Sermons

Oct 14 - The Rev. Brian C. Taylor

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Oct. 14, 2007
The Rev. Brian C. Taylor
Jeremiah 29:1, 4-7; 2 Timothy 2:8-15; Luke 17:11-19

In the time of Jesus, conflict was sharp between Samaritans and other Jews. For a variety of historical reasons, the Samaritans and the traditional Jews each believed that they, and they alone, were the pure manifestation of true Judaism. (I’m sure glad that never happens between religious groups anymore.)

It was not just a theological difference between them. They hated and distrusted one another. It was not safe to travel in the Samaritan/Galilean border zone; one could get attacked, robbed.

It was like any edgy border zone we might be familiar with: the West Bank, the streets of Baghdad where Shiites and Sunnis overlap, or the hallways outside our diocesan convention.

There was another edge to this gospel scene. In Jesus’ day, people who had the disease of leprosy were considered both very contagious and spiritually unclean, and so they were permanently separated out and isolated from the rest of the community.

They lived together, venturing out to beg for alms and food, covering their faces with a cloth, shouting out Unclean! Unclean! as others drew near.

And so when Jesus took his disciples to the borderland between Samaria and Galilee and encountered a group of 10 lepers, a tense electricity must have filled the air. Anything could happen.

Arguments or fights could erupt, or one might get too close to one of the unclean; all the neat little categories of social separation might break down. In fact, they did. The two groups, lepers and disciples came together. They asked for mercy, and Jesus healed them.

The text goes out of its way to make sure that we understand that the only one who returned to give thanks was one of the scariest residents of this zone, someone who was double trouble: a Samaritan leper. The story says pointedly “And he was a Samaritan.” Then Jesus underscores it further: “Was none of them found to return and give praise to God except this foreigner?”

So Jesus dragged his Galilean Jewish disciple friends into in this no-man’s-land, this dangerous border zone, filled with tension, and exposed them to the unclean. And lo and behold, a hated Samaritan, a leper no less, became the hero of the day.

I think that the disciples’ eyes were opened. I imagine they said to one another “Hey, wait a minute; these Samaritans aren’t so bad, after all! Maybe we have more in common with this grateful leper than those self-righteous prigs back home. And what’s up with those purity laws coming down from the Temple in Jerusalem, anyway? Who do they think they are, isolating these poor people?”

Jesus was constantly blowing people’s minds by putting the wrong people together. He would allow a known sinner, an outcast, to intrude upon a proper dinner party and wash his feet with her tears. He would touch the untouchable, and even invite himself to eat at the home of a hated tax-collector, a collaborator with Rome.

Can you imagine how Jesus’ friends, his followers, initially felt about this? It would be like going to a dinner with a friend down on Central Avenue, and your friend striking up a conversation with a homeless man lying in the street, and then inviting him in to share dinner with you at Scalo’s.

Jesus called his disciples then, and he calls his disciples now, to live as if the social compartments we live in do not exist. We are all God’s children, all equal, and we need each other in community because everyone brings something into the mix. We are enriched by one another.

The political zealot in Jesus’ company needed the tax collector who collaborated with Rome; the Pharisee needed the sinner woman; the Galilean purist needed the Samaritan leper.

That’s why the current potential split between Anglicans in developed and third-world countries is so disturbing. I don’t want to lose our relationships with brothers and sisters, especially Africans, who live outside our bubble of privilege, materialism, and isolationism. We need them just as much as they need us.

We may offer to them resources they don’t have in their countries. But they remind us of our humanity, of our common bonds that link us to God’s children all over the world. They remind us of basic human values, like compassion, generosity, and simplicity, values that we are in danger of losing in the so-called “developed” world we live in.

I am, however, confident that no matter what the big guys in purple shirts decide, Anglicans from both worlds will always gather, worship, serve, and learn from one another through the many global agencies and grassroots programs that will continue to thrive.

In fact, that is one of the main pieces of the Millennium Development Goals that our church has endorsed: ground-level partnerships between the poor and the privileged. This kind of thing has a wonderful way of breaking down artificial barriers, of putting us in that border zone between Samaria and Galilee where we rub elbows with very different people.

At St. Michael’s, we have two opportunities to enter that border zone. Your clergy are investigating both, and we hope we can interest you in them during the years ahead. One near at hand; the other is in another country.

The first is a possible partnership with the little town of Rancho La Colorada, in the state of Guanajuato, Mexico. We hope to take parish groups on work trips there, and, over time, get to know them and learn about the kind of support we might be able to give them.

We might help produce and market their lavender crop, teach them English and computer skills, work in healthcare projects and whatever else we come up with. And in turn, I am sure that they will give us a sense of the wider world, and remind us of some things we tend to forget.

The other could be right here in our parish hall, in the expansion of ministries to the increasing number of immigrants in our neighborhood. We already have relationships with many of them through our Food Pantry, and we know that more and more people in the North Valley need to learn English, have access to child care, job counseling, healthcare, legal advice, and other social services.

I can envision St. Michael’s becoming a kind of community center of compassion for immigrants, a safe place for present-day lepers and Samaritans who are scorned and feared by many in our society.

But more than that, I would like to see us be more of a mixed, bicultural community in worship and fellowship and everything else we do, so that it looks more like the neighborhood in which we live. This will be a blessing to us.

In both cases, we are talking about partnerships, ongoing relationships with real people, encounters that benefit both sides. The disciples were changed when Jesus took them into those border zones where they met Samaritans and lepers, outcasts, sinners, and people that society kept apart. They learned that they all had something to offer one another, and that as children of God, they are more alike than different.

Jesus invites us, too, into border zones where we might be changed, where we rub elbows with people that society teaches us to stay separate from.

If we are to be faithful to Jesus’ way of doing things, this has nothing to do with charity. It’s not about seeing ourselves on the strong side of the power equation, as the generous and virtuous givers, separated from “the other,” the grateful and needy recipient.

It’s about being the whole Body of Christ, refusing to keep separate what was created together. It’s about then being changed by our relationships with other members of this Body.

But aside from what we might do here in this parish, I want to leave you with a few questions to ponder. Where are those border zones in your own life? Who do you consider to be Samaritans and lepers? Are you willing to follow Jesus there? Can you receive the gifts they might offer to you, and be changed?