Tikkun Olam

OK, clearly not an elephant.

There is a well-known story of an elephant and a group of blind men that goes a little something like this: A group of blind men touch an elephant to learn about what it is like. One touches an ear and says, “an elephant is like a wicker basket”. Another one of the men touches the elephant’s head and thinks it the elephant must be shaped like a large cooking pot. Yet another grabs the tail and believes that the elephant must look like a broom. You can see why the blind men were having some difficulty interpreting the whole elephant, can’t you? The animal was so enormous that the best they could do as individuals was understand the unique part they held.

The blind men could only interpret what was directly in front of them. Let’s think about this elephant-touch dilemma as if it affects the life of today’s church: If we think of the elephant as representing MCC’s mission, do all touches have the same value? Is there a place that we all must touch? Finally, can we touch the mission at different places, disagree, and still work together? Sometimes the wide, expansive need is overwhelming and too much to bear. We don’t know where to get started, so we limit ourselves or come to believe that there really isn’t an elephant in the room! N.T. Wright has said: “What you do in the present – by painting, preaching, singing, sewing, praying, teaching, building hospitals, digging wells, campaigning for justice, writing poems, caring for the needy, loving your neighbor as yourself – will last into God’s future”. Each of us individually, and our congregation as a whole, needs to touch tikkun olam, which is a Jewish concept that loosely translates to “mend the world”. My prayer is that each and every one of us touches the elephant. Whatever we do to mend the world has a lasting value. Everyone contributes. God blesses richly each and every gift.