From the NYT:
Republicans gained more than 690 seats in state legislatures nationwide in the November midterms, winning their strongest representation at the state level in more than 80 years.
God, have mercy on us all.
Why? Where to begin? I can't.
Immigration.
Choice.
Marriage equality.
Health insurance.
Deficit and taxes.
Muscular Christianity.
That is just what comes to the top of my head.
May God have mercy on us in 2011.
31 December 2010
Jump!
Not quite Van Halen....
Young Guy takes on Orange Guy, ousting him from his perch while San Romero de las Américas looks on.
13 December 2010
Haitian impressions
[click on photo to embiggen]
The images that I could not/did not capture in photographs...
— the people lined up to go into the remaining room of a collapsed house in Port au Prince, some people climbing up the rubble to get into the yellow room, others below in what must have been a driveway
— the boy bathing from a basin by his tent
— the two goats sleeping on top of a family mausoleum (families build house-looking structures for the dead in their yards)
— the two young women waiting for their violin lesson behind the ruins of the Episcopal cathedral, Sainte Trinité in Port au Prince
— the Roman Catholic cathedral mostly gone
— the wild donkeys, goats and cows crossing the roads
— the charred remains of tires from various barricades
— beautiful sunlight filtering down through the clouds over the bay
— tent after tent after tent even out in the country
— steep mountainsides
— men going at limestone hill quarries with just a pick axe
— flat plains with wide-open expanses of land
— pot holes!
— a woman walking down the street with a large chicken under one arm, box on head; a man carrying two chickens and a bag of rice that trickled a trail of rice behind him
— the palpable anxiety of Haitians as they awaited the results of the election
That's just for starters.
29 November 2010
Plus ça change...
From an article on censure in today's NYT:
Violence was hardly routine in 19th-century Congressional disputes, but there was enough to make it interesting. In 1856*, as divisions over slavery intensified, Representatives Preston S. Brooks and Laurence M. Keitt, Democrats of South Carolina, strode to the Senate, and Mr. Brooks severely caned Senator Charles Sumner of Massachusetts, an anti-slavery Republican.
When other senators tried to intervene, Mr. Keitt brandished a pistol and shouted: “Let them be.” Mr. Brooks survived an expulsion vote and resigned his seat. Mr. Keitt resigned to protest his censure. Both were re-elected — Mr. Brooks with a supply of new canes sent by constituents.
In 1858, Mr. Keitt started a donnybrook on the House floor. After an exchange of insults in a debate over the admission of Kansas as a slave state, he leaped up and tried to throttle Representative Galusha A. Grow, Republican of Pennsylvania. Supporters on both sides jumped into the fray, and a melee involving dozens of congressmen broke out.
The speaker shouted in vain for order. The sergeant-at-arms rushed in. Representative Cadwallader Washburn of Wisconsin tried to grab Representative William Barksdale of Mississippi by the hair, but came away with a toupee. Mr. Barksdale retrieved his wig, but put it on backward, and the fighting ended as both sides dissolved in laughter.
* the year of the consecration of the church building where I formerly served...
Violence was hardly routine in 19th-century Congressional disputes, but there was enough to make it interesting. In 1856*, as divisions over slavery intensified, Representatives Preston S. Brooks and Laurence M. Keitt, Democrats of South Carolina, strode to the Senate, and Mr. Brooks severely caned Senator Charles Sumner of Massachusetts, an anti-slavery Republican.
When other senators tried to intervene, Mr. Keitt brandished a pistol and shouted: “Let them be.” Mr. Brooks survived an expulsion vote and resigned his seat. Mr. Keitt resigned to protest his censure. Both were re-elected — Mr. Brooks with a supply of new canes sent by constituents.
In 1858, Mr. Keitt started a donnybrook on the House floor. After an exchange of insults in a debate over the admission of Kansas as a slave state, he leaped up and tried to throttle Representative Galusha A. Grow, Republican of Pennsylvania. Supporters on both sides jumped into the fray, and a melee involving dozens of congressmen broke out.
The speaker shouted in vain for order. The sergeant-at-arms rushed in. Representative Cadwallader Washburn of Wisconsin tried to grab Representative William Barksdale of Mississippi by the hair, but came away with a toupee. Mr. Barksdale retrieved his wig, but put it on backward, and the fighting ended as both sides dissolved in laughter.
* the year of the consecration of the church building where I formerly served...
Didn't know we had 'em here
Title from the Rutland Herald today.
Unfortunately, the rest of the article is behind the paywall and I don't have a subscription.
28 November 2010
Another Tom Delay?
Mr Issa is the richest man in the House, having made a fortune by making and selling car alarms, including the Viper, which features his own commanding voice declaring, “Please step away from the car.” And he is now clearly intent on making a name for himself sounding alarms of a different sort about the Obama administration. (NYT)
And so this Republican is of course going to waste taxpayers' money going after the small stuff in his attempt to bring down Obama as the most corrupt president there has ever been.
I am not sure I can weather the next two years... between the damage the Republican majority in the House is going to inflict to our already non-functioning government and the Anglican Communion business.
And so this Republican is of course going to waste taxpayers' money going after the small stuff in his attempt to bring down Obama as the most corrupt president there has ever been.
I am not sure I can weather the next two years... between the damage the Republican majority in the House is going to inflict to our already non-functioning government and the Anglican Communion business.
24 November 2010
Herein lies a problem
From the NYT report on the Church of England's vote on the 'Anglican Covenant':
'Bishop Michael Perham of Gloucester also had reservations, but said he was voting in favor partly out of loyalty to Williams.'
So in being loyal to Archbishop Williams, these bishops (I figure white and, of course, male because the CoE won't allow women to be bishops yet) are going to chuck aside all notion of Anglican compromise, the Via Media, which has worked well for five centuries. As we know, the GAFCON (just typed GAGCON which is not too far off the mark) crowd has already rejected the 'covenant.'
Frankly, if The Episcopal Church is shunted off to a second-tier status, we may be more free — free to proclaim the gospel of radical hospitality that Jesus proclaimed, not a narrow, literalistic and legalistic reading of the biblical narrative. The relationships around the globe that many of us have established with other provinces of the Anglican Communion will continue. And, at this point, if the ACNA-ites become the Anglican presence in the United States, TEC might still be able to thrive as it continues to be honest about who it is.
Not too clear but this whole covenant process has been a frustration because the cards were stacked against us from the get-go. Why should we be at all surprised that the CoE has voted as it did?
'Bishop Michael Perham of Gloucester also had reservations, but said he was voting in favor partly out of loyalty to Williams.'
So in being loyal to Archbishop Williams, these bishops (I figure white and, of course, male because the CoE won't allow women to be bishops yet) are going to chuck aside all notion of Anglican compromise, the Via Media, which has worked well for five centuries. As we know, the GAFCON (just typed GAGCON which is not too far off the mark) crowd has already rejected the 'covenant.'
Frankly, if The Episcopal Church is shunted off to a second-tier status, we may be more free — free to proclaim the gospel of radical hospitality that Jesus proclaimed, not a narrow, literalistic and legalistic reading of the biblical narrative. The relationships around the globe that many of us have established with other provinces of the Anglican Communion will continue. And, at this point, if the ACNA-ites become the Anglican presence in the United States, TEC might still be able to thrive as it continues to be honest about who it is.
Not too clear but this whole covenant process has been a frustration because the cards were stacked against us from the get-go. Why should we be at all surprised that the CoE has voted as it did?
16 November 2010
Post millennial blues
We all thought the world was going to collapse with the Y2K change. But here we still are ten years later. What is changing is that the world is becoming more and more conservative. I dread to think of where it will be in another ten years.
In today's paper: Catholic Bishops Elect Dolan
'The election consolidates the gradual shift in leadership and priorities for the bishops conference. From the 1970’s through the 1990’s, the conference was a center for progressive Catholicism in a distinctly American guise, releasing ambitious teaching documents on issues such as economic inequality, workers rights, the environment, peace and war. While the bishops still do take up issues such as immigration and poverty, they are far more focused on shaping public policy to stop abortion and prevent the legalization of marriage between same-sex couples.'
Yup, it is way, way more important to regulate the expressions of human sexuality (i.e., one would not have to deal with abortion if contraception were permitted in this value system).
In this day and age, The Episcopal Church can no longer count on disaffected Catholics crossing the street. They walk out the door to become part of the great de-churched alumni/ae association because institutional religion is seen to be too bigoted. We've got an archbishop across the pond in England who is trying to emulate the Roman hierarchy while making Anglicans into confessing people. And he is trying, through the dint of repetition, to create ex nihilo the Anglican 'Church,' as though this communion is a monolithic church rather than the collection of provincial expressions throughout the world. Then there is this proposed covenant which should never have gained traction but it still seems to have a life of its own.
We have so much work to do.
But will there still be a church?
Or is the millennium a decade or two behind in arriving for the millennialists?
15 November 2010
Back to normal
[the Burlington Free Press]
And, alas, I did not really get to profit from this nice weather. All-day meeting Saturday, all-day church yesterday, Friday getting ready for the weekend, Thursday, all day inside working. Phooey.
14 November 2010
12 November 2010
Friday cat blogging
returns albeit feebly. I just don't have free time any more...
Young Guy supervises the synching for the first time of my new iPad with my MacBook Pro... photo taken with my iPhone. Too many 'i's in this statement.
He is not partaking of my Flor de Caña rum, however. That is for humans only.
07 November 2010
Not terribly popular methinks
At midnight, here is how responses were running to the question, 'Should the Church of England reject the Anglican Covenant?'
Ha.
03 November 2010
Face it...
This country is conservative, red all the way with a few pockets of blue. We are way too outnumbered when it comes to the House of Representatives. I can't see things changing in the near future either. Dismal.
The old depression returns
A snippet from the NYT lead editorial....
Editorial:Election 2010
Published: November 2, 2010
Voters in Tuesday’s elections sent President Obama a loud message: They don’t like how he’s doing his job, they’re even angrier at Congressional Democrats and they gave the House back to the Republicans. The Republicans spent months fanning Americans’ anger over the economy and fear of “big government,” while offering few ideas of their own. Exit polls indicated that they had succeeded in turning out their base, and that the Democrats had failed to rally their own.
Readers' Comments
Americans who voted described themselves as far more conservative than they did in 2006 and 2008 — and than the population as a whole. More than 4 in 10 said that they supported the Tea Party movement. But more than half of the conservatives said they have an unfavorable view of the Republican Party.
The question is: Will either side draw the right lessons from this midterm election?
Mr. Obama, and his party, have to do a far better job of explaining their vision and their policies. Mr. Obama needs to break his habits of neglecting his base voters and of sitting on the sidelines and allowing others to shape the debate. He needs to do a much better job of stiffening the spines of his own party’s leaders.
He has made it far too easy for his opponents to spin and distort what Americans should see as genuine progress in very tough times: a historic health care reform, a stimulus that headed off an even deeper recession, financial reform to avoid another meltdown.
Mr. Obama has a lot of difficult work ahead of him. The politics in Washington will likely get even nastier. Before he can hope to build the minimal bipartisan consensus needed to move ahead, Mr. Obama will have to rally more Americans to the logic of his policies.
The question for the Republicans now is whether they are going to bask in triumphalism or get down to the real work of governing. It is one thing to pander and obstruct when you are out of power. With a divided government, it won’t take long for voters to demand that they explain their plans.
John Boehner, the likely speaker of the House, has not provided a clue of how his party will begin to cut the deficit, which Republicans say is their top priority. One of the few specific promises he has made would dig an even deeper hole: extending all of the Bush-era tax cuts.
And exit polls suggested that even these more conservative voters get what the Republican Party leadership still doesn’t: that there is no way to tackle the deficit and slash taxes at the same time. Only 19 percent said cutting taxes was the top priority for the next Congress.
Anticipating a big win on Tuesday, leading Republicans haven’t been talking about substance, only more obstructionism. Mr. Boehner said the other day that the president was welcome to support Republican programs. But as for Mr. Obama’s agenda, he said, “We’re going to do everything — and I mean everything we can do — to kill it, stop it, slow it down, whatever we can.”
Mike Pence, the No. 3 Republican, said there would be “no compromise” on repealing the health care reform law and permanently extending all Bush-era tax cuts, including for the wealthiest Americans.
+++
I am left wordless only deeply, deeply depressed and discouraged for our country. When will we ever learn!
To read this further...
At a news conference Wednesday morning at the Capitol, Mr. Boehner said Republicans would begin laying the groundwork for spending cuts and for repealing the health care law.
My passport is valid. I speak French and Spanish. Surely I can find somewhere else where people are not so self-centred.
Editorial:Election 2010
Published: November 2, 2010
Voters in Tuesday’s elections sent President Obama a loud message: They don’t like how he’s doing his job, they’re even angrier at Congressional Democrats and they gave the House back to the Republicans. The Republicans spent months fanning Americans’ anger over the economy and fear of “big government,” while offering few ideas of their own. Exit polls indicated that they had succeeded in turning out their base, and that the Democrats had failed to rally their own.
Readers' Comments
Americans who voted described themselves as far more conservative than they did in 2006 and 2008 — and than the population as a whole. More than 4 in 10 said that they supported the Tea Party movement. But more than half of the conservatives said they have an unfavorable view of the Republican Party.
The question is: Will either side draw the right lessons from this midterm election?
Mr. Obama, and his party, have to do a far better job of explaining their vision and their policies. Mr. Obama needs to break his habits of neglecting his base voters and of sitting on the sidelines and allowing others to shape the debate. He needs to do a much better job of stiffening the spines of his own party’s leaders.
He has made it far too easy for his opponents to spin and distort what Americans should see as genuine progress in very tough times: a historic health care reform, a stimulus that headed off an even deeper recession, financial reform to avoid another meltdown.
Mr. Obama has a lot of difficult work ahead of him. The politics in Washington will likely get even nastier. Before he can hope to build the minimal bipartisan consensus needed to move ahead, Mr. Obama will have to rally more Americans to the logic of his policies.
The question for the Republicans now is whether they are going to bask in triumphalism or get down to the real work of governing. It is one thing to pander and obstruct when you are out of power. With a divided government, it won’t take long for voters to demand that they explain their plans.
John Boehner, the likely speaker of the House, has not provided a clue of how his party will begin to cut the deficit, which Republicans say is their top priority. One of the few specific promises he has made would dig an even deeper hole: extending all of the Bush-era tax cuts.
And exit polls suggested that even these more conservative voters get what the Republican Party leadership still doesn’t: that there is no way to tackle the deficit and slash taxes at the same time. Only 19 percent said cutting taxes was the top priority for the next Congress.
Anticipating a big win on Tuesday, leading Republicans haven’t been talking about substance, only more obstructionism. Mr. Boehner said the other day that the president was welcome to support Republican programs. But as for Mr. Obama’s agenda, he said, “We’re going to do everything — and I mean everything we can do — to kill it, stop it, slow it down, whatever we can.”
Mike Pence, the No. 3 Republican, said there would be “no compromise” on repealing the health care reform law and permanently extending all Bush-era tax cuts, including for the wealthiest Americans.
+++
I am left wordless only deeply, deeply depressed and discouraged for our country. When will we ever learn!
To read this further...
At a news conference Wednesday morning at the Capitol, Mr. Boehner said Republicans would begin laying the groundwork for spending cuts and for repealing the health care law.
My passport is valid. I speak French and Spanish. Surely I can find somewhere else where people are not so self-centred.
02 November 2010
15 October 2010
An example of obfuscation
The Rev. Canon Kendall Harmon, canon theologian for the South Carolina diocese, told ENS that the convention's action is "significant … in that it enables us to pursue the bishop's vision of making biblical Anglicans for a global age while resisting the national leadership's attempts to change our polity in violation of own constitution and the basic principles of justice and due process."
There's another term for this: nonsense (and worse, falsehood).
Our standing committee spent hours on the consent process for this diocese and ultimately voted not to consent because these actions are precisely what we felt would happen. We were not assured by their bishop-elect's statements that he would make efforts to remain fully in The Episcopal Church. It is said and wrong to say, 'We told you so,' but unfortunately, we were not off the mark.
May those Episcopalians who want to be part of the broad church and not some dressed-up Calvinist break-away sect find safe places to worship and be assured that they are not crazy nor consorting with the evil.
As the Anglican Digest of which Mr Harmon is its editor would say: Makes the heart sad.
There's another term for this: nonsense (and worse, falsehood).
Our standing committee spent hours on the consent process for this diocese and ultimately voted not to consent because these actions are precisely what we felt would happen. We were not assured by their bishop-elect's statements that he would make efforts to remain fully in The Episcopal Church. It is said and wrong to say, 'We told you so,' but unfortunately, we were not off the mark.
May those Episcopalians who want to be part of the broad church and not some dressed-up Calvinist break-away sect find safe places to worship and be assured that they are not crazy nor consorting with the evil.
As the Anglican Digest of which Mr Harmon is its editor would say: Makes the heart sad.
14 October 2010
What is on deck for us
Hope this doesn't gum up tomorrow night's big gala of gratitude dinner at church.
10 October 2010
Proper 23C 10-10-10
I haven't posted a sermon in a long time but wanted to share this one. I have already seen that I am in good company.
+++
Proper 23C • 10-10-10
This interlude of healing and thanksgiving provides a bridge from the preceding teachings about the tough demands of justice and the difficult burdens of leadership in the new community to the following warnings about the end-time that they felt awaited them. Likewise, the travel journey portion of the gospel is coming to a close. Even though it seems as though the disciples and Jesus have been meandering for weeks on end, making no progress, they are finally approaching Jerusalem and Jesus’ death on the cross. As they get closer and closer to Jerusalem, Jesus is careful to remind those following him of its significance. Much time is spent talking about matters of faith. In Jesus’ teachings, faith on earth is represented by unusual people: Lazarus, a Samaritan, a foreigner, a widow, a toll collector, and little children.
The story of the leper we hear this morning serves as another story about faith, but there is more to it than just that. It is also a story about gratitude, cleansing, healing, boundaries, insiders and outsiders.
Biblical scholars and medical scientists agree that Hansen’s disease, that is, leprosy, did not exist in first-century Palestine. Instead what is generally meant by the biblical word, ‘leprosy’ is any condition that affects the appearance of body, clothes and home.
Though lacking a true understanding of what leprosy is, the Bible spends a lot of time talking about it. In the Hebrew Scriptures, two chapters in the Book of Leviticus speak about leprosy and how it affects an individual’s place in the community. What really is at stake here is the whole idea of cleanliness. That which is dirty or unclean is out of order, and out of place in a social system. Boundaries, which define what is and is not clean, what is and is not in place or order, limit a person’s interactions in a particular society.
The leper as an individual is someone who suffers not only from weakened body boundaries — the skin being afflicted by a disfiguring disease — but also social boundaries. The leper is someone who is incomplete and therefore unworthy to be present in society. No blemished person could possibly be a complete specimen of its kind. And so, the leper in Jesus’ time would be outside of social boundaries.
Understandably, as social outcasts, lepers travelled together. The ten in the story from Luke are following the directions from the Book of Leviticus: they are to stay apart from society, and cry out ‘Unclean’ should they approach a non-leper. In essence, they are to maintain strict boundaries that keep them out of Jewish society.
Jesus, as a Jew, would have known these restrictions. Yet when the ten approach Jesus, and cry out, ‘Jesus, Master, have mercy on us!’ he responds to them. Were Jesus to maintain the strict boundaries as directed by his faith system, he would not have even spoken to them, he would have chased them away. Instead, he instructs them, saying, ‘Go and show yourselves to the priests,’ knowing that the only way they can be reincorporated into the social system is to be certified clean and declared ‘back in place’ by a temple priest. Jesus also knows they will be healed as they go.
Presumably the ten go to the temple priest — the gospel does not say. What it does tell us is that one of the ten, when he realises he is healed, turns around to give thanks to God. He returns to Jesus, and falls at his feet and thanks him.
The gospel has saved up the punch-line for this moment. In one short sentence, it informs us, ‘And he was a Samaritan.’
A Samaritan. Not only once cast out of society by virtue of his leprosy, but twice cast out because of his nationality. A doubly impure, scorned man, someone whom the boundaries would have permanently kept out.
Yet Jesus ministers to this man with the same grace as he has to the other nine. Moreover, he tells the Samaritan something he does not tell the other nine: ‘Your faith has made you well.’ A stronger translation is, ‘Your faith has brought you salvation.’
Wholeness through faith, not through physical appearance; destroying boundaries that separate one person from another, restoring people to their communities, making them whole, giving them salvation — that is what matters to Jesus.
+
Haven’t we all been outsiders at some point or another in our lives? Frankly, I think it is nothing short of a miracle that we all survive junior high school. I don’t have many memories of that time period in my life but the few that remain are not all happy ones. Friendships seemed as solid as a marsh or swamp: I never knew if one day I would be ‘in’ and the next day ‘out’ for no reason at all other than the other kids decided that was how things were to be. Negotiating all the changes that come at that age — you feel like a klutz, you act like a klutz and everyone else is a klutz — requires a lot of patience and faith that somehow, you’ll come out the other end of that age intact.
Nowadays eye-glasses frames are far better-looking than those that were around for children in the 1960s. How many of you adults remember having super-dorky looking frames or being the only child in your elementary school class to wear glasses? Woe to the child who was hearing-impaired and had a hearing aid. That child was even more set apart.
In fact, for anyone who has gone through a temporary or permanent facial difference — by injury or birth, he or she knows what it is to be looked at, questioned, and deemed as less of a person perhaps, as the ten people in the gospel story were before Jesus healed them, because they look ‘funny’. (I know what it is like to journey albeit very briefly in that world. I traveled there for a while in sixth grade, the result of a bike crash-faceplant on asphalt.) They know of the contradictory feelings of shame but also wanting the world to accept them on their terms. They want the world to see them not just for what the world thinks they are — a curious person who doesn’t measure up to society’s norm of standardized (and impossible) beauty — but God’s beloved child, complete, integral, and equal to everyone else.
There are countless other examples — the person minus a limb, the person with a cleft palate, the person with badly crossed eyes, the person rendered bald by chemotherapy, the person scarred by fire. We know them. We have seen them. We are them. They should not be defined by what we think they lack. They are as whole as we are, we are as whole as they are.
We need to teach our children and ourselves that God’s goodness resides in every child of God. The recent spate of teen and young adult suicides as the result of out-of-control bullying attest to a failure on our parts to instill a respect for every person God has created — instead, people demand that others they look like, talk like or act like the way they think they should. The death of each young person is a tragic loss of potential in the larger life of the community. In an odd way, those who have bullied these individuals to death are the ones lacking wholeness because they are too afraid to contemplate that someone might be different from the way they think they ought to be. You and I need to be alert to any instances of bullying, as well as conveying to our children that no matter what others might say, they are God’s beloved, they are whole persons and that bullying just is not an option. If they find themselves putting down others, they need to be invited to considered what is missing in their wholeness that they need to harm someone else.
+
What gives a person wholeness? What restores them in body, mind and soul?
Jesus says in the gospel to the one person who came back to him giving thanks: ‘Your faith has made you whole.’ Faith, that which is as light and supple and as strong as silk. Not a set of beliefs, but confidence in God. Faith is having something and someone, God, to rely on. Faith, strong like bamboo, but also able to sway in a storm so that it won’t break. Knowing that you aren’t alone when the world wants to set you apart as different or incomplete.
In this case, when the world wants to cast us out because we are not ‘whole,’ or ‘clean,’ our faith can tell us, ‘No. Those are the world’s standards. Those are human-created standards. Those standards are not God’s standards. God created me and loves me for who I am, as I am.’ That faith in our innate goodness strengthens us as it also reminds us to return to the one who made, us God… and in our returning, to give thanks and express our gratitude.
The one healed person who returned to Jesus and gave thanks had faith. He returned to the one who showed him God’s love.
Maybe we’re not at a point where we can give God thanks, but we should always return to Jesus. As the words to hymn 692 say:
I head the voice of Jesus say,
“Come unto me and rest;
and in your weariness
lay down your head upon my breast.”
I came to Jesus, as I was,
so weary, worn, and sad;
I found in him a resting place,
and he has made me glad.”
Come to Jesus, as you are. Find in him your resting place. He will strengthen you so you can then give thanks for who you are — a wonderfully integrated, whole, restored and beloved child of God.
+
Analysis of purity codes comes from William Countryman's Dirt, Greed and Sex, Fortress Press, 1988.
+++
Proper 23C • 10-10-10
This interlude of healing and thanksgiving provides a bridge from the preceding teachings about the tough demands of justice and the difficult burdens of leadership in the new community to the following warnings about the end-time that they felt awaited them. Likewise, the travel journey portion of the gospel is coming to a close. Even though it seems as though the disciples and Jesus have been meandering for weeks on end, making no progress, they are finally approaching Jerusalem and Jesus’ death on the cross. As they get closer and closer to Jerusalem, Jesus is careful to remind those following him of its significance. Much time is spent talking about matters of faith. In Jesus’ teachings, faith on earth is represented by unusual people: Lazarus, a Samaritan, a foreigner, a widow, a toll collector, and little children.
The story of the leper we hear this morning serves as another story about faith, but there is more to it than just that. It is also a story about gratitude, cleansing, healing, boundaries, insiders and outsiders.
Biblical scholars and medical scientists agree that Hansen’s disease, that is, leprosy, did not exist in first-century Palestine. Instead what is generally meant by the biblical word, ‘leprosy’ is any condition that affects the appearance of body, clothes and home.
Though lacking a true understanding of what leprosy is, the Bible spends a lot of time talking about it. In the Hebrew Scriptures, two chapters in the Book of Leviticus speak about leprosy and how it affects an individual’s place in the community. What really is at stake here is the whole idea of cleanliness. That which is dirty or unclean is out of order, and out of place in a social system. Boundaries, which define what is and is not clean, what is and is not in place or order, limit a person’s interactions in a particular society.
The leper as an individual is someone who suffers not only from weakened body boundaries — the skin being afflicted by a disfiguring disease — but also social boundaries. The leper is someone who is incomplete and therefore unworthy to be present in society. No blemished person could possibly be a complete specimen of its kind. And so, the leper in Jesus’ time would be outside of social boundaries.
Understandably, as social outcasts, lepers travelled together. The ten in the story from Luke are following the directions from the Book of Leviticus: they are to stay apart from society, and cry out ‘Unclean’ should they approach a non-leper. In essence, they are to maintain strict boundaries that keep them out of Jewish society.
Jesus, as a Jew, would have known these restrictions. Yet when the ten approach Jesus, and cry out, ‘Jesus, Master, have mercy on us!’ he responds to them. Were Jesus to maintain the strict boundaries as directed by his faith system, he would not have even spoken to them, he would have chased them away. Instead, he instructs them, saying, ‘Go and show yourselves to the priests,’ knowing that the only way they can be reincorporated into the social system is to be certified clean and declared ‘back in place’ by a temple priest. Jesus also knows they will be healed as they go.
Presumably the ten go to the temple priest — the gospel does not say. What it does tell us is that one of the ten, when he realises he is healed, turns around to give thanks to God. He returns to Jesus, and falls at his feet and thanks him.
The gospel has saved up the punch-line for this moment. In one short sentence, it informs us, ‘And he was a Samaritan.’
A Samaritan. Not only once cast out of society by virtue of his leprosy, but twice cast out because of his nationality. A doubly impure, scorned man, someone whom the boundaries would have permanently kept out.
Yet Jesus ministers to this man with the same grace as he has to the other nine. Moreover, he tells the Samaritan something he does not tell the other nine: ‘Your faith has made you well.’ A stronger translation is, ‘Your faith has brought you salvation.’
Wholeness through faith, not through physical appearance; destroying boundaries that separate one person from another, restoring people to their communities, making them whole, giving them salvation — that is what matters to Jesus.
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Haven’t we all been outsiders at some point or another in our lives? Frankly, I think it is nothing short of a miracle that we all survive junior high school. I don’t have many memories of that time period in my life but the few that remain are not all happy ones. Friendships seemed as solid as a marsh or swamp: I never knew if one day I would be ‘in’ and the next day ‘out’ for no reason at all other than the other kids decided that was how things were to be. Negotiating all the changes that come at that age — you feel like a klutz, you act like a klutz and everyone else is a klutz — requires a lot of patience and faith that somehow, you’ll come out the other end of that age intact.
Nowadays eye-glasses frames are far better-looking than those that were around for children in the 1960s. How many of you adults remember having super-dorky looking frames or being the only child in your elementary school class to wear glasses? Woe to the child who was hearing-impaired and had a hearing aid. That child was even more set apart.
In fact, for anyone who has gone through a temporary or permanent facial difference — by injury or birth, he or she knows what it is to be looked at, questioned, and deemed as less of a person perhaps, as the ten people in the gospel story were before Jesus healed them, because they look ‘funny’. (I know what it is like to journey albeit very briefly in that world. I traveled there for a while in sixth grade, the result of a bike crash-faceplant on asphalt.) They know of the contradictory feelings of shame but also wanting the world to accept them on their terms. They want the world to see them not just for what the world thinks they are — a curious person who doesn’t measure up to society’s norm of standardized (and impossible) beauty — but God’s beloved child, complete, integral, and equal to everyone else.
There are countless other examples — the person minus a limb, the person with a cleft palate, the person with badly crossed eyes, the person rendered bald by chemotherapy, the person scarred by fire. We know them. We have seen them. We are them. They should not be defined by what we think they lack. They are as whole as we are, we are as whole as they are.
We need to teach our children and ourselves that God’s goodness resides in every child of God. The recent spate of teen and young adult suicides as the result of out-of-control bullying attest to a failure on our parts to instill a respect for every person God has created — instead, people demand that others they look like, talk like or act like the way they think they should. The death of each young person is a tragic loss of potential in the larger life of the community. In an odd way, those who have bullied these individuals to death are the ones lacking wholeness because they are too afraid to contemplate that someone might be different from the way they think they ought to be. You and I need to be alert to any instances of bullying, as well as conveying to our children that no matter what others might say, they are God’s beloved, they are whole persons and that bullying just is not an option. If they find themselves putting down others, they need to be invited to considered what is missing in their wholeness that they need to harm someone else.
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What gives a person wholeness? What restores them in body, mind and soul?
Jesus says in the gospel to the one person who came back to him giving thanks: ‘Your faith has made you whole.’ Faith, that which is as light and supple and as strong as silk. Not a set of beliefs, but confidence in God. Faith is having something and someone, God, to rely on. Faith, strong like bamboo, but also able to sway in a storm so that it won’t break. Knowing that you aren’t alone when the world wants to set you apart as different or incomplete.
In this case, when the world wants to cast us out because we are not ‘whole,’ or ‘clean,’ our faith can tell us, ‘No. Those are the world’s standards. Those are human-created standards. Those standards are not God’s standards. God created me and loves me for who I am, as I am.’ That faith in our innate goodness strengthens us as it also reminds us to return to the one who made, us God… and in our returning, to give thanks and express our gratitude.
The one healed person who returned to Jesus and gave thanks had faith. He returned to the one who showed him God’s love.
Maybe we’re not at a point where we can give God thanks, but we should always return to Jesus. As the words to hymn 692 say:
I head the voice of Jesus say,
“Come unto me and rest;
and in your weariness
lay down your head upon my breast.”
I came to Jesus, as I was,
so weary, worn, and sad;
I found in him a resting place,
and he has made me glad.”
Come to Jesus, as you are. Find in him your resting place. He will strengthen you so you can then give thanks for who you are — a wonderfully integrated, whole, restored and beloved child of God.
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Analysis of purity codes comes from William Countryman's Dirt, Greed and Sex, Fortress Press, 1988.
Alleluia
Glorious fall afternoon
brilliant sun
Faded leaves on the ground
Pink sweatshirt
Bar Harbor
Blue jeans
Sapphire ring
Delicate fingers
Hands covered in earth
Gently scooping up the soil
placing it carefully
slowly deliberately
in a simple hole
Moving slowly
tearfully
a young woman
covers up
the simple wooden box
that contains
the ashes
of her
mother.
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Part of my afternoon today, accompanying this woman, one of those moments of intersection between an individual's life and God for which I am graced to mediate.
brilliant sun
Faded leaves on the ground
Pink sweatshirt
Bar Harbor
Blue jeans
Sapphire ring
Delicate fingers
Hands covered in earth
Gently scooping up the soil
placing it carefully
slowly deliberately
in a simple hole
Moving slowly
tearfully
a young woman
covers up
the simple wooden box
that contains
the ashes
of her
mother.
+
Part of my afternoon today, accompanying this woman, one of those moments of intersection between an individual's life and God for which I am graced to mediate.
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