Who's in? Who's out?
Commentary
Object:
Today’s readings introduce us to three groups of outcast people: the exiles in Babylon, Paul in prison, and ten lepers seeking healing. In all cases, their encounters with God transform their status from outsiders to ones who belong. Hearing these stories, we are invited to similar transformations -- in our own lives, and in the world around us.
Jeremiah 29:1, 4-7
Today’s words of Jeremiah sound comforting on first reading, but they are written in the context of competing prophetic visions. King Nebuchadnezzar has taken many of the Hebrew people into exile in Babylon. How long will this exile last? Prophets arose who predicted a short exile -- a year or two in Babylon then everyone would return to Jerusalem, they said. Jeremiah heard a different word from God. Seventy years the exiles would live in Babylon, God told him (Jeremiah 29:10), and he counseled the exiles to make the best of it. For their own self-preservation, they should attempt to live peaceably in this new land -- no fomenting of rebellions, no stirring up trouble that could bring the hand of repression down upon them. Jeremiah’s words can be imagined as a response to the beautiful and troubling Psalm 137, which begins “By the rivers of Babylon -- there we sat down and there we wept when we remembered Zion” but ends with the ruthless cry for vengeance “Happy shall they be who take your little ones and dash them against the rock!” (NRSV). Jeremiah counsels neither weeping nor vengeance, but building and planting, marrying and giving in marriage, and contributing to the common good of this new land, trusting that ultimately God will bring things right and lead the exiles home.
2 Timothy 2:8-15
Second Timothy is attributed to Paul in its opening verse, but is generally believed to have been written pseudegraphically sometime after Paul’s death. In this letter Paul offers final words to his beloved son in the faith Timothy, passing on counsel and encouragement as he waits in prison for his own trial and execution. In this farewell address, the writer urges Timothy to keep it simple. Preach the gospel; don’t get caught up in arguments and speculation, theological or otherwise. In a culture that prizes rhetoric, Timothy is counseled to let the word of God speak for itself; even though Paul may be chained, God’s word is always alive and powerful, beyond the reach of any human chains or prison. Verses 11-13 of today’s reading likely are a fragment of a hymn which begins by recalling the saving grace of baptism, as Romans 6:3-4 recounts: “Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? Therefore we have been buried with him by baptism into death so that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life.”
Luke 17:11-19
Though Jesus encountered and healed lepers throughout his ministry, this account of the healing of the ten lepers appears only in Luke. It is reminiscent of the story of Naaman, commander of the army of the King of Aram, whose healing from leprosy is appointed in Track 2 for this Sunday (2 Kings 5:1-3, 7-15c). In both 2 Kings and Luke, foreigners are healed of leprosy and come to recognize and praise the God of Israel. What is even more striking in Luke, the Jews healed of leprosy do not return to give thanks; only the Samaritan does. Perhaps the nine Jews took their healing for granted and were satisfied with fulfilling the law of Moses concerning certification by the priests that they were cured of leprosy. (See chapters 13 and 14 in Leviticus for detailed accounts of how priests were directed to assess leprosy and its cure.) It is interesting to note that all ten were cured on their way to see the priests. Whether the priests would have even seen the Samaritan, a member of a rival and maligned branch of Judaism, could be questioned. In any case the Samaritan, realizing he had been cured, turned back to Jesus give thanks, while the others went on their way, presumably to receive the official certification and perhaps to make appropriate thank offerings, as Jesus counseled a Jewish leper to do after healing him in Luke 5:12-14. It is notable that the word “well” in verse 19 has a richer and deeper meaning than simply healing of physical disease -- the Samaritan leper has already been healed of leprosy, so it is a nonsensical statement if taken at face value. The New American Bible says instead “Your faith has saved you,” while the King James Version says “Thy faith has made thee whole.” “Well” here carries aspects of both ultimate salvation and wholeness of life that extend beyond the mere physical. The other nine lepers were cleansed of their leprosy, but we do not know if they were made well in this fuller, deeper sense of wellness, as the Samaritan was.
Application
Our three readings today all encompass human suffering and the choices made in the midst of it. Jeremiah counsels the exiles in Babylon to make the best of their lot, to live faithfully, and to trust that God will ultimately save them. Paul, imprisoned and facing death, still counsels hope, faith, and fortitude to his protégé Timothy. Jesus heals ten lepers, whose suffering would not only have been physical but also mental and spiritual as outcasts from society forced to live apart from others under Jewish law. These readings also address the question of who is an outsider in God’s eyes. Though exiled from their homeland and outsiders in Babylon, the Jewish people were yet under God’s care and sight, Jeremiah promised. Paul, too, in prison, was cut off from normal human society and interaction, rejected by many of his followers (see 2 Timothy 1:15), yet confident of his life in God’s kingdom. The Samaritan leper was twice outcast, first by his leprosy, but even after healing by his membership in a scorned religion. Yet Jesus does not scorn him but commends him for his faith, shown as greater than the faith of his Jewish compatriots.
In 1915, the American poet Edwin Markham opened his book of poetry The Shoes of Happiness and Other Poems with this epigram:
Outwitted
He drew a circle that shut me out --
Heretic, rebel, a thing to flout.
But love and I had the wit to win:
We drew a circle and took him in!
A century later, this poem still resonates. It describes the divine action we see in all of today’s readings: God redrawing humanity’s circles of exclusion to include the exiled, the imprisoned, and the foreigner. It also challenges those of us who seek to live according to God’s ways to do the same.
We are in the midst of a national debate about who is in and who is out, and who should be in and should be out. Whether it is immigrants looking for safe havens or people of different gender identities looking for safe bathrooms or people of different races looking for equal treatment under the law, we are embroiled in drawing lines and circles. Though it may have become a hackneyed phrase, the question “What would Jesus do?” seems apt. Where would Jesus draw the line? Who would he include, exclude?
I have two stories of ministries that are redrawing circles near where I live. The first, common cathedral (intentionally lowercase), began 20 years ago when a white, middle-aged woman from the suburbs named Debbie Little barely squeaked through the ordination process in the Episcopal Church. She felt called -- not to a church, but to Boston Common, just beyond the steps of the Episcopal cathedral in Boston, where homeless people whiled away their days on park benches. After a year and a half walking the streets of Boston, talking with the people she met and with those who worked with the homeless community, she did something new. On Easter Sunday 1996, just across the street from the cathedral, she set up an improvised altar and celebrated the Eucharist out on the Common, inviting any who would join her to come. Sixteen people did, and more joined in to share the peanut butter and jelly sandwiches she offered after the service. From that beginning, street ministries and outdoor worship that welcome people who would never darken the door of a church (other than perhaps to sleep there) have grown not only in Boston, but around the world. Debbie Little and her successors have redrawn the circle of church to include those who are lost or outcast in the cities of our world. To learn more, www.commoncathedral.org and www.ecclesiaministriesmission.org are both rich resources.
The second ministry comes to mind in reading Jeremiah’s counsel to the exiles to plant gardens as their make their homes in a strange land. This past spring, I was privileged to visit New Lands Farm, a program developed by Ascentria (formerly Lutheran Social Services of New England) near Worcester, Massachusetts. Ascentria/LSS has worked for decades resettling refugees in New England, but in 2008 they began something new. Realizing how many refugees had been farmers in their homelands but were ill-equipped in local knowledge and physical resources to farm in New England, they began helping families who wished to farm to do so -- growing both traditional crops from their homelands and produce that they could take to local farmers’ markets. Quite literally, this program has helped new citizens put down roots and make a home in what is otherwise a strange new land. On the farms, people from different continents and countries work side by side to grow food for their families and communities. The circle drawn here, with love and creativity, is one that connects displaced people with one another and people who value and know the land (but have been cut off from it) back with the land.
Our world has more displaced people than ever before in recorded history (see, for example, http://www.unhcr.org/en-us/figures-at-a-glance.html). Refugees, for the first time, had their own team in this past summer’s Olympics. Naaman of Aram would be a resident (if he hadn’t already fled) of modern-day Syria in the region of Aleppo. The lines on the maps mean little as people do their best to care for their families and bring them to safety. These are huge challenges that can seem overwhelming, and so particular stories of welcoming the outsider, of redrawing lines, can be helpful alongside naming this truth. Depending on who fills the pews, those who preach on today’s lessons may wish to emphasize that those who are cast out can choose, despite their situation, to live faithfully with generous hearts towards all. Alternately, the message may most appropriately be that those who are on the inside can choose to redraw the lines so that insider/outsider boundaries dissolve. This is what Jesus did, and it is what he calls us to do.
Jeremiah 29:1, 4-7
Today’s words of Jeremiah sound comforting on first reading, but they are written in the context of competing prophetic visions. King Nebuchadnezzar has taken many of the Hebrew people into exile in Babylon. How long will this exile last? Prophets arose who predicted a short exile -- a year or two in Babylon then everyone would return to Jerusalem, they said. Jeremiah heard a different word from God. Seventy years the exiles would live in Babylon, God told him (Jeremiah 29:10), and he counseled the exiles to make the best of it. For their own self-preservation, they should attempt to live peaceably in this new land -- no fomenting of rebellions, no stirring up trouble that could bring the hand of repression down upon them. Jeremiah’s words can be imagined as a response to the beautiful and troubling Psalm 137, which begins “By the rivers of Babylon -- there we sat down and there we wept when we remembered Zion” but ends with the ruthless cry for vengeance “Happy shall they be who take your little ones and dash them against the rock!” (NRSV). Jeremiah counsels neither weeping nor vengeance, but building and planting, marrying and giving in marriage, and contributing to the common good of this new land, trusting that ultimately God will bring things right and lead the exiles home.
2 Timothy 2:8-15
Second Timothy is attributed to Paul in its opening verse, but is generally believed to have been written pseudegraphically sometime after Paul’s death. In this letter Paul offers final words to his beloved son in the faith Timothy, passing on counsel and encouragement as he waits in prison for his own trial and execution. In this farewell address, the writer urges Timothy to keep it simple. Preach the gospel; don’t get caught up in arguments and speculation, theological or otherwise. In a culture that prizes rhetoric, Timothy is counseled to let the word of God speak for itself; even though Paul may be chained, God’s word is always alive and powerful, beyond the reach of any human chains or prison. Verses 11-13 of today’s reading likely are a fragment of a hymn which begins by recalling the saving grace of baptism, as Romans 6:3-4 recounts: “Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? Therefore we have been buried with him by baptism into death so that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life.”
Luke 17:11-19
Though Jesus encountered and healed lepers throughout his ministry, this account of the healing of the ten lepers appears only in Luke. It is reminiscent of the story of Naaman, commander of the army of the King of Aram, whose healing from leprosy is appointed in Track 2 for this Sunday (2 Kings 5:1-3, 7-15c). In both 2 Kings and Luke, foreigners are healed of leprosy and come to recognize and praise the God of Israel. What is even more striking in Luke, the Jews healed of leprosy do not return to give thanks; only the Samaritan does. Perhaps the nine Jews took their healing for granted and were satisfied with fulfilling the law of Moses concerning certification by the priests that they were cured of leprosy. (See chapters 13 and 14 in Leviticus for detailed accounts of how priests were directed to assess leprosy and its cure.) It is interesting to note that all ten were cured on their way to see the priests. Whether the priests would have even seen the Samaritan, a member of a rival and maligned branch of Judaism, could be questioned. In any case the Samaritan, realizing he had been cured, turned back to Jesus give thanks, while the others went on their way, presumably to receive the official certification and perhaps to make appropriate thank offerings, as Jesus counseled a Jewish leper to do after healing him in Luke 5:12-14. It is notable that the word “well” in verse 19 has a richer and deeper meaning than simply healing of physical disease -- the Samaritan leper has already been healed of leprosy, so it is a nonsensical statement if taken at face value. The New American Bible says instead “Your faith has saved you,” while the King James Version says “Thy faith has made thee whole.” “Well” here carries aspects of both ultimate salvation and wholeness of life that extend beyond the mere physical. The other nine lepers were cleansed of their leprosy, but we do not know if they were made well in this fuller, deeper sense of wellness, as the Samaritan was.
Application
Our three readings today all encompass human suffering and the choices made in the midst of it. Jeremiah counsels the exiles in Babylon to make the best of their lot, to live faithfully, and to trust that God will ultimately save them. Paul, imprisoned and facing death, still counsels hope, faith, and fortitude to his protégé Timothy. Jesus heals ten lepers, whose suffering would not only have been physical but also mental and spiritual as outcasts from society forced to live apart from others under Jewish law. These readings also address the question of who is an outsider in God’s eyes. Though exiled from their homeland and outsiders in Babylon, the Jewish people were yet under God’s care and sight, Jeremiah promised. Paul, too, in prison, was cut off from normal human society and interaction, rejected by many of his followers (see 2 Timothy 1:15), yet confident of his life in God’s kingdom. The Samaritan leper was twice outcast, first by his leprosy, but even after healing by his membership in a scorned religion. Yet Jesus does not scorn him but commends him for his faith, shown as greater than the faith of his Jewish compatriots.
In 1915, the American poet Edwin Markham opened his book of poetry The Shoes of Happiness and Other Poems with this epigram:
Outwitted
He drew a circle that shut me out --
Heretic, rebel, a thing to flout.
But love and I had the wit to win:
We drew a circle and took him in!
A century later, this poem still resonates. It describes the divine action we see in all of today’s readings: God redrawing humanity’s circles of exclusion to include the exiled, the imprisoned, and the foreigner. It also challenges those of us who seek to live according to God’s ways to do the same.
We are in the midst of a national debate about who is in and who is out, and who should be in and should be out. Whether it is immigrants looking for safe havens or people of different gender identities looking for safe bathrooms or people of different races looking for equal treatment under the law, we are embroiled in drawing lines and circles. Though it may have become a hackneyed phrase, the question “What would Jesus do?” seems apt. Where would Jesus draw the line? Who would he include, exclude?
I have two stories of ministries that are redrawing circles near where I live. The first, common cathedral (intentionally lowercase), began 20 years ago when a white, middle-aged woman from the suburbs named Debbie Little barely squeaked through the ordination process in the Episcopal Church. She felt called -- not to a church, but to Boston Common, just beyond the steps of the Episcopal cathedral in Boston, where homeless people whiled away their days on park benches. After a year and a half walking the streets of Boston, talking with the people she met and with those who worked with the homeless community, she did something new. On Easter Sunday 1996, just across the street from the cathedral, she set up an improvised altar and celebrated the Eucharist out on the Common, inviting any who would join her to come. Sixteen people did, and more joined in to share the peanut butter and jelly sandwiches she offered after the service. From that beginning, street ministries and outdoor worship that welcome people who would never darken the door of a church (other than perhaps to sleep there) have grown not only in Boston, but around the world. Debbie Little and her successors have redrawn the circle of church to include those who are lost or outcast in the cities of our world. To learn more, www.commoncathedral.org and www.ecclesiaministriesmission.org are both rich resources.
The second ministry comes to mind in reading Jeremiah’s counsel to the exiles to plant gardens as their make their homes in a strange land. This past spring, I was privileged to visit New Lands Farm, a program developed by Ascentria (formerly Lutheran Social Services of New England) near Worcester, Massachusetts. Ascentria/LSS has worked for decades resettling refugees in New England, but in 2008 they began something new. Realizing how many refugees had been farmers in their homelands but were ill-equipped in local knowledge and physical resources to farm in New England, they began helping families who wished to farm to do so -- growing both traditional crops from their homelands and produce that they could take to local farmers’ markets. Quite literally, this program has helped new citizens put down roots and make a home in what is otherwise a strange new land. On the farms, people from different continents and countries work side by side to grow food for their families and communities. The circle drawn here, with love and creativity, is one that connects displaced people with one another and people who value and know the land (but have been cut off from it) back with the land.
Our world has more displaced people than ever before in recorded history (see, for example, http://www.unhcr.org/en-us/figures-at-a-glance.html). Refugees, for the first time, had their own team in this past summer’s Olympics. Naaman of Aram would be a resident (if he hadn’t already fled) of modern-day Syria in the region of Aleppo. The lines on the maps mean little as people do their best to care for their families and bring them to safety. These are huge challenges that can seem overwhelming, and so particular stories of welcoming the outsider, of redrawing lines, can be helpful alongside naming this truth. Depending on who fills the pews, those who preach on today’s lessons may wish to emphasize that those who are cast out can choose, despite their situation, to live faithfully with generous hearts towards all. Alternately, the message may most appropriately be that those who are on the inside can choose to redraw the lines so that insider/outsider boundaries dissolve. This is what Jesus did, and it is what he calls us to do.
