As I spent time pouring through this week’s lectionary readings, I couldn’t remove one thought from my mind. God’s chosen people – the Israelites of the Hebrew Bible, first-century Palestinian Jews of the Gospels, including Jesus’ followers – were oftentimes nervous, fearful people. God had a heck of a time trying to convince them that foreigners and strangers were really their neighbors. Since we are members of the New Israel and the Body of Christ through our baptisms – included in the great drama of God’s relationship with humankind – we have graciously been bestowed with the same very human tendencies: there are people in this world of whom we are afraid. They are “others” to us. And yet, God continues to reach out to us to show us a better way. And this is what happens as the Spirit speaks to us through today’s readings.
In the reading from Jeremiah, the Israelites are in Babylon, having been sent there in exile by King Nebuchadnezzar. In chapters 27 and 28, just before today’s reading, the prophets Hananiah and Jeremiah have been engaged in something of a showdown – Jeremiah first proclaims God’s message that the Israelites will be exiled until He decides otherwise, then Hananiah prophesies the people’s restoration to Jerusalem in two years, then Jeremiah counters him with God’s message, then Hananiah throws a temper tantrum, rips Jeremiah’s mantle from his neck, and breaks it, saying, “And that’s what it’ll look like when Nebuchadnezzar’s mantle is broken, too.” The fight ends when God tells Hananiah that he’s lying and that he’ll be dead within the year. Case closed (though, I did have to Google “mantle,’ before I moved on, and it is a cloak that drapes loosely around the neck).
Then Jeremiah writes to the Israelites in exile and tells them to stop listening to the false prophets who had been proclaiming a speedy restoration to Jerusalem. “Build houses and live in them; plant gardens and eat what they produce,” he says. Settle in Babylon and form relationships with your neighbors. “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.”
This is an early prophetic example of God’s radical proclamation of love – and God’s revolutionary re-definition of foreigners and strangers as neighbors. Here the Israelites are, strangers in a foreign land, yearning to return home, and God tells them to stop yearning to leave. To settle. And to pray for the welfare of Babylon and the Babylonians – their enemies.
In today’s Gospel lesson, Jesus steps outside of social propriety to heal ten lepers – first-century Palestine’s untouchables. The newly healed depart, and only one returns to thank Jesus. The gospel text makes a point of saying that the one who returned was a Samaritan. In terms of first-century Palestinian Jewish norms, this man has two strikes against him – he (was) a leper and is a Samartian. Jesus has done something quite extraordinary by healing HIM. When this Samaritan comes back to thank him, even Jesus seems surprised that out of the ten, it was THIS one who returned, this Samaritan:
(Then) Jesus asked, “Were not ten made clean? But the other nine, where are they? Was none of them found to return and give praise to God except this foreigner?” Then he said to him, “Get up and go on your way; your faith has made you well.”
We could just breeze right through this text, but it seems to me like something crucial has just happened in the story. None returned to give praise to God except this foreigner. And this foreigner’s faith has made him well. A pretty audacious statement for Jesus to make: this social pariah, this leper and Samaritan, not a Jew, has been healed by his faith. For first-century Palestinian Jews, for Jesus’ followers – this realization of the Samaritan’s humanity, of his faith, and of Jesus’ healing of him, would have been pretty extraordinary. Pretty radical. And it should be for us, too.
ON Friday morning as I was preparing this sermon, I looked up and stared at a small piece of paper pinned to my bulletin board. I’ve looked at it time and again, but on Friday morning, it struck me in a new way.
Dear Allison
I hope Clay comes back next year. I hope you have a good time when we have ice cream and s’mores. Thank you for making camp fun and letting me come to camp. I hope I can come back next year.
From Billy.
Billy and his twin brother Patrick live in Pineville (pahn-vuhl) with their father Bill, and they attended Reading Camp at Pine Mountain for their second year this past summer. I have notes from my first conversation with their father, back in 2009, when I was calling all the campers’ parents and preparing for camp:
(grumbling): “This’ Bill.”
“Hi, Bill, this is Allison, the director of Reading Camp. How are you?”
“Oh, I’m fine, I’m fine. That lady done filled out those papers for the boys. They’re comin’ to yer camp.”
“Oh, that’s great news. I wanted to check on transportation for the boys. Will you be bringing them, or…”
“Well, that lady said there’d be a bus at the Pic Pac to pick ‘em up.”
“You’re right. Well, great, I’ve got it down that they’ll be on the bus.”
“mmm hmm. Now, I want to tell you ‘bout my boys. I’m the only one who’s raised ‘em, and they’re good boys. But, if you need to, you use a switch to make ‘em mind. You tell ‘em I told you you could use a switch to make ‘em mind.”
“Oh, I’m sure we won’t have to do that.”
“Well, if you need to.”
“(haha). Alright. Well, Bill, you just call me if you have any questions.”
From the time I received Patrick and Billy’s applications, I knew the boys and their father would be some of the most interesting people I had worked with. The boys’ teacher forms read, in all caps, “NON-READER.” On the part of the application where teachers can check each child’s strengths and weaknesses, the boys had no strengths. Every weakness was checked, and then those words, “NON READER.” The parent-guardian form had been filled out by “that lady,” (Deb Obermann from St. Mary’s in Middlesboro) because Bill was illiterate and could not fill it out himself. His signature was simply, “Bill,” not “William Miracle or even Bill Miracle,” just “Bill,” in a scrawl-like cursive that looked like a first grader’s.
In my years volunteering with Reading Camp, I had met many families and many children whose way of living, way of speaking, and way of being were different from my own. But, Bill, Billy and Patrick Miracle were a whole new type of foreign. I was a student at Transylvania University, reading as much as I breathed, writing more than I spoke. I was living in a hyper-literate world, knowing that my bread and butter depended not upon my literacy skills, but upon how well I could apply them – how high could my GPA be, where might I go to graduate school. Not that I could write a paper, but on how long, how well constructed, how well-argued my thesis was.
The Miracles stopped me dead in my tracks, and I felt before camp even started, that they might effect me more than any other Reading Camp family ever had. I wasn’t wrong.
The boys arrived at camp on Sunday very sullen, shut-off, and internal. They were gruff, they were abrasive, and they were mono-syllabic. They were “hmm, no, yeah,” until Wednesday morning, when they finally realized that everyone at camp cared desperately about them, that no one cared that they struggled so much to write their name, and that the teachers were ecstatic when they finally named all the letters of the alphabet. BY Wednesday, they started opening up. They formed a close bond with Aaron, a young man who was a writing center teacher – and Aaron worked patiently and tenderly with the boys on their writing. Billy and Patrick really wanted to write letters to Marcie, a young woman who was our Pleasure Reading “librarian.” It took Aaron’s coaxing, prodding, encouragement, and help with every letter of every word, but by Friday morning, the boys had written their letters to Marcie, and they beamed when they handed them to her. It was a sobering moment for the whole staff – an awe, a “hush,” and not a few tears that these boys had been able to achieve something their public school teacher never thought possible.
After camp, Billy and Patrick called several of the volunteers for weeks. We had all of course gone home to our comparably mundane lives, but Patrick and Billy assumed that when they called one of us – all the rest of us would still be there. They called me, “Where’s Clay?” “I don’t know Patrick. I think he’s at home.” “Well, I wanna talk to Clay.” “Well, I’ll give you his phone number.” “Okay.”
The year passed, and the majority of our volunteers from that first summer returned again in 2010. And, so did the boys. I picked Patrick and Billy up this year at the Pic Pac and brought them to camp – and I cannot describe to you the level of excitement and anticipation that was pouring out of those two. They knew what they were coming back to – an environment where it was okay to make mistakes, where people really cared about them, believed in them, and were going to help them to learn. A place where they could show that they wanted to learn. And I’ll tell you, their approach to camp this year was a 180-degree turn around from 2009. They were telling the other kids how to behave in the learning center. They were focused and engaged with each teacher, working SO hard to write more letters, stumble through simple books.
These boys, who had been complete and total strangers to all of us in 2009, had become, in 2010, our friends. For so many of us – counselors and support staff who come from affluent families and teachers who worked in private schools – Patrick and Billy were the personification of the many statistics that we had read about at-risk children, drop-outs, and juvenile delinquents. And those statistics were no longer impersonal numbers to be read and frowned upon – those numbers had faces. They had names. They were Patrick, Billy, Phebe, Brandon, and Callie. And they changed us. Transformed us, and dismantled our idea of who was foreign and what was strange. The children of Reading Camp – while from such different circumstances than our own – are our neighbors.
I think this is one of the reasons the ministry of Reading Camp is so crucial for this diocese, and also why its been spreading like wildfire. Reading Camp lifts the Gospel from the page and deposits it, right in front of you. The outcasts of society, the poor, the illiterate, the angry, the fearful, the misbehaving – they are there, right in front of you, crying out to be loved. And there you are, with your heart open and your soul vulnerable, asking God for the same thing. It is humbling; it strips you down to the bare essence of your fragile humanity. Reading Camp is, in many ways, the great equalizer. It brings us out of our circumstances, and gives us a look inside the circumstances of those who are so different from us. And it teaches those children, who need love, attention, help, and just for someone to believe in them – that they are worthy, beloved children of God.
I think this is one of the reasons the ministry of Reading Camp is so crucial for this diocese, and also why its been spreading like wildfire. Reading Camp lifts the Gospel from the page and deposits it, right in front of you. The outcasts of society, the poor, the illiterate, the angry, the fearful, the misbehaving – they are there, right in front of you, crying out to be loved. And there you are, with your heart open and your soul vulnerable, asking God for the same thing. It is humbling; it strips you down to the bare essence of your fragile humanity. Reading Camp is, in many ways, the great equalizer. It brings us out of our circumstances, and gives us a look inside the circumstances of those who are so different from us. And it teaches those children, who need love, attention, help, and just for someone to believe in them – that they are worthy, beloved children of God.
The rabbis of the Talmud taught that
Gemilut Chesed (loving-kindness) is greater than charity.
Charity is done with one’s money, while loving-kindness may be done with one’s money or with one’s person.
Charity is given only to the poor, while loving-kindness may be given both to the poor and to the rich.
The renowned rabbi known as the Haffetz Hayyim defined loving-kindness as “any good dead that one does for another without getting something in return.” Jesus, thus, performed loving-kindness when he healed the ten lepers.
And our rabbi, Jesus of Nazareth, said in the verses just following today’s Gospel reading:
“The kingdom of God is not coming with things that can be observed…. For in fact, the kingdom of God is among you.”
Which says to me that the kingdom of God will be brought forth when we allow God to use us as a vehicle for his love – when we become doers of loving-kindness.
When you make gifts to Reading Camp – you are fulfilling a portion of gemilut chesed, of loving kindness. Your gifts are not going to some impersonal pot of cash, to impersonal statistics regarding childhood illiteracy. They are going to a Billy, to a Patrick. They are going to the service of children whose lives will be transformed by the radical Gospel that permeates each Reading Camp community.
When you volunteer at Reading Camp, recruit a child to come to camp, drive kids to camp whose parents don’t have cars, work with your ECW to make lunches for the campers, come to the Reading Camp office to help process forms and call parents – you are living out the other part of loving-kindness. Your gifts have made camp a logistical reality for the children, but it is your presence and your actions that have brought the Gospel into their lives.
Furthermore, when you’re involved with Reading Camp – the Gospel comes alive to you in a way that is startling and somewhat bewildering. All of us a sudden, you are enfleshed in the great drama of the biblical story – in the narrative of God’s life with his people. You are opened, you are shown, as though through God’s whisper, that this child in front of you – this vulnerable, scared, struggling, poor, hungry, and fearful child – is your neighbor. And you care for that child, just as God cares for us when we come to Him in our vulnerability, fragility, and despair.
And you sit down with that child, and you open a book together, and read, in tandem, the first page, alternating words, alternating phrases, alternating sentences. Stumbling through, building trust, building friendship, and building hope. And thus, you are together living out, in tandem, your love for that child, not unlike God’s love for his children, and the child’s hope in you and your help, not unlike our hope in God.
In the name of the Lord, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.
No comments:
Post a Comment