Deut. 30:10-14

Resources

1. James Alison, The Joy of Being Wrong. Alison makes reference to two of today's texts in successive sections of ch. 3, where he is developing the process of transformation that the apostles underwent in response to the resurrection. More than just intellectual enlightenment (careful to avoid Gnosticism), this transformation involved the creation of a new community of God's people in history, a New Israel. There are troubles involved with a notion such as New Israel, as well, and Alison is seeking to avoid an out-and-out replacement of Israel by the church. He's attempting to put it in terms of a fulfillment of what God's people were, in fact, chosen to do and to be from the beginning. In this portion (from pp. 84-86), he is parsing the difference between a dialectical critique and a foundational critique. (More on the issue of a New Israel under the gospel.)

In the previous section I tried to make it clear that the witnesses perceived a difference between their accession to the intelligence of the victim, a necessarily dialectical process involving their own conversion, and their awareness that this intelligence was pacifically held by Jesus (or that it was what pacifically possessed Jesus) from the beginning. They also demonstrate that Jesus applied this intelligence to Israel from the beginning. This is clear from the way in which he replied to the question about divorce: "from the beginning it was not so" (Mt 19:8; Mk 10:6). That is to say, his attitude towards Israel was not based on a dialectical critique, but on what one might call a foundational, or gratuitous critique, which is only a critique at all by accident, because in the first place it is an understanding of what was in the beginning. (By a 'dialectical critique' I mean one that is provoked into being by an opposition to what is found present, a critique that is inseparable from an attitude of 'over against' and is thus intrinsically violent. For an elucidation of this use of 'dialectical' cf pp 60-2.) This means that when he criticizes the scribes and pharisees it is, once again, not part of a new proposal that he is making in the light of which they look foolish. His concern about them is that in them, Israel is falling short of what it should have been from the beginning. Hence, in places it is suggested that they are Egyptians, who are holding up the real Exodus of God's people. This is done with particular subtlety at Mark 3:1-6. There the way in which Moses placed before the people of Israel the choice between good and evil (Dt 30:15), the way in which God took Israel out of Egypt with mighty arm and outstretched hand, and Pharaoh's hardness of heart, are all recalled in the incident of the cure of the man with a withered hand (which becomes outstretched) despite the hardness of the heart of the Pharisees, who did not understand the choice on the sabbath between doing good or evil, and went out to seek to destroy Jesus.

Here the problem is not with the nature of Judaism, but with the way in which its current spokesmen are falling short of what they should have known and been ab initio. Exactly the same intelligence underlies the famous "woes to the pharisees" in Matthew and Luke. (Note: Girard's essay on this, largely reproduced in Things Hidden pp 158-167, is justly considered one of his most original contributions to biblical understanding, and is one of the texts that has had most resonance ever since its first publication...) The critique, which is obviously made out of a huge sadness concerning the fate of Jerusalem (Oh Jerusalem, Jerusalem etc), is precisely that the whole point of the foundation of Judaism, the calling of Israel out of Egypt, was to build a nation that was not like other nations, a nation that did not victimize, that cared for the widow and the orphan, treated well the sojourner (for remember that you were strangers in Egypt), that did not enslave (for remember that you were slaves in Egypt). That is to say: the calling of Israel was God's project for being authentically human, for the rescuing of Abel from beneath Cain's stones, and this vocation as universal model for humanity is being betrayed by the current representatives of Israel, who are fully complicit in the construction of the identity of Israel by exclusion of the victim, in the tradition of their forefathers who killed the prophets. Again, what makes this critique possible is Jesus' given understanding of the plan of God from the beginning. (pp. 84-86)

2. Charles Mabee, "Text as Peacemaker: Deuteronomic Innovations in Violence Detoxification," from Violence Renounced, edited by Willard Swartley. As the title indicates, he wants to present Deuteronomy as a text that can lead us into peacemaking. He begins by noting the prominence of the Decalogue and its movement from the exclusive sovereignty of Yahweh to stipulations concerning coveting and desiring in human community.

...In other words, the Deuteronomic prescription for social solidarity and peaceful coexistence begins at this crucial point of redirecting desire toward Yawweh rather than (things of) the other (personified as the neighbor's wife) and the property of the other (house, field, slave, ox, donkey, and the like).

Presupposed here is the anthropological perspective that human beings have the capacity to "choose" Yahweh, and that this choice breaks the back of misdirected human desire. In Deuteronomic theology, this capacity to choose Yahweh is based on Yahweh's prior choice of Israel....

...In other words, Yahweh's choice of Israel has theological priority over the "natural" human desire of its people, and thereby becomes the key to transform their human desire from an evil into a good, or into a choice for Yahweh.... In this way, Deuteronomy can best be understood as a catechetical handbook designed to instruct the community of faith in the fundamentals of life liberated from the drive of destructive coveting and desiring which always lies embedded in the soul of human society. (pp. 73-74)

By eliminating the tomb of its "heroic" founder and opposing the mythological Anakim [Deut. 1:28], the Deuteronomic writers in effect propose the written text as a weapon of peace (replacing the weapons of war), as the new means to effect social change. The hero forces social change based on impostion; Deuteronomy relies solely on the catechetical tools of teaching and persuasion and places the fundamental motivation of war -- vengeance -- out of human hands and under divine control. (p. 77)

Colossians 1:1-14

Exegetical Notes

1. "Redemption" in vs. 14 is the Greek word apolytrosis, related to the noun lytron, which is translated as "ransom" in Mark 10:45: "For the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life a ransom for many." So apolytrosis has the sense of "ransomed from," which happens to fit the context of these two verses very well: "He has rescued us from the power of darkness and transferred us into the kingdom of his beloved Son, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins." (The word for "rescue" here is not related to soter, but rather is ryomai, which has a noun form of ryomenos, the Savior, the Rescuer, the Deliverer [Rom. 11:26].)

In the gospels, apolytrosis only appears in Lk. 21:28: "Now when these things begin to take place, stand up and raise your heads, because your redemption is drawing near." In the Paul's letters it occurs three times, Rom. 3:24, 8:23; 1 Cor. 1:30. It's greatest frequency is in the Pauline letters: Eph. 1:7, Eph. 1:14, Eph. 4:30, and here in Col. 1:14. The final two instances are in Hebrews, 9:15 and 11:35.

Reflections and Questions

1. As we have cautioned in the past (see, for example, Proper 24B), one needs to be careful with the notion of ransom. It can fit too easily into the Anselmian notion of atonement, where Christ pays a ransom for our sin. Girard's anthropology helps us to avoid the pitfalls of the Anselmian atonement theory, the most basic one being that the darkness we are rescued from ends up being God's wrath. The alternative view in many of the theologies leading up to Anselm was that of being ransomed from Satan's power of darkness, not God's wrath. But this view risks the pitfall of Manichaeism, giving too much power to Satan, i.e., seeing him as a power of evil akin to God's power of good. The offshoot is that we end up having, as Anthony Bartlett calls it, an Imitatio Diaboli. We might allow God and Satan to be become enemy twins of one another. Even if we have God as the winner of the contest, tricking Satan at the cross, we need to be careful that God remains truly transcendent, showing Satan's transcendence to be a false one, not worthy of the elevation to the power of deity. Bartlett brilliantly traces the pitfalls of walking this fine line through the first fifteen hundred years of Christian theology in the second chapter, "Imitatio Diaboli," of his book Cross Purposes: The Violent Grammar of Christian Atonement.

How do we avoid according too much power to Satan? By learning to understand Satan's power anthropologically. In other words, Satan's power arises out of human reality. It is a power transcendent to individuals and to human communities, but it is never separate from human existence and derives its power from us. Understanding ourselves through the Gospel, then, with a gospel anthropology, is coming to learn to separate God's true transcendence from Satan's limited, less-than-divine transcendence. Satan loses his transcendence altogether -- it falls from heaven like lightning -- if we learn to see the nature of God's true transcendence in Jesus Christ. We are rescued from the power of our own darkness and transferred into the Culture of God in Jesus Christ, where we are ransomed from Satan's power through the forgiveness of sins (Col. 1:13-14). Sharpening such a gospel anthropology has been Girard's mission, one most recently and poignantly titled (from last week's gospel, Luke 10:18) I See Satan Fall Like Lightning. See also the webpage "The Anthropology of René Girard and Traditional Doctrines of Atonement."

Luke 10:25-37

Exegetical Notes

1. "wanting to justify himself" -- the Greek word behind "justify"is dikaioo. Along with its noun form, dikaios, it is one of St. Paul's most crucial vocabulary words. Among the gospel writers, it is perhaps most crucial for Luke. The most poignant moment is at the foot of the cross, where instead of the centurion declaring "Surely, this man was the Son of God" as in Mark and Matthew, Luke has the centurion proclaim, "Surely, this man was innocent (dikaios)." Previously, in Luke's gospel, other characters, such as the lawyer in this pericope, seek to justify (dikaioo) themselves. Jesus tells the lawyer a parable about a man who is a victim of violence and is befriended only by a man who is a victim of prejudice and ethnic hatred. The point seems to be that this lawyer cannot justify himself. And, ironically, it is when Jesus is made both a victim of violence like the man in the parable and to be an outsider like the "Good Samaritan" that someone else -- the centurion, another outsider -- proclaims Jesus to be justified, innocent.

2. Two other crucial passages in Luke in which people attempt to justify themselves are: 16:14-18 and 18:9-14. The first is a group of sayings to the Pharisees in between the parables of the Dishonest Manager (16:1-13) and the Rich Man and Lazarus (16:19-31). Luke 16:15 reads: "So he said to them, 'You are those who justify [dikaioo] yourselves in the sight of others; but God knows your hearts; for what is prized by human beings is an abomination in the sight of God.'"

And the second passage, Luke 18:9-14, is the parable of the Pharisee and Tax Collector, which begins: "He also told this parable to some who trusted in themselves that they were righteous [dikaios] and regarded others with contempt." And the parable concludes: "'I tell you, this man went down to his home justified rather than the other; for all who exalt themselves will be humbled, but all who humble themselves will be exalted.'"

3. dikaioo and dikaios are versatile words for Luke which the NRSV translates in various ways. dikaioo is translated:

(1) as "justify" in Luke 10:29, 16:15, 18:14;
(2) as "vindicated" in Luke 7:35;
(3) as "acknowledged the justice" in Luke 7:29; and
(4) as "set free" (twice) in Acts 13:38-39.

(1) as "righteous" in Luke 1:6, 1:17, 2:25, 5:32, 12:57 ("right"), 14:14, 15:7, 18:9, 23:50; Acts 3:14, 4:19 ("right"), 7:52, 10:22 ("upright"), 22:14, 24:15;
(2) as "honest" in Luke 20:20; and
(3) as "innocent" in Luke 23:47.

The verb form in the earlier Greek literature is even more gruesome. splagchneuo meant to eat the inner parts at the sacrificial meal, or to use the entrails in divination. It is also used in this way in 2 Maccabees.

In the Septuagint and other later Jewish writings, splagchna began to be used to translate Hebrew words having the sense of the seat of feelings, including more positive feelings like mercy and compassion. The middle voice form episplagchnizomai is used in Prov. 17:5 to mean "to be merciful."

It is that middle voice meaning that came to have a specialized usage in the Synoptic Gospels, with that verb form found only there. It occurs twelve times: Matt. 9:36; 14:14; 15:32; 18:27; 20:34; Mark 1:41; 6:34; 8:2; 9:22; Luke 7:13; 10:33; 15:20. And it is only used either a) to describe an emotion of Jesus, or b) by Jesus in a parable to describe the response of compassion by a major character therein. Mark's four usages all occur before miracles: Jesus is moved to compassion and heals a leper in 1:41; he is moved to compassion by the crowd before both feeding miracles, 6:34 and 8:2; and the father of a possessed boy beseeches Jesus to have compassion  for his son in 9:22. The five occurrences in Matthew begins with a remark about Jesus' compassion for the crowd, "like sheep without a shepherd," in 9:36; which is a precurser to his repetition of Mark's use of the term before both feeding miracles, 14:14 and 15:32; Matthew also uses to describe Jesus' compassion before healing two blind men in 20:34. The fifth occurence in Matthew is the first of the three synoptic occurences in a parable of Jesus: the master has compassion on the "unforgiving servant" in forgiving his unpayable debt in Mt. 18:27. That leaves three instances in Luke: Jesus is moved by compassion before raising the son of the widow at Nain, 7:13; and Luke has Jesus use the word twice of the two most time-honored characters of his parables: the Good Samaritan has compassion when he sees the man lying half-dead in the road, 10:33, and the father of the Prodigal Son is moved by compassion when he sees his son returning home, 15:20.

I find this specialized usage to be remarkable! Is there anything behind it? And what about the roots of this word in the world of sacrifice? There is the Girardian notion that Jesus subverts the old world of sacrifice into the new world of self-sacrifice. Is the Synoptic use of this word -- used only for or by Jesus -- reflective of such a transformation? In Jesus Christ the emotions that make necessary the purging through the sacrificial institutions -- anger, blood-lust for vengeance -- are transformed into the emotion that underlies serving in the Culture of God, namely, compassion. The "impulsive passions" behind the making of sacrificial victims are transformed into a compassionate reviving of victims. The latter is especially true of Luke's usage, i.e., compassion for the raising of a widow's dead son, the return of a "son who was dead but now is alive again," and a man violently beaten and left for "half-dead."

5. Eugene Petersen, in his The Message, has the perfect translation of esplagchnisthe given our discussion: "his heart went out to him." It is not only a picturesque metaphorical rendering of compassion, but it also more literally interprets the sacrificial origins of the Greek word. The heart going out of the sacrificial victim was, of course, a literal occurrence. Further, we once again clearly see the Gospel reversal: instead of the heart coming out of the sacrificial victim, compassion means one's heart going out to the victim.

6. When the lawyer responds to Jesus' question following the parable, he responds, Ho poiesas to eleos met' autou, "the one who did mercy to him." Different from the specialized word for "compassion" above, eleos is the common word for mercy.

7. Luke mentions Samaritans four times, here in 10:33, and also 9:52, 17:16, and Acts 8:25. He is using a Samaritan as a positive model here in 10:33; he also does so in 17:5 in specifying that the one leper who turned back to thank Jesus for being healed was a Samaritan. Acts 8:25 speaks of Peter and John "proclaiming the good news to many villages of the Samaritans." We had much to say about the 9:52 passage two weeks ago on Proper 8, when I argued that this passage is much more about the disciples wrongly wanting to bring down fire on the Samaritans than it is the traditional heading about Jesus being rejected by a Samaritan village. If I'm right about the latter passage, then Luke never speaks about Samaritans in a negative way but even uses them as positive models.

8. Brian Stoffregen, in his weekly notes on the Gospel (Proper 10C), notes of Luke's set-up in 10:25:

We are also told that he comes “to test” (ekpeirazo) Jesus. The only other time this word is used in Luke it is Jesus’ quote to the devil: “Do not put the Lord your God to the test” (4:12). Is that what this lawyer is doing with Jesus?

If we take seriously the image of inheriting, I think that the question, “What must I do to inherit eternal life?” is really stupid. I would like to think that there is something I could do to inherit some of Bill Gates’ fortune -- or even the fortunes of a less wealthy (but much older) person. An inheritance is usually determined by the giver, not the receiver.

9. In 2007 I found and used the following maps side-by-side in a handout:
 

Short Geography Lesson

• The Samaria of Jesus’ day (right map) corresponds roughly to the “West Bank” area of modern Palestinians in today’s Israel (left map). Samaria, however, extended to the Mediterranean coast, so there was no good way around it. The most common way for a Galillean like Jesus to get from Galilee to Jerusalem was along the Jordan River to Jericho (only on right map), and then up from Jericho to Jerusalem — except that that road was notorious for robbers and brigands. But Jews of Jesus’ day would rather have risked that road than go through the heart of Samaria!
• “Up” from Jericho to Jerusalem. Remember from your geography lessons that the Dead Sea is the lowest point on land below sea level in the world. The road from Jericho to Jerusalem is through rocky country up over 1000 feet in elevation.

1. Michael Hardin and Jeff Krantz, PreachingPeace.org (a sister site for "Girardian reflections"), Proper 10C. Michael begins his exegetical reflections by noting the history of interpretation shaped by Augustine's allegorical take: the half dead man is Adam after being conquered by sin, the Samaritan is Jesus, the inn is the church, the two drachma are the two sacraments, etc, etc. Actually, Stoffregen above represents well the Augustinian take:

We are the ones in the ditch and the Samaritan represents God -- God who is both enemy and helper. Our sin makes God our enemy. Yet, in the parable, the “enemy” gives new life to the man in the ditch. The “enemy” expends his resources (apparently unlimited) for the care of the half-dead man.

The problems with the lawyer is that he couldn’t see God as his enemy. He hadn’t recognized the depth of his own sinfulness. (He wants to justify himself and probably had a bit of pride that comes along with that.) He was too strong and healthy. He assumes that he has the ability to do something to inherit eternal life. He assumes that he can do something to justify himself. He is not helpless in the ditch. He doesn’t need God’s grace.

The mimetic crisis of Jesus’ Passion reveals that we are the persecutors, Jesus is the man on the side of the road. We are invited to rethink our concepts of neighbor and enemy. The moral interpretation of this parable, the one that extols good and charitable deeds, is still far from the love of enemy to which we are called. The moral interpretation of the parable creates a false security by focusing on the ‘compassion’ of the Samaritan because identification of our own victims has not been done first.

But the Lukan portrayal of this enemy love, as shown by his emphases, means far more than ‘deeds of compassion.’ In Luke’s Gospel, Jesus has relations with folk most people would try to avoid. And the proclamation of the eschatological jubilee means something spiritually; that we are forgiven by God for killing Jesus. And it means something socially, namely, that we were also to be forgiven our social debts and to forgive others their debts, both monetarily and in terms of honor and the like. Enemy love is taught and lived in the life of Jesus. When Jesus died, he, for his part, had no enemies (‘Father forgive them, they do not know what they are doing”). The Lukan christological focus is not meant to dominate at the expense of the more original setting of the parable. A more cogent interpretation of the parable lets it really parable us, that is, it brings both aspects of mimetic theory into play, making us aware of negative mimesis and exhorting us to positive mimesis. Perhaps this has been the real power behind the popularity of the parable in describing the Christian life. If Jesus has told us that life is to be about not having enemies anymore, then how does this parable read ‘Christians’ who perceive others as enemies?

There is a cliché that floats around the news from time to time. It is called ‘compassionate conservatism’ and is portrayed as charitable acts of kindness within firm boundaries. Herein lies the problem. Because it is both compassionate and conservative, it has set limits on its goodness, it goes this far and no farther. ‘Compassionate conservatism’ is the scribe’s problem, not his solution; it is the limit, the threshold, and the end, the-beyond-which compassion is not obligated to go. This compassion and the compassion of the Samaritan are two quite different things according to Jesus. Luke’s gospel is the gospel of compassion and for us to set limits on compassion (we will give it to those we deem worthy, the unworthy do not receive it) is to ignore the parable’s entire stated point. To interpret the parable in this moralizing fashion turns the lesson into a myth.

2. Andrew McKenna, Violence and Difference; the appendix, "Biblical Theory: Testing the Victimary Hypothesis," has an extensive reading of the Parable of the Good Samaritan, pp. 211-221. This is the most expansive Girardian reading that I'm aware of on this most crucial parable. It is well worth looking up.

3. Gil Bailie, "The Gospel of Luke" audio lecture series, tape #6. Link to my notes and transcription on this portion of Luke's Gospel. A basic thesis of Bailie's treatment of this passage is that it goes with the Mary and Mary story which follows. The lawyer correctly perceives the two great commandments -- love God, love neighbor -- but then jumps to the second commandment about loving neighbor. The Mary and Martha story complements the parable of the Good Samaritan by emphasizing the first of these commandments, love of God. For a sermon that makes use of this insight, link to one for next week's gospel entitled "The 'Better Part.'"

4. James Alison, The Joy of Being Wrong, pp. 91-93, 217; Raising Abel, p. 109. Pages 91-93 in JBW continue the discussion of the New Israel (began under the First Lesson), lifting up its universality, but not in the recently popular sense of the "anonymous Christian." The Parable of the Good Samaritan is his main illustration: the Samaritan is not some sort of "anonymous Jew" in Jesus' parable.

The problem with the term "anonymous Christian" seems to me its link with a certain sort of anthropology, one insisting that a certain sort of universally saving grace is already present in people just by the fact of being human, and one which therefore makes of the visible contingent Church simply the explicitation of what is essentially an anthropological universal. I would suggest, as a consequence of the theology of grace that I have been developing above (for that is what it is), that a more useful approach to this problem might be to talk of the universal christoformity of grace, whether present in sign, or present anonymously.

Let me illustrate this: when Jesus taught the parable of the Good Samaritan (Lk 10:25-37) he was not teaching that the Samaritan was in fact an anonymous Jew. He was identifying the concrete way in which divine grace is made humanly present: as a turning towards the victim. The intelligence of the victim is the criterion of the presence of grace. This means that we can say that grace is always christoform: it is always the gratuitous presence of the self-giving victim that is at the same time a critique of the way humans are, and a constructive forgiveness of humans permitting the construction of a creative sign of a new human reconciliation. Now, the creative sign of the self-giving victim bringing about a new humanity par-excellence is the Church founded on the Eucharist. And this is a visible reality. Indeed, the only way we have come to know that God and the self-giving human victim are essentially linked is through the contingent historical events, signs and texts discussed above. However, this very fact obliges us to recognize that this self-giving of the victim, a divine self-giving, is constantly pushing wider the human limitations of the contingent historical sign, and is perfectly capable of creating anonymous proto-signs of the reconciliation of humanity with God wherever there are humans to be reconciled -- the field of opportunity is universal....

To be a Christian is to live out the universal christoformity of grace visibly, so as to create the sign, which is itself contagious to others, all of whom live in a world whose social order is based on victimization. The important thing is not whether people are Christians or not, anonymously or explicitly, but whether the universal christoformity of grace is being lived out as genuinely constructive of the new unity of humanity. The importance of this approach is that by talking of the universal christoformity of grace, rather than the anonymous Christian, I am saving the way in which there is no grace available to human beings that does not involve a turning towards the victim, that is, a certain form of conversion. ...the question Jesus was answering when he told the parable of the Good Samaritan, was that of the criterion for inheriting eternal life (Lk 10:25). And the answer was given in terms of the intelligence of the victim. Any anthropology that does not include that criterion seems to fall short of adequacy as an aid to theological interpretation. (pp. 91-93)

5. Andrew Marr, "The Good Samaritan: A Debate between Jesus and a Lawyer before a Crowd of Listeners" (online article).

Reflections and Questions

1. My exegetical notes above point to a related but slightly different direction than focusing on the victim status of the man in parable. The parable, by being set in this context of the lawyer "testing" Jesus, is set in a context very much about mimetic rivalry. The latter always seems to come down to this phenomenon of trying to justify oneself. The lawyer is part of the crowd listening to Jesus, but steps out from the crowd in order to justify himself. And he does so by trying to make himself look good in opposition to another, by tempting someone else to get caught up in his game.

But Jesus will not be the constituting Other in his game. He who was without sin will not become embroiled in such mimetic rivalry. In fact, he offers the lawyer the way out. The priest and the Levite in the parable are like the lawyer: they are caught up in the typical games of mimetic rivalry that necessitate a sacrificial solution of some variety. But Jesus leads this lawyer to see the way out of the mimetic entanglements and their sacrificial solutions: respond to the victim of those games. Will the lawyer follow? Will you and I 'overhear' and follow?

Link to a sermon developing these themes entitled "Deadly Games."

2. During this week in which the bottom line is the experience of mercy, I had one of those eerie God-moments of happenstance (2001). While visiting a patient in the hospital who was using the bathroom, I sat down in the nearby lounge and picked up a book of American short stories lying on the table -- of all things to find in a hospital lounge! Leafing through the contents, the story with which I'm most familiar, largely through Gil Bailie's tapes (e.g., tape #3 of his series on "Confirmation"), was the one that caught my eye. I turned to "The Artificial Nigger," by Flannery O'Connor.

The ending of the story with its depictions of mercy is what initially caught my eye. But it's the crucial episode at the center of the story which gave me a word to name the opposite of mercy or compassion, namely, "denial." When the priest cut out the beating heart of the human victim of blood sacrifice (see comments on splagchna above), the congregation certainly could not allow themselves the emotional response of compassion. Rather, they would need to have denied their human connection with the victim. The victim is Sacred, or a demon, a monster. For Jews to hate Samaritans, they must deny their human connection to them. For Americans to kill Japanese in war, we deny their humanity. For Mr. Head in O'Connor's story to hate "niggers" in the way that he does, he must deny their humanity. Standing in the circle of Jesus' persecutors, Peter must deny Jesus. The miracle of Jesus' forgiveness is that it is able to transform such denial into compassion.

At the center of O'Connor's story is a denial. For those who aren't familiar with the story, first published in the spring of 1955, it is about Mr. Head and his 10 year-old grandson, Nelson, taking a train ride from their rural home in Georgia into the big city of Atlanta. When Mrs. Head had died some years back, their only daughter had run off. When she returned home "after an interval," it was with the baby Nelson. His daughter then died when Nelson was only a year-old. Mr. Head is taking Nelson into the big city purely for the experience. Having led a sheltered life in the country with his grandfather (embroiled in mimetic rivalry), he has grown up a bit of a smart-aleck, and Mr. Head hopes this trip teaches him a lesson, putting him in his place.

They get off the train at center city and begin walking in tight circles around the neighborhood of the train station. Being in mimetic rivalry, Nelson is able to goad his grandfather into wandering further and further away from the station, until they find themselves lost in the African-American portion of town -- an absolute fright for two white racists from the country. Nelson finally is the one to ask directions, and they are told to catch a streetcar at the corner. Afraid to take the streetcar itself, Mr. Head and Nelson follow the streetcar tracks out of the poor section of town.

It is when they feel safe enough to sit and take a break that the crucial episode in the story takes place. Nelson falls asleep. In keeping with his goal of teaching his grandson a lesson, he walks off a distance to hide around a corner. But Nelson panics so immediately upon waking up that he darts off without his grandfather being able to keep up with him. When Mr. Head catches up, he sees that Nelson has gotten into some trouble. He has collided with a women walking home from the grocery story, and he, the woman, and the groceries are scattered all over the sidewalk, with a growing crowd of women surrounding them. Mr. Head inches forward as the woman shouts, "You've broken my ankle and your daddy'll pay for it! Every nickel! Police! Police!" When Nelson spies his grandfather he runs to him and throws himself around Mr. Head's hips, his fingers digging into his legs. With the fallen woman renewing her shouts for justice, Mr. Head is faced with a moment of truth:

Mr. Head sensed the approach of the policeman from behind. He stared straight ahead at the women who were massed in their fury like a solid wall to block his escape, "This is not my boy," he said. "I've never seen him before."

He felt Nelson's fingers fall out of his flesh.

The women dropped back, staring at him with horror, as if they were so repulsed by a man who would deny his own image and likeness that they could not bear to lay hands on him. Mr. Head walked on, through a space they silently cleared, and left Nelson behind.

It is in those last remaining blocks that Mr. Head and Nelson come upon a sight very strange to them, one which begins to break the ice between them. They catch sight of an ironic piece of the landscape, the plastic figure of an African American posed on one of the suburban lawns. "An artificial nigger!" they both exclaim. Here's how Flannery O'Connor describes the experience:

They stood gazing at the artificial Negro as if they were faced with some great mystery, some monument to another's victory that brought them together in their common defeat. They could both feel it dissolving their differences like an action of mercy. Mr. Head had never know before what mercy felt like because he had been too good to deserve any, but he felt he knew now. He looked at Nelson and understood that he must say something to the child to show that he was still wise and in the look the boy returned he saw a hungry need for that assurance. Nelson's eyes seemed to implore him to explain once and for all the mystery of existence.

Mr. Head opened his lips to make a lofty statement and heard himself say, "They ain't got enough real ones here. They got to have an artificial one."

After riding the train back home, standing on the train platform in his own familiar environment, Mr. Head has a second, deeper experience of mercy. Here is the second to last paragraph of the story:

Mr. Head stood very still and felt the action of mercy touch him again but this time he knew that there were no words in the world that could name it. He understood that it grew out of agony, which is not denied to any man and which is given in strange ways to children. He understood it was all a man could carry into death to give his Maker and he suddenly burned with shame that he had so little of it to take with him. He stood appalled, judging himself with the thoroughness of God, while the action of mercy covered his pride like a flame and consumed it. He had never thought himself a great sinner before but he saw now that his true depravity had been hidden from him lest it cause him despair. He realized that he was forgiven for sins from the beginning of time, when he had conceived in his own heart the sin of Adam, until the present, when he had denied poor Nelson. He saw that no sin was too monstrous for him to claim as his own, and since God loved in proportion as He forgave, he felt ready at that instant to enter Paradise.

Link to a sermon that makes use of these insights on "denial" vs. "compassion," entitled "Doing Compassion."