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The Fourth Sunday after Pentecost Have you ever thought about how it feels to be ostracized? To be a true outsider, living on the margins? To be invisible to the community that surrounds you, or to be seen by others as so despicable that it might be more desirable to be invisible? I wonder if any of us here has ever experienced that kind of marginalization? Or felt it, deep within ourselves—the feeling that we were invisible, untouchable, unlovable? The three main characters in today’s gospel each represent some aspect of that marginalization, of being unapproachable, untouchable, unlovable. Our gospel opens with Jesus encountering Matthew, a tax collector. As much as we joke and complain about the IRS, I don’t think our feelings can quite match what the members of the Jewish community felt about tax collectors like Matthew. “Toll collector” might be a better descriptor for Matthew’s job; remember that Jesus is preaching and teaching in and around Capernaum and in this area, the toll collectors would have been primarily responsible for collecting the duties imposed by Herod Antipas on goods being transported through the region. Toll collectors like Matthew were outcasts on two grounds: they worked for an unpopular government sanctioned by Rome, and they supplemented their meager incomes by extracting more from the tax payers than the government required. They were despised by their community and their status was so low, so sinful that even entering into a tax collector’s home (like entering into a Gentile’s home) could make one unclean. And then Jesus encounters the woman. Women by virtue of their gender were already marginalized but that is not all that is going on in today’s gospel. The woman we meet has been suffering from hemorrhages for 12 years. We aren’t told the exact nature of this woman’s bleeding, but it’s reasonable to believe that this was a menstrual disorder and as such that it rendered her not only weak and unhealthy but also ritually unclean and an outcast. To touch such a woman or to touch anything she sat on or lay upon would render a person ritually unclean. We’ve all heard that phrase “ritually unclean” or “impure” but I wonder if its impact isn’t lost a bit on us modern Christians. A person made unclean couldn’t just go and wash up. No, before a person made unclean could participate in any religious rituals or worship, he or she had to go to the temple, take part in a ritual bath, make a sacrifice, present themselves to the priests. It was no small matter to be made unclean, and thus people like the woman with the hemorrhages were avoided, they were ostracized. It’s actually hard to imagine how she survived for 12 years that way. Finally Jesus comes to the young girl who has died. We know that she was dead not just because her father said so, but also because when Jesus arrived at the house where she lay, there were flute players, professional mourners, outside. And in death this girl also became untouchable for everyone except those whose job it was to prepare her body for burial. And so we have them—three people who because of their jobs, their genders, their health were outcasts, ostracized, untouchable. And yet Jesus interacts with each of them. When Jesus encounters Matthew he says, “Follow me” and Matthew does. But it doesn’t stop there. Jesus goes with Matthew to his house where he enters and eats with other tax collectors—other sinners. In the culture of Jesus’ time, eating with someone was a way of identifying with that person. So not only is Jesus consorting with these outcasts, entering the home of one of them, he is identifying with them as well, not differentiating himself from them, but instead entering into their world Later, when the hemorrhaging woman reaches out and touches the fringes he wears, Jesus does not flinch, he does not recoil in horror. Instead he turns and responds to her with loving reassurance. “Your faith has saved you,” he tells the woman. What welcome words those must have been, restoring not only her health but also her place in the community. Nor does Jesus hesitate when the father asks Jesus to lay his hands upon his dead daughter. He touches the girl and she gets up, restored to her family, restored to life—a powerful message that for Jesus even death cannot separate one from one’s community. Jesus eats with outcasts and sinners, he touches the untouchable, he joins those on the margins where they are and brings them in, into the kingdom of heaven. Powerful images, and a powerful message for us. Which bring me back to where I started. What does it mean in our world to be ostracized? To be an outsider? To live on the margins of society, invisible, unseen, unloved? Some times they are easy to identify—as in the days of segregation and overt racism when one’s skin color was a visible marker of one’s status, or in the early days of the AIDS epidemic when caregivers were afraid to touch their patients, when churchgoers were afraid to share the chalice with those who were ill. But more often the ostracized, the marginalized are less visible, the markers are more subtle. Who are the unlovable ones for us? Is it the homeless? Those who are needy? People who are different by virtue of their color or gender or orientation or national origin? People whose opinions or beliefs differ from ours? Those who question our values? Is it the people in our individual lives who have hurt us in some way? And what parts of ourselves do we find unlovable? How do we feel marginalized and alone? Whoever it is that we perceive to be unlovable, untouchable, whoever it is whom we shun, who is ostracized in our midst, whatever parts of ourselves are feeling unlovable, the message for us is clear. Jesus was not afraid to touch, Jesus was not afraid to love, Jesus did not hesitate to call those people into community, and he calls us to do likewise. We live in a society that is increasingly polarized. Despite the strides we’ve made in some areas, facing up to racism and sexism for example, we often still fear the other, we still seek safety and comfort in the company of those who are like us. But Jesus calls us to a new way. Jesus calls us not to fear those whom society labels as unclean, undesirable, different, but rather to reach out to them with love and to draw them in. Jesus shows us that God’s love is a generous love, a fearless love, an encompassing love, and that in God’s kingdom there is a place for all. And because Jesus calls us to bring in the kingdom of heaven by doing as he did, we are called to love in a way that is just as fearless, just as generous, just as open as the way Jesus showed us in today’s gospel. We are called to bring everyone into that kingdom. Who are the ostracized among us? Whom do we shun? Whom do we fear? What parts of our selves are hidden away, feeling unlovable? Whoever, wherever, whatever these are, we are called to reach out to them, to welcome them, to love them, just as Jesus loves them, just as Jesus loves us. AMEN
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