The former biblical scholar, Patricia Sanchez, told this story in her commentary for Celebration magazine three years ago. It involves children on their way to school in Johannesburg not long after the ending of apartheid in 1994. They had known segregation all their lives and now the rules had abruptly changed. Changes in mindset and social patterns though take time. As they rode the bus to school an argument broke out about who was supposed to sit where. One student said, “blacks in back; whites in front.” That led to a huge quarrel that began to rage through the bus. At the next stop the driver pulled over and stopped the bus. He got up and faced the group. “There are new rules in place,” he told them. “There is no more black and white, no more segregation. We are, all of us, experiencing a new beginning. We are all green with new life.” With that he returned to his seat. Before starting the engine a small voice behind him piped up and said, “Dark green in back, light green up front.”
Prejudice dies hard. And when the rules of engagement change there is often a backlash. Waves of resentment about lost privilege are unexpectedly released and, sooner or later, they catch up with the change agents. We see this happening all around as once marginalized voices find the courage to tell their stories and begin to show up at the table. We see it as displaced cultures turn up at our door needing food, shelter, and medical care. We see it in the backlash against Pope Francis by some bishops, cardinals and powerfully connected groups and individuals calling him a heretic. Inevitably the people classified as ‘outsiders,’ by whatever dominant culture, are met with anger, hatred, arrogant dismissal and, often, violence.
In today’s Gospel Jesus is on his way to Jerusalem when he meets those ten lepers. He is seen as an outsider and a threat by religious authorities. He is known for eating with the slime balls of society—the tax collectors, the sinners—and for healing untouchables like these lepers, also outsiders. He is breaking strict rules of engagement, disregarding sacred taboos! Luke showcases the encounter with a Samaritan leper and draws our attention to that very issue of ‘insider’/’outsider.’ Jesus seems to say that it’s ‘faith,’ not tradition or ritual, not laws or social norms, not where we worship or who we know, that liberates us in the end. Faith dissolves those barriers.
It didn’t matter to the Samaritan that Jesus was a Jew nor did it matter to Jesus that his own people despised the Samaritans. Ancient history and differing beliefs were not a reason to avoid one another or to hate. Faith is different from mere systems of belief. Faith goes to the core of what it means to be embedded in a Reality beyond anything we can ever fully know, but which is the Source and Substance of all that we are. At that level of truth no one is or ever can be separate from the very Being-ness of existence. And when you see it that way, as Jesus did, then no one can be an outsider.
The nine lepers who didn’t return to thank Jesus followed his directions and went to show themselves to the priests. That was the established gate leading back to the heart of community. Returning to their family, former lives and livelihood, and regaining their position in society and their status as insiders was probably everything they’d hoped for months or years. For them this healing experience was a doorway that led them home, in a very basic, human, ordinary sense. It gave them a pass to re-enter their lives. I imagine they had learned many things walking in the world outside community, forced to announce themselves as “unclean” if anyone drew near. Hopefully they would have developed a deep sense of compassion for anyone their culture considered an outsider. Perhaps they even became catalysts for an attitude change within their families if not in the larger society. There are reasons why the ‘wounded healer’ is such a powerful figure. Real healing goes deep. It permeates the psyche at the same time it brings the body back into balance. It mends tears in the fabric, knits together the fragmented cells. As this is true in our physical body, it is also true in the body politic, in society as a whole.
The bowed figure of the Samaritan kneeling in gratitude at the feet of the Jesus is an image of faith as well as an image of Oneness that dissolves divisions. It calls to mind a re-knitting of torn ligaments, a re-uniting of fragmented cells. It is an image suggesting what deep healing looks like. It is an icon of humility and also an icon of unity. Sit before it and you are invited into the heart of God, a God whose nature is all-inclusive, and who tirelessly draws us deeper into that same wholeness Jesus experienced, demonstrated and invited the disciples to witness. He crossed those divides in his culture and continues to ask his followers to do the same. It isn’t an easy road. Jesus knew this. The Jewish hatred of Samaritans was more than eight centuries old by the time Jesus came on the scene. The prophet Jeremiah had proclaimed that God sent their nation away with a decree of divorce (Jeremiah 3:8) due to their infidelity.
And here is Jesus upholding the faith of this Samaritan, telling him his faith has “saved” him. The historic prejudice against Samaritans and everyone seen as outside the covenant or outside the group needed, both then and now, to reach an end.
So let’s return to that image of the grateful Samaritan bowing at the feet of Jesus. There is our truth. There are no ‘outsiders’ or ‘insiders.’ There is only ‘us’.
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