What we miss when we look away

There are many things in my life that I’m not proud of–speaking hurtful words in anger to someone I love, sharing a story that I never certified to be truthful before sharing it, living and acting from a place of anxiety, making a judgment about someone or a situation with only cursory knowledge. 

Perhaps one of things about me that I’m least proud of is the way I sometimes look away from difficult or uncomfortable situations. When I am out at Walmart and I see someone with a sign asking for money or help of another kind, I sometimes turn away. When I see someone prepaying for $5 worth of gas with nickels and dimes, I sometimes turn away. 

Truthfully, I think I turn away because I’m afraid if I look too long at these human beings around me who are struggling, I would be compelled to do something about their plight. And yet, I don’t always know what I can do about their situation and I don’t always know what real help looks like to them. So instead of wading into a situation I feel inadequate to solve or inadequate to even fully understand, I turn away. Perhaps feeling some kind of internal shame that I cannot fully touch or name. Maybe you can relate?

I think as human beings, turning away has become the path of least resistance that most of us have chosen to follow. When we hear news that is deeply concerning or frightening–we turn it off. When we hear a homily that pushes on one of our vulnerabilities–we take a break from church. When we see a Facebook post or an Instagram post that suggests that we might be part of a larger, unfolding problem–we scroll on by. Whatever the scenario, we have gotten very good at looking away from that which troubles us and the relatively comfortable waters in which we find ourselves. 

And yet, looking away has never actually done anything in the world but give us a false sense of comfort. A sense of comfort that keeps the stranger strange and keeps us insulated from our neighbors–those we know AND those we don’t. But it also keeps us insulated from our own humanity. It shields us from the love, connection, and empathy that is a part of our DNA, and that can only be truly realized when it is laid bare before others. To say it another way, when we look away from even the most difficult and frightening scenes we encounter everyday, it is impossible for us to fully be us.

Today we are mid-way through Holy Week. And many of us are making plans for Easter Sunday and family get-togethers and deciding what we will wear to church that morning. But are any of us making plans to attend a Maundy Thursday service or a Good Friday service? Are any of us looking square into Jesus’ betrayal and denial by some of his own? Are any of us listening deeply to his make-believe trial before Pilate, or listening as Roman soldiers mock him and laugh at him as they beat him? Are we there, lingering at the foot of the cross, witnessing his cries, his final prayer, his last breath? Are we there in the grief? Are we there in the confusion? Are we looking at the long shadow of the cross? Or have we turned away–in our hearts, minds, and spirits?

For many of us, it is the latter. For a whole host of reasons–many of which mirror all of the reasons we look away from all that disquiets us in our lives:  We’re uncomfortable. We’ve got problems of our own. We feel inadequate to really do anything. We feel triggered. 
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Still, I have to wonder what would happen if we trained our eyes and hearts to not look away from the hard and scary parts? Like, maybe if we could get our hearts online and look deeply inside the story of Holy Week–the times we have betrayed, denied, grieved, mocked, prayed a prayer like it was our last–that practice could help us do the same thing in our everyday lives. That somehow, this story that we walk through every year could be our gateway to walking into the difficult and uncomfortable parts of our own stories, and that we could become people with eyes less averse to the suffering of others–people with hearts more inclined to gaze into the heart of another. 

I’m not sure. All I’m sure of is that there is A LOT of road yet between here and Easter morning. And it is my prayer that each of us would stand and face the ENTIRETY of the story–not just the comfortable parts. For in our stare our own story unfolds, and therein lies a world of possibilities for connection and creativity, for empathy and for hope. The kind of hope that we cannot ever experience on our own–only with another–even another we don’t know. Even another we don’t know how to help. Even another we have previously looked away from.

So don’t look away. Not from the painful parts of our Holy Week story, and not from the painful parts of our collective human story. There’s something for us there...if only we’re willing to look.

Looking into Holy Week and the holiness all around with you,
Pr. Melissa

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