Tend to the Wound

In today’s readings, we are offered two connected paths to think about how to be in the world.

We have the reading from Leviticus that essentially summarizes what have been called the 10 Commandments and reminds people about how they should treat others.  What most of us have rarely heard, however, is that – at least in Leviticus – very specific injustices are mentioned.  We’re told, among other things, not to rob people of their wages, not to discriminate against people with disabilities, not to hold hatred in our hearts, not to defer to the mighty and powerful, and to not stand by when our neighbor’s life is at stake.

Wait, what? Those aren’t the 10 Commandments I heard growing up (and they surely aren’t the ones many evangelicals want put up inside of our schools!). God said we need to address situations of wage inequality and discrimination and resist complicity with the powerful and mighty? And God said don’t just stand on the sidelines when your neighbor’s life is at stake?

Yes (well at least as recorded in the Hebrew scriptures and teaching tradition).

As a Christian, I know that I can forget (and maybe was even encouraged to forget), that the only scriptures that Jesus read were the Jewish scriptures.  I am guessing that Jesus read and/or heard Leviticus read aloud and made the direct connection between wage inequality, discrimination and complicity with the powerful and the groups of people he identifies in his teaching about the “final judgement”.

Jesus knew that discrimination and inequality displaced people, left them hungry and thirsty or ill and imprisoned – or all of the above. And so he tells a different story to try to bring home the same point: do not stand on the sidelines when your neighbor’s life is at stake! Our God (at least as recorded in the Christian scriptures and teaching tradition) says that hunger, thirst, imprisonment, illness and displacement are ALL matters of our faith. 

If we combine the two scriptures from today, we might feel a dual calling: tend to the wounds of the neighbor AND seek to remedy the source of that wounding.

The famous Brazilian Archbishop Dom Helder Camara once said, “When I give food to the poor, they call me a saint. When I ask why they are poor, they call me a communist.”

This is where we are invited to locate ourselves today – in this tension of tending to the wound and asking who or what is doing the wounding.

For today, talk to God about what wounds exist in the world around you.  What can you do to try to tend to the wounds? What might you need to do or say related to the source of the wounding?

(P.S. As part of our Lenten reflection series, we are taking up exploring the Doctrine of Discovery (DoD) which is a part of the Catholic tradition. The DoD essentially was a legal principle issued by the Catholic church that gave permission to European colonizers and settlers to claim land and ignore all Indigenous sovereignty, rights and status as humans. It went on to be used in United States law as a legal precedent and continues to be used to this day as part of the ongoing dispossession and oppression of Indigenous people. Exploring and taking steps to undo the DoD is part of the work of healing one of the original wounds that Catholic history has perpetuated. We hope you can join us for this conversation!)