Lectio
Divina:*
Meditatio:
‘Get up and go on your way; your faith has made you well.’
(Luke 17:19)
Commentary (1,113 words):
Hanging out with the other side
One day Jesus was skirting the borders of Samaria and Galilee. This was troublesome territory on the borders between two very similar but ethnically, religiously and politically hostile communities. It was as if Jesus – a Jew and a Galilean - were walking up the Garvaghy Road in Portadown Northern Ireland or along the international frontier at Aughnacloy some miles to the West! Or, perhaps on the border of some area in Dublin or Colchester where political elements erect flags to claim territory and keep the others out. I strongly suspect that were Jesus, a brown-skinned Palestinian Jew, to walk by some of these man-made frontiers he would not be recognised and might very well be subjected to abuse or rejection.
We humans, like to mark out our territories, our identities
and our values. Boundaries offer security, clarity and a sense of place
when anxieties and lack of familiarity with the ‘Others’ press in upon us. Along
major dual carriageways around Dublin and Cork road barriers mark out diverse
social communities by virtue of income, wealth, employment and status. As
is widely known, migrant ethnicity and migrant status is often negatively correlated with concentrations of wealth and
status in the labour market.
All societies, tribes and in-groups know how to include and
to exclude and we see this more than ever with the rise of a raucous, bigoted
and introverted version of nationalism that seeks to weaponise the issue of
migration against migrants and other outcasts by virtue of their gender,
ethnicity or political views. If we
think that what happened in Germany in the 1930s and is happening today in the
United States of America could not happen in dear old Ireland we are sadly
deluded.
What is the point of this story about Jesus walking the
border where a group of lepers approach him and yet kept their distance?
In the first place, Jesus was not supposed to be hanging around people like these
and in places like that. In the second place it appears that among the lepers
were people from ‘the other side’. Yet again we see and hear Jesus going beyond
the boundaries of acceptable religious custom and regulation. As might be heard
in respectable ecclesiastical, administrative or political circles today, Jesus
was a ‘troublesome sort’. Recently, a pilgrim group of LGBT+ persons visited St
Peter’s in Rome after which there were was an outcry and outrage on the
extremist fringes of Catholic commentary.
That this happened tells us more about the commentators and their choice
of topics about which to become outraged at this time.
A troublesome sort
Being regarded as ‘troublesome’ did not stop Jesus from
reaching out to the stranger and the outcast. Yet, one is struck time and time
again in the gospels, including that of Luke which was probably written for the
new gentile Christians of the 80’s in the first century, that Jesus very much
sticks with custom and tradition when the occasion demanded it. Hence, he
follows the counsel of Leviticus
14:1-9 in saying to the lepers to ‘go and show yourselves to the
priests’ (v. 14).
We may note that the lepers followed this advice instantly
even though they had leprosy. It was in going along in trust that the healing
happened. The lepers had to make that move first in response to the call and
grace of Jesus. First, there was a call of despair (‘Jesus, Master, have mercy
on us’ in v. 13) followed by a brief exchange in which Jesus bids them to show
themselves to the priests. Then came the miracle ‘as they went’. We might add
‘as they went in trust and faith’. Nine of them continued on their way while
one turned back to say thanks (translated from the Greek word eucharistōn).
This was more than a mere courtesy. The ‘so what’ of this story was the way
in which a ‘foreigner’ and a leper at that was filled with praise and
thanksgiving for God who had worked in and through Jesus. An echo of this episode is found in today’s
first reading from the second book of Kings. A foreign leper, Naaman,
visits the Israelite prophet Elisha and discovers deep healing and
transformation when he bathes in the river Jordan. Luke seizes the moment to
make an important theological point: healing and salvation are for everyone –
everyone. The grateful Samaritan leper took it upon himself to prostrate
himself at the feet of Jesus and thank him. Later on, others would find
themselves prostrated at the foot of the cross where the feet of Jesus were
raised above them on high. ‘Truly this man was the son
of God’ as actor of John Wayne in The Greatest Story Ever Told once
said in quotation of the Roman centurion in the gospels!
In Luke, we find a special place for prayer in the life of
Jesus and of his disciples. The prayer of the lepers is what, today, is called
the ‘Jesus prayer’. The Jesus prayer – ‘Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have
mercy on me, a sinner’ is on the lips of many outcasts, excluded and sick
persons. In the times and culture of Jesus, sickness was sometimes understood
to be a sign of sinfulness (if not on the part of the sick person then on the
part of someone else from whom the sickness was inherited or deserved as the
thinking went). How fitting that a simple and powerful prayer such as the
‘Jesus prayer’ so popular among Christians in the East, today, was first
composed by the excluded including, in this story, the marginal and outcast
‘stateless’ persons in a wilderness beside a border somewhere.
In the saying ‘Get up and go on your way; your faith has
made you well’ we are encouraged to rise from our worries and lows and be ‘on
our way’ – a way that is unique to each of us who is called. It is faith
and trust that make this possible and we are the better for it.
Many are those from diverse backgrounds and conditions of
life entering the kingdom of heaven today with hearts of praise and
thanksgiving. We do well to make a list of 10 things to be genuinely thankful
for every day before breakfast starting with ‘I am alive’ and hopefully we can
say ‘I am healthy’, etc., etc.
Two words
Might we find ourselves just some of the time as types of
‘inside-out lepers’ – all squeaky and shiny on the outside but all wounded and
deeply hurt on the inside and excluded from the normal society of normal
persons and far from God – so it would seem? This is a time of healing when
Jesus sees us from what seems afar. At this time two words suffice: ‘Jesus
Mercy’. A glance, a breath, a pause and go on our way. It is enough…
Oratio
(Collect of the Word for this Sunday - Church of Ireland)
O God, you have made heaven and earth and all that is good: help us to delight in simple things and to rejoice always in the richness of your bounty; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, for ever and ever.
These readings are taken from the Sunday lectionary used in most Catholic churches. The source is BibleGateway.com: A searchable online Bible in over 150 versions and 50 languages (using the New Revised Standard Version - anglicised catholic edition). Psalms in this Blog are numbered according to the Hebrew (Masoretic) text with the Greek Septuagint/Vulgate numbering in parenthesis where applicable.
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