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Finding Peace and Purpose in Service
As I stood in church last Sunday, listening to a selection from the gospel of Luke about a woman washing the feet of Jesus with her tears and drying them with her hair, I could not help but wonder about her broken, tear-soaked, soul.
To what lonely, tragic circumstance had she fallen to where she would risk humiliation and scorn only for the chance to touch those feet. And how did the intimacy of that touch—hands cupping feet, tears soaking hardened skin, hair cascading into the crevices of toes—how did she effect the rabbi who was sitting in full view of the harsh Pharisees, the arbiters of moral behavior?
Back at church, I looked at my children standing, fidgeting, listening and wondered how they felt about this woman’s story. What model could she be my oldest daughter, a 20-year-old American woman? For my three teenagers in the midst of stretching their physical and emotional tendons in growth? For my youngest, a-nine-year-old drawing pictures of the good and the bad, the pleasing and the painful, the grounded and the groundless? A woman scorned, labeled, isolated, and in tears could offer them what?
Hunger. She was so hungry for love that she risked everything for a moment’s touch of those loving feet. Just like my 9-year-old grabbing her mother’s dress, she clung to those feet. Just like my teenagers clinging to friends and hoping to find themselves, she clung to those feet. Just like my 20-year-old daughter clinging to adventure and meditation hoping to find her purpose, she clung to those feet. Just like me, clinging to those children, she clung to those feet.
We know virtually nothing of that woman other than her appearance early in the life of Jesus of Nazareth. What is easy to overlook in the midst of a story about her and the forgiveness she receives, is the effect she had on Jesus. She is the first person to whom he refers as a person who “loved much.” She is the first person to touch him. She is the first person to bathe him. She is the first person to kiss him. I wonder how he felt and what he thought as she bathed him in the depths of her sorrow and love? Above all else, I think he felt her enormous hunger.
Perhaps in this story as in our faith, it is wise to see the vulnerable not just as recipients of love and forgiveness but also as givers of those precious gifts. People of faith would typically read this account and seek ways to follow Jesus’ example in this story, but I wonder if we should not also seek to follow the woman’s. She is the catalyst here, the person who precipitates the confrontation between love and judgment. She is the catalyst who disarms the Pharisees with tears. She is the catalyst who draws from the master his jolting inner power: “Your faith has saved you. Go in peace.”
Among the ironies of the spiritual life is the realization that the deeper the inner life, the deeper the social life—that care of the soul is also inescapably care of the world around you. So too with this woman of tears and the world in which we live today. She seems at first to offer us only an example of tragedy and love, a private journey shrouded in mystery and available to us only in a sudden and cryptic encounter with Christ.
But more fully, she is an invitation to our more public lives too. Consider the challenges of politics today—the deep divisions within our country over moral issues; the global tension over ethnic and religious conflict; the terrifying plight of billions of human beings whose lives hang between starvation, disease, and grinding poverty. As we face these overwhelming issues, we are in a collective search for peace between those who differ and purpose among all those who long for a world of less suffering and injustice. Like the sinful woman, we find ourselves outcasts in a world of terrifying complexity and shamefully tempted to abandon any hope of making a difference.
But if our politics were more like hers, we might find ourselves taking the big chance: risking humiliation and failure but taking the chance of showing all the harsh realists that we are hungry for love and purpose. We might find ourselves discovering as Jesus did, the wellspring of love that resides in every person, especially those who are suffering in our midst today. We might find ourselves invited into a politics of service where those who serve and those who receive service—in the story, both Jesus and the woman—are each sources of power and forgiveness. We might even find ourselves inspired to believe again in the possibilities of the commonweal—that peace and purpose are not just gained in the privacy of prayer or the insular confines of one’s family or tribe, but rather in the great arena of social ideas and shared adventure.
Thinking back to standing in church, perhaps the greatest lesson should have been that all my thoughts and deliberations and concerns were a distraction. Perhaps what the story called for were fewer thoughts and greater quiet; fewer rambling questions and more presence. The woman, after all, says not a word.
Perhaps that is the core lesson for politics too: quiet down. Focus on the common search for peace and purpose. Take a chance on hungering for love. The woman’s example was that she wept and gave freely to the source of love which she found in the unlikely person of an itinerant Rabbi who preached forgiveness. That is a lesson that emerges from the spirit and is not bound by any particular religion or even by religion itself. It is the core of a politics of spirituality. It is a lesson that the world is searching for desperately.
And standing in church, I should have realized that in the inner quiet of my children’s souls, I’m sure that it’s a lesson that makes sense in ways that I will never understand.
Timothy P. Shriver is the Chairman of Special Olympics, Inc. In that capacity, he serves 2.5 million Special Olympics athletes and their families in more than 160 countries. He's also a TV and film producer. His credits include co-producing “Amistad” and “The Loretta Claiborne Story.”
By Timothy Shriver |
June 28, 2007; 9:10 AM ET
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Thank you, Mr. Shriver, for your post. You have made the same leap of faith I have and that I think the woman made. Forgiveness has tremendous power to transform us.
What that woman did was unheard of in her society. What would prompt such a public, “over the top” display of emotion? We never get to know. But, what we do get to know is that a fresh start is granted to her. “Your faith has saved/healed you. Go in peace.” The possibilities opened up to her by that sending are tantalizing. If that was true for her, it’s also true for us. Those possibilities move us to think about what could be here and now and what we can do about it.
I have to believe those possibilities took two roads. First, after having been forgiven herself of many sins, after having the weight of whatever she had done to herself and others removed, she was more willing to be merciful to those immediately around her. Mercy begets mercy. Drops in the pond, yeast in the bread. Second, she lived differently in the world and her example—to those who knew her when and those who didn’t—made a difference for good.
As you suggest, maybe that difference was simply greater quiet. I remember reading Thomas Merton (Contemplation in a World of Action) who helped me understand quietness better. It was not a retreat from the world, but a strategy for dealing with the world. You came back again to peace and purpose so that you could take them back out again into the world. Peace borne of forgiveness and purpose borne of the peace.
This is what I think God wants for us—peace and the opportunity to be part of its making. I read in all these posts the heartbreaking disappointments of people with “religion,” what human begins do with their relationship God. But, there is also good.
Posted by: labech | June 29, 2007 9:25 AM
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Desr Anonymous
I would bet a hundred dollars, no, a million dollars, that you are a very sheltered person with a narrow and limited experience in life. From your post, I would suggest that you get out a little more, get out of your house, get out of your car, get out of your neighborhood, and prowl around and explore around a little and meet some real people, and just expereience what life is like.
Posted by: Daniel | June 29, 2007 8:52 AM
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Jacob Jozefz,
Do you really think anyone reads your posts? I'd bet a 100 dollars you smoke weed and have dreadlocks. Am I right?? I also have a feeling you like tie dyed t-shirts and always make sure you have your trusty birkenstocks on hand for a magical "eclatarian" moment through the woods. Dude, chill out with all the craziness homie!! You make no sense bro. Ya Ya
Posted by: Anonymous | June 28, 2007 11:51 PM
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DANIEL tells us: I have been observing this guy Jacob for awhile.
ANN replies: I have too, Daniel. I love JJ. He is a poet of optimism and good will in the face of a dark world. Maybe if Mary had experienced the horrors he has she might be more understanding.
Posted by: Ann O. | June 28, 2007 6:47 PM
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Meanwhile, thank you Mr. Shriver for your willingness to share so intimately your thoughts and feelings. I appriciate your personal insights.
Posted by: Guy | June 28, 2007 5:27 PM
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I cannot keep quiet here. I am so struck here by the hypocrisy. Wallowing in the idiom of "love" yet barely comprehending it at all, that is the stereotypical Christian attitude, which is so off-putting to people, and which gives Christians and Christianity a bad name.
Mary Cunningham, you cry for a character in a story that is two-thousand years old, who is long dead, and gone from this earth, whom you will never meet, or see, or interact with; yet you call this "JJ" who is a troubled soul, who is alive now, and who will receive your insult, you call him a "complete jerk" and then insult him some more.
I am not trying to be hard on you, no harder than you are on other people. I am not trying to insult you. I just wonder how you can be so mistaken about the depths of your own sensitivity.
Of course, I totally expect to be insulted and bashed, and to be called alot of names. That is what I am expecting from you, my fine Christian brethren.
Posted by: Daniel | June 28, 2007 3:05 PM
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Mary Cunningham, you said that JJ is a complete jerk. You often post here with a Christian point of view. But what kind of Christian are you? You seem very hard and a little bitter. All you want to do is argue and lobby. What is the point? Did it ever occur to you, to just "be a Christian" and stop arguing about it?
I have been observing this guy Jacob for awhile. At first, I did not like him either. I posted a few hostile comments to him. But, gradually, I think I was understanding his "problem." I have seen several of his postings today. Today, he seems especially troubled. I hope he is feeling better tomorrow.
I guess it would be nice to press a button and jettison all the bad and troubled people in the world whom we don't like. But aside from the impracticality of doing that, how can you fit that into your Christian vision of what it means to be a human being, and how to live on the earth?
Posted by: Daniel | June 28, 2007 11:50 AM
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PS, And your stuff is way too long. Why don't you give everyone a break and try to edit your idiocy instead of just cutting and pasting such trite tosh?
Posted by: MC | June 28, 2007 10:38 AM
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JJ
You are a complete jerk. Can;t you find a website for atheist physics wannabees and post there? Atheism is just a late Christian cult anyway.
Posted by: Mary Cunningham | June 28, 2007 10:33 AM
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Well, Mr. Shriver, I listened to that passage from Luke this Sunday as well. But I've come to look upon it in a different way.
Some think it strange, I guess. I can't remember what I thought as a child in the West of Ireland when I first heard it. I never forgot it. It made an impression...I know that, it is so vivid.
But now, I think it a passage not of purpose, but of joy. She was weeping, yes, but they were tears of happiness--the tears a woman will shed when--after a hard labour--she sees her newborn child at last.
This woman, whom we might say had a wee bit of a 'past', had the great knowledge and instinct to realize what was in front of her: God in human form. And unlike Peter who was terrified when he realized the same thing ("Depart from me, O Lord, for I am a sinful man"), this woman was full of joy and happiness and wonder that she had been granted such a gift.
So I think it is one of the most optimistic passages of the New Testament, and in front of
the stern frowning absolutely uncomprehending
Pharasees too! Even better.
What my own daughters think of it I am not sure. But I do remember the middle one smiling when she first understood it, although at that point she didn't quite get what the woman's 'past' ensued.
Posted by: Mary Cunningham | June 28, 2007 10:30 AM
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