Roger Lynn
June 16, 2019
Over and over again Jesus seemed to find himself on the receiving end of sharp criticism for the same basic offense. He was forever getting in trouble for the same thing. After awhile you’d think he would learn. But he just kept doing it. He stubbornly refused to submit to the instruction of the religious authorities of his day regarding this unseemly behavior. “Stop associating with ‘those’ kind of people,” they would say. To which his reply was simple – “‘Those’ kind of people are who need my message the most.” So Jesus just kept hanging out with the “wrong” crowd, telling them in no uncertain terms that God loved them, and so did he.
You see, in Jesus’ day there were people who made it their life’s work to define in very clear, very detailed terms what it took to be acceptable to God, and perhaps more to the point, what it took to be unacceptable to God. Some of it had to do with what you did (like eating the wrong kind of meat, or food that was prepared the wrong way, or working on the Sabbath). Some of it had to do with what happened to you (like bleeding, or coming into contact with someone who was dead). Some infractions of these ritual purity laws were temporary and involved only a certain degree of inconvenience. Other situations were more ongoing and resulted in what amounted to permanent “outcast” status. In a society where everything centers around religion, being out of favor with the established religious norm meant being cut off from anything even remotely resembling a “normal” life. And when interpreted in the strict, narrow way in which the Pharisees seemed to view these rules, it would be very difficult to be an ordinary, working person living a subsistence life and maintain ritual purity. It was an “us and them” reality written in large, bold, capital letters.
So Jesus’ choice of dinner companions, his choice of friends, his choice of disciples was a powerful faith statement. He hung out with “the wrong crowd” on purpose. There is no “us and them,” Jesus says with both his words and his actions. There is only us. If you want to talk about “sinners” you better start by recognizing that it is a very long list. We all fall short in some way or another. If we start using that as an excuse to separate ourselves from each other and judge other’s status in God’s eyes, it can only end badly for everyone. The sooner we stop pretending it is otherwise, the happier everyone will be.
And then, just to make sure we get the point, Matthew gives us two stories which dramatically illustrate this understanding of the world. In this story within a story, it is both the contrasts and the similarities which make such a profound statement. First of all, the subject of both stories are female – second-class citizens in the patriarchal society of that day. The first, the daughter of the religious leader, would presumably have been ritually pure, but the fact that she is dead meant that Jesus would have made himself ritually unclean by touching the corpse. The second woman was, for all intents and purposes, an outcast. Her bleeding condition would have rendered her perpetually unclean, and by touching Jesus she brought that condition on him as well. An interesting feature of the “story within a story” is the order in which the events occur. Jesus interrupts his journey to the religious leader’s home (read here “the socially acceptable character”) to deal with the woman who was bleeding (read here “the socially unacceptable character”). He makes no distinctions – right crowd / wrong crowd, male / female, rich / poor, righteous / sinner. Such distinctions are beside the point. Such distinctions are beyond the point. What Jesus sees, what God sees, is simply our need for healing and restoration. What Jesus desires, what God desires, is simply our wholeness. There is no such thing as “us and them.” There is only “us” and we are all in need of healing.
Ann Weems puts it this way in her poem “God’s Holy People”:
Here we are, you & I,
called to be God’s Holy People.
You say you’re not the holy type,
but I’m not talking about holier-than-thou.
I’m not talking about religious ritual,
and the last thing I mean is self-righteous!
Jesus chastised the self-righteous,
the ones who spent their days doing religious things,
the ones who spent so much time in religious ritual
that they didn’t have time for tenderheartedness.
I’m not talking about them;
I’m talking about us.
I’m talking about paying attention
to the things Jesus taught people,
ordinary people, people like you, people like me . . .
Look at the disciples: ordinary people
called to follow,
called to be God’s Holy People,
called to live in this world with tender hearts.
Live holy lives . . . impossible?
Is anything impossible to God?
That old woman Sarah thought it impossible
to have a child . . .
The lepers thought it impossible
to be healed . . .
The disciples thought it impossible
to feed five thousand with two loaves and
five fishes . . .
Mary & Martha thought it impossible
that their brother Lazarus was alive . . .
The lame thought it impossible to walk . . .
The blind thought it impossible to see . . .
Here we are, ordinary people,
called to be the Holy People of God.
If you have eyes to see and ears to hear,
see and hear God’s holiness in your life.
We are called to follow Jesus, to hang out with the “wrong” crowd, to declare with our words and our actions that there is, in fact, no such thing as “us and them.” May God bring healing to our brokenness so that we can bring healing to the brokenness of the world. What are we waiting for? Let us begin now.
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