Sunday
October 9
Planting Gardens in Babylon
By Marsh Chapel
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Jesus and his disciples are on their way to Jerusalem, toward the end of their time together. In our text this morning they are in the borderland between Samaria and Galilee. These were once united as a country, but now are two separate countries, whose inhabitants despise each other due to religious and cultural differences that developed over time out of an originally common belief system. In this political and social borderland, ten lepers approach Jesus, but do not cross the border of the distance between them. These lepers are feared and outcast because of their disease’s contagion, and despised because of the common belief of their disease’s connections to sin. One of them is even more feared, outcast, and despised, because while the others are Jewish, he is a Samaritan.
They call out to Jesus as “Master”, a term of respect, and ask him for mercy. Jesus does not physically cross the border of the distance between them, but with his voice he somewhat conforms to Jewish norms: usually showing oneself to a priest is directed after a healing occurs so that the healing can be confirmed, but here Jesus vocally directs them to do this before any healing has taken place. It is when the lepers just obey and go that their request is granted, even before they complete the direction. They are healed of their leprosy, all of them, including the Samaritan. It is he who turns back, the only one out of the ten who were healed. He praises God, and falls at Jesus’ feet in gratitude. It is, as Jesus says, “this foreigner”, who not only has faith in Jesus and obeys his direction, but also recognizes – as the other nine do not – who Jesus is as the agent of God’s mercy and grace for him.
We have noted before the reminder from independent theologian and disability activist Sharon V. Betcher that the healing stories of the Gospels are never just about the healings – they carry social and political concerns as well. A borderland is the setting for this healing, and, as here, borderlands are fluid spaces: at the same time barriers and marks of passage to safety; places where crossings both official and not, voluntary and forced, are made; where there is often a gathering of many diverse peoples and cultures that intermingle in peace or for war; and where unusual alliances are often formed. The nine Jews and one Samaritan are forced out of the mainstream into the borderland by their illness. And, they also remain there and find alliance together for protection and support. After their healing, they all voluntarily are able to cross the border between disease and bodily health, back to their religious, social, political, and community life. Perhaps the Samaritan, even more feared, outcast, and despised than the other nine, is also just a little more aware of how much of what God has done in his life, and of how much God has restored him to, through his healing experience. Jesus is rather a borderland person himself, in his willingness to cross political, cultural, and religious barriers, his care for those rejected by society, and his willingness to engage with both the borderland and the people in it.
Jesus would have been familiar with the text from Jeremiah, that also talks about a border crossing. This crossing was not voluntary. The Israelites are in exile, forced into captivity in Babylon after a crushing defeat in war. Bereft of all they have known, they have crossed a border into a strange land with strange people and strange ways. They have crossed a border from freedom to captivity. Jeremiah’s message tells them that their exile and captivity are a consequence: of their having gone after other gods, and of rebellion against their covenant with God specific to Israel. In our text this morning he describes how they are to bear their exile, so that their faithfulness might restore them to right relationship with God. They are not to destroy themselves by direct resistance to their captors. Instead, they are to make the most of their time in Babylon as they can. They are to build houses and live in them. They are to make friends of their captors, even ally with them through marriage and children. They are to plant gardens, create places of beauty and nourishment. And even more, they are to seek the welfare of the city where they now live in exile, and pray on its behalf. For it is in the welfare of the city of exile and captivity, full of borders and crossings, that they will find their own welfare and redemption.
Our lives too have many instances of borderlands and border crossings. National, state, and city borders, certainly. Social, cultural, political, and religious borders, now more fluid and more contested than ever before. In New England, as in other parts of the country, we cannot help being aware of natural borderlands, often the most fluid, beautiful, and bountiful: the borderlands between land and sea, mountain and valley, forest and meadow, town and country, garden and wilderness. It is in our borderlands that we too find the most diversity and change, fluidity and barrier, conflict and alliance.
It is interesting that these texts about borderlands, about voluntary and forced border crossings, and about forced and voluntary encounters with strangers in the borderlands, come to us this year on Indigenous People’s Day weekend. The word “indigenous” originally and still does mean plants and animals that grow, live, or occur naturally in a place; that have not moved there from, nor been brought to that place, from somewhere else. More recently the word also encompasses the people who originally lived in a place, rather than the people who moved there from somewhere else, or especially rather than the people who colonized the original places of indigenous people. The Boston University calendar marks tomorrow as Indigenous Peoples Day, a Boston University holiday on which to reflect, to remember indigenous peoples with ceremony, and to recognize and celebrate their endurance, resilience, and contribution to American life and culture in the face of so many generations, and counting, of settler colonialism. Certainly the borderlands and border crossings of indigenous people around the world bear some reflection, as they display distressing similarities, and have a bearing on our own American future.
Here I’m going to apologize for my pronunciation, as I have never heard his name spoken, and mean no offense if I mispronounce it: Te Ahukaramu Charles Royal is a New Zealand Maori musician, university professor, and Maori-music revivalist. His work reflects the thought of many indigenous thinkers, including many of those in the United States, when he defines the term “indigenous” with regard to world view. He uses the term “indigenous” to describe those peoples and cultures whose world views place certain special significance on the idea of the unity of humans with the natural world. In these world views, humans are integral to the environment, and have a seamless relationship with nature which includes all of its components of seas, lands, rivers, mountains, flora, and fauna.
The borderlands and border crossings of the indigenous peoples in our country have to large extent been shaped, mostly in negative and even horrific ways, by the conflict between the American historical general view of the natural world and the indigenous cultures’ continuing general view. Historically and practically the American general view of the natural world is that it is something to compete with and exploit, while a general indigenous view of the natural world values a more cooperative and relational model with the rest of creation. This conflict has not only resulted in land grabs, resource theft, and widespread pollution of their earth, air, and water for indigenous populations. Fueled by cultural assumptions of racist and poverty-inducing public policy, this conflict has led to devastating and continuing indigenous intergenerational loss and trauma. Such a pattern of conflict is common throughout the world between colonizing and indigenous populations, with international and cumulative negative effects on both sides and on all of creation. Such conflict is increasingly being regarded as unsustainable by many diverse groups of people. Resistance to it continues to be inspired to good effect by the courageous leadership of all kinds of people around the world, including many indigenous individuals and populations. And, the chickens are coming home to roost, in the increasing challenges to human flourishing brought by the effects of such conflict in the midst of increasingly rapid climate change, which in turn increase the stresses on human freedom and community, and the economic, social, and cultural wellbeing of us all.
If we go back far enough, and granted, it may be pretty far – or not, we will all find an indigenous person in our family tree: someone who was an original inhabitant of a land, and who was so interwoven into and with the land and its provision, that the land shaped their community, politics, social interactions, spiritual awareness, and wellbeing or lack of it, to an extent almost unimaginable to our current individualistic and mechanized way of life. But while we all now, indigenous to a place or not, may be feeling that more “being more connected to nature” might be more essential to our well-being and even our souls than we thought, most of us, who are now not indigenous but are the results of forced or voluntary immigration, and most of us, who have been shaped by more or fewer generations of the historical and practical American general view of the land and natural world – most of us can never be truly indigenous, in the sense that our contemporary indigenous neighbors are. And, we all may yet join with them, in the like negative experience of the land and its natural processes being so compromised through historic systemic evil and its present consequences, that its effects on our lives might become more negative than positive, and that it will take all of us to make an enormous effort to heal everyone’s environment, if that even remains possible. We all soon may be involved in contemporary involuntary border crossings that we may not welcome at all: geographic, social, political, and personal. Many Americans of all sorts have already been forced into crossing borders into strange territory with strange people, and even into what feels like exile through floods and fire, hurricane and tornadoes and sea rise. Migratory and breeding changes for birds and pollinators, as well as bloom cycle changes and unusual weather patterns with warming seas foretell changes in food resources. The predictions of continuing and new pandemics threaten continuing loss of both loved ones, and of precious diversity and potential. To think that we might escape any trouble by denying the situation, or by travel in our spaceships with our friends to a terraformed Mars, or that we can protect ourselves from change by buying up acreage and hiring armed guards, is only realistic up to a point, or not at all. Unless the necessary changes in our consumption and unsustainable extraction, our prejudices and our pride, are made by everyone individually and together, we all may come to feel like exiles who have crossed a border, as we no longer recognize the place we live in, or the people, flora, and fauna we live with.
For now many of us remain in borderlands, and the borders still remain fluid. In this meantime, we all can take the opportunity to wait upon, and work voluntarily toward, the border crossing back into health, and into social, political, religious, and community life for everyone, especially for those who have already suffered and continue to suffer great harm. For it is in all creation’s welfare that we will find our own.
And, we can turn to back to Jeremiah also for insight in how to indirectly resist that which tries to hold us captive in hopelessness and despair. We can live, really live, now in the places we are, locally and with a wider sense of how interconnected we are to a larger whole. Build, or maintain, houses and live in them. Make friends with those around us, strangers and familiar faces alike, and even ally with them – if not through marriage and children, through shared purpose and projects toward our mutual flourishing. Plant gardens even in a Babylon, create places of beauty and nourishment where we are, even in unwelcome places. Even more, seek the welfare of the place where we live, seek in the sense of knowing what that welfare is, and working towards it, no matter if we are there voluntarily or not. And we can pray on behalf of that place and all its people. For it is in the place where we live, really live, full of borders and crossings, that we will find our own welfare.
This is a tall order. We have all been through a lot, and the “unprecedented” still seems to keep coming. How do we sustain ourselves in the midst of all the challenges we face?
The author of II Timothy writes as a mentor to his mentee, who is a young man of faith living out a life of ministry in sharing the gospel and the teachings of Jesus. As people of faith, we too can take the author’s words to heart, as he has also experienced challenge and hardship in his work, but is not discouraged. He tells us, first of all, we can remember Jesus, and the power of God loose in the world toward resurrection. We can look for signs of that power at work in the world today, and cooperate with it. Even though we may feel chained by circumstance, the word of God is not chained. We can endure the costs of sharing the good news of God’s love and empowerment for us, through Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit, for our own sakes as well as for the sakes of others. The words of vss. 11-13 are a Christ hymn – we can say or sing them to ourselves:
“The saying is sure: If we have died with him, we will also live with him;
if we endure, we will also reign with him; if we deny him, he will also deny us;
if we are faithless, he remains faithful– for he cannot deny himself.”
We can remind ourselves and others of these certainties. We can warn ourselves and others before God against the destructive wrangling over words, which does no good but only ruins those who are listening. Instead, we can do the work as best we can, rightly explaining the word of truth, so that God would approve of us as workers who have no need of being ashamed.
As we reflect on all this, we might also go back to the story of Jesus and the ten lepers. Faith in Jesus is basic to faith, obedience to his directions will bring about healing just by going, before the direction is even completed. And, it is the joyful praise of God, the gratitude to Jesus as God’s agent of mercy and grace, that marks this Samaritan, “this foreigner”, as a true person of faith. It is gratitude for the mercy and healing of God, at work in our own lives of borders and crossings, that most of all will empower us to meet our challenges, and cross the border back into health and well-being for ourselves and for the world.
Amen.
-The Rev. Dr. Victoria Hart Gaskell, Minister for Visitation
