Contamination and Celebration (The Politics of Jesus, Week 4)

Psalm 32

Luke 15:1-3, 11b-32          

The controversy at the heart of Jesus’ ministry is that he welcomed the wrong kinds of people.  He welcomed, touched, and ate with the kind of people who will contaminate you.  The godly people, the church goers and the Bible experts didn’t like him: “Behold, a glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners” (Luke 7:34). 

He gets close to people – and even affectionately touches them – people who are ritually unclean.  Women willing to do whatever for a little money.  Men who should be proud Jews but instead cooperate with Rome by collecting taxes, charging exorbitant rates to fellow Jews and pocketing the margin.  He lets people with disabled bodies and scabrous skin diseases touch him.

The Bible is clear on this - a good Jew, a godly Jew, won’t let themselves be contaminated by loose women, greedy embezzlers, the diseased and oozing.

“My son, if sinful men entice you, do not give in to them. . . . do not go along with them; do not set foot on their paths”  (Proverbs 1:10, 15)

“Don’t walk with the wicked; don’t stand with the sinners; don’t sit with the mockers . . . “  Psalm 1

“Touch nothing unclean.”  Isaiah 52:11

“Don’t be misled: ‘Bad company corrupts good character’.”  (I Cor. 15:33).

And furthermore, the Mosaic Law in Leviticus contains lots of precise rules concerning how godly people are to avoid contamination.  God forbids faithful Jews from coming into contact with anything unclearn or impure: lepers, bleeding women, and dead bodies.

As we watch Jesus heal and teach, it looks like most respectable people are keeping their distance.  Or at least they’re remaining cautious, holding back, hedging their bets.  The people eagerly gathering around him to listen to stories, the people scrambling to share an evening meal with him are the down on their luck types.  People who’ve made foolish decisions.  People who cut corners.  People diseased and disabled.  They live with the kind of shame that could rub off on you and infect you. 

Yesterday I went with friends to the KU Game vs. Iowa State.  The Jayhawks are celebrating 12 straight Big 12 Championships.  They’re currently ranked #1 and hoping for a #1 overall seed in the NCAA Tournament.  They could win a 6^th National Championship (1922, 1923, 1952, 1988, 2008).

They are 25-4 so far this year, a great season.  Allen Field House was electric.  All those people packed into that historic arena – and it works because they win.  We like to be associated with winners.  If you’re there on campus, in Allen Field House, dressed in KU colors, seated next to people dressed in KU colors, singing the ode to your Alma Mater, shouting rock chalk jayhawk – it’s almost as if you’re part of the team.  You leave saying, “WE won!”  Success is contagious.  Winning is infectious.  (Now good for KU, but I would also like to point out that the Yale Bulldogs won the Ivy League this year, and will be heading to the NCAA tournament AGAIN!  Yes, AGAIN – we were there in 1962.)

So if you’re considering belonging to a fellowship of friends gathered around Jesus Christ, you’ll want to know who else is there.  What kind of people does he spend time with?  Who does he share meals with?  This is the very question behind our reading from Luke.  The scribes and the Pharisees have some worries.  They’ve witnessed Jesus not just spending time with questionable types.  They’ve actually seen him sit down to dinner with them and enjoy their company, swapping stories and laughing through the evening.  These are people that the rest of the community knows to steer clear of.  These are people barred from the synagogue.

In response to these complaints about contamination, Jesus tells a story.  You have heard this story before.  But given the complaints about Jesus, I would like to emphasize the part where the father embraces the disgraced son.  The father, filled with compassion, runs to his son, throws his arms around him, and kisses him.  This is a very intimate, very affectionate embrace.  He pulls the son’s shame close.  This is the kind of embrace that would involve contamination.  This is the kind of hug that might leave the father smelling like the son.  The son has been working as a pig farmer.  He smells like pigs.

It reminds me of the romantic story line of Waking Ned Devine.  Maggie keeps promising to marry Finn, as soon as he gives up pig farming.  He keeps wooing her, and in one scene he chases and catches her and pulls her close.  He tells her that he’s been using the perfumed soaps she gave him.  He assures her that these soaps have rid him of the pig smell.  Delighted, she allows herself to be pulled close.  And we’re rooting for poor Finn, finally he’ll get to kiss the woman he loves.  But just as they pull close, she wrinkles her nose, pulls back from him, saying she can still smell the pigs.  The father in the story Jesus tells smells the pigs, but holds his son in a long embrace.

I’m glad to be a part of a congregation who gets this.  In all kinds of ways, we purposely put ourselves in places of failure, shame and contamination.  People in this congregation have taken up the way of Jesus by choosing to share the lives of people who might contaminate you.  Circles out of Poverty, Beacon, CASA, Nursing Home Visitation, calls and visits and food to people who are sick, Sunday Serve help for those who struggle to keep up their homes and yeards.  Just last week I asked elders and deacons to dream about how we can share God’s love with the needs of our wider community.  And we had a beginning conversation about the national metrics for community well-being.  Our county scores extremely low on that scale.  And our leadership is passionate about finding even more ways to make a difference. 

We have a beautiful church.  We have a smart, committed, energetic congregation.  Let’s make sure that this continues to be a church for broken people.  Let’s make sure that all our efforts aim at welcoming those who feel they’ve failed.  Let’s make sure that the Lord Jesus Christ is in our midst, welcoming - in our hands and faces - those who struggle with addiction, with obesity, with illness, with unemployment, with depression, those with a criminal record, those who have failed as students, or parents, in marriage, or in business.  Those who are damaged or a different color or who speak a different language or who don’t believe the right things.  Jesus himself has already freed us from all worries about contamination.

Stephanie finished her Master’s Degree this year at Columbia Teacher’s College.  In May we’re flying to NYC for her graduation ceremony.  We wanted to take all the kids.  But Henry and Oliver said they wanted to stay here since it’s the last week of school.  Remy, on the other hand, wants to go.  Now we had kind of envisioned either ALL the kids going, or NONE of the kids going . . . We told Remy – look, this is a short trip, just a few days, the graduation will be long and boring, we’ll be seeing friends, probably staying out late, and you’ll just have to do whatever we’re doing.  He said fine, he still wants to go.

We planned to use our credit card miles to buy plane tickets.  But American increased the miles for flights to New York, so we only had enough miles for two tickets, not three.  We considered barring Remy from the trip.  But we didn’t have the heart for that.  We’d have to get two tickets with miles, then buy a third ticket on the same flight.  And hopefully we could sit together.

Now the credit card miles are in my name.  So obviously one of the two seats bought with miles had to be for me.  And of course we’re not going to take the chance that the 9 year old has to sit somewhere else, or worse, has a ticket on a different flight.  So we got seats for Remy and me.  And then we had to scramble and buy a ticket for Stephanie on the same flight.

As it turns out, the reason that the two seats for Remy and I cost double the miles is because the only seats available were first class seats.  So not only is Remy flying to New York with mom and dad, he’s flying first class.  Now it’s a terrible injustice, of course, that it’s Stephanie who is graduating and she’s the one has to fly coach.  But there’s not a lot I can do.  She suggested that since it’s her graduation I should give her my seat and I should fly coach.  And I’d love to.  I really would.  But with airline security and all, it’s probably safer for me to be in my assigned and ticketed seat.

I admit, it will be a little awkward when the gate agent invites all first class passengers to board.  Remy will have to kiss his mother goodbye so that he and I can join the other good looking and well-dressed folks boarding the plane.  But we’ll see her again.  Once we get settled into our extra-wide, leather seats, wash our hands with a warm, lemon-scented towel, and order two ginger ales, she’ll pass by us on the way back to her scratchy cloth seat.  Once the flight attendant whisks closed the curtain separating our people from her people, we’ll lose contact.  She’ll have her bathroom and we’ll have ours.  But hey, we’re all on the same plane, and isn’t that really what matters?

It’s pretty easy for me to fall into the trap of thinking that Jesus is lucky to have me.  And when I do that, something in my heart grows judgmental and dismissive of people whose lives are a mess.  Of people who’ve royally wrecked their lives, harming themselves and others and who then require costly, extravagant care and rehabilitation.  There is in me that natural revulsion towards all those who are stuck in no-exit cul-de-sacs of destruction.  I want to steer clear.  And then Jesus tells a story, and I begin to recognize what it is that draws people to him.  And this new light falls over my own life.  I begin to see that I belong with them, the lucky to be healed, the grateful to be included.  I’m with all those the glad for the kind of welcome that frees us from shame and failure.

Reading this story does make you wonder – what kind of person is this Jesus?  If the friends gathered around him from village to village are any sign, this looks like a roving hospital for the sick.  Or like a rag tag support group for people with problems they’ll have the rest of their lives.  Is this really what it looks like when God arrives to deliver us?  Is this the kind of community that crystallizes in the light of this long awaited good news?

If you’re considering joining a new family of people gathered around Jesus, you’ll have to decide whether you want to share your life with the kinds of people he attracts.  His God is the loving father of the story – the father who loves both sons.  The father who gladly welcomes the failed child but never stops loving the faithful one.  You have to be willing to be part of a family where some of us have stayed home, and some of us had to come back home from somewhere else.  And the feast is for all of us.

But I find myself strangely interested in Jesus.  I like the way he carries himself without the fear that drives most people.  I like the way he sees fresh things in Scripture I never saw before (even if it does bother me at times).  I like the power in his eyes and hands, especially in the way he can command evil spirits to stop harming people.  And I like the gentleness of his hands too, the way he is with children, and women, and men who don’t usually count.

You know, when I watch Jesus, it’s almost as if he doesn’t believe those Scriptures about ritual uncleanness.  It’s almost like he doesn’t fear contamination or infection.  He doesn’t worry about people’s bad habits and foolish lives.  He touches them and blesses them and heals them as if the power runs the other way.  As if it’s his goodness that contaminates and infects them.  As if in this new kingdom of God all the rivers turn and run in the opposite direction.  When God arrives to save and deliver, it’s goodness, blessing, and healing that jump from one person to another.