Sometimes the squeal of wheels as a speeding car goes by gets me wondering. I find myself wondering why the driver is speeding. And who will eventually pay the consequences of that action. I found myself doing such a thought experiment this week in response to hearing of the car that disintegrated as it collided with a telegraph pole in Upper Mount Gravatt; the car clocked moments earlier travelling at over 160km per hour. Was the speeding a consequence of some violent interaction? Were the people in the car scared? Or joy riding? Or just late?
It’s a thought experiment I subject myself to when I am in traffic and find myself provoked by an aggressive or foolish driver. I use the exercise to remind myself that if I respond with aggression, return evil for evil, that I will be passing the aggression on, and that I have no idea how far the aggression will travel, nor what its eventual consequences might be. One can imagine aggression flowing across the world through a domino effect: one driver cuts another off, the second accelerates in anger and zips through a red light, narrowly missing a pedestrian. The pedestrian, livid, strides home, and yells at their child, who in turn retreats to their room to cyber-bully the kid on the other side of the world who kills themselves.
It is a fact of life that nothing we do happens in isolation. Newton ’s third Law of motion states that for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. So it is with each and every action of ours; there is a flow-on or domino effect. Each action is like a pebble thrown into a pond: the ripples go on and on and on, to very edge.
The story of David and Bathsheba, which we encounter in today’s first reading, illustrates this principle well. It starts off with the King wanting a bit of a fling, and ends with a man and a child dead, and a woman in deep grief. The writer of 2 Samuel sees David’s actions as being so profoundly disturbing that the child’s death, as well as Uriah’s, is a consequence of David’s initial action. Each step in the story is predictable and tragic. The secret liaison, the simple attempt at a cover up, the escalating need for action, and then the fatal stepping outside the bounds...... ‘See that he is killed’. The King who just a little earlier in the story was offering a prayer to God expressing his gratitude for God’s grace, and committing himself to be God’s agent on earth, finds himself engineering a murder.
The story of David and Bathsheba reminds us that all things are interrelated; it is a parable, if you like, of the way the world works. It also contains an invitation; an invitation to see that everything we do has flow on effects. We are invited to never underestimate our significance.
One way of reading the story of the feeding which we encounter today from the gospel according to John fits this theme. Some commentators suggest that John’s miracle story might have had its origins in a simpler tale. They suggest that it is quite likely that many of the people present had a little bit of food in their kit bag; a little food they were unwilling to bring out in case they had to share it with others. These commentators suggest that the faith of the child, as one who catches the vision of Jesus and reflects the spirit of Jesus, breaks through the selfishness of the others present. The flow on effect of the child’s act of generosity is that it enables everyone else to share the little they have. And together they find there is more than enough for everyone. The miracle is that selfishness and self-interest are overcome by grace. And what a miracle that is! Such a reading of the story speaks volumes to a world that produces more than enough food for everyone and which also sees millions going hungry.
The flip side of the child’s positive modelling is provided by the inaction of the adults. The adults’ unwillingness to share, their inaction, carried consequences of its own. The few who had no food may have gone hungry. So today’s gospel reading not only serves as a reminder that what we do carries consequences, it also suggests that what we do not do has flow on effects; ripples that we sometimes see, but often times do not. Who can know the effect of the unspoken word of encouragement, or of the thank you that was never offered, or of the food and company that were not shared. Each non-event carries consequences which are as powerful as the consequences of the things that we do.
The theme of this reflection is beautifully summed up in the words of St Teresa of Avila, words which I call St Teresa’s Charge: her challenge, her briefing, her instruction on how life is to be lived; her words of wisdom:
Christ has no body now on earth but yours,
no hands but yours,
no feet but yours;
yours are the eyes through which Christ's compassion
is to look out to the earth,
yours are the feet by which He is to go about doing good
and yours are the hands by which He is to bless us now.
St Teresa’s charge is an invitation to accept the dignity of being human. It invites us to allow the embracing of our essential dignity to be the source and bedrock of our ethics and morality; for our self-understanding, as bearers of Christ, to be the thing which guides the way we live. To live out a Christian life focused on and by grace rather than rules and law. It is an invitation to practise what is known as incarnational theology, to reveal God in and through the flesh, in and through our lives. To see ourselves as Christ; to live into the gift given at our Baptism when we were Christened, made into Christs. St Teresa’s words invite us to take this understanding of who we are into our life of prayer, so that when we pray for the Kingdom to come on earth we might appreciate that we are dedicating ourselves to be the people who make it happen.
+Amen
© Peter Catt
2 Samuel 7:1-14a
