NOT OUR KIND OF PEOPLE?
Mark 1:40-45

I believe that most people can relate to being on the outside...experiencing some kind of rejection or another. I have had that experience as a new priest moving into a new parish. I am seen as an outsider.  You can't help it. It doesn't matter who you are, even if you are the rector of a parish, or have a position in a diocese, you come into a community and you come into a church community as an outsider. I remember going into a small rural community as the new minister years ago and being told that I would be looked upon with suspicion because, first of all, I was from the city and the people there were guarded of people from the city and secondly I was educated at a University and at that time people had a distrust of people with too much education. I was told that I would have to slowly gain their trust.  It might take a long time.  I remember one person who was the Rector's Warden of a church in southern Manitoba saying that he still felt as an outsider in the community because he had only been there for twenty five years

In these kind of situation situations we can live for quite awhile with the feelings that we don't quite fit in or we don't quite belong.  We are on the outside looking in. We experience a great loneliness. That feeling, the idea of not fitting in and experiencing an overwhelming barrier between us and others can be quite severe sometime.

We do have a tendency as human beings to draw lines...to say who is in and whose out. ...who is included and who is excluded...who is accepted and who isn't accepted...and we even lay down the ground rules (maybe not written but certainly understood) as who gets accepted and who doesn't...and when.

I remember hearing a story of the very early days in New York, that there was purportedly a sign in one of the major parks with the words "No dogs or Irishmen allowed". When some people were asked what they had against the Irish, they said that they were just "not our kind of people".

We tend to narrow down the concept of neighbour to include only those like ourselves, in terms of creed, caste, race, sex, or sexual orientation. When asked why, we are likely to answer the same "They are just not our kind of people"

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In Jesus' world there were many people considered to be on the outside, the fringe of society, so that respectable people, the keepers of the law, would not have anything to do with them.  One such group were the lepers. Leprosy was a skin disease that literally causes the body to rot and was a scourge of the Middle East.  So the lepers were outcasts, unclean, untouchable, forced to live in leper colonies outside the population centers. That is why the story in the Gospel today is an amazing act of compassion. A leper came to Jesus, kneeling and saying to him that if Jesus chose, he could make him clean.  That was astounding in itself for the leper to reach out beyond the boundary that was set.  They were suppose to just shout "Unclean" "Unclean" so people would keep their distance. However, what Jesus did was even more astounding. Jesus , we are told, reached out to him and touched him and immediately the leper was made clean and sent him  to see the priests, as the Torah requires, to certify that they had become clean from their leprosy and thus could rejoin the social order.

You can see that this was much more than a healing.  It was overcoming a barrier that keep people apart.  Jesus was always reaching across boundaries that kept people apart: the boundaries of prejudices and stereotypes, tribal boundaries, religious boundaries. So in this case, Jesus took the risk, reached out to the man, touched him, healed him, and told him to go to the priests and fulfill the law, so he could once again be accepted as part of the community.  It didn't seem to matter to Jesus that he might be criticized, that he might face opposition, that he might we seen as violating the common wisdom of the day that kept lepers apart from the rest of the people. In a way, it foreshadowed the Cross, where Jesus showed that he would reach out to others in love no matter what it cost.

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We often have a hard time doing that.  We don't want to be criticized for crossing the lines and being considered outcasts ourselves. We don't want to bear the cost.

Fred B Craddock has a story in the book Craddock Stories:

    He tells of a time when he was a graduate student at Vanderbilt, away from his family and children.  He lived in a small room spending most of his time preparing for exams.  He says that it was "make it or break it" time so there was a lot of pressure on him. Every evening around eleven of twelve o clock he would take a break from his studied and go to an all-night diner close to where he was staying and he would have a grilled cheese sandwich and coffee. It was the same every night and the fellow behind the counter at the grill knew that when he walked in to prepare the a gilled cheese and a cup of coffee.  He would give him a refill and sometime he would give him another.  He always join the other men hovering over their coffee, still thinking about his own possible questions about the New Testament oral exams

    One night he noticed a man who was there when he came in but had not been waited on even Fred had had his second refill. Finally the man behind the counter asked the man, "What to do want?" He was an old grey-haired black man and what ever he said, the man at the counter responded by going to the grill, scooping up a little dark patty off the back of the grill, putting it on a piece of bread without condiments and without a napkin.  The old man paid for it and took it out the side door by the garbage can and out on the street.  He sat on the curb with the eighteen wheelers of the night and the salt and pepper from the street to season his sandwich.

    Fred says that he didn't do anything.  He didn't say a thing to the cook or to anyone else in the cafe.  I just kept to himself. He didn't go outside and sit beside the man on the curb, on the edge.  He did nothing but think of the questions there were coming up on the New Testament. He ends the story by saying:

      "I left the little place, went up the hill back to my room to resume my studies and off in the distance I heard a cock crow"

    (Fred B. Craddock Craddock Stories edited by Mike Graves and Richard F. Ward, Chalice Press, St. Louis, Missouri, 2001 , p. 124

     

I'm sure we can all relate to this struggle. We find it so difficult to be the ones that cross the boundaries of separation.  We shrink back from taking the risks for the well\-being of others.  When people say and do things against others because of their belief, culture, race, sex, sexual orientation, or because of the sigma around mental illness and addictions, etc., we often don't do anything because of what nasty things people might say about us or do to us. 

It is also worthwhile to consider the insight of the Dalai Lama. His words speak to me:

      My earnest request is that you practice love and kindness whether you believe in religion or not.

      And remember:

      Helping others is not limited to providing food, shelter and so forth, but includes relieving the basic causes of suffering and providing the basic causes of happiness.

Sometimes,  we have to reach out to others, alone or with others to help them to realize that they are loved, to let them know that  someone cares for them, no matter what they may have done in the past or what situation they find themselves in in the present. I know that in many cases it is not an easy thing to do. After all, they may not be "our kind of people" but they are people and down deep within, whether we realize or not, we are "at one" with them. That is the basis of a compassionate lifestyle. 

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The American Poet, Edwin Markham wrote:

      He drew a circle that shut me out 
      Heretic, Rebel, a thing to flout 
      But love and I had the wit to win: 
      We drew a circle that took him in.

Jesus lived in a world, in a period of time, among a people who had drawn a circle to shut out the likes of people such as the leper in this story. He was definitely on the outside. Jesus in his Love and Mercy drew another circle, a wider circle, that took him it.

Who do we keep out with the lines and the circles that we draw?  Who is it that we need to reach out to?  Who do you need to include? .....At what cost?

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