Farnoosh Brock, a blogger, writes
about standing right at the edge of the ocean:
"My schedule and agenda fell by the way side and my whole body and mind fell into a reverie. This is why I don’t live near the ocean, I told myself, because I would get nothing done… The ocean wins every time and like every other soul on the planet, I dream of a day that I can commune daily with the ocean."
I've lived in Nevada most of my
life, and when I think of going on vacation, I think just like this writer. All I can think about is going somewhere near
the ocean. People I've known who live by
the ocean, when they think of going on vacation, they often think of going up
to the mountains, to Tahoe. As human
beings we seem to be drawn to places where earth meets water or earth meets
sky... borderlands, edges, doorways, what the ancient Celtic Christians called
"thin" places. Places where
heaven and earth meet, where this world and the next are touching.
The Gaelic name for these thin
places was Caol Áit (pronounced “keel awtch".) In Celtic folklore, a thin
place was always about being in that boundary between the two elements.
Riverbanks, lakeshores, bogs, ocean and the shore, turning points of the
seasons, all were considered thin places.
The Celts believed amazing things happened when you set foot in a thin
place.
If you look sharp, you can see that
today's Gospel is filled with thin places, borders, edges between our world and
the next. It is filled with both true
thin places where earth and heaven meet — true doorways — and also false
boundaries; those edges and borders and walls that only humans seem to love to
create.
In the very first verse of the
passage, Luke sets this entire story in a thin place, on a border. In verse 11 it says: "On the way to Jerusalem Jesus was going through the region
between Samaria and Galilee." Jesus
is on the border, the first Caol Áit,
the first thin place.
And then immediately in the next
verse, we come to the second thin place.
Jesus is halfway between the countryside and the city. It states: "As
he entered a village…" — Not even in the village, partway in, at the
threshold. In that strange in-between
place, Jesus encounters ten people who have been forced to live their lives in
a thin place: They were Lepers. They
were trapped in that place between life and death because of their disease.
And they physically lived in an
in-between place, on the border: They could neither enter the city nor go too
far from it. Biblical law required these
“unclean” souls to live near the town dump (Lev 13:46). Yet, they had to live close enough to cities
to receive charity. What torture! To be rejected and yet have to stay close to
the people who reject you so you could survive!
The passage goes on: "… ten
lepers approached him. Keeping their distance, they called out, saying, 'Jesus,
Master, have mercy on us!'” Biblical
law demanded that they announce their sickness to all passersby (Lev 13:45). Their skin disease was potentially contagious
and was considered to be God’s judgment; lepers were shunned and treated as
invisible people.
That was the amazing thing in this
passage: Not that they had this dread
disease, not that they had the
courage to beg healing from Jesus, but that Jesus “saw” them. While the rest of the world treated them as
invisible, Jesus in a great act of compassion stood in the thin place with
those ten human beings whose skin was being eaten away by leprosy, and he
actually saw them.
And Jesus does an amazing thing: In
other healing miracles he touches a person, or speaks words of healing, here,
he simply tells them to move into another thin place, "Go show yourselves to the priest…" That was the only way, according to Levitical
Law you could go from being a leper, outcast, and reenter society, you showed
yourself as healed to the priest. And so
they moved off into that new thin place,
and as they went, their lives as lepers and outcasts came to an end, and
healing began.
I have to be honest, if I were a leper, my instinct would
be to keep running into that thin place away from Jesus, because as I ran, the
skin sores and huge, disfiguring lumps under my skin would begin to soften and
heal and disappear. And the nerve damage
of leprosy in my feet would slowly vanish, and I could actually feel the dust
of the road between my toes once again.
As I kept running away from Jesus, the almost total blindness of
leprosy's attack on the nerves in my eyes would withdraw, and all of a sudden,
the colors of the leaves on the trees and the searing blue of the sky would be
so beautiful it would break my heart. But
most of all, as the constant muscle fatigue of leprosy left me, and I could run
like I was sixteen again, every step, every stride, every yard, every mile,
would bring me closer to a home I had not seen in many years, and loved ones
who would welcome me. I do not know that
I would have the willpower to stop, and turn, go back, and fall to my knees to
thank Jesus, like the Samaritan did.
The guy who stopped his race toward
life, turned and fell in gratitude before Jesus' feet was a person who lived on
the margins his whole life, he was one of the quasi-Jews that true Jews hated;
he was a Samaritan. It was more than a
trivial act of gratitude; it was an act of supreme self-denial. In essence, he was saying, "Health can
wait, the green leaves and the sky
can wait, my beloved family can wait, those children I never got to see growing
up can wait, my life can wait, right now, nothing is as important as giving
thanks to God."
People like me who probably
would've kept running, were apparently the good Jews.
I wonder, maybe when you've lived
your life on the margins, in the thin places, maybe it's easier to show
gratitude, maybe it comes more naturally.
I know over the years, I've seen many people come to Trinity who would
not be welcomed elsewhere, me included, who were overwhelmed with gratitude at
the acceptance and welcome they found here.
We don't always do it perfectly, unlike Jesus, we don't always see
everyone we should see, those hurting folks on the margins who feel invisible. But we're still pretty good at it, radical
welcome is part of our DNA here in this thin place.
There are real thin places, Caol Áit, and they appear in different
locations, and moments, in relationships, and in different seasons of our
lives. Holy moments and places where you
suddenly realize you're in a place where heaven and earth are touching. Something is going on, something wonderful
and mysterious and tingling with the healing power of God.
But there are other in-between
places that are artificial, human made, and they don't cause wonder and joy,
they cause fear and despair. We don't
call them Caol Áit, we call them
fences, and borders, and walls… and we call them "those" people. It's where we keep our lepers, the people we
don't want to see, but over and over in Scripture God refuses to recognize the
boundaries we draw between each other. It
is running rampant in America today. And, it saddens me to admit that it is
even the tendency in the church to confine the boundaries of God’s kingdom to
the church.
I can imagine those twelve
disciples thinking, “We’re special. Jesus has called us to follow him. We are
his first friends, his best friends, his only friends, judging by some of the
resistance Jesus has received. We’ve left everything and followed him on his
way. Surely Jesus ought to be pleased with what he’s achieved with us.” But then Jesus leads them outside their
comfort zone, out into foreign territory, out to the borderland of
Samaria. There he doesn’t even go into
the safe confines of town; he stops because he recognizes a thin place at the
edge of town, and engages ten poor souls who, because of their sickness, have
been thrown out.
And Jesus is going to lead us there
too.
I don't get down to the ocean very
often, but that first moment I stand on the shore and look out, the seagulls
crying overhead, I know I am in a thin place.
Maybe that's why we touch the holy water in the font and cross ourselves,
it reminds us when we stood on that vast shore of the ocean of our baptism, and
we are drawn back again and again to that thin place where we hear the words
again, “You are my beloved child;” that place where miracles happen.
“Heaven and earth,” the Celtic
saying goes, “are only three feet apart, but in thin places that distance is
even shorter.”
When we trust, and step into that
thin place of faith, the longer we keep walking with Jesus, the more we will
see the function of faith as crossing human made boundaries and breaking down
human walls. Not just the ones we
construct to keep other people out, but also those terrible walls we build
inside ourselves. Those ugly walls that
convince us we aren't worth much, walls that separate us from others, walls
that keep us from giving to others, walls that make us afraid be the people we
can be.
The amazing thing about what Jesus
did in this Gospel today is right from the start, he saw those lepers as they
truly were: already healed, the walls had already been broken down, and they
were free to go on their way and live their lives in joy as Children of God.
And you know what? If you step into this thin place of faith,
you'll realize Jesus has seen you that same way all along. Amen.
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