Recently I finished reading Hanya Yanagihara’s novel, A Little Life. The title is a bit misleading, in that A Little Life is not a little book,
coming in at 814 pages. There is nothing
little about the scope or themes of this book either. It is one of the most beautiful and painful
books I’ve ever read; so painful, that at some points I had to put it down and
stop reading. I wanted to throw it
across the room.
The story describes the friendships between four men,
college roommates, and traces the development of their lives and relationships
over several decades. At the center of
this quarter is Jude St. Francis. He is
strikingly handsome, brilliant, kind, and painfully shy. He also suffers from chronic pain due to a
mysterious disability, the result of an “accident” that he refuses to talk
about. He has no parents, no family,
seemingly no past. Yet his friends
accept him as is he is, and treat him as though he were another brother.
As the story unfolds, the reader discovers what Jude cannot
bring himself to tell his friends. Jude
was a foundling, taken to a monastery, where he spent the first fifteen years
of his life receiving a rigorous education and enduring horrific physical and
sexual abuse. Without going into detail,
suffice it to say that it is only when his abuse lands him in the hospital that
he finally becomes free of his tormentors and, through the help of a social
worker, goes on to college.
But in truth, Jude is never free of his tormentors. He believes what the monks taught him: that he is a hopeless case; dirty, soiled,
worthless. No matter how accomplished he
becomes academically and professionally, how loved and supported by his friends
and peers, he never accepts that he “deserves” the good things that later come
to him in life. He lives in constant
fear that if people knew his story, knew the “real” Jude, they would reject
him. The more Jude is loved, the more he
seeks to manage his anger and reinforce his self-hatred by cutting himself; a
“coping mechanism” introduced to him by one of the monks.
The novel is a long meditation on the difficulty of
receiving mercy. Driving the plot is the
tension between Jude’s isolation and despair, and the unrelenting efforts of
his friends to understand and support him.
Jude refuses to accept that he belongs.
They refuse to accept that he does not; even when they begin to learn the
depth of his past and present suffering.
Harold, one of Jude’s law school professors, and his wife, Julia, adopt
Jude as their own son. Eventually,
Willem, Jude’s closest friend, acknowledges that he is in love with Jude, and
they begin a relationship. Jude tells
Willem everything; and Willem only loves him more for his courage and
perseverance. Willem can only wonder
that Jude would risk such vulnerability and intimacy after what he has been
through. Jude can only wonder how it is
possible that he has received such mercy.
Will he accept it? Will we?
One of the reasons it is so difficult for Jude to accept the
mercy of his friends is that he thinks he doesn't deserve it. Like Jude, we often think of mercy as
something that is unmerited. That is
what makes it mercy rather than justice; mercy is getting what we don’t deserve
and justice is about getting what we do deserve. But I don’t accept that formulation, and I
don’t think it is consistent with the teaching and practice of Jesus.
Mercy is the response of our whole being to the deep truth
that we all belong to the same reality.
It is not dependent upon what we do or don’t do, or upon what was or was
not done to us. We belong. If my arm is injured and I go to the doctor
to have it treated, it is not because my arm does or does not deserve to be
healed, but simply because we belong together! So, too, if I offer compassion
to another person who is suffering, it is not about whether they deserve it; it
is because I recognize that we belong together, and that our wellbeing is
interrelated. We are inextricably
related to everything else that is; which is why the denial of our belonging,
being treated as if we do not belong, is so traumatic. It implies that we do not – or should not –
exist.
Who belongs?
Everybody and everything. We are
a part of one reality. I am; therefore,
I belong. Mercy is the experience of
relationships in which this belonging is recognized. It is a metaphysical claim about the nature
of reality – not a moral claim. Mercy
just is! Sin is the experience of
relationships in which this belonging is not recognized. This too is a metaphysical claim, not a moral
one. Sin is separation, and separation –
the denial that we belong together – is the root of all evil; sins in a moral
sense.
This is what makes St. Paul exclaim, twice, in one short
section of his letter to Timothy: I
received mercy! Paul came to accept that
he still belonged, was part of the flow of mercy, even though he had done
terrible things. What is even more
amazing, is that the people to whom he had done those terrible things accepted
that be belonged as well. Blessed are
the merciful, for they will receive mercy.
Realizing that we belong, that everything belongs, is the
essence of repentance. Repentance isn’t just
being sorry for the bad things we’ve done (although we should be). It is about a transformation of consciousness
such that we accept that everything belongs, and so enter the flow of
mercy. Whenever repentance happens, it
is cause for rejoicing! I received
mercy! So have you! Let's throw a party!
That is the point of the parables of the lost sheep and the
lost coin. When that which becomes
separated is reunited, we should rejoice!
When tax collectors and sinners, the people who are excluded from the
circle of belonging, find themselves on the inside of the circle, this is good
news. Mercy is always about the
restoration of wholeness, widening the circle of belonging.
Jesus goes further.
It isn’t enough to passively wait around for those who are lost to show
up. We must find them! We are invited to be active agents of mercy,
even when it means vulnerability and risk on our part, even when it defies the
logic of cost/benefit analysis, because no one finally can be sacrificed for
the common good.
Like the shepherd and the woman of the parables, Harold,
Julia, Willem and Jude’s other friends are tireless in seeking him out and
including him in the circle of belonging.
Their commitment to mercy is not easy.
They often find themselves perplexed, heartbroken, unsure what to do,
how to reach through the barriers that keep their beloved separated from
them. But, for them, mercy just is. It is the baseline of relationship, whether
Jude chooses to receive
it or not.
Jesus tells another parable along with that of the lost
sheep and the lost coin; the parable of the lost son (the Prodigal Son). In that parable, it is the older brother who
separates himself from the circle of belonging because he cannot accept that
his younger brother (a notorious sinner and shameful failure) is being restored
to the family. For the older brother,
belonging is a zero-sum game. It can
only happen on his terms. He doesn’t yet
realize that everything belongs.
Offering mercy can be hard.
We’ve all been taught to believe that some people and some things simply
don’t matter; they don’t belong. We
build walls to keep others outside the circle of belonging because we are
afraid that mercy is a nonrenewable resource.
We want to feel special, better than those people. It can be a little bit humbling to realize
that we all belong.
Receiving mercy can be even harder. We’ve all internalized messages of
self-doubt, if not self-hatred. Too
many of us have suffered indescribable trauma, and we are all witnesses to it;
if it could happen to her, it can happen to me.
It is impossible to remain unaffected.
We stand outside the circle of belonging, fearing that we will not be
accepted. We are just too broken, too
numb, too cynical to trust again. It
requires great courage to be vulnerable enough to accept that we belong
together. I wish receiving mercy were
easier. I wish I was freer in offering
it.
Yet, it is always already there for us, for God is a God of
mercy and Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners – to reunite that
which has been separated. Our belonging
together is the most real thing, the deepest truth, the greatest good. When we
repent and believe this good news – I received mercy! We belong! – it really is
a great relief to let go of the burden of having to deserve our existence. May we become willing to let go of all the
barriers to belonging. May we become
free to play in the stream of mercy. May
we enjoy the celebration that God intended our life together to be all
along. May it be so for all the “hopeless”
cases, for all of us. Amen.
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