Where Can You Participate in Mutuality?

One of the ways I’m observing Lent this year is by listening to a Bible study series by the Rev. Dr. Jia Starr Brown, an antiracism educator and activist. The series is called Decolonizing Jesus, and one of her talks connected the beatitudes with the parable about the judgment of the people (the “separation of the sheep and the goats”) in Matthew. There was a lot to ponder in her talk, and today I want to reflect on mutuality.

She talked about how the beatitudes were reflecting the disenfranchised lives of Jesus’ followers, who lived in occupied territory of the Roman Empire. She noted that they didn’t have a lot of material wealth or possessions. Yet Jesus blessed those who share, from their poverty, with those who have less. As she put it, “The people who already don’t have a lot are giving what they don’t have.”

She then explained that Jesus (who “had nowhere to lay his head“) was inviting his followers to essentially spend down what little they had by helping others. Then, once they became poorer than others in their community, they got to (needed to, spiritually?) be the poor who receive what others give. In this way, there’s a dance of genuine mutuality in community. Those who were poor receive and become richer (relatively speaking), then turn around and give back to those who had given to them the week or the month before.

It reminds me of the mutuality I’ve learned about amongst the Native Alaskan tribes. When someone is fortunate to kill a seal or caribou, they become “rich” and give from that abundance to their family and friends in the community. Later, it will be someone else’s turn to share back, perhaps because they had a successful season harvesting salmon.

It seems to me that this mutuality is inherent in all cultures—and was once the way of life even for my poor white European ancestors. But we’ve forgotten the lesson. We’ve been infected by the capitalist mindset of acquiring and hoarding. We believe that being impoverished and in need is a sign of failure rather than a sign that you’ve blessed your community by giving away what you have so that others can also thrive.

What would it take to reclaim this perspective of radical mutuality? What shift would need to happen for you to view those around you as part of your support network instead of as competitors for limited resources? How might you begin to intentionally participate in such exchanges of mutuality in your own community?