Religious genius — Day 6 of Elijah Interfaith Summer School
Sunday 9th August 2020 — Hosted in Jerusalem, participants zoomed-in from around the world
Bibliodrama is an emotional exercise therefore it draws many of us outside of the comfort zone of the intellect.
A number of years ago Elijah ran the Religious Genius project
The Bibliodrama we used came from the project. The Religious Genius was Gregory the Theologian. The full resource on Gregory the Theologian can be found below. We used only Oration 14.
Oration 14.
My brothers and fellow indigents (we are each one of us, after all, poor folk in so far as we stand in need of God’s grace, even if some of us seem to have more than others) … do not receive this oration on love for the poor in any pinched or tight-fisted way, but with great magnanimity, so that you may lay up treasure in heaven….. Love for our fellows is such a good thing. And here we take our example from Jesus who was ready to be called our brother, and even to suffer for our sake.
There are many virtues and each is a pathway to
salvation… but the love of the poor, compassion and pity for our fellows, is the most excellent of them all, for nothing serves God so faithfully as compassion.
All the many wretched around us look towards our hands for help, just as we ourselves look to God; but the most wretched of all are the lepers who have been betrayed even by their own bodies. Who is there even among the most gracious and humane of men who does not habitually show himself hostile and inhumane to the leper?
This is the only case where we forget this is someone who is flesh like us, and must bear the same fragile body we have.
We even feel pity when we come across a stinking corpse, and will carry it off for burial. And yet we all run away from a leper: what hardness of heart.
Imagine the sorrow that the mother of such a one has to bear? What lamentation will she not raise when she sees her son before her very eyes like a living corpse.
‘O wretched son,’ she will say, ‘Of a tragic mother; stolen away from me by this disease. O pitiful child; son I can no longer recognise. You who must now live among wild animals in deserts and craggy mountains, with only rocks as your shelter; nevermore to see mankind except for the most holy among them…’
With cries such as this she pours out fountains of tears. How have we come to accept inhumanity as fit behaviour for a free society; while we scorn compassion as to be ashamed of?
And yet if we place any reliance on Paul, or on Christ himself, then we should take love as the first and greatest of the commandments, the summation of the Law and Prophets and, accordingly, we must take love for the poor as the highest pinnacle of charity …. for ‘Mercy and truth walk before our God’ (Ps. 88.15. LXX. ) and nothing more than this befits a God who prefers mercy to justice.
The kindest person, as the leper thinks, is not the one who supplies their needs, rather the one who turns them away without a torrent of sharp words. They live out their wretched lives under the open sky, while we live in splendid houses adorned with mosaics; glittering with gold and silver. Can you not see how strangely moving it is, that when someone shows a leper a small kindness they receive it with gratitude, rather than with outrage for all the neglect they have unjustly suffered. They have come to that state where they can only give thanks through their eyes, since their lips are no longer visible.
I have said these things to help you towards a change of mentality. What has all this vast, unending, misery of humankind got to do with today’s festival you may ask? I suppose I had better stop developing the theme of tragedy, for otherwise I shall spoil the fun by moving all of you to tears; though some grieving may be better for you, perhaps, than what you’ll soon go to see on the stage, and a few tears may be more worthy than the bawdy jokes you’ll share among you. Oh but what amounts do we not waste upon luxuries? Why do we do these things my friends and brothers? Why are we so sick in soul like this? For it is indeed a sickness to be so obsessed, far worse than any bodily illness …. Why do we not rush to help while we still have time? … Why do we sit and glut ourselves while our brothers and sisters are in such distress? God
forbid I should enjoy such superabundance, when the likes of these have nothing at all. Would we not be ashamed to receive so much from God if we did not give back this one single thing: kindness towards our fellow human beings? So I ask you today: dedicate a little to God, from whom you received so much. Let the fear of God conquer the inertia of your desire for ease. Even, give everything back to God, for he first gave you everything that you now possess, because you will never be able to surpass God’s generosity to you; not if you gave away every single thing you owned, even selling yourself into the bargain. And therefore, I say to you: ‘Know Thyself !’ Know from
what source comes all that you own; all your breathing, your knowing and your wisdom. And this is the greatest of all — to know God, to hope for the Kingdom of Heaven, the same honour as the angels, and the vision of glory.
For now we see that we are all the children of God, and co-heirs of Christ, but only as if in a mirror, or in dark reflections, but then we shall see more clearly and more purely (Alluding to 1 Cor. 13.12. ). And, if I may put it a little more daringly, we shall see that we have even been deified. A human being has no more godlike quality than that of doing good.
Let us take care of Christ in the person of the poor while we still have time. let us serve Christ’s needs; feed him and clothe him. The Lord of all things has said: ‘ I desire mercy not sacrifice;’ (Hoseah. 6.6.) and again: ‘A heart full of mercy is worth more than thousands of fattened rams.’ (Daniel. 3.40) Let us give our gifts to Christ in the persons of the poor who are today cast down upon the ground; and one day when we are set free from this world, it is they who will come out to welcome us into the tents of heaven, in Christ Our Lord himself, to whom be glory for all the ages. Amen.
I have little time but during the exercise after finding the voice of Gregory, his parents, the people, the oppressor we were asked to hear Gregory’s voice in this passage. I have put in bold and quotes that which stood out for me.
More than that this oration addressed to a crowd 1700 years ago spoke to me and in the moment it softened my hard heart. It wasn't just for the moment for it urged me out of my inertia and I took some action.
The word that I spoke about in the last story which we found in this exercise was that of ‘Compassion’.
Best day,
g
