(The Nationalist, October 2004)
There is a story in the Bible about a leper called Naaman who was a Syrian. At the time, Syrians and Israelites felt about each other as they do now – pure hatred. Naaman was the commander of the Syrian army. But he was healed of his leprosy through an Israelite prophet. He was made one of the community of God’s followers, symbolized by bringing home with him some soil from Israel. Before, he had been an outsider, an enemy. Now, it wasn’t just his body that was healed but the relationship between the two peoples. They found common ground through their faith in one God.
In the Gospels lepers are often a symbol of the outsider, the one cast out by society, as lepers literally were at that time.
We don’t have lepers in Ireland – apart from travellers, immigrants, gays, people of other races, religions or colour, the politically incorrect, drug- or sex-addicts, prophets who proclaim unwanted truths, people who are different in ways we don’t like – to name just some. Our response is sometimes to shut such people out, to close our eyes, ears and hearts against them.
Jesus welcomed outsiders: a Samaritan leper, a Syro-Phoenician woman, a Roman centurion, the good Samaritan and others.
The risk involved in welcoming outsiders is that you are made an outsider yourself. You get thrown out because you are seen as having gone too far, having broken ranks with your own community.
It happened to Jesus. He preached a universalist message to people whose minds were firmly locked into the local. He had a powerful sense of God as Father; it was his over-riding preoccupation, his constant theme. This left no room for petty local partisanship. He tried to broaden the horizons of people who had made up their minds to be narrow. So he was rejected. People said, ‘Crucify him!’ and he was crucified – outside the city, in a symbol of rejection.
To be a unifier or a divider – that’s a basic challenge for anyone. Jesus prayed ‘that they all may be one as you, Father, and I are one’. The human vocation is to be an agent of healing and reconciliation at every level.