So that land between Samaria and Galilee is where we find Jesus today.
I can't count the number of times I have heard the story of the healing of the lepers and always I have gone to the experience of the lepers --- wondering at the one who was given eyes of faith and understanding enough so that he returned to give thanks. Wondering what ever happened to the others that ran to give thanks. Were they believed? Were they still given the side-eye every time they stepped into the street.
I am not there today. I'm somewhere else
This week I have been thinking about where Jesus and his disciples found themselves in this particular story – that in-between land.
“Jesus was going through that region between Samaria and Galilee.” I always figured that Luke offered up this detail as a way to get Jesus from one place or another. But lately, as I've been watching world events and as I've been meandering through Central New York, I'm beginning to wonder if perhaps it is something more. I wonder if we meet up with Jesus in that particular place today for a reason.
For the land between Samaria and Galilee is neither one or the other. By its very existence, it is a place where it is impossible to forget that the two had once been one. At one time it had been all one land. The land of the people of Israel. But that was long ago. The nation had been torn apart. The Northern Kingdom of Israel had been destroyed first, leaving a remnant behind. Then the people in the Southern Kingdom, who came to be called Jews, were plucked up and exiled for decades. In the big scheme of time, they had only recently returned and found themselves at odds with that remnant, living in the region of Samaria. So, it is a location which causes one to remember how things were before long before the experience of exile left its mark on both kingdoms. It's a place where old grudges still grow. This in-between place is a place where you might find yourself unsure of who belonged and who didn't, where you might be uncertain, un-trusting, even a little fearful. It is a place where the customs and rules might not apply --- where you would not fully know your place. It is the place where Jesus travels today. It is a place where, it seems to me, if we are where we are called to be, you and I are traveling every day.
At least this is what I have found to be so for me of late. I suppose it should come as no surprise, though, that in some ways I'd rather not be here at all.. And it occurs to me, too, that so many others find yourselves even more fully there in that in-between. Whether your daily lives take you to schools or construction sites, office buildings or hospitals, you know what it is to walk that line between what you know and what you wonder about as you encounter this uncertain, often frightening in-between-ness in the lives of others that we increasingly meet.
I was struck by this a few days ago, this awareness that lately I am more and more in that strange land where Jesus traveled so long ago. I had just gotten to my car in the parking lot of the Byrne Dairy in Norwich. I had bought one of those glass half-gallons of milk and needed to pump some gas, so there I was, standing there in my uniform, just looking around. And I caught the eyes of two dudes, who, under other circumstances I might just cross the street to avoid. They were leaning against a car in the parking lot smoking. I did one of those kinda nods in their direction. You know the kind. The one that says, “I know I got caught looking at you. I hope you weren't offended. And I hope my nod acknowledging your existence was enough to keep you from coming over here and hurting me.”
It didn't work.
They flicked their cigarettes and came over to my car. I was scared to death. These were rough, jittery dudes with tons of tattoos and piercings. And then they spoke. They told me that they were the friends with a woman whose son had died of a heroin overdose earlier that week. Would I follow them to see her? I was about to plead being on my way to an emergency, but they had seen me just casually walking out with my milk, and I was feeling trapped. But then I noticed something. Behind all that nonchalance and toughness, there was grief...and fear. Fear of me. Fear of God. Fear that I would judge them harshly...too harshly.
It wasn't so much that the mother of their friend needed me. They needed me. And they were afraid of that.
What hit me then was this was not a world I knew well. I grew up safe and protected and in a world entirely foreign to the anger and despair that really took the life of their young friend. Much of my life I have believed that if one just did the right thing one's efforts would be rewarded --- unlike the heartbroken mother that I met later, a mother who had done all that she knew to do and still today suffers an unspeakable loss. But she shared that loss with me. And I am grateful.
Unlike the two young men that approached me, men who are probably still afraid that they may soon follow their friend and don't know what to do about that. And those men asked me to pray. And I am grateful for that, too.
But I have to say this. I don't much like traveling in this land in between where words are hard to come by and healing seems so awfully elusive. Where the rules I've come to count on don't quite seem to apply. And yet this is where God keeps calling us of late – to this same place where Jesus traveled when those desperate, hopeful lepers cried out for mercy.
Migrants. Closing farms. Refugees. Opioids. Job losses. Growing homelessness. Betrayals between nations. Betrayals between people. People just needing something, anything, to believe in. Something to hold onto.
People caught in those scary in-between places between Samaria and Galilee. Those places where Jesus stands today. Those places where Jesus calls us more and more to go.
And y'all, it's not easy. After all, we don't have Jesus' power to cleanse and make whole as we hear in this story we have heard so often before and hear again today. At least I don't. But I do have the power to step into those in-between places in this country and in people's lives where we can no longer deny that what once was whole is now broken and where the pain of their experiences may be simply heartbreaking. Those places where the lepers in today's Gospel once lived – cut off from all they knew and loved and took for granted. We can walk into those places and maybe, just maybe that is the beginning of cleansing, of healing, of restoration. And somehow even just that alone sometimes evokes the kind of gratitude we witness in today's lesson.
It's where we're called more and more, it seems to me. I expect there was a time when fear alone would have kept me from choosing to walk into these in-between places: this land between Samaria and Galilee where the rules don't apply and the words are hard to find and healing is elusive. I'm not entirely certain what has changed except most days there's no other choice. And yes, many days I still find myself surprised to be there. And yet, it is where Jesus traveled. So don 't you suppose that's exactly where God's people are called to travel, too?