LOSER.
LutheranChik is well acquainted with that particular L-word, and that particular feeling.
Back in elementary school I was the last kid picked in gym; team captains bargained with one another not to get me on their side. In the spring, when we played softball, I was always assigned to the outfield, where I could do the least amount of damage. And, after the initial insult and injury wore off, I got accustomed to that -- to being a spectator at everyone else's game...invisible...relieved to be so rejected that people just stopped paying attention to me. I used to, and I'm not making this up, watch the killdeer and study the weeds there in the outfield, all the while praying to God that the ball wouldn't come anywhere near me.
Later on, when I had developed enough social skills to meet up with the other geeky rejects of my school -- we discovered the value of hanging together rather than hanging separately -- life got better for me. But I have certainly felt that big L pressing into my forehead at various times since then.
Today's Gospel lesson presents us with a trio of losers.
First we have Levi the tax collector, a man who, for whatever reason, has decided to trade his integrity and his place in the community for a little extra spending money. Oh, he has a certain civic authority, backed up by the Emperor and probably a couple of burly Roman soldiers. But that comes at the cost of his place in the Jewish community, since he would have been thrown out of the synagogue for collaborating with the Romans; at the cost of his family, who would have been forced to disown him lest they too be rejected; and at the cost of his self-respect, as he lives every day in that self-loathing space between his outraged neighbors and his contemptuous foreign handlers.
Next we have the woman with the hemorrhage who has, through no fault of her own, lost her dignity. Because of the nature of her illness, she is perpetually ritually unclean; probably rejected by her husband and by her own family, maybe reduced to beggary, dependent on the occasional coins tossed from a distance by uncomfortable passers-by.
And finally we have Jairus' dead young daughter -- already a "nobody" if ever there was one in a patriarchal society where a woman's only status came through marriage and bearing male children, now losing the very last of what little she had to lose.
Losers, all three of them, in the game of life.
One of the messages of our Gospel is that Jesus takes all these losers and makes them winners. Through Jesus' saving power, the toady of the occupying powers wins back his freedom from his craven servitude to both material wealth and the political powers that be. Through Jesus' saving power, the woman with the issue of blood wins back her physical and relational wholeness. Through Jesus' saving power he young girl wins back her very self.
But, more than that -- by his words and actions, Jesus rewrites the rules of the game. When confronted by The Way It S'posed To Be according to the dominant culture and the religious bigshots of his time and place, Jesus emphatically announces, Game over. Jesus demonstrates a radical willingness to reach out to anyone, to touch the untouchable and save the unsaveable, to upend "community values" that presume to judge which human beings are and aren't valuable. That radical willingness in turn radically transforms the people he touches. He tells his audience the ancient Palestinian equivalent of the contemporary aphorism about the definition of mental illness -- doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result. New game in God's Reign -- new rules.
And, as we know from the rest of the story, Jesus' identification with the losers of society wind up making him the biggest loser of them all -- the one who bears the sin of the world as a dying, discredited criminal on a cross.
Except...this loser won't stay conveniently and safely dead. He keeps showing up -- first to this friends, then to his followers. He shows up when we get together in his name. And...he shows up whenever and wherever we, in whatever ways we can do it in whatever situations we find ourselves, reach out to a loser and raise her or him up to be a winner in the Reign of God.
(Thanks to Mark Powell's book Loving Jesus (Fortress Press)for giving me the perfect title for this post...first thing that came to mind when I read the Gospel lesson.)
"Woman With Hemorrhage" by Louis Glanzman
5 comments:
Wow! This is a great sermon. Do you ever preach? You might consider it. The Lutheran pastor where I work is going to preach on how God is always interupting our lives with mercy, and we don't like interuption, especially in the church. I'll post a copy on the church's website and link it.
[blush] Thank you! Actually, Christopher, I'm on preaching rotation with three other people in my parish when our pastor is out of town, sick, etc. (Writing stuff like this, among other things, keeps me in practice for "on call" assignments.)
In my own mind I'm a writer who occasionally gets assigned the job of reading my writing aloud...I don't have that spontaneity to just stand up there and preach without being wedded to a hard copy of my sermon. (I understand that they're going to try and train this tendency out of as at one of our upcoming lay ministry retreats.)
Gosh...if you wrote a liturgy, and bls acted as musical director, and some of our other blogging companions contributed their talents, and I did a sermon, with insightful theological input from my friend Mel...that might be kinda cool.;-) I'm always in awe of the spiritual giftedness I find on the Internet.
LC, I had just offered that suggestion to bls, that we might consider a cooperative blog with a more practice focus.
That was a really beautiful post. You captured the heart of who Jesus is to me in a very vivid way.
John
Jesus and The "L" Word
Ronald Reagan began the demonizing of the Liberal philosophy when he equated the word "Liberal" to the "F" word during his presidential administration, with his infamous "L-Word" quote. Since then there has been an ever-increasing drumbeat of negativity emanating form the conservative right, relating Liberalism to the great sins of the world - like Radicalism, Hedonism, even Communism. They would have us all believe that Liberalism is what's wrong with the world when just the opposite is true. Their ravings are all just pretext. There were no liberal thinkers under Joseph Stalin or Chairman Mao, or any other war-mongering magnate. They tried their best to eliminate the liberal minds in their midst - much like what the conservatives would like to do here. Their periodic public book-burning forays of literary works and music CDs would be more akin to the social philosophy we endured coming out of places like The Soviet Union or Red China than anything liberals have ever projected. The wars of the world are always been fought between conservative participants, usually from different religious factions or dogmas, with hapless liberals getting caught in the middle.
Conservatism is what's wrong with the world! Conservatives, on the whole, are just plain mean, vindictive, and greedy - and all the woes of the world are born out of these conservative traits. They like nothing better than to call names, hurl insults, and take as much of everything as they can for themselves. Just listen for a moment to conservative talk radio or people like Ann Coulter. They believe that greed is good and that greed is basically what carries civilization forward, when nothing is further from the truth. It's innovation and creativity that carry the world forward and those traits generally emanate from the Liberal mind. Conservatives tend to have good memories which propels them toward occupations like litigator or "bean-counter." Their consciousness, being full of facts and figures, has no room for humility or compassion. They seem to have no idea of what those concepts really mean. "Compassionate-Conservatism", George Bush's ugly quote, is just more pretext, intended to hide his true nature. It's a joke.
All of the great social progressions in history have come from Liberalism. The Magna Carta, our Declaration of Independence, The American Constitution , and The Bill of Rights are all Liberal documents born out of a doctrine of equality and fairness. Conservatives don't believe in equality or fairness and never have. Every time I have ever said that something wasn't fair to a conservative, they've just scoffed and retorted with the old hackneyed phrase, "Who said life was fair?" The only reason life isn't fair is that conservatives don't want it to be fair. They want it all for themselves.
The conservatives were the ones against independence for the United States. They were the ones that remained loyal to the British Crown. They were against women's rights and still see their women as subservient. They were the ones against child labor laws. They propagated the slave trade in this country and resisted, with deadly force, its abrogation. They always resist the enlightenment of the masses then turn and claim responsibility for it afterwards - - - more pretext.
For God's sake, Jesus Christ was/is a Liberal! Every precept he taught us was of Liberal origins. I can't think of one precept that was of Conservative origin - and yet the vast majority of conservatives claim to worship him - what obscene hypocrisy. "Turn the other cheek, It's easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven, The lilies of the field - take no though for tomorrow, Give all that you have to the poor and follow me, Love thine enemy, Judge not least ye be judged, I am my brother's keeper, The meek shall inherit the earth(what a beautiful thought!), etc. etc." - all liberal philosophy. In my six decades of life on this earth, I don't think I've ever seen a meek conservative.
Just calling conservatives hypocrites doesn’t do justice to the severity of their transgressions. They claim to worship Jesus while at the same time undermining or negating his teachings. The only phrase that sufficiently describes this phenomenon is "Anti-Christ."
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