The Chasms That We Have Learned To Live With

In recent weeks I have been watching the new season of Bridgerton with my wife, Lynne. It surprises me to even see myself say that because Bridgerton is definitely NOT something I’d normally gravitate towards. But I plop onto the couch next to her and get drawn into the plot twists and complicated relationships. If you’re not familiar with the series, it is a drama that follows the ups and downs of a fictional high-society family in a 19th century London that is racially diverse and progressive.

But like all dramas, it’s about humans, and human relationships are messy. Each of us could probably tell our own stories about this!

Our first reading from Jeremiah 17 won’t argue with us. God is saying (through Jeremiah), “Cursed is the one who trusts in human beings…More tortuous than all else is the human heart, beyond remedy; who can understand it?” And this is from the one who CREATED humans!!!

As often happens in the Hebrew scriptures, God softens and seems to say (one again), “OK, OK, I guess they’re not that bad…”

We’re not that bad, actually, and I truly believe that at our core we are good. But we have been wounded – individually and collectively – and these wounds have made us unwell and un-whole. These wounds impact our relationships. These wounds cause us to do things that, if we were well, we would not do.

I often think of Jesus’ command from Matthew 5 where he tells his disciples, “Be perfect as your heavenly God is perfect.” Sadly the word teleios, which has a lot of meanings, was translated as “perfect.” Other definitions of the word mean “whole, complete or mature.” So imagine if we had received the words “Be whole as you heavenly God is whole.”

Does this change anything from you hearing it this way?

Wholeness is the opposite of fragmentation and division. And fragmentation and division characterize so much of the world that we live in.

In the gospel today from Luke 16 we hear the famous story of the “Rich man and Lazarus.” I have written on this story previously (here and here), and my daughter, Kateri, also wrote a beautiful reflection on it here.

In this story, there is a rich man who has a poor beggar named Lazarus sitting outside of his gate (the name Lazarus means “God is my help”). The rich man passes him all the time but never interacts with him let alone offers any assistance. They both die. Lazarus goes to heaven while the rich man goes to hell where he is tormented. 

Even in the afterlife, the rich man tries to use his privilege and status to get himself out of there by begging Abraham for some mercy. Abraham has some chilling words for the rich man when he says, “remember that you received what was good during your lifetime while Lazarus likewise received what was bad; but now he is comforted here, whereas you are tormented. Moreover, between us and you a great chasm is established to prevent anyone from crossing who might wish to go from our side to yours or from your side to ours.‘”

Whenever I read this reading, I think about the chasms that we have learned to live with. God hasn’t put them there. We have put them there. Chasms in our own lives (between and among parts of ourselves). Chasms between people. Chasms between groups of people or communities. Chasms between and among nations.

Along these lines, I often return to the work and witness of Fr. Greg Boyle. In his book, Cherished Belonging, he says that the chasms, divisions and bad actions that we witness in our lives and in the world appear not because we are evil but because we are unwell and unhealed. 

I see the rich man as an unhealed person. I mean someone who is well and healthy does not walk by people in need. Someone who is well and healthy does not look the other way when someone is suffering. Someone who is well and healthy does not amass great wealth for themselves while others go without.

This was actually a fundamental experience of the Native People living in what is now called the United States as they encountered the Christian European settlers. Numerous First Nations peoples developed the concept of “Wetiko” (or Wasi’chu) for the white people – a term meaning an illness that was akin to cannibalism whereby they witnessed white people “consuming” other lives (human and non-human) for private gain or profit. The original peoples saw it as a disease of the soul in which brutality, greed and disconnection seemed to have no limits. 

Paul Levy is a Buddhist practitioner and shamanic guide who says that the state of being Wetiko is a “virus of the mind that cultivates and feeds on fear and separation…[and is] a sickness of the spirit.” Furthermore “it is a form of mind-blindness that renders us blind to our blindness (i.e., we don’t realize we are blind, but fancy ourselves as clear-seeing).”

In our story today, the rich man embodies this Wetiko energy and cannot see his own sickness and cannot see the chasm that he has helped to create and perpetuate. So many of us might be in the same category.

The chasms and walls that we have created, learned to live with and told ourselves are normal or ”just the way it is” are all the result of social and personal illness. This, by no means, excuses accountability. But for me it proposes a different frame that says, “If you want to be well, you must address the fragmentation. If you want to be well, you must do repair. If you want to be well, you must close the chasms.”

Earlier in our Lenten journey (2/20) we heard from Isaiah 58 that we are called to be “repairers of the breach.” Our following Jesus means working to bridge (and ultimately fill in!) the chasms of this world.

Part of this requires introspection and silence, however, as we work to heal our own hearts and lives – noticing what fragmentation might exist there. And part of it requires action in our world as we try to bridge whatever separates us.

May we all today take some time to reflect more deeply on the chasms and take even small steps to bridge them.