about. If we don't understand this parable, we'll misunderstand everything.
In the parable, Jesus tells a story of Judgement Day. People are brought before the king, and there's a great drafting out of the flock. The sheep go one way and the goats go the other. At this point Jesus is saying nothing new to his audience; he's not saying anything that people were unfamiliar with. People expected that there would be a day of judgement. They knew that they would be judged There was a pretty clear expectation about what criteria you would be judged upon, what meant that you would be going to into the kingdom to be with his Father, and what meant you might be going to another place. There's nothing new about that, he's telling a story with which people are quite familiar, and what that's happening is they're beginning to relax into it. And then he drops a "narrative bomb," because he changes the story.
Jesus is speaking to a group of people who (thought they) knew who was going to be the good sheep who were coming into the kingdom with the Father. The good sheep would be the people who had kept a particular interpretation of the Law. It is true that people argued about what keeping the law meant; it was a big, ongoing argument in Judea for a long time, including during the time of Jesus, and it still continues within the Christian church. But for one group of people, keeping the law, tithing, obeying the ten commandments, doing all the right things and making the right offerings in the temple—all that meant you were a righteous person and would be welcomed into the kingdom of God.
Lots of us still think a variant of that today; it's not a particularly "Jewish" issue. Every church, has its little list of local rules, what we might call shibboleths, ideas of what constitutes a good and faithful Christian—and there's always a bunch of us who think if we do these things, then God will love us, and accept us. And it's completely wrong, that's not how it works, God already loves us and God has already accepted us from before we were born.
And in the story it turns out that what resulted in people being amongst the sheep—that's where you wanted to be—was not keeping the Law like this.
What meant people were among the sheep was the fact that they had taken care of Jesus when he was sick and poor and hungry and a stranger and in prison, and so on. And these people, maybe already very surprised to find themselves among the sheep—there's a lot of dry humour here—these new sheep were surprised to hear this because, as one of them might have said, "When did we see you like this!? I only saw you for the first time today. When did I do that?"
And Jesus said that as soon as you did it for other people who were sick and poor and hungry and in prison, you were doing it for him.
And then there were the people who found out that they were not among the sheep. I think the context means we are to understand that they've actually done a lot of keeping of the law, and very seriously and very faithfully. Maybe they're nice and proper people And they find out they're with the goats because they didn't didn't help Jesus when he was hungry or in prison or sick—all of that!
And we could imagine someone saying, "Lord, I've kept the Law all my life. What do you mean that I didn't help you? I'm never seen you until now!"
And I'm tempted to say that Jesus might have said, "You're not wrong about that," but that's not fair; it's not what he says. Rather he says "Well, whenever you didn't help the poor and sick and thirsty, you were refusing to help me."
And that person might even have said, "What! We know why those people were sick and poor and hungry, and in prison. They were there because they were already under your judgement."
Now, in fact, I suspect everybody didn't think like that, and that it was a point of argument—look at Amos1 and Micah2—but many people did, and still do. And from that point of view, to actually help the sick and poor was to go against the judgement of God. It was to say, "God, you are wrong. They don't deserve to be judged like that."
And what Jesus is saying is that they were wrong about that. "They are not sick or poor because I judged them. They are sick for other reasons, some of them to do with you. And they most certainly should have been helped because I am them and among them."
So this is part of what the parable says, and what this part effectively means is that people who are poor and ill and sick and outcast and in prison and broken are sacramental of the Christ; that is, they bring the Christ to us. We can say correctly, I think that they are Christ to us in some way!
Now we could get very literal about this and say, "Well that person over there, he's a shoplifter, and the parable doesn't mention shoplifters, so I'm really going to be down on him. I'm going to throw stones at him," or something, right? But it's not about the literality here, it's about the implications.
These people that Jesus talks about were outcasts. They were the people who didn't fit in, they were the ones that people like to look down on. They were the ones that people didn't like, they were the ones people were scared of. And they were the people who it seemed made no contribution to society, because they were in prison, or blind, or sick, or something else. Again, there is nothing particularly Jewish about this; the exact same scenario plays out in our society today.
What Jesus says is that when we care for those people we are caring for him. When you meet those people, he says, you're actually meeting me. And that caring, if we think about it, is creating community with them.
I emphasise here that this caring is not the stuff that's "as cold as charity," which looks down its nose at someone and grudgingly gives them a bus ticket and says, "You're a terrible person, and we're not going to give you money, because you'll only buy cigarettes." It's not that.
It's the care that is creating community. It's love and respect for somebody, and sitting with them, and when we enter community like that, when they come among us, which means when we come among them, something opens in us—or, more correctly is opened in us. The doing of compassion means not only that the Christ is among us, but that at last, we are able to hear the Christ. We see things, we understand things about life quite differently. In real terms, we are healed, it's that simple.
This means that if we are poor, sick, frail, need a ride to church, have to be helped in the toilet—I'm just not looking forward to that, but it's likely my future—in all of those things, actually, we are God's gift to someone, we are God's grace to the people who support us. That's the first thing to say.
But that leaves us in the position of thinking, "So do you mean that I'm having to lie there and say, "Well, I'm having my bottom wiped and it embarrasses the life out of me, it's terrible, but I just have to say, 'Oh, well, this is doing a good job, excellent.'" Not very nice.
It's not quite like that. The people who helped me the most—Paul says somewhere3, "Live out your salvation..." The people who've lived out, and have most helped me live out salvation, are the people who have discomforted me, frankly terrified me on occasions, and who have challenged me—these same people have often felt like an utter burden.
True, there are plenty of people here in this congregation who have been wonderful, incredibly kind to me, and they've not been a burden at all; I've been a burden to them! Their contribution to my life has been hugely significant, but I'm going to stick with this other statement: the parishioners who were the most challenging, and needed to be supported, were the ones who opened me to the healing of God.
So... when we are a burden we can choose to be miserable, ungracious, difficult and obstreperous, right? We can choose to be the sort of person about whom the old folk's home says. " There must be two of you go to Andrea's, room." Or, however little we can do it—because life can be incredibly grim—we can choose to try and be gracious back to our carers, to try be grateful, to try to be respectful. Just like we do now. And that means that we, the so-called "burden," become a delight. And a balm to people's soul.
My mum spent a long time in aged care. It grieved her deeply. She couldn't sleep well. So at two in the morning she'd get up and go around with the nurse who had the drugs trolley, or just had to check on people. All the way around the huge complex she was living in. They loved her for it. She was grace to them.
But there is still a problem with that. How can it be that God is a good God, if God puts us into this body, which lets us down so that we are humiliated. And if God puts us into this life where we are damaged and traumatised and abused by other people. Or the body itself just fails and we live with chronic disease. How can a loving God set up a world like that, and call it grace!?
In the concentration camps in World War 2, a Jewish boy, Elie Wiesel, was present when three rabbis sat up one night and debated whether or not God was guilty for what was happening to Jewish people in the concentration camps. And he says, "At the end of the trial, they used the word chayav, rather than ‘guilty'. It means ‘He owes us something'. Then we went to pray."4
When things are bad we might say, "God, you need to pull something pretty good out of the bucket, because you owe us big time for putting us through this." You owe us. I don't know how the calculation of what's good enough, and what makes up for the suffering of people can ever be done.5 This is in the area of mystery. But chayav, and the character of God means it will be computed. What I think we get in a Christian life which lives compassionately are intimations of grace, we get hints, we see signs of the fulfilment of Creation. And we see it when we let ourselves be a burden. And we see it at the moment, when we're not quite the burden we might be in future, and we are compassionate to other people.
Andrea Prior (August 2006)
1 Eg Amos 1:6-8, 5:24
2 Eg Micah 6:8
3 Philippians 2:12
4 https://www.thejc.com/news/wiesel-yes-we-really-did-put-god-on-trial-gjs45iw9
5 God must answer the complaint of Karamazov: "Tell me yourself, I challenge you— answer. Imagine that you are creating a fabric of human destiny with the object of making men happy in the end, giving them peace and rest at last, but that it was essential and inevitable to torture to death one tiny creature-that baby beating its breast with its fist, for instance— and to found that edifice on its unavenged tears, would you consent to be the architect of those conditions… And can you admit the idea that men for whom you are building it would agree to accept their happiness on the foundation of the unexpiated blood of a little victim? And accepting it would remain happy forever?" The Brothers Karamazov pp269
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