[Date Prev][Date Next][Date Index]
Epiphany VI-B: February 16, 2003
H O M I
L Y G R I T S
The
Sixth Sunday After Epiphany
Year B February 16, 2003
(© 2003 by Grant Gallup -
permission given for free distribution in fair use or quotation )
¶ Book of Common Prayer Lectionary -
2 Kings 5:1-15b The Arameans had taken a young girl captive
Psalm 42 or 42:1-7 Quaemadamodum - As the deer longs for the waterbrooks
1 Corinthians 9:24-27 Run in such a way that you may win
Mark 1: 40-45 A leper came to him begging him
¶ Revised Common Lectionary
2 Kings 5:1-14 as above
Psalm 30 Exaltabo te, Domine I will exalt you, O Lord
1 Corinthians 9:24-27 as above
Mark 1:40-45 as above
"Plans are made for a pipeline to carry water from the Jordan north
of
Galilee directly into Israel's water system. Palestinian authority
protests that this diminishes the amount of water flowing from Galilee
south through the West Bank."
--news from the Internet.
The Israeli state nowadays diverts most of the water of Palestine to
its own use, even to fill Israeli swimming pools, in illegal settlements,
while Palestinians must severely ration their use of drinking water, and
go without it for many days in the West Bank. When I visited dispossesed
families in Hebron in 1998, at the Christian Peacemaker Teams house we
had to save our dirty dishwater and basins from washups and shaves to
flush our toilets. The Israeli State no longer wants to share water,
alhough it is an immemorial law of life in Arab lands, a requisite of
hospitality in the desert. In Elisha's time too, in the second half of
the 9th century BCE, in northern Israel, there was talk about the use of
the waters of the Jordan River. But the old Israel was then more
generous in its sharing of the Jordan with its neighbors than is the
modern state of transplanted Europeans and New Yorkers. . Naaman, a
general in the Syrian army, a non-Jew, a heathen, is afflicted with what
the Bible calls leprosy, a misnomer for various skin diseases. A little
Jewish girl, captured during one of the Israel-Syrian border disputes, is
a slave, working for Naaman's wife. The little girl tells her owner of
Elisha, the prophet in Samaria, and claims he would heal Naaman of his
disease. The Syrian government is anxious to have this general cured of
the illness, and sends Naaman with money and a letter to the government
of Israel, which is taken as a threat--a veiled attempt to pick a
quarrel, to create a diplomatic incident. What if it doesn't work? Is
this a Catch 22 to bait us? Elisha says "Not to worry--send him to me."
And so he tells Namaan to wash seven times in Jordan water, and he'll be
cured. Naaman expected at least that the prophet would come out and wave
his hand over the lesions and do an incantation. But the Prophet offers
no magic, no gestures "What's this? We've got rivers in Syria--better
and bigger ones than this little trickle of the Jordan," Naaman
declares. But his servants prevail upon him to do as the Prophet had
asked, and he does so and is miraculously cured: his flesh is restored
"like that of a a young child." By heeding the advice of a young slave
girl! The gospel of an Innocent Abroad. What's different about this
water? Why did this shared Jordan water cleanse? Not by magic, but by
obedience in faith, evoked by a maiden, who in her captivity remembered
thee, O Zion. She is not vengeful and she does not think "This evil
Naaman has taken my freedom, and 'que dulce es la venganza'! I'll keep it
a secret!" Does she hesitate to do good to those who despitefully use
her? No, she preaches to her slave holders a gospel of cleansing and
reconciliation, even in the midst of her slavery: as did Sojourner
Truth, Harriet Tubman, Susan B. Anthony and so many other enslaved and
fettered women in our own leprous and captive land. "I know a better
land, a healing river, and someone sent from God," she declares.
Slant darkens our daily reports from BBC and Deutsche Welle, if not
quite so "spin-doctored"and self-censored as CNN, where Jonathan Mann has
learned the lessons while improving on the style of Nazi propaganda
genius Joseph Goebbels. Emily Dickinson advised us "Tell the truth, but
tell it slant"--for her it was a subversive technique for veracity in
art. Rdyard Kipling's poem, "Naaman's Song" has a curious contemporary
slant which makes it a commentary on the news from Palestine.
"Go wash thyself in Jordan--go, wash thee and be clean!"
Nay, not for any Prophet will I plunge a toe therein!
For the banks of curious Jordan are parcelled into sites,
Commanded and embellished and patrolled by Israelites.
There rise her timeless capitals of Empires daily born,
Whose plinths are laid at midnight, and whose streets are packed at morn;
And here come hired youths and maids that feign to love or sin
In tones like rusty razor-blades to tunes like smitten tin.
And here be merry murtherings, and steeds with fiery hooves;
And furious hordes with guns and swords, and clamberings over rooves;
And horrid tumblings down from Heaven, and flights with wheels and wings;
And alays one weak virgin who is chased through all these things.
And here is mock of faith and truth, for children to behold;
And every door of ancient dirt reopened to the old;
With every word that taints the speech, and show that weakens thought;
And Israel watchetch over each, and -- doth not watch for nought. . . .
But Pharpar--but Abana--which Hermon launcheth down--
They perish fighting desert sands beyond Damascus-town.
But yet their pulse is of the snows--their strength is from on high--
And, if they cannot cure my woes, a leper will I die! " (1)
Here at Casa Ave Maria in Managua we are often asked by pilgrims from the
North, "What do Nicaraguans think of us from the United States, who have
done so much harm to their country?" Fifty thousand Nicaraguans
slaughtered in a mercenary war, billions of dollars worth of her social
structue and infrastructure--schools, hospitals, power stations,
dams--bombed and burned, ostensibly to prevent a non-existent communist
menace from dive-bombing the U.S. in retaliation from Harbin, Texas.
I tell them of what Carter Heyward and the Amanecer collective called
"Revolutionary Forgiveness"--the title of a book of essays by women in
solidarity with the Revolution here back in the 80's. In it, Laura
Phyliss Biddle writes: "I learned in Nicaragua that forgivenss is a
revolutionary virtue It is revolutinary not because everyone is
forgiven, or because forgivenss is all in God's hands. God is part of
the revolution. Forgiveness is revolutionary because former victims of
an unjust system-- such as that of Somoza--are able to see the systemic
charcter of victimization and recognize thereby their former oppressors
also as victims. Those who forgive are prepared to blame the way society
was structured rather than simply the individuals who participated in
it. The individuals are held respomnsible primarily for the future, not
the past. They are given a chance to change rather than being cast
away." (2) There can be no room for vengeance if we are to construct a
future more human and more just. The poor, the enslaved, want to enlist
the oppressors into liberation, too. The Sandinista revolutionary Tomas
Borge said to the Somocista torturers who had raped and killed his wife,
who had castrated him: "My vengeance is that I forgive you." Que dulce
es la venganza cuando Dios nos la concede. How sweet vengeance when God
gives it. Our souls are all athirst for this God, this Living God, who
heals us in the living waters of our own relentless immersion into the
River of Life we call by the name of our Baptism. Naaman wanted
something spectacular, some waving about of arms and some "great thing".
But only a bath in simple trust was needed. Did Jesus hesitate to
violate the rules of procedure with regard to another "leprous" soul?
It was forbidden by the Law of Moses to touch one so afflicted. Did
Jesus hesitate? We hear the evangelist say "He was moved with pity."
Other translations say "he had compassion." The guts churned, the womb
moved. Jesus stretched the rules, and stretched out his hand: "I do
choose!" Jesus declares. But not to do a "great thing" either--not a
thing to be bruited about, to be advertised, to be made into a religious
commodity, to make him a celebrity clergyman. He chose to share the
opprobrium of the outcast. He declared, with our former Presiding Bishop
Edmond Browning, "there will be no outcasts in this Church." And he
sought no glory. Nevertheless, and no doubt in gratitude, the healed
one preaches about Jesus, who must now stay in the campo to avoid the
curiosity seekers.
Paul's note about ASKESIS --"getting into shape", "pumping up", "keeping
fit", uses athletic metaphors to remind us that we are all seeking a
prize, a trophy, a crown. We are "in training"-- whence comes our word
"asceticism". Shadow boxing won't hack it. This is an appropriate time
to broach the subject of Lent, the season named for Lengthening days. W.
H. Auden's Oratorio, "For the Time Being" ends with a poem marking the
end of the season of the Incarnation
"Well, so that is that. . . .
Once again, as in previous years we have seen the actual Vision and
failed
To do more than entertain it as an agreeble
Possibility, once again we have sent Him away,
Begging though to remain His disobedient servant,
The promising child who cannot keep His word for long.
The Christmas Feast is already a fading memory,
And already the mind begins to be vaguely aware
Of an unpleasant whiff of apprehension at the thought
Of Lent and Good Friday which cannot, after all, now
Be very far off. But, for the time being, here we all are,
Back in the moderate Artistotelian city
Of darning and the Eight-Fifteen, where Euclid's geometry
And Newton's mechanics would account for our experience,
And the kitchen table exists because I scrub it.
It seems to have shrunk during the holidays The streets
Are much narrower than we remembered; we had forgotten
The office was as depressing as this. To those who have seen
The Child, however dimly, however incredulously,
The Time Being is, in a sense, the most trying time of all." (3)
Lent began as a time for the people of God to enter into solidarity with
the catechumens, and the penitents--those who were turning away from the
world's way of doing things. Even those in "good standing' knelt with
them for a season and shared their humility. For many Lent has
deteriorated into a time of self-improvement. But St. Paul reminds us
that this training is
for a contest, and not for narcissism. A renewed, contemporary exercise
of solidarity with those who are turning to liberation means surely that
we do something with them--something that will involve our prayer,
fasting, and almsgiving. Dieting, church-going and fundraising cannot be
substituted. We are all invited into the Jordan of healing. Let us turn
to the healing of our relationships with the Arab peoples--with Naaman
the Syrian and his family of believers. A season of solidarity is
coming--we are invited into it for a cleansing and healing bath. (4)
GRANT GALLUP
Apartado RP-10
CASA AVE MARIA
Managua, Nicaragua C.A.
Tel. 011-505-2662165
gallup@tmx.com.ni
GRITS 2nd series now on-line:
http://newark.rutgers.edu/~lcrew/homilygrits
(1) Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936) , "Naaman's Song", from Chapters Into
Verse, ed. Robert Atwan & Laurance Wieder, Oxford Univ.Press 1993.
(2) Carter Heyward, Anne Gilson, Laura Phyllis Biddle, Florence Gelo,
Susan Harlow, Elaine Koenig, Virginia Sapienza Lund, Kirsten Laura
Lundblad, Patrick Michaels, Laurie Ann Rofinot, Margarita Suárez, Jane W.
Van Zandt, Carol Vogler: the Amanecida Collective: Revolutionary
Forgiveness: Feminist Reflections on Nicaragua. Maryknoll: Orbis
Books, 1987.
(3)W.H.Auden, Collected Poems, ed. Edward Mendelson. The Franklin
Library, 1978.
(4) Roni Ben Efrat, editor of Challenge magazine, a review of the
Palestinian-Israeli conflict, recommends Sharif S. Elmusa's book, Water
Conflict, Economics, Politics, Law & Palestinian Well Water Resources,
published in 1997 by the Institute for Palestine Studie, Washington DC