Lent E-Retreat                       Who leads the way to the kingdom of God?

 ²⁷After that He went out and noticed a tax collector named Levi sitting in the tax booth, and He said to him, "Follow Me."  ²⁸And he left everything behind, and got up and began to follow Him.  ²⁹And Levi gave a big reception for Him in his house; and there was a great crowd of tax collectors and other people who were reclining at the table with them.  ³⁰The Pharisees and their scribes began grumbling at His disciples, saying, "Why do you eat and drink with the tax collectors and sinners?"  ³¹And Jesus answered and said to them, "It is not those who are well who need a physician, but those who are sick.  ³²"I have not come to call the righteous but sinners to repentance.”   (Luke 5:27-32)

In her short story, Revelation, Flannery O’Connor writes about a woman with Pharisee-like tendencies, Ruby Turpin.  Ruby is pretty clear on the place of her and her husband Claude in the kingdom of God.  She is consumed by a sense of order and rank— and tends to see others as beneath her.  This manifests itself in racism, comments about ‘trashy people’ and a general looking down upon others.  Ruby’s social and theological world is rocked one day.  While gossiping in a doctor’s waiting room and carrying on with another woman in judgment-laden conversation, Ruby is verbally attacked by the woman’s teenaged daughter (she calls Ruby “an old wart hog from hell”!).  Naturally, Ruby is fuming about this ‘unprovoked’ outburst and the other myriad injustices she must continually endure from those beneath her.  Later that day, while feeding the pigs on the small farm she lived on with her husband, Ruby has a vision:

“Until the sun lisped finally behind the tree line, Mrs. Turpin remained there with her gaze bent to them as if she were absorbing some abysmal life-giving knowledge.  At last she lifted her head.  There was only a purple streak in the sky, cutting though a filed of crimson and leading, like an extension of the highway, into the descending dusk.  She raised her hands from the side of the pen in a gesture hieratic and profound.  A visionary light settled in her eyes.  She saw the streak as a vast swinging bridge extending upward from the earth through the field of living fire.  Upon it a vast horde of sols were rumbling toward heaven.  There were whole companies of white trash, clean for the fist time in their lives, and bands of blacks in white robes, and battalions of freaks and lunatics shouting and clapping and leaping like frogs.  And bringing up the end of the procession was a troupe of people whom she recognized at once as those who, like herself and Claude, had always had a little of everything and the God-given wit to use it right.  She leaned forward to observe closer.  They were marching behind the others with great dignity, accountable as they had always been for good order and common sense and respectable behavior.  They alone were singing on key.  Yet she could see by their shocked and altered faces that even their virtues were being burned away…. At length she got down and turned off the faucet and made her slow way on the darkening path to the house.  In the woods around her the invisible cricket choruses had started up, but what she heard were the voices of the souls climbing upward into the starry field and shouting hallelujah.”

Take some time in quiet.  Read and re-read the Scripture passage from Luke.  Read the passage from O’Connor.  What strikes you?  In the gospel passage, what stands out?  Which character(s) can you relate to in that passage?  Why?   Again, take some time in quiet.

Some questions for reflection:

·         Lent is a time when we are called to look at our own need for healing, forgiveness and reconciliation.  Am I guilty of self-righteousness?  How is it manifest in my life?

·         What do I feel about O’Connor’s vision of the heavenly procession in the passage quoted above?  Where would I be in that grand parade?

·         Is there someone I may be called to forgive this Lent?  Is there someone I need to apologize to?

·         What is the grace in being one of those in need of healing, one of those Jesus came to save?  Can our wounds and broken parts become ways to grow closer to Christ?

Lent E-Retreat 
 

            “On his return, Jesus was welcomed by a crowd.  They were all there expecting him.   A man came up, Jairus, by name.  He was president of the meting place.  He fell at Jesus’ feet and begged him to come to his home because his twelve-year old daughter, his only child, was dying.  Jesus went with him, making his way through the pushing, jostling crowd. 

            In the crowd that day there was a woman who for twelve years had been afflicted with hemorrhages.  She had spent every penny she had on doctors but not one had been able to help her.  She slipped in from behind and touched the edge of Jesus’ robe.  At that very moment her hemorrhaging stopped.  Jesus said, “Who touched me?”  When no one stepped forward, Peter said, “But master, we’ve got crowds of people on our hands.  Dozens have touched you.”  Jesus insisted, “Someone touched me.  I felt power discharged from me.”  When the woman realized that she couldn’t remain hidden, she knelt trembling before him.  In front of all the people, she blurted out her story- why she touched him and how at the same moment she was healed.  Jesus said, “Daughter you took a risk trusting me, and now you’re healed and whole.  Live well, live blessed!” 

            While he was still talking, someone from the leaders house cam e up and told him, “You daughter died.  No need now to bother the Teacher.”  Jesus overhead and said, “Don’t be upset.  Just trust me and everything will be all right.”  Going into the house, he wouldn’t let anyone enter with him except Peter, John, James, and the child’s parents.  Everyone was crying and carrying on over her.  Jesus said, “Don’t cry.  She didn’t die; she is sleeping.”  They laughed at him.  They knew she was dead.  The Jesus, gripping her hand, called, “My dear little child, get up.”  She was up in an instant, up and breathing again!  He told them to give her something to eat.  Her parents were ecstatic, but Jesus warned them to keep quiet.  “Don’t tell a soul what happened in this room.””

Luke 8: 40-56  (from The Message, a contemporary translation of the Bible)

 

A few reflections:

 

The woman in this gospel reading had good reason to tremble as she knelt before Jesus and told him everything that had just happened.  By touching him she had rendered Jesus impure.  The fact that she had a constant flow of blood would have kept her well on the fringes of society.  Being a woman already garaunteed that she was virtually powerless in society at that time.  To be both a woman and someone experiencing an illness such as hers that caused a flow of blood would have meant a life of isolation, poverty and shame.  Certainly there were those living in the First Century in ancient Palestine who would have subscribed to the notion that somehow the woman deserved this condition – that God was striking her for some reason, perhaps her sin or that of her parents… an old proverb from this time was sometimes crassly repeated, “If you see a blind man begging by the side of the road, kick him! Why should you be any kinder than God?”  In the midst of all of that, and while on his way to the home of someone very important (we have Jairus’ name, after all, not something very common in Scripture), Jesus stops, notices, and blesses the one who was despised, unclean and an outcast.  “Live well, live blessed!” he tells her. 

 

The words, “My dear little child, get up” are, in ancient Aramaic, Talitha Ku’um.  Jesus’ words and ministry spoke life in a place of death.

 

In two instances, we have Jesus bringing life into a situation of death and causing the kingdom of God to be made manifest in situations where all that people could see was limitations – cultural and social living death in the case of the woman who dared to touch Jesus and the literal death of the little girl he touched.  

 

1. Which character(s) in this passage can you relate to?  Why?  What does this Scripture passage say to you?
2. The old woman who reached out for a cure was marginalized and declared unclean.  Who gets treated like that today?
3. If Jesus were to invite you from death to life in some area of your life today, to what part of your life would Jesus touch you and say, “Talitha Ku’um”?
4. When and how have I reached out to ‘touch’ Jesus for healing and strength?  What happened?  Did someone help me?  Have I thanked him/her?

 

Spend some time in quiet with the Lord