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Who is Our Neighbor: A Zen Buddhist Reflection on a Christian America

Who is Our Neighbor: A Zen Buddhist Reflection on a Christian America

Last updated on: February 2, 2017 at 6:56 am by James Ford

Who is Our Neighbor: A Zen Buddhist Reflection on a Christian America 2017-02-02T06:56:47-08:00 James Ford

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I was distressed to see a new Pew survey written up at FiveThirtyEight that shows that a majority of Americans think being an American also means being a Christian. Thirty-two percent of those surveyed stated they believed it is very important to be a Christian if one is to be an American, while a softer nineteen percent only felt it “somewhat important.” Together that counted for fifty-one percent. Of course that does mean almost the same number believed it wasn’t very important (seventeen percent) or not important at all (thirty-one percent.)

Further unpacking showed a skew heavily toward older people believing this. But, also a majority of women. As to political affiliation it was, hardly a surprise I would say, that Republicans skewed much more heavily in believing this than did either Democrats or declared Independents.

First, as someone who is an ordained Buddhist priest, I find this distressing. I also think about my Jewish friends. I think about my Muslim friends. Hindus. Pagans. Atheists. Of course, I’m also a Unitarian Universalist minister, and UUism is a crowd that includes all the above, and a good number of folk who fit the “other” category. All Americans. (Yes, I know folk who are not Americans, as well, but let’s keep focused, friends…) So, I know a lot of people who are Americans who can’t find this survey a positive thing.

And, second, I found myself thinking about how we are culturally so imbued with Christian assumptions, narratives, stories, which are themselves often in fact Jewish. Particularly when derived from the scriptures. This has a pervasiveness about it for us that causes me on occasion to speak of the “Western tradition.” Me I think of our Western tradition as sort of a magpie thing with a bunch of ancient Greek thought, a goodly dash of pre-Christian European paganism mixed throughly with Jewish and Christian texts and traditions, salted with humanism, rationalism, Adam Smith and Karl Marx, stirred well, and now simmering over a low heat. And these days more than a few of us have been throwing in some Buddhism, Daoism, and Hinduism as well as some perspectives from Africa. Quite a stew. No doubt.

And, third, I found myself wondering what parts of that Christian (and often in fact Jewish) tradition is in fact stuff I hold true, and which I suspect many of us, should we choose to look into our hearts, consider true? And that’s when I noticed the blog post “Trump has already led me to the Bible” by the always wise Justin Whitaker. He himself drew upon Jesse Carey’s essay “What the Bible Says About How to Treat Refugees.” Mr Carey lists a dozen passages. Dr Whitaker lists seven of them.

I share Justin’s seven with my own comments.

First four from the Hebrew scriptures.

Leviticus 19:33-34 calls us to treat the stranger, foreigner, refugee, different translations show us how inclusive that “other” is meant to be, to treat that other as ourselves. Me, I find this echoes the great insight of all traditions that we are bound up together in an web of intimacy that national boundaries cannot contain.

Ezekiel 16:49 points to the real sin of Sodom, which has never been about sexuality, but rather hospitality. In the King James Version (hey, good enough for Jesus, good enough for me…) “Behold, this was the iniquity of thy sister Sodom, pride, fulness of bread, and abundance of idleness was in her and in her daughters, neither did she strengthen the hand of the poor and needy.”

Exodus 23:9 is a flat out commandment to not oppress the perceived other, that stranger, foreigner, or refugee – and is itself a haunting call to the myth of the Egyptian captivity, a story for all of us, and here a chilling reminder, we, too were, could be, and yet might be, strangers in a strange land.

And, Job 31:32, listing how he has been faithful to God’s commandments and that his door was always open to that stranger, foreigner, refugee. Little good that it did him, of course…

And three from the Christian texts.

Matthew 25:25-36, where in my red letter Bible Jesus described those who would inherit the Kingdom, “…I was hungry and you gave Me food; I was thirsty and you gave Me drink; I was a stranger and you took Me in; I was naked and you clothed Me; I was sick and you visited Me; I was in prison and you came to Me.” And when those to whom he was speaking, asked when did they do this, the good rabbi responded, in verse 40 “Assuredly, I say to you, inasmuch as you did it to one of the least of these My brethren, you did it to Me.’”

Galatians 5:15, “For all the law is fulfilled in one word, even in this; Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.” It echoes the ancient traditions going right back to that Leviticus text. And is one of the most beautiful summations I can think of, of the call out of the heart of knowing the web of interdependence, of which we are all of us a part. And, for me, of Dr Martin Luther King Jr.’s inescapable network of mutuality. The deep knowing of who we really are, and a pointer on what that means in our lives.

And, last, for this briefest of lists, Luke 10:29-37. One of my favorite texts from the scriptures of the West.

And, behold, a certain lawyer stood up, and tempted him, saying, Master, what shall I do to inherit eternal life He said unto him, What is written in the law? how readest thou? And he answering said, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy strength, and with all thy mind; and thy neighbour as thyself. And he said unto him, Thou hast answered right: this do, and thou shalt live. But he, willing to justify himself, said unto Jesus, And who is my neighbour? And Jesus answering said, A certain man went down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and fell among thieves, which stripped him of his raiment, and wounded him, and departed, leaving him half dead. And by chance there came down a certain priest that way: and when he saw him, he passed by on the other side. And likewise a Levite, when he was at the place, came and looked on him, and passed by on the other side. But a certain Samaritan, as he journeyed, came where he was: and when he saw him, he had compassion on him, And went to him, and bound up his wounds, pouring in oil and wine, and set him on his own beast, and brought him to an inn, and took care of him. And on the morrow when he departed, he took out two pence, and gave them to the host, and said unto him, Take care of him; and whatsoever thou spendest more, when I come again, I will repay thee. Which now of these three, thinkest thou, was neighbour unto him that fell among the thieves? And he said, He that shewed mercy on him. Then said Jesus unto him, Go, and do thou likewise.

This story appears only in the Gospel of Luke, which makes it a little bit suspect for those on that quixotic quest for the historical Jesus. Although the majority of biblical scholars seem to concur that it is indeed a story attributable to Jesus, in part because the obvious point is consistent with the general direction of his teachings.
The story has a set up, the lawyer who asks about who is “one’s neighbor” is following on an earlier passage where perhaps the same lawyer asks, apparently as an entrapment, there are a lot of these set ups recorded where enemies ask leading questions that could earn the word heresy, or, worse, sedition. These were indeed dangerous times. Perhaps we can recognize these times.

In this case the lawyer asks how to earn eternal life, to which Jesus responds, what do you think? The lawyer then says, “Love God and love your neighbor,” when taken together what has come to be called the Great Commandment. Jesus agrees with him. In fact this pronouncement is recorded straight out of Jesus’ mouth in both Mark and Matthew. However, then the lawyer goes in a very interesting direction, asking, “Who is my neighbor?”

There is a world of comment on this parable. Frankly, I find most of it not particularly compelling. The earliest strata of these comments are, typical of late antiquity, pure analogy with Jesus himself understood to be the Good Samaritan. In more recent years Liberationists and others put a lot of emphasis on the outsider qualities of a Samaritan to some good effect. I kind of like how Christopher Hitchens, late raconteur and atheist polemicist cited the Good Samaritan parable as evidence that you don’t have to be religious to be ethical.

One of my mentors is Ruben Habito, a former Jesuit priest who now teaches comparative religion at the Perkins School of Theology at Southern Methodist University in Dallas. In one of his books he comments on this parable, saying it can in fact be seen as something more than a moral injunction, however useful, and whether God-given or as natural as nature itself. Ruben points out that it all turns on the question framed at the beginning of the conversation with that lawyer. “What do I do to earn eternal life?”

Eternal life: a lovely placeholder for the great longing of the human heart. For some perhaps it is a literal hope of living beyond our physical deaths. It is also, and I find vastly more important, recognizing a sense of separation, of hurt, perhaps of wound, and with that a hope of reconciliation with that from which we seem separated. For me that phrase “eternal life” is a way of acknowledging our divided hearts, of finding ourselves lost and longing for our true home.

For Ruben, Jesuit priest for a dozen or more years, oh, and did I mention today a Zen teacher of some renown, I no longer recall exactly, this eternal life is the same as that kingdom of God which in various other biblical passages is clearly something not elsewhere, or at least not entirely elsewhere. Rather the kingdom the realm is right at hand, within us, and among us. I think about that and all of a sudden I find myself very interested in what that might mean for this parable.

So, what about that eternal life, that peace that passes all understanding, that hope for a healing of broken hearts, that finding of our true home? That place, I suggest, which when found, corrects the misunderstandings we bring to our desire to be of use in the world, and frustrates our desire to find justice, to do mercy. It is the anchor, it is the North Star that can guide us on our way, making our actions useful rather than harmful. So, it is critically important. It is about a fundamental reorienting of our selves and our lives. It is about the path of harmony and love.

For Ruben loving God and loving neighbor are one thing. Identical. Me, I tend to prefer the placeholder the Holy rather than God. But God works. The critical point is that there is no other place to find the Holy, God, than right here, in this place, within my own heart, and among us, within your own hearts and among us. In my very ordinariness, in your very ordinariness, that is exactly where the Holy is, where God is.

For Ruben this parable becomes a direct pointing to the deep and true and an invitation into a conversation, into a more intimate presence with our own hearts and with the world itself, all of it. From this perspective of wild intimacy God and love and neighbor cannot be disentangled. As Ruben says, “As we see our neighbor as not separate from ourselves, but as embraced in the same circle of Love that we ourselves are embraced in, in the same way, we embrace them with our whole soul, our whole mind, our whole heart, our whole strength.”

Of course we play all the parts. We are the wounded man. We are the thieves who set upon him. We are the Samaritan and the innkeeper. And, yes, we are the donkey. And we are the inn and the road between Jerusalem and Jericho, and the sky, and the sun, and the moon, and the stars in heaven. We are all of these people and things. Yes. And.

We open our hearts and we see it and know it. Like someone who takes a drink of water and knows for herself whether it is cool or warm.

Then the mysteries of remembering and forgetting and acting all come together like a song or a dance. And perhaps then we come to understand that line from one of those ancient Chinese worthies, who when asked why is it that the Bodhisattva of Mercy has all those hands and eyes? Replies, it is like someone in her sleep, who reaches behind her head and adjusts the pillow.

Or, it is like a man walking down a road and sees another who has been set upon by thieves, and lies broken and wounded. No theology. No commandments. Unencumbered by should or should not, he simply does what needs doing.
Here is the great way. All we need do is open our minds and hearts. Here we find the intimate way. We see how each of us is as different as night and day. Of course we are, that’s as obvious as the nose on your face. And, when we look deeper, truer, truest, each of us is also one thing, like a hand and a heart, like a cause and an effect, where we cannot see which part it is we play, perhaps, perhaps in some ancient dream, all of them. All of it, all of us, you and me, earthworms and galaxies: a thread within a seamless garment, a point within a vast web of interdependence.

And all of it, shot right through like a deep breath, dazzling, amazing, wondrously, with Love. That’s what that parable is about. Love. That’s the great pointing. Love. That’s the invitation. Into love. Into the great healing.

Is that what these people who think America should be a Christian nation are thinking?

If so, I think that’s pretty good. Actually, if so, I think it is wonderful.

If not, if they mean some sort of code for another us versus them thing, for the washed and unwashed, for the good us and the evil other, well, then, no.

Perhaps you want it a little more eloquently put? Here you go…

Sanitation workers.

Strangers.

Refugees.

Foreigners.

The least of these.

The least of these…

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