In the past weeks, we have all been reminded of how fragile our social safety is. For many, this was a shock, but, for many others in our world, this news was status quo. Yet it takes something like a driver running over innocent people during tourist season, a bomb going off at a concert with thousands of young people in attendance, a shooting of congressional leaders at a baseball field, and a fire in a high-rise apartment building to remind us, as a nation and a global community, that there is so much to be done when the goal is safety and peace.
It was a great moment when Congressman Paul Ryan proclaimed, “An attack on one of us is an attack on all of us.” As a Wisconsin native, I felt particularly proud. Yet I continue to be concerned about how limited his understanding of all is. I am not sure his all is all inclusive. When we speak of all are we speaking of the limited all of just congress? Or, are we also talking about the neighborhoods that surround the fated ball field, those neighborhoods where shootings are common place? And, does that all extend to Albany, Milwaukee, Chicago, Detroit, Syria and Yemen, the Holy Lands, Iraq and Iran, and the Ukraine, to mention just a few?
When we hear our president say, “We can all agree that we are blessed to be Americans, that our children deserve to grow up in a nation of safety and peace”, do we really believe that these words are for all of our children? Or, are these words a soporific panacea for the masses?
When we hear and see with horror, the reports coming from around the world of death by car, bomb, shooting, and fire, do we compartmentalize those events to something sad that happened to others or do we recognize that they happened to all of us? Are we reminded that we need to continue to work for peace among the nations and throughout the world? Yes, Paul Ryan was right; his words of counsel were helpful and right when he said, “Let’s just slow down and reflect, to think about how we are all being tested right now because we are being tested right now.”
Churches around the world today are reading and preaching the verses we just heard from chapters nine and ten in the Gospel of Matthew. Within this text is an intriguing and challenging statement Jesus makes in a world that also wanted safety and peace. He tells his disciples to go out among the lost sheep of Israel and “proclaim the good news, ‘the kingdom of heaven has come near.’ Cure the sick, raise the dead, cleanse the lepers, cast out demons.” (Matt. 10:7-8a, NRSV) I assert that this commissioning is not beyond the capabilities of Jesus’ followers then or now.
Let’s take a look at each commission.
Cure the sick. How are we able to cure the sick when millions do not have adequate health care, when access to physicians is limited by whether or not one can pay?
Raise the dead. How can we even begin to raise the dead when we, as a society, are more concerned about a legal system that gives preference to a privileged few at the expense of the impoverished dead; when we are unwilling to address the systemic laws and policies that have been instituted in order to bury them?
Cleanse the lepers. How can we address the issues of the unclean when we are unwilling to be in conversation with those who suffer from real and metaphoric skin diseases and rashes to learn the circumstances of their hate and alienation?
Cast out demons. How can we even begin this task when we seem to be celebrating and feeding, even worshipping, the demons of our world?
This may be where we need to begin. Each day we name our demons in the news, but little seems to be done when it comes to casting them out. We have the demon of hate and polarization; the demon of character assassination; the demon of self-interest; the demon of greed; the demon of racism, sexism, ethnocentrism, hedonism, and privileged self-righteousness. One of our greatest demons seems to be that damned aisle. I mean that literally, that damned aisle, dividing Republicans from Democrats. With so much energy being spent on personal aggrandizement, why would we want to change?
Well, we might want to start changing because of the level of violence arising in our nation. We might want to change because of the increased anxiety we are feeling as a society. We might want to change because we do not recognize ourselves anymore when we look into our domestic and foreign mirrors. Over the course of years, we have become a suspicious and suspect nation testing the limits of the constitution that binds us all together.
Yes, getting rid of the demons may be the place to start because, with the demons put aside, we can focus on the work of the other three tasks we’ve been commissioned to do. With doctors and nurses, pharmacists and scientists, curing the sick and cleansing the lepers seems possible, but what about raising the dead? Was Jesus serious?
A few years ago, I read an article in the Theological Dictionary of the New Testament concerning the poor. It included this amazing nugget: the poor were just one segment of the society in the first century who were declared socially dead, shunned, that is, beyond the concern of the ruling class. It also said, for the purposes of the privileged, other groups of people, including the many beggars, were shunned and declared dead.
As I have studied Scripture, I have learned how large this catalog of “the dead” is. It included and continues to include the deaf, the lame, the blind, the maimed, the widow, the orphan, the stranger, and the poor. In our world today, we can also add to the catalog the mentally ill, various ethnic groups, and the LGBTQ communities.
Certainly, there is a crisis in our world today that tests the very fabric of our society. As we wrestle with health care and our national budget, with equitable distribution of goods and services, the conversation seems to center on worthiness. After all, we really want those who receive the benefits of our great “America First” society to be worthy of the largesse we give, right? You wouldn’t want the benefits to go to worthless dead people, would you?
Paul Ryan is right, this is a time of testing, and the people of our nation and the people of the world are watching and waiting to see what it is that we, the people of the United States, will do in the coming days to cast out the demons of division and find a way to provide adequate health care for all of our people; to address not only the symptoms of poverty, homelessness, and violence in our nation, but also the causes instituted by systemic practices; and cleanse the leprous rhetoric of hate and isolation.
These latest shootings, in Virginia and San Francisco, are incidents that are too often repeated. The New Town Action Alliance said, “Approximately one-half million Americans have been killed or injured by guns since Sandy Hook [the elementary school shooting where twenty 6- and 7-year-olds were shot December 14, 2012]. Thoughts and prayers are not enough.”
I do not know who to thank for the following comment, but a person interviewed this week said, “Prayers are nice, but it is time to do more than pray.” There have been many comments about prayer and praying recently. Many have asked for God’s blessing and healing for so many. These comments belie a confidence in God’s ability to continue to act in our history, to enter into our lives, and to make a difference. Into this mix of social access to the benefits of our culture, the commissioning words from Jesus—cure, raise, cleanse, cast out—seem incredibly poignant. If we are so willing to call on God to ask for God’s action, then why do we not listen to the commissioning words Christ speaks? What is preventing us from acting? Do we believe that these tasks are beyond our abilities? Or, are we just afraid to try?
A friend once said to me, “God never gives us more than we can handle, but the Holy Spirit really pushes our comfort zone.” Well the comfort zone is quickly vanishing, and it is time for all of us to find places for reconciliation because the violence has to stop. We need to insist that Bernie Sanders’ words are heard. “Violence of any kind is unacceptable in our society, and I condemn this action in the strongest possible terms.” These words and the actions necessary to support them are important for us all.
In the coming days, let us hear the cries of Hagar for her child, Ishmael, and remember the healing, life-giving waters of her tears. Let us remember the wrestling match with God that changed the name and identity of a people, that Israel means the one who wrestles with God. Let us remember that God came in the midst of slavery and led his people out into the wilderness to a new land and into a new covenantal relationship that sustained us for years and led us into a relationship with God’s-self revealed to us in the person of Jesus Christ. Therefore let us remember the one who died for us and is raised up from the dead also lived a ministry of resurrection and commissioned us to be part of that ministry.
Let us lift up the words of our President and hold him and our Congress accountable to them: “We are strongest when we are unified and when we work together for the common good.” In St. Paul’s language we hear, “Now I appeal to you, brothers and sisters, by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that all of you be in agreement and that there be no divisions among you, but that you be united in the same mind and the same purpose.” (1 Cor. 1:10) Let us be reminded that, in the new resurrection life, “there is no longer Greek and Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave and free; but Christ is all and in all!” (Col. 3:11)
Let us remember that all who share in the common good are common people seeking basic solutions for basic needs. Let us find ways to lift the common people up into new ways of living together—ways that say, in word and deed, every person, all in our society, is valued and that we, all, can walk together knowing the benefits of this great nation. Let us allow and invite the wealthiest part of our society to share their gifts of great abundance with those who have not known that bounty. Let us cure the sick, raise the dead, cleanse the lepers, and cast out demons.
Let us remember the all in these statements when we hear the words Christ speaks as he offers the cup to his disciples and us, “This is the cup of the new covenant in my blood, shed for you and for ALL people for the forgiveness of sin. Do this for the remembrance of me.” And then, when we have remembered our oneness, our all in the body of Christ, our hope for the common good, let us clamber into that damned dividing aisle between us and claim it as Isaiah’s holy highway where all walk together in safety, where no one can get lost, and walk together with one another from the altar fellowship of Christ’s table into Christ’s resurrection world. We have received the blessings of God without payment. Let us also be generous with what we have been given. Let all really mean ALL.
Now may the peace of Christ that surpasses all understanding guard and keep us all in Christ Jesus.
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