12th Sunday after Pentecost 27.8.06 Other people
It is very easy to see other people as something of an interruption to the important business of life.
This was the problem facing the two passers-by who did not stop to help the injured man on the side of the road (Good Samaritan parable). No doubt they had other things on their minds.
In our hurry we can treat persons in an impersonal way. We can see the person as an object rather than a subject. If I am the sixth person in a checkout line and I wish the other five would hurry up, then I am seeing them as ‘objects’, needing to be removed. It is not a nice way to think.
Better if we can learn to see others as ‘subjects’, coming to see how they feel and think. One way we experience this is when we follow another person in a story. Think of some of the powerful books you have read, or films you have seen. Notice how you ‘identify’ with some of the characters.
For example, in ‘Roots’, we travel with Kunta Kinte through his childhood to the moment when he is captured by slave traders and then his brutal treatment; his anguish at being separated from his family and never seeing them again…
Or Macbeth. Even an evil character can arouse our sympathy. We trace his fall from grace, how one sin leads to another, and he gets worse. We wish he would take a different turn and come out of his dilemma. We are identifying with him.
In fact every person could be the subject of a book or film. It may be a dull story, we might initially think. But every person is a whole universe of desires, wishes, hopes, fears, joys, missed opportunities. Every person is interesting, even the bad ones. If we had the time and the energy we could come to be interested in that person as we do when watching a film.
This means that as we go about our busy daily lives all those people whizzing around us - although we don’t know many of them personally - we do register a sense of their importance.
And that is a major step in loving one’s neighbour, one of the primary commands we receive from the Lord.
We are far more likely to love our neighbour if we realize his importance. A man lying on the side of the road is not just an object, like a sack of potatoes. He is a subject, a human person with a soul, loved by God, and called to the kingdom of heaven.
How could we treat him with indifference once we realize that?
God Himself is not bound by our limits of time and opportunity. He does know each person intimately, to the number of hairs on their heads.
He knows us better than we know ourselves.
And He has an infinite and undying love for each person.
Other people are important to Him, so they must be important to me too.
My indifference to others is only because of my ignorance of what is really there. May the Lord open our eyes and hearts to the dignity and importance of each other person.
We then can offer the appropriate assistance to each other. The first need is always spiritual. We pray for mercy, the grace of repentance, that this person will know the mercy of God and come to salvation.
Then we can help in other ways - physically, or economically, or in whatever the situation requires. Ways of helping will emerge once we have overcome the initial lack of compassion. We learn to feel for others with the Heart of Christ. We learn to see the other person as God sees him.
People are not just so many black ants running about, but each one is a subject, either already - or called to be - a son of God. We must treat them accordingly.
