Tucson bids us to consider: Friendship, Kindness, and Kingdom

I gotta tell ya, I’m surprised to be really liking the Pope’s book Jesus of Nazareth ...because, you see, it’s written by the Pope.  My “reading” in audio format as I walk the pre-dawn hills in the lake-effect snow that is normal here has put me in diverse but endlessly stimulating company, from Karen Armstrong (The Case for God, the Battle for God) to Sue Monk Kidd (The Mermaid Chair) to Maria Doria Russell (The Sparrow) and most recently C.S. Lewis (Miracles, Mere Christianity).  After writing every morning for almost a year since facing the reality of my mortality last November, I found that my wound-up spring of ideas and insights wound down.  I felt the need to listen.

Instead of daily blog postings, I have been, from this reading, jotting down ideas and insights from these writers on “sticky notes” on my laptop, for future writing.  But sometimes like today, I’m moved to write immediately from seeds planted on my walk.  Tucson and the righteous Right...and Left set contrast hard to ignore.

Pope Benedict has released for publication the first half of his intended book on the life of Jesus of Nazareth…because he’s not sure that he will live long enough to finish the rest of it. 

I’d scoffed at mention of the book among a group of men with whom I meet weekly to read and reflect on the gospels.  The younger guys tend to more inclined toward Catholic doctrine and dogma than I am, and their mention of “reading the Pope’s book” drew an involuntary smirk from me that they may have mistaken as a smile.  So when I saw the audio book version at the library, I picked it up, and I find it quite good. 

Benedict writes of the beatitudes, and the “Kingdom of God.”   As the churches who restart the calendar of readings find Jesus coming into his own and accepting the Baptism of John, innocents are killed in Tucson, possibly because of their proximity to the target of the assassin.  As he rises from the water and the sky opens up and we are told that he is the beloved of god, the favored one, and that we are to listen to him.  He will run to the desert to consider the impact of this, and when he comes out, he will know who he is, and what he must do.  He will preach the Kingdom of God.

The Tucson killings bring to our minds the problem of righteous anger, of political power that aims to rule in what a political group considers to be justice.  And the extremist rhetoric of such a drive has found its way (and some would say its source) in the righteous statements of those who call themselves Christians, who call for targeting people who they consider evil.  When they are in charge, God will reign. 

Benedict writes of the Kingdom of God as gently as a mother unwrapping a newborn infant for the first time.  He is not the logician, the machinist, a tactician or a broker.  He is the receiver of a precious gift, the surfaces and curves and forms of which are a source of delight, but also of complexity that calls for careful description.   But despite (or because of) the power in his own position as Pope, he uses careful language to draw us into a respectful understanding of Kingdom.  King…dom…friendship…kindness.  All are states of mind, and ways of being.  When a “kingdom” comes, it will not be a state of stability through power.   The kingdom already is.  It is among us, not as monolithic order, but as friendship in an alien world, kindness in a mean society.  It is among us as a tiny seed in a lot of soil, as a treasure buried, as a bit of leaven in a lot of flour.

The problem that exposes itself in Tucson is not simply one of a deranged individual or a website marked with crosshairs.  It is one of misunderstanding of kingdom, of political power.  We need to work not from contrary anger at the perpetrators, but from the compassion that we feel for the innocent victims.  We need to be called not to grasp for right that is just beyond our reach but to discover and nurture the seed of kindness and friendship, the irrepressible leaven of the kingdom that is already among us.