There are so many reasons for dissing people. Though we don’t all have the same ones.
She’s just a Freshman. He’s a drop-out. She’s too intellectual. He’s a socialist. She’s an atheist. He’s a bigot. She’s missing teeth. He’s handicapped. She’s blonde. They’re Yankee fans.
So many ways to dismiss people as irrelevant. To cut them off. To close our minds when they start talking. To see them as somehow less than human.
Just recently I was involved in a big group discussion. I offered what I thought was a powerful point. The moderator waved me off with a few words, dismissed my point entirely, and I felt personally disrespected. I got over it and moved on. But it got me thinking about people who are regularly dissed, and how I sometimes do it myself, as hard as I try not to.
I feel awful when I spot my own prejudices, the ways I categorize people without intending to at all. And when they really start bugging me, I take those pre-judgments into my prayers and into my conversations with friends. Somehow, exposing them is the beginning of overcoming them. For me, it’s a journey of learning to respect beyond the lines, learning to see the way God sees.
This week many Christians around the world will be digging into the story from Mark’s Gospel where Jesus talks about the issue of divorce and then about how children are respected (or not) in his culture.
Take a look at this story: Mark 10:2-16 http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Mark%2010:2-16&version=MSG
There’s so much to talk about as far as what divorce was like then as opposed to how it is now, and we’ll do that on Thursday night at Bread for your Journey, but I’ll just get us going a bit here… Jesus is talking about the kind of divorce that a husband could do simply by writing a letter of dismissal, leaving his ex-wife to fend for herself in a woman-unfriendly world. She’s dismissed, disrepected, and terribly alone. She’s damaged goods and will never live the label down… unless…
Unless someone breaks through old attitudes and prejudices and does something about it. Unless someone creates a new kind of community where the dissed can be re-respected. Even children, the most dissed of all, can be seen and held as people of worth we can learn from admire. Is that what Jesus was getting at?
How are you someone that is dissed sometimes and needs to be re-respected, re-connected, re-deemed? And what difference does it make that Jesus is working through us to restore respectful community? What needs to change inside of us for that to begin?
Let’s explore some more this Thursday night 7pm at the Crowne Plaza. And we’ll continue as well on here on the blog this weekend.
4 comments:
Earlier this week I was getting on the city bus with my guide dog Posada. As we were getting on some high school boys in the back of the bus yelled at the bus driver to not let me on with Posada. The driver yelled back at them that I had the same right as they did to be on the bus.
As I sat down I felt a little bit uncomfortable becuase this is the first time that I have encountered this issue since becomeing a gude dog user. All throughout the ride I kept hoping that the driver would make them get off the bus for being so rude. When I finally got off the bus at the transit center I wrote them off as being awful teenagers.
As someone who works with children I feel as though I should not have felt that way. I felt as though I should have just wrote them off as being ignorant about the equal access law. I returned home feeling upset with teens in general. I had to remind myself that not all teen are like that. I am a confirmation sponser to a really great 14 year-old.
Some part of me makes me feel as though I had the right to feel the way that I did on the bus. Nobody deserves to be teased, and that includes myself. As a teacher I have a zero tolerance rule for people teasing others. I feels awful to be "dissed" or tossed aside.
Powerful thoughts, Kristin. Lots to think about there. I think about that bus being like God's life of love... and the bus driver as Jesus (the one who risks standing up for the dissed and making sure all are welcomed). Thanks for telling us of that vulnerable moment, Kristin. I'm willing to bet that those rudely-acting kids were affected by your self-respecting attitude, by your decision to not insult them back. You never know what seeds you're planting.
Kari, we just discussed this passage this morning in the pericope study part of our Preaching Mark class at LTSG. We will be preaching on it next week (either this passage or the previous pericope about "if your hand causes you to sin etc.
Blessings.
So glad to know that by the way has reached inside the hallowed halls of Gettysburg Sem! Thanks for letting us know, Ivy. Happy sermon-writing...
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