In the Name of God:  Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.  Amen.

Borders and boundaries are key elements in today’s Gospel story.  And they’re important in ways you might not expect.

Let’s begin with leprosy.  And at the outset let me tell you that I’ve relied heavily on the scholarship of John J. Pilch in his work, The Cultural World of Jesus[1], to understand the background of today’s text and in preparing this sermon.  In this morning’s story, Jesus encounters ten lepers somewhere on the border between Samaria and Galilee.  What exactly is wrong with these ten people?  It probably is not true leprosy.  Leprosy, or Hansen’s disease, almost certainly did not exist in ancient Israel . . . Biblical scholars and medical scientists are in agreement about this.  So, in much of the Scriptures, whatever the condition is that the word “leprosy” is pointing to, it’s probably not a deadly, highly contagious malady.  Biblical leprosy is not “catchy,” like a cold or the flu, it’s “dirty.”  It makes individuals and communities impure and unclean.  The fear of leprosy in the Bible is the fear of  contagion . . . MORAL contagion . . . you might even say that it’s a fear of the boundary between right and wrong being broken down, or pierced.

Think of the book of Leviticus with all of its purity laws.  They’re all about boundaries.  Chapter 11 is all about food . . . it’s all about what foods may pass the boundary of your body, through your mouth, going from the exterior to the interior and allow you to remain “pure.”  Chapter 12 is all about conception and childbirth . . . it’s all about the body boundary again . . . this time from interior to exterior . . . about how a woman and her child may remain “clean” in childbirth.  Leviticus 13 and 14 describe a repulsive skin condition – although not true leprosy – that can affect the skin . . . or clothes . . . or even walls!. . . three different kinds of boundaries.  I could go on, but in all of these texts the real concern is about whether or not the problem being discussed has pierced a boundary . . . about whether or not a person has been polluted . . . made unclean . . . and therefore can make others unclean. 

Anthropologists point out that a society concerned with maintaining safe and secure body boundaries is also concerned with safe and secure boundaries for the society itself.  Rules governing the physical body mirror rules governing the social and geographical body.  For example, during the exile of the Hebrews in Babylon, the priest Ezra concluded that the reason God had punished the chosen people with exile was because the men had married foreign, non-Jewish women.  In other words, they had pierced a boundary . . . these men had brought “unclean” women into the “holy” community of Israel.  Ezra declared that, in order to restore purity and holiness to Israel, these women and their children had to be dismissed immediately.  On the spot, he broke the marriages and restored solid, impenetrable boundaries to Israel, making it whole and “holy” once more (Ezra 10; Nehemiah 9).  It’s a horrifying story, but I think it makes clear how important borders and boundaries were in the ancient world.

It was during this period of Ezra that the purity laws of Leviticus began to be enforced rigidly.  Marriage laws protected the boundaries . . . and so the purity . . . of society.  The laws of Leviticus protected the boundaries . . . and so the purity . . . of individual bodies.  One set of laws reflects and reinforces the other set of laws.  And the reason for all these laws is to ensure that Israel will remain “holy as the Lord is holy,” which is a recurring theme in Leviticus. You can see that borders and boundaries are important things in this world . . . and that piercing them is a very dangerous thing indeed:  dangerous to both the individual and to the society.

The setting for today’s Gospel story is a border . . . the boundary between Galilee and Samaria.  Jesus is walking in the place between “clean” Israel and “unclean” Samaria.  What a potent image!  Isn’t that exactly where Jesus always is:  on the border between what is accepted and what is unaccepted?  And what happens?  Ten lepers encounter Jesus.  They call out asking for mercy.  Now mercy, in the ancient Mediterranean world, is a rather specific thing . . . somewhat different from what we think of as mercy today.  For us, to show mercy probably means something like showing compassion or pity to someone in our power . . . or at least to someone weaker than we are.  But, in Palestine at the time of Jesus, to ask someone for mercy is not so much to ask for compassion or pity, as to ask a person to fulfill his or her obligations . . . in other words, to ask for mercy is to ask someone to do what he or she should do.  Essentially, the ten people in the Gospel of Luke are asking Jesus to give them what he owes them!  Wait . . . How’s that again?

Remember the ten lepers may not be people with actual leprosy, but people whose borders have somehow been breached and who now are considered unclean.  Their presence in a community threatens the community with pollution . . . their presence pierces the borders of that community and they must be expelled, as the foreign wives were expelled in the time of Ezra, to protect the holiness of the community.  And so these ten people are excluded from the community and, most importantly, from common worship.  They must remain outside.  What such people need is restoration to the holy community.  And anyone who can provide such restoration should indeed provide it.  In calling upon Jesus for mercy, the ten people in today’s story are recognizing Jesus’ ability to make them clean again.  Their call for mercy is, in a way, a recognition of Jesus’ identity.  They call upon Jesus to do what they expect he can do . . . to do what he is obligated to do if he is capable of it . . . to bring them back within the boundaries of the holy community.

Jesus the healer is constantly challenging existing boundaries and pushing them outward.  Think of all the stories of Jesus reaching out to and welcoming outcasts.  Sinners, prostitutes, the blind, the lame, lepers . . . they are all welcome within the boundaries of the holy community that Jesus is forming.  Healing, in an important sense of the word, means restoring meaning to life.  And that’s what Jesus does for the people he heals . . . for the people he welcomes into his community . . . he restores meaning to their lives.

Now, there’s a fairly obvious direction I could go from here with this sermon:  I could talk about how Jesus walks on the borders of society, approaching outcasts . . . offering to restore meaning to their lives . . . welcoming them into the holy community.  And I could ask us to reflect . . . as Jesus’ representatives on earth, as the Body of Christ . . . on how well we follow Christ’s example . . . on how well we welcome outcasts into our community and heal them.  But ya know what?, I’m not gonna go there.  Because as a parish and as individuals I know that we try hard to do this.  Oh sure, there’s room for improvement . . . isn’t there always? . . . but many of us ARE trying to do what we can.  So . . . if I’m not going to hector you to do more and to do it better, what AM I going to tell you?

Well, let’s look into our own hearts.  I’ve talked a lot about borders and boundaries . . . but I haven’t talked about the divisions . . . the boundaries, if you will . . . in our own hearts.  We all have them don’t we?  We all have cordoned off some small pocket of our soul that we consider impure or unclean.  Oh yes, most of our life may be in order, our souls essentially healthy . . . but even so, we all have some dark little spiritual corner that we’d rather not have a bright light shined on.  I expect that we all have some little piece of ourselves that we try to shun . . . to cast out . . . to keep the rest of our interior world holy and pure.  We all have little outcasts within us.  This is where Jesus walks.  This is where we can be certain to encounter our Lord and Savior . . . walking along the interior borders of our souls.  Can we find the courage to call out from the darkness?  Can we bring ourselves to cry out from that impure, unclean place asking for mercy?  He’s there . . . right there . . . right on the border offering healing and restoration . . . offering us wholeness.

Earlier I mentioned that it’s dangerous to pierce borders.  It is . . . but, remember, with Christ, everything gets turned upside down.  Allowing Jesus to pierce the divisions in our souls does not allow the sinful and unclean to enter in . . . rather, allowing Jesus to pierce the divisions in our souls allows a holy transformation to begin.  When Jesus pierces a boundary he brings healing to the darkness.  Rather than fearfully guarding a walled-off homeland in our souls, Jesus is walking the borders . . . healing and forgiving more and more . . . pushing out our borders . . . including more and more of us into the holy community . . . uniting us spiritually and making us whole.

Do not be frightened of those dark corners in your souls . . . call out for mercy.  Jesus will cross over.  He will provide healing . . . he will provide MEANING to your lives.  And, when you feel the healing touch of Christ, may you be like the single Samaritan in today’s story . . . may you return to Jesus in gratitude, praising God.

Amen.

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