Learning from the Margin
Sermon by: Rev. Mary Alice Mulligan, Ph.D.
Scripture: Luke 17:11-19
For weeks, we have been on a journey with Jesus and his closest followers as they moved toward Jerusalem. We took a break last Sunday and visited the first chapter of the Gospel of John, to help us think through Hurricane Ian. But today, we return to Luke, still accompanying Jesus as he heads toward Jerusalem, pushing his followers deeper into discipleship and turning society’s rules upside down. But remember, Luke is not offering us a travelogue, picturing the countryside Jesus passed through. Luke is showing us Jesus’ teachings: his theology and ethics, helping us learn the radical lessons of living out the unconditional love of God for the whole earth. The story of Jesus’ healing the ten lepers and the one who came back in gratitude to worship, is a parable in motion – an enacted parable.
Notice how Luke sets up the scene. Jesus is traveling between Samaria and Galilee. The people with leprosy live between clean society and the wilderness, between power and powerlessness. And as Jesus sends the 10 off to the priest, they are between sickness and health, between clean and unclean, between Jesus and the priest, because although Jesus is healing them, only the priest can declare the people cured. At first, all 10 obey Jesus; but then one disobeys and returns to worship. Stop and read the passage: Luke 17:11-19.
Anyone can notice. Borderlands are all around us. People considered “outsiders” are everywhere. How often do we hear people say someone just “fell between the cracks”? But if we stop to look in the cracks people fall between, those almost invisible places are full of real people with names and lives. Like the 10 people with leprosy who approached Jesus (but not too close) traveling the border between Samaria and Galilee, between clean and unclean, between illness and health. Curiously, all the barriers among those 10 people had come down, because they were relegated to Nowhere by their disease. So Jews and Gentiles, probably male and female, regardless of age or previous social status, were all marginalized, thrown together, calling out for mercy. Imagine how many people made sure to keep a safe distance from “the lepers” (not even thinking of them as people with leprosy, but just “lepers”) every day? Dozens walking on the other side of the street to avoid them, never going near the place where they slept or foraged for sustenance? They were essentially non-people, invisible.
But of course, we know such folk did not die out in the first century. A bookmark from the 1990’s reminded us: “1 in 8 children in the United States is hungry.” Crushingly, that is now 1 in 5. In the United States, 1 out of every 5 children lives knowing there will not be enough to eat today. But when these children fall between the cracks, they don’t disappear. They are real people.
Pew Research estimates there are about 3.4 million people in the United States who are Muslim, or about 1 out of every 100 people. We pass them in the grocery store, on the highway, playing in the park, attending a concert. Yet most of them live invisibly, at least to us. They may carefully watch themselves to make sure they don’t upset anyone, but we mostly don’t even see them, even though they are as fully citizens as any of us. They work, pay taxes, register to vote, cheer for the local sports teams, and donate money for hurricane relief. They are people, with whole lives. If we pay attention we will notice, there are marginalized outsiders all around us.
But here’s an important reminder. Jesus exists along borders. We might use that modern phrase. Jesus lives between the cracks of society, the vague areas between firm realities. His attention is most often drawn to people living in almost invisible spaces, hidden at the edges of society. How often he is depicted interacting with the socially isolated outsiders, society’s rejects. To emphasize Jesus’ habit of focusing on the margins, Luke shows us Jesus’ traveling through the borderland between Samaria and Galilee, an area between the half-breed, despised Samaritans and the backwater, socially unacceptable folk of Galilee.
Of course, we have to remember Jesus himself was no celebrity superstar. His parents were not fully married when his mother got pregnant, so he was born into a questionable borderland between legitimacy and illegitimacy. Ancient Jewish scripture directs a new mother to bring a year-old lamb to the priest as a burnt offering and a pigeon or dove for a sin offering, unless she is poor. Then she may bring two doves or two pigeons – one for a burnt offering and one for a sin offering. And Jesus’ mother? Luke tells us, his parents brought a pair of turtledoves, indicating they were too poor to afford the required lamb. They brought the offering poor people were allowed to substitute. (Luke 2:24) That’s important for us to remember. Jesus doesn’t just choose to mingle with poor people as an adult; he was born into poverty; took on underprivileged flesh among the socially insignificant. The Bible says the holy family then became refugees; fleeing to Egypt to protect their infant son from slaughter. When they finally returned, it was to Galilee, known as a borderland. “Galilee of the Gentiles” Matthew (4:15) calls it, where Jews lived side by side with Syrians, Arabians, Asians, Greeks. All manner of Gentiles. So Jesus himself would have been considered an outsider in proper Jewish society. No wonder he is so often found at the margins; he probably feels most at home there. Jesus spends most of his time in the borderlands.
Which means for us, that faith is best discovered in borderlands. We can get to know God at the margins. Look. We don’t have to be biblical scholars to understand that the person who came back to thank Jesus for the healing was really an outcast. He had leprosy, a permanent condition, separating a person from family, isolating one from social gatherings. Most shaming, the person with leprosy had to call out to others to get away – “unclean, unclean.” Like being required to yell “poison. I’m poison!” as you walk down the street. And he was a Samaritan. Double ugh! A sick, disgusting, dirty foreigner. Yet only he shows what true gratitude looks like. He demonstrates how, when God rescues us, we appropriately respond with worship. Luke uses three Greek words meaning worship. The Samaritan praises God, falls on his face in worship, and offers divine thanks. A great lesson from an outcast.
If we pay attention, we can learn other lessons, from people tossed into the margins. Various church groups travel the desert border between Mexico and the US at night, calling out, “We are from the church and have life-saving water and medical supplies!” to aid those who are crossing into the US. Often the migrants run away because the border patrol and vigilante groups call out the same things. One night, a church group heard people running away, so one of them called out the usual Spanish phrase: “We have water and supplies.” Immediately the running away stopped and the people from Mexico returned, because the gringo’s Spanish wasn’t quite right. The migrants came up saying, “We don’t have much food or water, but what we do have, we’ll share with you.” The refugees misunderstood the offer of assistance as a cry for help. They thought he said, “We need water,” so they returned, willing to share what meager resources they had with those they thought needed help. Isn’t such self-giving exactly what Jesus tries to teach us? When our eyes are open and we unstop our ears, outsiders can teach us amazing faith lessons.
Jesus is an outsider. The Samaritan and the Mexican refugees were outsiders, and they seem to know the most about how God expects us to live together in the world. Hmmmm.