No Outcasts
Back in the day when Dennys was still at
the end of Los Osos Valley Road near the freeway, and you could get a grand
slam breakfast for $2.99, I was filling up the car with gas when I was
approached by a young man who said he needed money for to get breakfast. I
didn’t have much cash but I emptied my pockets, searched deep in the bottom of
my purse, and under the seats of the car. Eventually I came up with $2.99 for a
grand slam plus another $1.50 for coffee and tax. Pleased to be able to help I
gave him the money and told him how to get to Denny’s. Yet as I drove away I
saw him approach another customer for money.
In today’s gospel reading, Jesus is
approached by ten lepers. These unfortunate people suffered from what we now
call Hanson’s disease. Known to humans for thousands of years, this disease
went untreated in biblical times and caused permanent damage to skin, nerves,
limbs and eyes, compromised the immune system, and hastened death. Though it is
now known to be only mildly infectious, the ancients considered it highly
contagious and forced lepers to stay away from others, identifying their
condition by announcing, “Unclean. Unclean,” when approached.
As a result, they were excluded from
society and forced to make their own communities. They became dead men walking
– at the mercy of others, ostracized, alienated from the richness of family
life and the comfort of communal religious practices. Lepers were outcasts who
bound themselves to one another out of necessity because no one else would touch
them or even come near. All that mattered was their disease. They were
identified as unclean, as different. Their disease was such a strong identifier
that one of the lepers in the story was actually a Samaritan who would have
been a hated and shunned foreigner in regular Jewish society.[1]
It was this man, only the foreigner, who
praised God and came back to thank Jesus. The others were too busy getting to
the health authorities to show that they were now clean and could return to
their families.
This lack of gratitude doesn’t stop
Jesus healing people; in a page or two we’ll find him healing a blind beggar,
another outcast. Jesus does not judge the nine lepers who were in such a hurry
that they forgot to express their wonder and gratitude.
As disciples of Jesus this must give us
pause.
We are living in a time when the leaders
of our nation can shutdown the government in an argument over providing
affordable healthcare. We are living in a time when the poor are portrayed as
the problem, when benefits to the neediest are the first to suffer from
cutbacks. We are living in a time when undocumented immigrants are so
scapegoated that even to give them a ride or serve them at a soup kitchen could
become a criminal act.[2] It
is easy for us to get caught up in this mindset and start to judge those who
are begging, those who are living by the creeks and under the bridges, those
who are mentally ill and those who are disabled.
Sometimes people behave in ways we don’t
like – like asking for money for breakfast and then not immediately using it,
or not wanting the sandwich or the coffee we want to give them – but they are
still beloved children of God.
As the followers of Jesus, we are called
to respond with humility and compassion, and to work for a society in which
there are no outcasts. That’s a really hard thing to do, because it is part of
human nature to gather in groups and make those groups stronger by talking
about how other groups and other people are not so good. It’s part of human
nature to scapegoat people who are different from us and blame them for the
problems we experience.
It’s part of human nature, but it is a
part that does not stand up to the light of the Gospel. Our mission is to work
for a day when all beings will be reconciled with God and with each other and
we further that when we bless those who fail to thank us, when we bless those
whose behavior we don’t like, when we bless those who are outcast, and work to
bring them back into society. This requires a change of heart which goes
against our natural inclinations, and which goes against the messages we get
from the media.
It’s much easier to help people who are
grateful. It’s much easier to talk to people who respond in a positive way. Sometimes
we walk our dog, Shadow, in the hills above Los Osos and we park on Bayview
Heights Road. Naturally, we frequently meet other people with their dogs. One
man in particular seems often to be there at the same time that we are, and
when we first met him he was usually in a bad mood. One day he yelled at me
because he didn’t like the way I had parked my car, and then zoomed off in his
pick-up with a great screeching of tires. After that we avoided him and when we
met just said a quick greeting and kept going. The other day I saw him sitting
in the vet’s office. I plucked up my courage and asked about his dog, expecting
a gruff response. Instead he gave me a lovely smile and we reminisced about
dogs we have loved. He could have been a different person. I don’t know what
made the difference. I don’t know what may have happened in his personal life
to make him so angry all those months ago. I’m just glad that I didn’t just say
oh no and look the other way in the vet’s waiting room.
He isn’t an outcast, he’s just a normal
guy with a pick-up and a dog. But my inclination was to ignore him and pretend
that we had never met. For once I was able to do the other thing, the more
Christ-like thing, and attempt to be open to him as a fellow human being
without the baggage of our past interaction.
There are millions of people in the
world who are outcasts. There are thousands of ways that we can help them. And
it’s important to do whatever we can and whatever God calls us to do. The most
important thing is that like the Samaritan who came back, we have a change of
heart. Of course, like the Samaritan, we are called to praise God for all the
ways in which we experience healing and blessing, and even for the times when
we don’t. But the big change of heart which Jesus shows us, is to refuse to
scapegoat, to refuse to see others as less than we are, to refuse to judge. The
big change of heart is to remember that, but for the grace of God, we could be
in their position. The big change of heart is to see Christ in all beings.
That is the path of compassion. That is
the path of Jesus.
[1] With
thanks to Ken Kesselus and Sermons that Work, http://episcopaldigitalnetwork.com/stw/2013/09/23/21-pentecost-proper-23-c-2013/
posted by Caroline Hall at
7:26 AM
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