Emily Schaming
I have recently become an avid subscriber to CBC's collection of podcasts. These are recordings of many of their radio shows which are available online. I like being able to choose the shows that look interesting, or ones that I missed parts of while listening in the car. Recently I listened to a documentary podcast about homelessness in Los Angeles. According to this documentary, the homeless of Los Angeles are in a different situation from most of those in other large North American cities. Because people drive everywhere in L.A., there is a huge network of freeways that allows drivers to only come into contact with people they choose to see as they drive from one home or restaurant in the city to another.
This car-centric lifestyle means that panhandling is not a popular pursuit in L.A., so many of the city's homeless simply move to an area known as Skid Row, where over 10 000 people live in tents and makeshift housing. Many L.A. residents scarcely even know that Skid Row exists.
But there are some people who do know about Skid Row, people who come to bring food or comfort. There is a priest who has been going there to visit people every morning for over twenty years. Another group is made up of Christian missionaries from Korea. They come to Skid Row each morning with boxes of donuts that they give to the homeless there. The only catch is that one must listen to them sing a hymn in Korean before receiving a donut. This produced quite the cacophony on the radio report, with the enthusiastic Korean singing blending with people fighting over the jelly donuts in the background. It seems like a strange, somewhat uncomfortable juxtaposition, the squalor, the unfamiliar songs and the donuts.
Perhaps it always feels strange and uncomfortable on the margins, because we know that something is wrong. Something is wrong when people are living like abandoned animals on the streets of our prosperous cities. There is an unrest knowing that we have somehow failed one another as people. Certainly the Israelites in this morning's reading felt that unrest in their exile to a foreign country. Certainly the men suffering from leprosy, forced to beg at the city gates for food and clothing did not feel that all was right in the world.
Mother Teresa said that, "the biggest disease today is not leprosy or tuberculosis but the feeling of being unwanted." This feeling of disconnection, of isolation and marginalization is not new to humankind but it certainly seems to be widespread in our society. Jesus knew this and he chose to join the people on the margins.
Living on the Margins
What does it mean to be living on the margins? In the Bible it seems to mean that there is no place that we can call home. That exile and rejection are a part of life. According to the Agence France news service there were about 13.9 million refugees in the world in 2006. Millions of people in the world have no place to call home.
Jesus knew how to live with those on the margins. Jesus did not give out songs and donuts. He knew that even if the structures that gave our lives meaning and purpose have been destroyed it doesn't mean we have to self-destruct. He knew that the day would come when exile would end, when we could be found again by the love and comfort of a home with God.
How can we be comfortable there? It may not be where we intended to end up, or perhaps we feel silly and out of place with people we would not usually spend time with. In his book, My People is the Enemy William Stringfellow describes moving into Harlem in the 1950's to minister at a church there. He quickly realized that this was not a place he naturally would fit as a middle class white person. But he lived there anyway, and began to make friends. One Harlem native who became his friend observed that he shined his shoes every day, which was not a common practice in the neighbourhood, but a habit he had picked up serving in the army. The man said he appreciated that Stringfellow had not attempted to change in order to fit into his new environment. As Stringfellow put it, "…as I heard him, to be a person in Harlem, in order that my life and work there should have integrity, I had to be and remain whoever I had become as a person before coming there. To be accepted by others, I must first of all know myself and accept myself and be myself wherever I happen to be. In that way, others are also freed to be themselves."
Living Inside the Box
Sometimes we do not feel comfortable with just being ourselves. Don't we need to spend time exploring and discovering who we are? Of course… but in our society every moment of life seems so full of choice- there is always a chance to shop around. We are constantly presented with seemingly new, better and different options of how to live. I had a minor meltdown on a recent Friday evening grocery store trip to buy laundry detergent. You would think that this would be an easy task, but when confronted with five different sizes of bottles and boxes with names like Apple Mango Tango Passion and Lemon Verbena Twist I wondered if I had wandered back into the produce section when all I was looking for was some soap to clean my clothes. When something as simple as doing laundry has become a lifestyle choice, we can see how widespread this issue of individual freedom has become. We move around on personal whims hoping to find "better" houses in "better" areas looking for "better" schools or parks or shopping centres. I am certainly guilty of having a ‘moving bug', as this is the first year in the last eight that I have not moved, and I wasn't even having problems in the places I moved from! It seems easy to leave an area just because it does not suit our image or the way we like to see ourselves.
Stan Wilson tells of this tendency on the Christian Century web log. He says, "Members of our church were studying the Hebrew word shalom one night when someone asked: "Where are the places in our community that seemed to be governed by fear, division, doubt and death?"
"That's easy," said another member. "It's happening in my neighborhood. We're afraid of the people who are moving here. I tried to get some of my old neighbors to make bread for a new neighbor, and they all refused. There was a day when we made bread for every new neighbor."
A long and important silence followed because we realized that our members had been among the first to move out of that neighborhood.
Our church began as a mission to these neighborhoods, but we've left them behind for newer houses, larger bathrooms and higher ceilings. Finally someone said, "Maybe it's time for us to start moving back into the neighborhood."
Even when the Israelites are forced into a difficult new living situation, God does not tell them to move on. Instead they are told, "Build houses and live in them; plant gardens and eat what they produce. Take wives and have sons and daughters; take wives for your sons, and give your daughters in marriage, that they may bear sons and daughters; multiply there, and do not decrease. But seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the Lord on its behalf, for in its welfare you will find your welfare." How can we seek the peace of any place that we are constantly trying to leave? We need to be committed to our communities, God tells us, committed enough to plant gardens, have children and pray for the welfare of our neighbours.
One commentary I read on this passage said that Jeremiah was telling the exiles to move beyond their comfort zones. But in many ways I believe God was saying that we should move within our comfort zones. God was saying that we should take time to love those who are closest to us, to care for our neighbours, wherever we find ourselves, because their welfare is our welfare. American writer Kurt Vonnegut once asked the question "What should young people do with their lives today?" His response was, "Many things, obviously. But the most daring thing is to create stable communities in which the terrible disease of loneliness can be cured." Creating a community is an act of daring. Strangers do not need to remain strangers. When I looked up the word "stranger" one of its synonyms was "guest". And there is a Swahili proverb that says, "treat your guest as a guest for two days; on the third day, give him a hoe." In other words, we can move quickly from being strangers, to being guests, to being a working part of a community.
Shalom in the Home
In the story of the lepers from today's gospel lesson, all of the lepers are cured of their skin condition, but only the one who returns to thank Jesus is healed. The Greek word used for healing is connected to the Hebrew concept of shalom, which is a word sometimes translated as peace, can be connected with this word for healing. When people experience shalom it means that they are at peace with their neighbours, their world, with God, and with themselves. This is the kind of healing that the tenth leper experienced.
There is nothing easier than exclusion. It gave me real pause when I realized while reading about leprosy that the eczema I have had since childhood would mean that I would likely have been placed in a leper colony in Jesus' time. But does living in a leper colony make someone less human? Only if we who are outside it decide that it does. We can decide that we want shalom for our communities, that we want to give people the gifts of our time and presence. If we commit to this kind of peace in our lives, times of exile will not be our end, but rather a chance to renew relationships and love.
In the movie Chocolat, a woman named Vianne moves to a small town in France that has been kept ‘clean' by the Compte de Reynaud and his family for many years. He is in control of the whole town, even writing sermons for the young priest. He is meticulous in particular about observing Lenten fasting. But then Vianne and her daughter move to town and open a chocolate shop- during Lent! She then proceeds to scandalize the Compte by feeding the townspeople chocolate and good company and making friends with the "river rats" who live on boats outside town. There is a bit of a battle between the ‘clean' forces and the ‘unclean'. Before long it becomes evident that those who are considered unclean are living a life full of goodness.
After his encounters with Vianne, the priest decides to write his own Easter sermon that reflects the changes that have occurred in the small town. He says, "I want to talk about Christ's humanity, I mean how he lived his life on earth; his kindness, his tolerance. We must measure our goodness not by what we don't do, what we deny ourselves, what we resist or who we exclude. Instead we should measure ourselves by what we embrace, what we create and who we include."
God tells us we should "…[S]eek the welfare of the city where I have sent you…and pray to the Lord on its behalf, for in its welfare you will find your welfare."
God has blessed us with a community in which people love and care for one another. So let us pray for our neighbours, here or wherever God sends us. Let us pray for the places where we spend our time and the people with whom we live. And above all let us see our world as Jesus saw it, through the eyes of those who live on the margins, longing for love and inclusion.
And we are called to the margins if we want to live with Jesus. The Samaritan, not being welcome into the temple, even if he was cleansed of his leprosy comes to Jesus immediately to give thanks. And Jesus not only gives this man praise, but true healing. Jesus heals and cleanses us, declares us worthy to stand at the centre but always calls us back to the margins. It's where he is after all.
All quotations of Scripture, unless otherwise noted, are from the New Revised Standard Version.