Luke 10: 25 - 37
Doing
Likewise
Rev.
Elizabeth Macaulay
7/15/07
Mohatma
Gandhi’s statement: “We must be the
change we wish to see in the world” has long moved me, even before it got put
on the back of the T Shirts we wore on our mission trip to
Those words are wise beyond the telling.
But the
words have become even richer for me.
Recently, in reading the really good book “The Not So Big Life” by Sarah
Susanka, I ran across the story behind the quotation.
It seems
that a woman came to Gandhi, begging him to help her with her child, who was
grossly overweight and addicted to sweets.
She wanted Gandhi to tell him to stop it. He agreed to give it a try, but asked the
woman and her child to go away for a week and then come back to him. She thought it was an odd request, but she
was desperate, so she went away and came back with her son a week later.
When they
got back, Gandhi sternly told the young boy how destructive his eating habits
were. He needed to stop eating
sugar-rich foods right away.
Gratified
by the message, but confused about the need for the week in between, the woman
asked Gandhi why he couldn’t have just told the boy that message when she first
brought him.
“Because,
dear madam,” said Gandhi, “I did not know if I myself could accomplish that
which you asked me to ask of your son.
If I could not do it myself, how could I ask him to do it? We must be the change we want to see
in the world.”
Jesus, in
the story of the Good Samaritan, is teaching his disciples the lesson that his
admirer Gandhi sought to teach centuries later.
We must be the change we wish to see in the world.”
And we must
be honest enough to really try it on and walk its lessons for ourselves, in our
own lives, through our own willingness to embrace the struggle and risk and
reaching out asked of us as followers of Jesus.
Because surely, in this day of rampant poverty, want, loneliness,
chemical dependency, divorce and despair, we want the change that Jesus
offers. Do we not?
Passing by
without stopping on that long ago deserted road were the religious elite. People who talked plenty about living the way
of God. But people unwilling to be the change
they sought to teach about.
Rather than
risk defilement. Rather than risk the
obligation that entering into relationship with others can entail. Rather than reaching into the place of
demonstrated pain sprawled before them in the ditch, these fine fellows looked
the other way and walked on by.
Who
stopped? The Samaritan. One who knew what it was to be despised and
outcast in the Jewish culture within which he lived. One thrown into the ditch of public
condemnation on an almost daily basis.
One who knew that without compassion, life is a living hell. One who knew through the teachings of his
faith that living as a child of God means being that child of God - in
words and in action.
This week a
friend shared a most amazing story of how one person’s willingness to see the
pain of others and enter into the healing of it literally saved a life.
In the
program I have been involved with for over three years, Women Touched by
Grace, we were asked to introduce ourselves at the first session. One of the participants, a beautiful young
woman with long red hair and a confident spirit, showed us a picture of an
ultrasound of the twins that she had just discovered she was carrying. Those boys became our own - through her
pregnancy and eventual birth - one in which the boys struggled for a time - and
then when she brought them along on retreat when they were wee ones.
Rob and Charlie were the only men in residence during our
retreats. They became community.
They are
bigger now, healthy and growing and glorious.
So my heart stopped when Stacey sent out an email that I want to share
with you.
Dear
sisters,
My family
and I have been the most horrifying experience of our lives this week, and now
that we have come through it I have to share it with all of you.
Rob almost
died. We have been at the beach for the last week (until last night), and on
Sunday afternoon, he was the victim of a "spontaneous sand cave-in."
Unbeknownst to us (it happened while we were setting up beach chairs - Paul was
watching the boys while I set up the chairs, I said something to Paul, he
looked at me, and then suddenly I became aware that only one boy was still in
my peripheral vision), he fell in a hole that some other children had dug, just
a few feet from our chairs, and the hole caved in on him. He was fully buried
in the sand - 8-10 inches over his head - for more than five minutes while we
searched for him.
As soon as
we realized he was gone (which I think was within seconds of him dropping into
the hole and being buried), I began screaming for help and Paul and Leonard
(Paul's son-in-law) began searching the water. About 20 people or more helped
us look. The lifeguards assumed it was a "child wanders off"
situation - but I was certain that was not the case. I'm grateful for that
certainty, because if I had not screamed for help when I did, and if people had
not continued to look for him, he would have died for sure.
For five
minutes, we searched and searched, expecting to find his body floating in the
water. The more time went by, the more certain I became that we had lost him
for good. It was the most terrible thing in the world - running up and down the
beach with Charlie in my arms; frantically searching the water and the sand;
hearing Charlie cry out, "Help! We can't find Rob! Oh my gosh, oh my gosh,
oh my gosh. He in water. Help my brother!"; being certain something
horrible had happened while the lifeguards treated it as nothing. It was
sickening, and horrifying, and we believed he was dead. I kept hoping the water
would at least bring his body back to us. I couldn't imagine leaving the beach
without getting him back. I kept thinking of people I knew who had lost a
child, including one who lost a twin son (at age 3) by his drowning in the
ocean, and I kept thinking that now it was me, the thing I feared most in the
world had happened. It was unbearable. I both believed it and couldn't believe
it.
Then a
young woman who had been helping us look noticed an indentation in the ledge of
sand where the soft sand slopes towards the packed sand. She asked me if that
hole was there when we got there - it was just a few feet from our chairs. I
didn't know if it had been or not. She stuck her hands in - and discovered his
head (later she would tell us that she felt like a spirit inside her was
telling her that he was in that hole). She, and Paul, and about 8 others
started digging. I stood back, with Charlie, afraid for either of us to see Rob
pulled up dead. A couple of long minutes went by, and then someone shouted,
"He's all right!" and I came running. He was crying, and dazed, and
his tongue was bleeding where he bit it, but otherwise, he was totally fine.
Alive, and totally FINE. The EMTs came and checked him out, we took him to the
hospital for a chest x-ray (to make sure there was no sand in his lungs), and
he checked out totally okay. I still find it hard to believe, and I can't quit
holding him and looking at him and kissing him.
To go from
knowing your child is dead to discovering that he is alive and okay is an
experience I cannot fully explain - or even comprehend. He was lost, gone, good
as dead, and then he miraculously was returned to us. We are overwhelmed, and
living very close to the knowledge that though our boys are okay, it was very
nearly otherwise. It is phenomenal, and amazing, and really miraculous. At the
same time, I can't get fully beyond those minutes of thinking he was gone - I
experienced all the emotions of losing him, those emotions went deep and sort
of got seared into my brain and heart. It's hard to shake loose of them, and I
also keep thinking of all the people who go through this kind of loss without
the unbelievable return of their child, and I cannot get over how we got him
back when so many people simply have to accept the unacceptable loss of a
child. In those several minutes, it was like my whole world collapsed. And then
I unexpectedly and almost unbelievably got my whole world back, only now life
feels altered in ways I can't explain.
I feel
fragile and shaken and also grateful and amazed. I ask for your prayers for our
family, and especially for Rob and Charlie as they both continue to process
what happened. Many times a day, Rob will launch into the story: "I fell
in a hole. The sand kept coming in. The hole closed and it locked. I am so
happy I camed out of that hole." And Charlie, just as traumatized, only
differently: "We couldn't find my Rob. He in hole. He not happy in hole.
We saved him." Charlie keeps giving Rob the sweetest hugs and kisses.
I just
needed y'all to know about what happened - that the earth swallowed up our
little boy, and we somehow got him back.
Stacey
Simpson Duke
… And then
a young woman who had been helping us listened to the spirit inside of her and
reached into the hole and touched the head of our son.
….A man was
going down from
We must be the change we wish to see in the world.
We are
called to be the people of doing likewise. Amen