Nesting Dolls
Image from Nesting Dolls by Vanessa Brantley-Newton
For as long as I can remember, I have been curious about and fascinated by the ancient sin of inequity. The ways we as humanity create division and then use that division to justify the dissemination of resources under the created illusion that there isn’t enough for all of us. And more egregiously, we use these divisions to justify violence in all its forms.
Inequity and iniquity have separate meanings but the same base, the Latin word aequus, meaning “level” or “equal.” The word inequity refers to injustice and unfairness, while iniquity refers to wickedness and sin. The authors of the book The Spirit Level (Wilkinson & Pickett) present evidence that the greater the inequity of a country, the greater the negative health and social outcomes. Even with this evidence and similar evidence, we as humanity cannot seem to get it quite right. We can’t seem to completely understand that we’re all better off when we’re all better off. As King said, “… We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly” (Martin Luther King Jr., Why We Can’t Wait).
When serving as a chaplain in a Chicago hospital, I was assigned the neonatal intensive care (NICU), the pediatric intensive care (PICU), and the orthopedics (Ortho) units on which to do my daily “rounds” or walk-throughs. There was a little boy—maybe five or six years old—in the PICU and when I made my daily rounds, I would find him lying alone in the dark, breathing tube down his throat, apparatus on his head. Every day for about a week I found him like this. One day, I asked one of the medical staff if he was conscious and if I could enter his room to visit. I also asked about why he had no visitors or family with him. The medical staff affirmed that he was conscious, that he had brain surgery, and he was in the care of his aunt and uncle who were unable to be with him due to work and the needs of other children in their home. She also explained that I could enter his room. I entered his room and he turned to me and asked, “Can you wipe my nose?” My heart expanded for this little boy who was having major medical procedures and did not have anyone to help him wipe his nose. I began to visit him regularly and to follow the notes entered by the medical staff about his daily care closely. As a chaplain, it was our responsibility to be at every death in the hospital and every “code blue” when a patient needed a lifesaving medical intervention.
I remember being called to a code blue one day and, before I arrived, knowing that it was this little boy. When I arrived, I found him being resuscitated by the medical team. He was without family and had been on his way to receive medical testing. Thankfully, he was resuscitated. When he started to have what was written in his medical notes as “bad behaviors” the medical team wanted to start him on psychotropic medications. I advocated instead for a “sitter.” This was a hospital staff person who would stay in his room and interact with him and spend time with him. They agreed. He went from not being able to eat or ambulate independently to being able to walk on his own and having his first food post-brain surgery: ice cream. I was filled with joy by his recovery. This little boy happened to be Black and happened to be poor.
Matthew 21:12-17 and Mark 11:15-19 both tell the well-known story in Christian communities of Jesus entering the temple and, in anger, driving out the people who were selling doves to the Poor. According to the Harper Collins Study Bible commentary, the emphasis in Matthew and Mark is slightly different. In Matthew, the emphasis is political and economic exploitation, while in Mark the emphasis is on the rejection of Jesus and his message by the community leaders. In the historical context, temple sacrifices were viewed as necessary, but the buying and selling of animals for sacrifice was to happen outside of the temple in the outermost court. Doves were the traditional sacrifices of the Poor in the community. And the “blind and the lame” (and Gentiles) were viewed as unclean and not allowed in the temple. In Matthew, after Jesus drives out the people buying and selling, he then allows the blind and lame to come to him in the temple. In Mark, there is no mention of Jesus allowing the blind and lame into the temple to cure them following his driving out those buying and selling animals for sacrifice, but the book of Mark does mention that the chief priests and scribes were afraid of Jesus and his influence and so planned to kill him.
Regardless of the emphasis, there is a clear and simple message in these passages about inequity (justice and fairness) and iniquity (wickedness and sin). The Poor, the blind, the lame, and the Gentiles in the community were to be treated as equal to everyone else and were to have the same access to the temple and God. Jesus, of course, understood our inescapable network of mutuality.
I imagine our inescapable network of mutuality as nesting dolls. Nesting dolls can be inspiring symbols whether they are Japanese Kokeshi dolls or Russian Matryoshka dolls. The Matryoshka dolls, for example, were originally meant to depict Russian peasant life and symbolize Russian values. In Vanessa Brantely-Newton’s contemporary children’s book Nesting Dolls, the main character, Sorie, a child of Gullah Geechee descent, creates her own nesting dolls to symbolize the characteristics and values she is most proud of in her family and the characteristics and values she wants to uphold over time as symbols to continue to strive toward. As a Christian community, how do we imagine our nesting dolls? What symbols do we want to uphold? How can our symbols help us eliminate inequity? Jesus was angry with the merchants in the temple. When he threw them out, he was saying that this is not what we represent. And at the same time, he was upholding who we are.
We are all susceptible to in-group bias and we can arbitrarily ascribe positive characteristics to people we identify as one of us as opposed to the Other. If, for example, a child is one of us and breaks something while playing we might have an in-group bias that the accident is due to the child’s giftedness. “I know he broke my mug but look how crafty and creative he was in reaching the shelf. He is gifted.” If the child is Other, we might describe the accident as the result of the child’s bad behavior. The little boy I encountered in the hospital was not behaving badly, he was a scared and brave child of God who needed love in action, care and compassion, someone to wipe his nose. Our challenge as Christians, in response to the ancient sin of inequity, is to see the sacred in the Other and to realize the inescapable network of mutuality. The Other is an illusion.
Howard Thurman (a Christian theologian) in Jesus and the Disinherited, Martin Buber (a Jewish mystic) in I and Thou, and Tich Nhat Han (a Buddhist monk) in Living Buddha, Living Christ—books that have all been formative for me—speak to encountering the sacred in the Other and the importance of this for our individual growth and our growth as humanity. In these verses in Matthew and Mark, Jesus is protective of the temple and of all the people who come to worship God, and of the community values we strive to uphold as Christians.
The good news is, like this Spring season, there is an opportunity for awakening and new beginnings in our Christian community. Jesus challenged, “… ‘Is it not written, ‘My house shall be called a house of prayer for all the nations’? But you have made it a den of robbers.” (Mark 11:17). What do we want to awaken to today, what do we need to throw out, and what symbols do we want to uphold?
The Rev. Jocelyn Wilson is a clergy member of the Iowa Annual Conference. "Abiding in Hope" is a spiritual support series that began during the coronavirus pandemic and evolved into an ongoing resource.