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4.10 Neighbors & insiders: From sacrifice to mercy
In the final video of the course, we reach some conclusions about living according to mercy, the resurrection as an impetus for moral life, and that being inducted into the Christian faith is about being drawn in, by an initiative not our own, into becoming aware of what has been done for us.
Receiving a new story
Share ways in which you have noticed the content, questions or insights from the previous Module showing up in your lives.
Food for thought
- Discuss the different ways goodness and badness is achieved according to sacrifice and according to mercy.
- How did, does, Jesus make God available to us as a model of desire?
- Discuss James’ reasons for saying that Jesus’ new commandment to love one another is not a moralistic commandment.
- Now that you have reached the end of the course, share how your understanding of what Christianity is all about has changed.
- Do you agree with James’ statement from the introduction to the course, that Christianity is about discovering just how much you are loved?
Wrap-up question
Consider this message from James:
“So here is where this introductory course leaves off. I hope that you have begun to get a sense of something that is true independently of my attempt to teach it, a center of meaning to which I’ve been pointing but which is not of my invention, one from which so much more flows than I have been able to bring out here. I hope that you are leaving with an enriched sense of the Crucified and Risen One who is just there, alongside you, calling you into being, forgiving you and challenging you, teaching you to laugh at yourself, not despising you or putting you down. One who wants to see what you are going to make of this, is curious and excited to journey with you in ways I can’t anticipate. So where will you take it? How will you build each other up? I look forward to your filling me in so that my journey is enriched by yours!”
Where would you like to go from here?
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In the Discussion Forum of this unit, share ways in which you have noticed the content, questions or insights from the previous session showing up in your life.
What have I been noticing? I am much more patient than I was. Recognizing the privilege of spending time with another person, I argue less. If I must argue a point, I say my piece and then stop to listen accepting that there may be no immediate resolution.
What I desired before I no longer want as I relax into the moment where the next step may be unknown. Means not ends, become more important than desired outcomes. I watch the drivenness of my life fall away leaving no clear picture or need to know what comes next, and yet, there always is a ‘next.’
Of course, I’m not living with all these changes all the time. The structures of my prior life endure providing the forms that carry new awareness into being. That is good, except at those times when I regress into longing for an object and seemingly step off the path for the journey.
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What you are expressing here Rich is just the fact of being human. I don’t think we ever achieve a state of constant perfection, we all fall back into the archaic sacrificial from time to time despite our best intentions.. This is the essence of the spiritual path, constant awareness and constant striving, James puts it wonderfully:
“Goodness or badness according to “sacrifice” enables us to be good by contrast with some defiling other.
Goodness or badness according to mercy is discovered in our being moved, or not, to show neighborliness to one considered defiling. The attitude toward victims (the defiling other) is the criterion for neighborliness” -
Discuss the different ways goodness and badness is achieved according to sacrifice and according to mercy.
Goodness According to Sacrifice works through beliefs and actions the believer employs to shield him or her from the effects of God’s violent response to human sin. Death reflects the contamination of human failure to find perfect cover from God’s anger. Jesus was the only person whose cover was perfect and who then paid the price for God’s redemption of all humankind. Believing in Jesus ensures the immortality of the believer. Just as Jesus’s resurrection and ascension back into Heaven validated His immortality, so also after death, if one believes in Jesus, the ordinary women or man will rise from the dead to follow Jesus into Heaven.
Goodness According to Mercy comes through human participation within God’s eternal life, the Christ presence within each of us. Immortality and eternal life are different concepts. Immortality transcends mortal perception. Eternal life is about God’s inscrutable but loving presence within human perception. James’s discussion of the Parable of the Good Samaritan reflects the immediacy of eternal life, which takes form in the Samaritan’s visceral, emotional and open-endedly merciful response to the victim. Responding to God’s gut-wrenching love, we bring immediate and accessible “Goodness According to Mercy” to the aid of our neighbor.
James gave a talk on the conversion to Goodness According to Mercy in 2010 at Sturt University in Canberra, Australia, which echoes what James wrote in “Jesus, the Forgiving Victim.” James put a transcript of his talk online. http://bit.ly/2qSnud6 The transcript’s last paragraph reflects what it means to recognize and to begin following the road to eternal life. The process of giving up Goodness According to Sacrifice feels both excruciating and exhilarating simultaneously as God’s living presence actively loves in the form of personal actions that move toward, not away from, victims of sacrificial ‘goodness.’ God loves eternally with the goodness of God’s presence – now.
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Rich, you have grasped so well the meaning of Goodness According to Mercy in this final session. And, you are now fully aware of what James describes as “the most difficult truth of all, that we are liked irrepressibly as we are, our journey continues as we seek to discover what the new shape of community will take, one in which there are no longer insiders and outsiders, only those who are being inducted into a human story in which death does not have the final say. And how will we respond to the challenges that flow from this? Many blessings to you.
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Where would you like to go from here?
Sheelah, thank you for all your comments, on my last post, and in your many other responses. You’ve taken the time to reflect on what I wrote. Your persistence and counsel have helped me reach this ending point and have helped me to grow in patience and understanding.
My two and a half year experience here changed my life. I’ve learned to recognize the profound difference between the demands of the social other and the Call of the Other other. I hear God’s call ‘… just there, alongside, calling [me] into being, forgiving and challenging, teaching [me] to laugh at [myself], not despising [me] or putting [me] down.’
Now that I’ve completed the course, I will go back and review its interwoven ideas and concepts. I will explore the requirements of teaching the course in a study group at our parish church. I’ve begun a journey as a lay preacher. I will ground sermons that I write in “Jesus, the Forgiving Victim,” who walks alongside each of us every day challenging, teaching, and laughing with us.
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