The Walking Dead

It has come to my attention that I am a card-carrying member of the Walking Dead at times. At the conclusion of one session of our three-day look at the Gospel of John, our instructor read some questions to us that struck me as completely appropriate.

One of them was, “Have you cried over something in the past year?”

Another spoke to whether I felt anything. Another spoke to my ability to show compassion.

Another asked if we had thought seriously about the fact that one day we are really going to die. Another asked “has your heart beat faster at the sight of young beauty?”

Still another asked “Is there is somebody you know in whose place, if one of you had to suffer great pain, you would substitute ourselves for?”

At the end of the questions, she said, “if you have answered no to all these questions, there’s a good chance you are dead.”

I wouldn’t say no to all of them, which I guess means I’m just walking around, but not completely dead yet.

The point of all this is we should be feeling a sense of assignment, a sense of calling, a sense of doing, a sense of following, and there are plenty of times when I simply don’t.

I would love to proclaim that I always suffer for the poor. I always hurt for the lost. I always cry for the lonely, the least, the marginalized. But the pure truth is I don’t. You don’t. We don’t together.

I’m fairly certain that if we did, we would all up and do something about eradicating all of the above.

Jesus, on the last night he would have the body we call human, knelt and washed some feet. When he was concluded, he said, “I have given you an example. Go and do the same.”

Compassion in a basin of water and some sort of cloth to wash and another to dry is not getting rid of the poor or the homeless or the hungry, but it strikes me as one heck of a first step.

And even the walking dead take steps.