…What do these stories mean for those of us who are not martyrs? For those of us whose grief is quieter, less dramatic, but no less real? And what do they mean for those of us who must learn to see ourselves not only as sufferers, but sometimes also as participants in another’s suffering?

One of the early Anabaptists’ favorite verses, cited in letters and court records, was Psalm 24:1: “The earth is the Lord’s and everything in it, the world and its inhabitants too.”  This simple verse had profound implications on how the Anabaptists thought of themselves in relation to the accusations brought against them.    

Jesus suggests in Matthew that there might be times in our lives when we encounter a person who is hungry or thirsty or a stranger. Or maybe there is a person who needs clothes or needs a visit. And what we don’t necessarily realize at the time is that that person is Jesus. And so to try to alleviate this restlessness that I was feeling in my own life, I started looking for strangers.

Ending the debt between parent and child ended the relationship.  As if indebtedness was what held the relationship together.  As if the kinds of debts we can never repay are what hold the world together.  To be in good debt means that our lives are so dependent on past generations, the abundance of the natural world, the goodwill of others, that the only reasonable way to live is, as Paul writes, to “let no debt remain outstanding, except – except – the continuing debt to love another.”