This article appears as a chapter of Brad Jersak's Kissing the Leper.
God sells righteousness very cheap to those who are eager to buy: namely, for a little piece of bread, worthless clothes, a cup of cold water and one coin.1
Abba Epiphanus
This began with a taste of heaven and hell. This began with a taste of peace and torment. This began while giving birth to my second child. The doctor broke my water just before 7 a.m., and my baby was born at 8:22 a.m. That final hour was contraction upon contraction. Labor is not the kind of pain that makes you cry; it’s the kind of pain that makes you gasp and writhe and cry out “O God, help me!” It’s also the kind of pain that makes you pass out—which I did, twice. Those unconscious moments of bliss during otherwise conscious pain were what started me thinking…
My assumption had always been that when you passed out, it was like falling asleep: Everything goes black, time continues without you noticing, and you are oblivious to everything outside of your dreams. This assumption turned out to be wrong. Everything did not go black when I passed out, but white. I was not oblivious, as I heard every word spoken by those around me.
My husband, Pete, was calling gently to me, “Brita, Brita,” and then he said, “I think she passed out.” I was aware of my body—my head rolling slowly back and forth, my hand in his—but I could not feel any pain. Every nerve receptor seemed covered over, protected. I felt total peace. In a time of severe agony, I was experiencing a moment of grace. I knew Jesus was near. I knew he was right there. I could hear the doctor and nurse calling me out, saying I needed to wake up, but all I wanted was to stay. Forever. I had found rest, and I did not want to go back to the agony before me. And then, all at once, I was back. All the pain returned, and I was beyond the point where I could string a
sentence together. My longing to return to that miraculous place of peace was so important I managed my one complete sentence, “I want to pass out again.”
Later that day, after our little beauty had entered this world as the real miracle, it got me thinking about heaven and hell—one a place a rest, the other a place of pain—and how I had tasted both earlier that day. Two worlds came to mind as I lay in my hospital bed; two places where I remembered horror and bliss together.
The first world was a parable. In it are Lazarus and the rich man (Luke 16:19-31) and their revealed future destinies of peace and pain. It speaks of these places I have just tasted. Childbirth is an experience that underscores the fact that I do not want to be the rich man when the end comes. I do not want an eternity of contraction upon contraction. I want to understand this story and why Jesus created it and spoke it. The rich man is given good things, dies, and enters eternal torment. The poor man is given bad things, dies, and enters eternal rest. That’s the simplest version.
It has a hole. Rest, in this story, does not seem to be entered through Christ or forgiveness or grace. This troubles me, especially as I look at both of my beautiful girls and know that I have
been given good things. I am not Lazarus. I am fearful and wanting to see Jesus in this story somewhere.
The second world that came to mind was the poorest community in Canada, Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside. I remembered their stories and faces. There was my friend, Steve, who suffers from chronic back pain. He told me that when he was on heroin, all of his pain (physical and emotional) disappeared. He told me he would go from agony to peace. Heroin offered him a moment of rest. At the time his description of a heroin fix brought verses describing heaven into my mind.
I also remembered a young woman whose mind was often unaware of what she was doing. We were standing together on the street, and she was wearing socks with a pair of flip-flops jammed between her toes. She kept smiling and asking me if they looked pretty. I told her, “They look pretty.” Later, she went missing. Later still, her DNA was found on accused serial killer Robert Pickton’s farm (along with the DNA of at least 21 other women).
Lying in the hospital, I remembered a man who fought in Vietnam and returned with a gunshot wound and all the memories of the things he had done—and all the things that had been done to him—during the war. He came back and escaped his memories, for awhile. When I knew him, when my door was next to his, he was making it sober one day at a time. Carefully. Graciously. Mightily.
I also remembered this little man who tried to walk across the narrow brick pattern on the fl oor every day without stepping on any of the lines between the bricks. It was impossible, but his body would contort to perform it. During the soup kitchen meal he would only put one little pea in his mouth at a time. Each pea had to be eaten individually. He kept his face covered summer and winter. People whispered rumors he had been tortured, in another land, an earlier time.
Living and dead, they were among the poor of the earth. There are all kinds of deep wounds and torment. There is pain that seems unending and perhaps unendurable. For spaces of time, the addicted escape through their use of heroin and cocaine. Moments of grace. Reprieve. Rest. I wondered if they (like me for that hour) have had glimpses into heaven and hell, peace and torment, with the distances between those extreme worlds separated by mere moments, seconds, breaths. I wondered at how desperately I wanted to return to unconsciousness during my very brief encounter with real pain.
In the story of Lazarus, the ones I met are the poor who receive bad things and die. I, with my new baby, look to Christ the Savior. I listen to his story. And I look for him in his story, for he is present
in every moment. Where are you in this story of the rich man and Lazarus, where the outcome seems to depend, not on grace, but on circumstances or works or good and bad things?
And there he is. He’s Lazarus. He’s not just the one who received bad things; he received every bad thing. He’s the one slapped, beaten down, busted up, and not just at Gethsemane or in some metaphorical way. If I grab your head and squeeze it and speak violently in your face, it is your face I am holding.
But if I ask Jesus where he is, it’s his face I hold, too. Every cruel act we do to each other, we are doing to him as well. He says, “Whatever you did to the least of these, you did unto me” (Matthew 25:40), because he inhabits them all. Christ inhabits them all. When Christ says, “When you visited the prisoner, you visited me,” he isn’t referring to some wrongly imprisoned innocent. He’s referring to every menace to society; every one locked up or held for execution. Every one who is tortured. Every naked kid. Every one in socks and fl ip-fl ops waiting on the curb for her last ride.
For it isn’t about a tally sheet at all. Did I feed enough orphans? Did I do enough hospital visitations? Rather, it is this: Christ saves us. Christ in the poor man saves us. Christ in the naked kid saves us. Christ in socks and flip-flops saves us. Our encounters with such people change our hearts and lives. His word to me is, “ Allow the poor man to save you. Allow the poor man to save you.”
It feels like a hard word, but he assures me it is easy if I will step out and try it. In Bono: In Conversation with Michka Assayas, the lead singer of U2 speaks about how he is holding out for grace, how he needs grace, how he imagines God saying, “Let’s face it, you’re not living a very good life, are you?”
These words are for me. These words are true. I like to think I do what I can for the most part, but often I don’t even do that. My life has not been great. I have not been Mother Teresa. I have not been the hero or the giant. I want to be saved through Christ, and I believe he will save me. But sometimes he comes to me looking like the one I most judge and most avoid. It is Jesus who saves and transforms our hearts, and sometimes he does so in painful disguise.
Sometimes he looks disgusting or pitiful or worthy of contempt or simply sick and tired and poor. But in receiving him, even in these states, I fi nd I am saved. In receiving him, I am changed.
Something happens to my heart, something good and liberating and widening and beautiful. I don’t need to feed the poor to be good enough to get into heaven. But what am I to do? Believe him. Follow him. Feed him. Eat him. Love him. Tend to his sores. In doing so, I am always the one who has received, is receiving, will receive.
So, I asked Jesus the question, “When have I encountered you?” and he started bringing people to mind, strangers I had met. None of them were from the Downtown Eastside, however. This troubled me. So, I asked, “What about in the Downtown Eastside?” And he said, “ All of them. All of them. Do you get it now? Whatever you did for the least of these, you did for me. It was me every time. I was every one of them. It was always me.”
Abba Agathon
Going to town one day to sell some small articles, Abba Agathon met a cripple on the roadside, paralyzed in his legs, who asked him where he was going. Abba Agathon replied, “To town, to sell some things.” The other said, “Do me the favor of carrying me there.” So he carried him to the town. The cripple said to him, “Put me down where you sell your wares.” He did so. When he had sold an article, the cripple asked, “ What did you sell it for?” and he told him the price. The other said, “Buy me a cake,” and he bought it.
When Abba Agathon had sold a second article, the sick man asked, “How much did you sell it for?” And he told him the price of it. Then the other said, “Buy me this,” and he bought it. When Agathon, having sold all his wares, wanted to go, he said to him, “Are you going back?” and he replied, “Yes.” Then said he, “Do me the favour of carrying me back to the place where you found me.” Once more picking him up, he carried him back to that place. Then the cripple said, “Agathon, you are fi lled with divine blessings in heaven and on earth.” Raising his eyes, Agathon saw no man; it was an angel of the Lord come to try him.2
Footnotes
1 Yushi Nomura (ed.), Desert Wisdom: Sayings from the Desert Fathers (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2000) 101.
2 Benedicta Ward (trans.), The Sayings of the Desert Fathers (Collegeville, MN Cistercian Publications, 1987), 21-22.
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