"Unclean" Love (Reflections on Pentecost 3, Year C)

Altar Panel by Lucas Cranac

Soon afterwards he went to a town called Nain, and his disciples and a large crowd went with him. As he approached the gate of the town, a man who had died was being carried out. He was his mother’s only son, and she was a widow; and with her was a large crowd from the town. When the Lord saw her, he had compassion for her and said to her, ‘Do not weep.’ Then he came forward and touched the bier, and the bearers stood still. And he said, ‘Young man, I say to you, rise!’ The dead man sat up and began to speak, and Jesus gave him to his mother. Fear seized all of them; and they glorified God, saying, ‘A great prophet has risen among us!’ and ‘God has looked favorably on his people!’ This word about him spread throughout Judea and all the surrounding country. (Luke 7:11-17)

Did your mom ever tell you not to touch dead things?

Out where I live, in the quasi-rural ‘burbs outside of Philadelphia, we have these things called turkey buzzards. They are absolutely the most revolting animals you’ll ever see. Not only are they uglier than a bridesmaid’s dress, but they actually eat dead things. Whenever Bambi decides to cross the highway without looking both ways and gets splattered across the side of the road by a soccer mom in a Cadillac Escalade, you’ll see a whole convention of these disgusting birds having a smorgasbord meal on the deer’s carcass. When I consider that some of these dead deer have been rotting in the sun for over a week, I almost want to turn vegetarian when I see the turkey buzzards chowing down on a feast of reddish grey bacteria which once was venison.

Turkey Buzzard eating something dead.

Some things are just unclean. In the Gospel lesson appointed for Pentecost 3 in the Revised Common Lectionary (see above), Jesus does a ritually unclean thing. He touches the bier of a dead man. Contact with a corpse was considered impure and would, in this culture, require an elaborate system of purification in order for someone like Jesus to be considered fit for society again. The guys carrying the dead guy’s stretcher just stop dead in their tracks when Jesus walks right up and touches this unclean thing. But Jesus couldn’t give a crap about that. He’s ready to touch the yucky things so he can do an act of mercy.

One of my favorite theologians, the Rev. Stephen Bouman (former Bishop of the Metropolitan New York Synod and one swell guy!), always said we should let Jesus teach us how to do ministry. What he teaches us in this story is the necessity of the Church to touch the dark and unpleasant things in life in order to bring healing and justice. Do you notice that Jesus isn’t so much concerned about the dead man as he is about the dead man’s mom? After all, the dead guy is dead. Nothing much worse is going to happen to him, but, in this culture, his mom is really up the creek in a chicken wire canoe. She’s a widow with no son. This means that she has no identity in the culture and no means of financial support. She’s just landed on the welfare rolls which, in New Testament times, meant living off the charity of some distant relative or begging in the streets. But Jesus has compassion for her, and he’s willing to get a little dirty, defiled, and socially objectionable in order to put her right.

Face it: We can never bring the light until we acknowledge the darkness. Outside my office is a meeting room where Alcoholics Anonymous groups gather six times every week. There’s a sign with the Twelve Steps which proclaims “We admitted we were powerless over alcohol—that our lives had become unmanageable.” That’s the first step to recovery. We can never have life until we face the sin that’s killing us. We have to go there and encounter it. As people in Christ we can’t be afraid to confront those dark places, to enter into places of poverty, loneliness, addiction, and grief. There is no Easter without Good Friday.

Every summer my parish hosts homeless families in our basement for a month. We welcome them, give them shelter, prepare dinners for them, play with their kids, and encourage them to get back on their feet through our partnership with Interfaith Hospitality Network. There are some in the congregation who complain that our guests are often messy, grumpy, rude, and their kids are totally undisciplined brats. I agree wholeheartedly with those church members, but I try to remind them that if our guests actually had their act together they wouldn’t need to live in our church basement. We exist to touch the hurting and the broken, not the clean and comfortable.

The really cool thing about this story is the fact that Jesus doesn’t get infected by touching the dead. The smell and decay does not rub off on the Lord of Life. Rather, his righteousness and justice and mercy rub off on the widow, her son, and all who witness this miracle. This is the counterintuitive promise of our faith—God’s righteousness can be just as infectious as decay, pessimism, depression, and panic. Knowing this fact lets us go into the places of sadness and despair and bring new life.

I have a recently retired colleague whose ministry always seemed to illustrate the Spirit’s infectious quality. Pastor Kevin never did anything really sexy in his ministry. That’s to say he didn’t start a new social ministry organization, didn’t make headlines by protesting social injustice, and didn’t serve an underserved population. He never wrote a book or published a column in a religious journal. He was just a darn good parish pastor in blue-collar Northeast Philadelphia. He kept a congregation alive and worshiping through his ebullient joy in the Lord. His love of Jesus and sense of righteousness rubbed off on the people, and they became infected with his love of the Gospel.

This is our challenge as Christians: To touch the dirty and the decaying with a spirit of God’s love, justice, compassion, and light, and to believe that we, too, are healers.

Get a little dirty this week, my dears. Thanks for stopping by!