Who Cares? John M, Buchanan
Luke 2:1-}4 Broad Street Presbyterian Church
December 19, 1976 Columbus, Ghio

Winston Churchill was an exceptional human being. He continues to receive an
immense amount of literary attention because he did and said so many things which
deserve to be vemembered, He was blessed with an exquisite sense of timing and that
rare gift of being able to perceive with some accuracy the public significance of
his personal behavior, Nowhere is that more clear than in that memorable bit of
newsreel footage showing the wartime Prime Minister climbing through the rubble of
London, It was at the height of the Blitz: every night, night after night the
sirens would wail and the city would tremble in fear as the bombs fell out of the
dark sky. Goering's strategy was to reduce London to a pile of bricks, destroying
the spirit of the people and their will to resist. It nearly worked, Some say it
would have worked had it not been for one man, Winston Churchill, Now, his walks
through the bombed-out streets really didn't accomplish anything tangible, But
he did communicate something terribly important; namely, that he cared. The Prime
Minister cared, and the spirit of the city was buoyed and the will to survive
stiffened, Churchill's gesture and the Londoners’ courage became an inspiration
to the whole world,

When Dwight Eisenhower was elected President the American people were depressed
and divided over the stalemate in Korea, ‘The troops were badly demoralized, One of
the first things Eisenhower did was to go, personally, to Korea and be with the
troops, Again, it was a significant gesture,

There are many historic precedents for a leader acting out his concern for his
people by going where they are and walking among them, One of the very oldest is
in IL Kings, in a rather remote corner of the Old Testament called the Elisha Cycles,
Jehoram, King of Israel, was in the capital, which was under long and brutal siege
by the Syrians, The people were slowly starving to death and beginning to act iike
animals, Every day the King appeared on the Wall of the City in full view to make
common cause with the people, One day in particular he noted the depths of degrada~
tion into which his people had fallen and in a dramatic gesture, removed his royal
robes and armour and put on sack cloth, the rough, erude material which indicated
mourning, And the people knew that the King really cared,

In a sense that idea is the genius of Biblical religion. God cares about His
people, ‘The germinal text is in the Book of Exodus, Chapter 2. The people are in
Egypt, in bonded labor, And the text reads: ",,,And the people of Israel groaned
under their bondage, and cried out for help, and theix cry came up to God, And God
heard their groaning,.,and remembered His covenant...And God saw the people,..and
knew their condition,” (verses 23-25), ‘That's a dramatic claim, This God isn't
hidden away in the recesses of the universe, or amusing Himself on Mt, Olympus,
This God hears and sees and knows - and responds to the condition of His people.
Miracle of miracles: this God cares!

It is the theme of the Old Testament, When they are making their tortuous way
through the wilderness their God is traveling with them and providing for them.
After they occupy the land and settle in, one of their prophets, Hosea, tells them
that God loves them as a husband loves a wife. Another of their prophets, Amos,
suggests that God cares so much that He becomes very angry at their injustice, When
they are in Babylonian exile, another prophet announces the coming liberation with
words of compassion: "Comfort, comfort my people, says your God," One of the highest
points in all of Literature is in the image of God as shepherd, gathering the lambs
in His arms, gently leading those that are with young.

=- 3? -
This God, the Bible shouts on every page, has a heart, This is a God who cares,

Jesus wept when a friend died, He wept again because of the insensitivity and
biindness of Jerusalem, Unlike any model of leadership at the time He obviously
and openly and unapologetically cared about people: all sorts and conditions of
people: rich, poor, young, old, fishermen, lawyers, dectors, prostitutes: He cared
about them and they knew it, At the table of His Last Supper with His dearest friends,
He summed up His life and teaching ~ "This is my commandment, that you love one
another..." (John 15:1).

We ave, in our day, experiencing a crisis of caring, It was more than a decade
ago that we awoke to a new and ugly truth about ourselves, The event that jolted
us awake was the murder of Kitty Genovese on the steps of her New York apartment
building. ‘The police discovered that many people had seen the initial assault, had
watched the attacker run away and then return to complete his crime, Not one pounded
a window, yelled, interceded - or even called the police, They didn't want to get
involved, they said later, And suddenly we realized that it was happening all around
us, People were standing around on sidewalks, busses, subways, watching other
people get beaten up, Nobody seemed to care, Not long after that we discovered
that an embarassingly large number of Americans were poor, hungry, sick, under
educated, A new sense of caring stirred among us: the Government tried to program
it and failed, We lost the war on poverty. In fact, we didn't put up much of a
fight,

Rollo May, highly respected psychiatrist and author thinks we are in a critical
struggle - "The struggle is for the existence of the human being in a world in
which everything seems increasingly mechanical, computerized,.." (Love and Will,p. 292).

The genius of Biblical religion is the idea of God who cares, The moral imper~
ative of Biblical religion is love, The birth of Jesus Christ is the watershed of
the idea, Yet, we are in a crisis of caring and those of us who will celebrate the
birth ought, it seems to me, to be asking Why?" with impatient conviction.

Let me make some suggestions, Mobility is one of the reasons, People who are
essentially homeless stop caring about others, “Lowered social capacity", Vance
Packard called it, I£ you're new on the block and don't expect to be there very
long you aren't likely to carry a meal across the street to a family whose grand-
father just died, And pretty soon you won't care much, nor will you expect fo be
eared about,

The simple bigness of our cities mitigates against caring in any personal way.
Poor people, lonely people, elderly people simpiy get lost in cities: nobody knows
them, sees them nor cares much about them, The Christian Century carried a news
item about a New York caseworker whe lost an appeal for assistance for a client's
dog. What caught my attention was her opinion that dogs are the only "significant
other" for a lot of city people, ‘The New York Times several years ago editorialized
about an elderly woman dying of Parkinson's disease in a hospital, who simply would
not cease asking to go home, A caseworker was dispatched to find out what was so
appealing and important about home for the old lady, She found a filthy, one room
flat, with a bed, and a teddy bear, worn thin from hugging apparently, It's hard
to care in the city.

-3-

But I'm most concerned about another reason altogether, an insidious conspiracy
to teach us and our children that human life is cheap, that individual human life
isn't very important; that it is weak to care too much; that suffering is casual,
that violent death is everyday, OK, and exciting to watch,

Vietnam started it, L suppose, by bludgeoning our normal sensitivities with
becy counts and nightly news in living color, I think the battle for humanity - for
caring - is being lost, and the battlefield is Television and Motion Pictures, The
National Council of Churches raised the issue with television stations about a movie,
“Death Wish", in which violent vigilante-style justice is admiringly presented, Most
of the stations didn't respond, One of the Holiday Season's favorites this year is
Two Minute Warning", which allows the movie goer to feel how it is to be a sniper
in a crowded football stadium, One reviewer said: "Only one emotion is stirred, a
hatred of life that revels in gushing blood and violent death," (fhe Christian
Century, December 15, 1976 p, 11-15),

Paddy Chayefsky has produced a new movie, "Network'’ which raises the whole
issue of violence and pornography on television - as the way to improve one's
position in the Neilson Ratings, Tn an interview in Time Magazine he stated the
case: "Television coarsens all the complexities of human relationships, brutalizes
them, makes them insensitive, The point about violence is not so much that it breeds
violence - though that is probably true - but that it totally desensitizes vicious~
ness, brutality, murder, death so Chat we no longer actively feel the pains of the
victim or suffer for the mourners or feel their erief," (Time, December 13, 1976,P.79).

And even today as that barbaric drama continues in Utah, reporters are badger-
ing state officials for permission to cover and photograph the execution of Gary
Gilmore,

Out of all of this, I think, is emerging a new life style; a new ethic almost,
Tt may be described with words Like “detached - uninvolved - cool,” In personal
terms it is an approach to life which looks suspiciously at all close and caring
relationships and regards others as "things" to be used, In social terms it is a
mentality that regards "Bleeding heart; do gooder" as a criticism instead of a
high compliment,

I suppose it is a matter of our own Will to survive, Each of us does build a
wall around ourselves, If my brother bleeds, I bleed too, If he hurts, I hurt. I
can't feed them all, or even very many, And so it's simply easier not to know -
not to care,

The genius of Biblical religion is the jdea of a God who cares, The birth of
Jesus Christ is its watershed, Social Science knows the truth of the Biblical
genius, When ve forget how to care something precious and essential to our very
humanity ig lost, Infants need caring - T,L.¢, in hospital jargon - to survive,
Psychotherapy doesn't work unless the patient knows that the Doctor cares, Caring
is the cement that holds civilization together, It is the only magic there is in
marriage and the intense relationships of families.

The late Martin Buber, a Jewish philosopher, in his book L_and Thou , deepened
our understanding of the importance of caring. "Existence", he wrote, "will remain
meaningless for you if you do not penetrate into it with active love, Everything is

waiting to be hallowed by you...Meet the world with the fullness of your being and you
shall meet God, If you wish to believe, love!" (Expository Times, November 1976, p.64).

~& -

That's how important it is, Buber suggested that we will meet God when We
care about and love our neighbor: when we will that the other person become a "rhoul
and not an 'it",

There is a beautiful line in W7,H,Auden somewhere about "Remembering the stable
where for once in our lives everything became a You and nothing was an It," The
birth of Jesus Christ is the eloquent drama of God's caring, Like Jehoram, and
Churchill and Eisenhower, the birth of Jesus Christ is God saying, "I walk the
streets of your cities: I care deeply and passionately about what happens in them,"
The birth, in a setting that could not be more humble and human, is God saying to
every individual, “I care about you, I walk with you, You matter to me, TI hurt
when you hurt and rejoice when you laugh,"

In Bethlehem that which is eternal and cosmic and unfathomable becomes suddenly
very personal, I become a "Thou" as I stand in front of a manger, I matter, This
was for me, God cares,

And I celebrate Christmas - I mean really celebrate - when I let that caring
ignite a new passion in me,

There is an abundance of sentimentality in the very air at Christmas, The
romanticized version of the nativity is quite charming, No one can resist a new
born: even Herod, one supposes, could have been persuaded to interrupt the palace
party long enough to lift a cup to the newest citizen, But sentiment is not caring,
The difference is immense. ‘Tolstoy told about the elegant Russian ladies who cried
in the theatre while theix coachmen shivered outside in the cold, That's sentiment.
That's a large part of what happens in our culture every December,

There is an old Jewish story about a Rabbi who "disappeared from the Synagogue
for a few hours every day of Atonement, One of his followers suspects that he is
secretly meeting the Almighty, and foliows him, He watches as the Rabbi puts on
coarse peasant clothes and cares for an invalid woman in a cottage, cleaning out
her room and preparing food for her. The follower goes back to the Synagogue and
when he is asked, ‘Did the Rabbi ascend to Heaven?' he replies, ‘If not higher’, "'
(Expository Times, Ibid).

That is what God intended in the birth of Jesus Christ, He cares about you
and me, He cares so much He wants us to be fully human: He wants us to discover the
joy of our humanity by learning how to care and love, He bent Low to be among us
that we might rise to our full height, embracing the glory of our humanity by
learning how to care deeply,

In the days between now and Christmas each of us will implement the final
plans, For each of us those dear customs and traditions are the appropriate way to
celebrate the birth of Christ, But I know a secret. I know the way really te do
it, I discovered it when I was younz, quite by accident, In retrospect 1 think I
learned it by hearing, each year, the lovely story of ‘Why the Chimes Rang in
which a little boy secretly places a coin on the altar on Christmas Eve. f had the
idea that I ought to give a special and secret gift on Christmas - ail on my own,

I can recall it vividly, At the Christmas Eve service I carefully placed some
money in the offering plate without my parents knowing it, I'm not sure they
ever knew I did it, But I do know that I never felt better in my life, That is the
secret,

~5-

Cod cares about you and dearly loves you, That is why He sent His Son to be
born in Bethlehem. You've heard enough talk about that, If you want to understand
it: if you want to experience it deeply ~ if you want really to celebrate it this
year, care - love - give, Mend a relationship, forgive someone, hug someone who
needs hugging, give a gift that is generous and unexpected, Break down the wail of
detachment you have built between yourself and the rest of the world, Allow the
miracte of God's care to ignite a new and passionate caring in you,

That's the Gospel of Christmas, To you ~ and me - to us - is born, a Savior
who is Christ the Lord,

Glory to God in the highest
and on earth peace among men

with whom He is pleased,
Amen,

Father, we are grateful for the beauty of this blessed season: for the joy
it ignites in our hearts: for Your care which it expresses, Fill us today

with Your love ~ love that has come among us in Jesus Christ our Lord.
Amen,