Since 1996 Per CDC estimates more than a million Americans have died from drug overdose. In the past two decades overdose deaths have quintupled. During the pandemic, the rate of death went up as folks struggled with the increasing isolation that resulted from necessary quarantines. For those on the margins it was life threatening, and I am not engaging in hyperbole here. Already isolated folks were left to their own devices and fell through and continue to fall through the cracks. Siblings in Christ, our sisters and brothers are dying at an alarming rate and despite what we might tell ourselves, there are costs to us. Economic costs to be sure, but for the Beloved Community these losses represent a loss that cannot be measured monetarily. These are losses that strike at the very heart of who we profess to be as followers of Jesus Christ. We are called into the midst of this crisis to be healers. Not blamers, not judges, but with the same openness and hopeful expectation that Jesus models for us in today’s Gospel.
When I share with folks about Luther Memorial, I am always say that this is a theologically sound congregation, that despite our small size we are always ready and willing to do the heavy lifting. We have a strong understanding of grace and of God’s wide love in the world. So, I’m not sharing anything new or surprising from today’s readings with you. We know how people with leprosy were regarded in Jesus’ time, and we know that Samaritans were seen as mortal enemies of Israel. Is it that difficult to see a parallel between the lepers the Samaritan and the addicted? In today’s world we tend to marginalize the addicted and place the blame for their problem on them. Or, if we don’t do that, we tend to ignore the problem unless it affects us directly. Friends, I am here to tell you…. this crisis is on our doorstep and as followers of Christ we are compelled to bring mercy, compassion, and Love to those who are outside. When I think of the Samaritan giving praise, it is hard not to remember our brother Robbie, who suffered from addiction to alcohol, Robbie who found a place to rest on Sunday mornings and who responded to the Love he was shown by an occasional loud “AMEN” from the back pew. An unlikely witness to God’s Love expressed by the people in this place. That building right there is a testament to Robbie and his witness to us. I am not here to suggest that we now turn our time and treasure to the opioid crisis. Our resources may be too small for such an endeavor, although with Spirit it is always a possibility. But at minimum we must speak for the addicted.
There are a couple of things I’s like to draw our attention to from today’s readings.
The first is this. We must stop using the word addict. Luke identifies the ten not as lepers but as “men who had leprosy” just as earlier he referred to the man who was paralyzed not as a paralytic but as “a man who was paralyzed” (5:18) and called the Gerasene demoniac “a man who had demons” (8:27). The difference is subtle but reflects a humanizing and dignifying recognition of personhood. They are not addicts; they are people with an addiction. They, like us, are Creations and Children of the Most High God. Despite their condition, they are worth of our love. Period. We must be mindful that we share our humanity and discipline our tongues to regard those with addictions as human beings first. Jesus sees the persons in the ten, including the Samaritan.
Here is the second piece I want to highlight as it speaks to us both as a community of Love and as individuals that express Love but feel we are too small and insignificant to help. In the Old Testament lesson, we have the story of Naaman, the foreign dignitary who is leprous and seeks a cure. Expecting a ceremony with great pomp and circumstance he is affronted when the prophet tells him to go wash in the Jordan. The Jordan, a dirty backwater river far inferior to the Abana and Pharpar, the rivers of Damascus, which he feels befits one as powerful and famous as himself. But as the Shandell’s sang about the river Charles in Boston, you have to “love that dirty water.” The story of Namaan is the story that Jesus tells in the temple way back in Chapter Four of Luke, the story that offends the congregation so much that they are ready to drive him to a cliff and throw him off. Why? Because it elevates the foreigner and the afflicted, those whom polite society and religious authority deem unclean and dare I say unworthy. But the one piece I’d like to zero in on is the role of the maidservant, small, insignificant and for all the fancy language about maidservant is nothing more than a slave in the house of a powerful man. Yet it is this small and insignificant one who speaks of the prophet Elisha. Elisha who is a spokesperson for YHWH who is the One True God. She was paying attention in Sabbath School.
When we consider our siblings who are gripped in the whirling cycle of addiction, we have two clear options. We can turn away in disgust and disapproval, or we can look as Jesus looked upon the ten, and we can see them as children of God and precious in Jesus’ sight. We can practice agape love in the understanding that only one out of ten will thank us, thank God, and remain open to the surprising place the praise comes from. Robbie? Can I get an Amen?
Naaman and the Lepers and one Samaritan show us that God is no respecter of human boundaries. God will work where God works. But it is we who are the hands and feet.
Teresa of Avila a 16th century nun and mystic wrote: “Christ has no body now on earth but yours.”
We are the healing hands; we are the responding body. But not just hands and feet, seeing only “the hands and feet of Jesus” limits God’s desire for our healing. Why bypass our heart, mind, soul, and strength? “Christ resolved all suffering with holistic love. We are always free to suffer. Jesus calls us to freely love. How do we come? Do we come Christ like, open to the pain of others? How do we respond to the addicted person? Yes, fear is a legitimate response, yet dare we simply turn away because we are afraid? Now I am not suggesting that we need to set aside whatever our own legitimate fears are, but we are not allowed to make judgments based on that fear. There are those who have the skills and necessary compassion to be with those who may tend to violence. Out of mercy, justice, and humility our compassion must lead us to support those in the midst of this work of God. Whether they acknowledge they are doing this because of God or not, we need not concern ourselves but where we see the work is being done, we are beholden to offer aid and assistance in any way we can including writing to our representatives and demanding that this work be funded. Do we need to revisit the meaning of the Samaritan? Are we still committed to the Sunday School version of the Good Samaritan? Do we recognize the impact that the Samaritan with leprosy is the only one who returns to give praise to God? We need to be less concerned about labels and more attentive to the workings of Love because, as this and so many stories from the gospels emphasize over and over again, the Love of God transcends borders and it often transcends legalisms, even those sanctioned by YHWH. If we feel we are too small think of Anna who remembered that ultimately it is God who will make the healing effective, but it is our Love that opens the way for God’s Love to work.
Father Richard Rohr of the Center for Action and Contemplation says that the first commandment is that we love God with all our entire being. But how do we do that? By showing up on Sunday and singing and praying and sharing a meal? Well, yes, these are important pieces of loving God and there is fruitfulness in coming here where we share values, tradition, sorrows, and joys, but siblings…. this is only a part of it and what we are about here on Sunday’s is preparation for loving a wider world than just this place. The way we Love God is to Love what God Loves and God Loves everything that God has made and nothing, not one thing escapes the grasp of God’s Love.
Can we say that we love God without reservation?
God loves without reservation, and we are asked to do the same. It matters not if they are an agent of an oppressive force, an “insignificant” slave, a group of lepers, a Samaritan, a person that cuts me off in traffic not ten minutes after I leave this place unleashing a stream of cussing that would make a nun blush.
God loves me, the cusser.
So, if God loves even me
Is it all that much of a stretch to say that God loves the person caught up in addiction? And if that is true, then am I not to love that person with all my mind, heart, and soul and in doing so show my love for God? The unfortunate reality is we tend to show love for God by following a set of rules when repeatedly, Jesus shows us a different way. Love bends the rules. Love breaks the rules. Our readings today show that to be true, time and time again. Siblings, the problem of addiction is huge, and we may find ourselves wondering what we can do. I would simply say, start with Love and then see what God will accomplish through us.
Here is our spiritual payoff. When we begin to love what God loves we open ourselves to receive….no let me rephrase that, we begin to perceive the vastness of God’s love. When we open ourselves to this kind of perceiving we experience a miracle no less startling than the healing of ten lepers who did what Jesus told them to do, and we may even rejoice as the Samaritan did.
If nothing else friends, love is so much easier than clinging to our notions of what is required of us or more importantly, of others.
Reverend Michelle Mathis who helps coordinate an outreach ministry to addicted siblings in Hickory North Carolina wrote “…it doesn’t always smell like flowers, and you might get a little something on you. The people who are willing to work at the face-to-face level get to see the miracle and look it in the eye.” Jesus always worked face to face with those who suffered, transcending artificial borders religious expectation and who is in and who is out and performed miracles. Be a miracle.