Exodus 14: 19-31
Exodus 15:1b-11, 20-21
Romans 14: 1-12
Matthew 18: 21-35

My what a great day it was when we won that battle and put all of our enemies to the sword! What a great day it was when we made widows of our enemies wives and made their children fatherless! What a great day it was when we won and drove back the enemy; they will not bother us again for a long, long time!

If that sounds a little off to our ears, especially to our “church ears”, it should! Yet, at the same time, it does sound like our Old Testament passages for today. It sounds like the rejoicing, placed on the lips of Miriam, at the victory over and escape from the army of Egypt.

These are two of those passages I would not normally touch with a ten foot pole. I would very much rather leave well enough alone and stay with something safe, and warm and uplifting. YET, the crossing of the sea completes the first part of the biblical story of the Exodus. So I feel I have to say something about these disturbing passages before we move to the next part of the journey in the wilderness.

Of course, this passage was written by the heirs of the Hebrew tradition; the descendants of those who escaped and it IS from their perspective. But I wonder how a modern-day Egyptian, whether Christian, Jewish or some other faith, would react to a passage which takes joy in the deaths of their ancestors?

I suppose that it is human nature that allows us to go from deep-felt thankfulness over victory to spontaneous rejoicing in the death and suffering of the enemy but as a people of faith we need to take a serious look at what it is that our God calls us to do.

As a people who follow Jesus, who took a hard look at his own tradition and shone a sometimes harsh new light on it, we need to take a critical look at the passages such as this and ask ourselves if they affirm our already fixed prejudices or if they challenge us to greater faithfulness. In their attitude to the enemy, I see nothing in the attitude toward the enemy as contained in these two passages to strive for and everything to guard against.

But, and it is a big but, but we cannot ignore it or skip over these passages, because they also contains the affirmation that God is with the people of Israel as they escape into freedom.

If we were to take it and transpose it into the modern realm we need only to talk about our mission in Afghanistan and the continuing war in Iraq. I believe that we can indeed mourn the death of our soldiers and be thankful for progress toward peace that has been made without rejoicing in the death of their sons and especially their innocent civilians! What we need to work foris true peace, not a victory that only comes when the so-called enemy has no soldiers left or can’t afford to continue.

We have had far too much war and violence justified in our world by people of one religion saying “God is on OUR side and God wants all the other folks to suffer a horrible death”, while the people on the “other side” are saying the same thing!

A few weeks ago I quoted Martin Niemöller , the German minister who was was imprisoned by Hitler for eight years. He said, "It took me a long time to learn that God is not the enemy of my enemies; he's not even the enemy of his own enemies."

As Christians we need to struggle with what the world expects of us; with what our own country and community expects of us; and our own ‘first reaction’ to what is going on. We need to hold that in tension with how the Gospel of Jesus calls us to live and be in a world that is hurting and seeking healing and peace.

Today’s gospel has implications far greater than that of two church members in conflict. Like the Lord’s prayer says, “our forgiveness of others is connected to God’s forgiveness of us.”

I think that we need to do is to affirm that the God who led the children of Israel from bondage to freedom is a God of justice and compassion.

When we look at situations in our world and in our own lives we need to realize that there is far more to any situation than there being two simple sides to anything.

The people of Israel were in the desert but their journey was far from over. Our journey is also a continuing one.

When you go on a trip or an outing alone or with your family, one of the most important things that you can take with you is a first aid kit.

Perhaps what we need for our journey this fall and winter is a “spiritual first aid kit”. I have one for everyone. (Everyone will have received an envelope containing the items mentioned.)

In it you will find:

A Bible verse

A band aid

A couple of elastic bands

A crayon

h2> A pencil and eraser to remind us that we will each write our own story opf our journey but occasionally we will make mistakes. The eraser will help us to remove those mistakes so that we can write over it and keep on going.

h2> A peppermint to remind us that we and others are worth a mint to God.

h2> A caramel to remind us of the sweetness that we are to find in life.

h2> A one cent piece to remind us of the love that we sometimes have to look around for (Like, on the ground, under our feet); the love we are supposed to share and like the lowly cent, love is worth more than it appears to be on the surface. (Did you know that a cent costs more than a cent to make!)

h2> A tea bag to remind us to sit down with a friend and share the details of our journey and share in struggles and joys. VMay we all be blessed on our journey this fall, remembering to love and to forgive as Jesus did.

Amen.

Exodus 16: 2-15
Psalm 105: 1-6, 37-45
Philippians 1: 21-30
Matthew 20: 1-16

Enough for All

Sometimes things are just too good to be true, or too good to last. (Pause) Think about it; the people of Israel had escaped from Egypt. After 400 years they were finally free from cruel taskmasters who enjoyed the fruits of the labours of thousands of slaves. They had miraculously avoided capture and drowning. Now, on the other side of the sea, they were finally safe. Then, as it often does, reality set in. The food and water they had managed to carry with them was gone. Of course, there were no grocery stores in the desert. Remember, they were city folks who didn’t know how to live off the land. The animals they had, they could not afford to eat!

They were hungry and thirsty and as we know, you cant live very long without food and water. They became desperate and began to wish for captivity again because, in Egypt at least, they ate and had water to drink. And the WHOLE BUNCH of them started to complain; every single last one. Actually the text says that the “Whole Congregation” started to complain, but I didn’t want you to get any ideas!!!

Since we already know what happens in the next part of the story, we might say, “Why didn’t they have the faith to just wait for God to bring about the next good thing to ensure their survival?” Well, people just aren’t like that. We want certainty, we want security. Just go to the Superstore a division of Loblaws (a grocery giant) in the Atlantic Provinces. when the radio has just forecast a storm and it looks as if no one was going to be able to shop for a month - everyone’s shopping cart is piled high. (And we do know what “just in time” delivery does to the fresh food supply when the bridge IS shut down and the trucks cant deliver their goods). We live on an island whose 2 choices for transportation of goods can easily be closed because of high winds We do know some of what they were feeling.

We are used to choice. A man ordered a meal in a restaurant in the USA and when h his meal came and he saw something he didn’t recognize on his plate. He asked what it was.

“Oh that’s grits,” said the waitress.

“I didn’t order any grits”, responded the man.

“Oh you don’t order grits, they just come.”

I am told there is actually a truck stop which puts as one of it’s daily specials- handwritten on a giant blackboard, “Sit down - Shut up- Eat what you’re given” - $15.”

The people of Israel had a lot to learn about their life in the desert and this would not be the last time they complained about the food or God’s care in general. But let’s not get ahead of ourselves.

At this point, the stage is set, for God to act again, to save the people. Not one, but two seemingly miraculous occurrences kept them fed: the quail and the manna. We are told that large flocks of these birds fly across the desert on their annual migration. Whether or not this was the right time of year for this, do not know. Some biblical scholars tell us that the word “Manna” is not really a name at all but a question, “What is this?” They didn’t know what it was, but this “whattsits name” fed them.

We still don’t know what it was. One theory suggests that it was the sap of a certain bush while another theory suggests that it was the secretion of the insects that fed on the sap of this bush. I don’t know about you, but it doesn’t sound all that appetizing to me!

The scriptures are full of little tidbits of information about this “manna”, but it seems that the most interesting is that it would only keep for a day (but since it was not gathered on the Sabbath the manna gathered on Friday kept for two days). Thus there was no stockpiling, there was no hoarding, unless of course, you wanted a basket-full of worm infested white flakes! So, as the story goes, they harvested just enough food for the day each and every day except the Sabbath. And this went on until they reaped their first harvest in the land of milk and honey.

By the time of Jesus, many, many generations later, the people were again living a precarious existence and almost all of the able-bodied men had been reduced to the status of day labourers. This was a hand to mouth existence in which finding work was the only way for a man to feed his family, and only one day at a time.

So, when the usual daily wage was subsistence living and nothing else, those who worked only part of the day would not have been able to support their families if the landowner had not been generous.

Was it fair? No. Was it the right thing to do? Only the reader can decide.

Or is it not really about economics, and fair employment practices, but about something far broader? The text tells us that Jesus tells this parable like story as a way of illustrating the Kingdom of God.

Two of my favourite shows on TV are Grey’s Anatomy and er . These shows claim to depict life in big city hospitals. One of the things you learn from these shows about life on the medical staff of a big hospital is the pecking order. The interns, are the lowliest of the “doctors” and, if you believe the tv show, their task for the morning might be to get the resident (who is also a “student”, higher up the ladder) a donut and a coffee, or pick up his dry-cleaning, or being the brunt of his or her misplaced anger, instead of learning about medicine.

In the movie The Pursuit of Happyness Chris Gardner, played by Will Smith, is single dad who goes from being a door salesman of over-priced bone density scanners to working as an unpaid intern in an investment firm and he must compete with all the others, who have more time, more education and less responsibility, for a coveted position as a stockbroker with the firm after the end of his internship.

So much in life is about paying your dues, putting our head down, getting to work and putting in your time until you earn some respect, recognition and remuneration; that we don’t know any other way. Actually, we don’t want it to be any other way either, because that is how we were trained and how we learned about life.

But, asserts Jesus, the Kingdom of God is not about competence or status; it is about grace. Grace, by its very definition is not earned, it is a gift. Grace, by definition is not fairness, it is grace. Living by grace is learning to trust and live in that trust expecting enough grace for that day only.

The words, “One Day At A Time” are emblazoned on the bumper stickers of many member of 12 step groups such as Alcoholics Anonymous. As I understand it, the journey of sobriety, is not achieved all at once, but with just enough grace and strength of that one day.

The Kingdom of God, says Jesus is not about success as if we could achieve it through hard work; the kingdom is a gift to which we respond. The kingdom is a way of life in which we participate from day to day. The kingdom is all about God and God’s action and only secondarily about us.

So, freed from the need to have it all resting on our shoulders we can live as if God’s kingdom has already arrived and, where it has not, there is God and God’s grace. It does not depend on us. We are on a journey; and as the hymn says, “the journey is our home.” Thanks be to God for the news that we are never alone as we journey together.

Amen.

Exodus 17: 1-7
Psalm 78:1-4, 12-16
Philippians 2: 1-13
Matthew 21: 23-32

What Gives Us Confidence?

We are in the midst of a federal election campaign “supposedly” called because the Prime Minister did not feel his minority government had the “confidence of the House”. I wonder how many federal elections have been in Canada as a result of a “non-confidence” motion in the House? It’s a time honoured way to bring down a minority government. If I remember my junior high school social studies lessons correctly, certain bills, such as the annual budget, are automatically matters of confidence and if they fail, the Prime Minister must ask the Governor-General to dissolve the House and call an election. So here we are. Essentially, ALL of our federal elections answer the question “in whom do the majority of Canadians place their trust for up to four years.”

The people of Israel did not have a lot of confidence in Moses, despite his track record of leading them to freedom and finding them food. They wanted to go back to Egypt, despite all of the privations they suffered there. Despite the fact that they had cried out for freedom and release from their captivity.

Yes, despite all of that! They were human after all and they were really no different than we are. We all know that most of us look at the past with rose coloured glasses. When things get difficult many of us are at least tempted to wish for a simpler, seemingly less complicated time.

However, as the text tells us, the attitude of the people of Israel did not really show a lack of trust in Moses, but rather, a lack of trust and confidence in God!

Having enough water to drink while in the Sinai desert is not merely a matter of comfort, it is a matter of survival. In this context though, the people should have known better; God had just provided them with manna and quail. What reason would there be to do this and then kill them through dehydration? Surely, there would not be any reason to doubt God at all, but at the first sign of chapped lips and empty water bottles they voiced their complaints to Moses. The same God who could dry up the sea for them to cross should be able to produce water in a desert!

I feel for the people; I really do. But I also feel for Moses. Here he was, dragged back from the herding of sheep and called by the power of God to a life of herding a bunch of complaining and ungrateful people who just don’t “get it”. They don’t “get” that God is with them. They don’t “get” that God is trustworthy and will not let his plans for them fall flat. They don’t “get” that they will be taken care of and that they will find enough water to sustain life.

Speaking of people who don’t “get it”, the disciples frequently don’t “get” it either. The scribes and pharisees, as they are portrayed in the gospels, not only “don’t have a clue” about Jesus; they are downright hostile. It seems that, in their eyes, Jesus can do nothing right. He does do good things but for the wrong people and he breaks all sorts of rules to do them. Clearly he cannot be “from God”; their minds are made up.

Jesus did not close the door on them though. He told a parable that talked about a son who was initially hostile to his father and one who payed him only lip service. They are forced to admit that, in the end, the one who received the praise, is the one who is worthy of praise is the one who acted according to his father’s wishes.

There is hope for the people of Israel who can seem to see nothing but the rather large and admittedly very real problems in their lives. There is hope for those who follow Jesus but just don’t “get it” right off the bat. There is hope for those among us who need to wait; those who need to weigh all the evidence first, or exhaust all other possibilities. There is hope for those of us who have not been able to confidently place our trust in the one who promises us life in all abundance.

When they were wandering in the desert the people of Israel needed to have the confidence that issued in action; not just the action of not complaining, but the action of getting on with their wilderness journey and finding and serving God where they were; not where they wanted to be.

That’s often our problem, I think. We want to wait until things change; until things get better. On the one hand we are a society that lives on credit because we don’t want to wait to purchase whatever it is that we want right now. On the other hand we look at the call of faith or at the simple and complex needs around us and we throw up our hands saying that our own needs are so great and we have to wait until we have more money, more time, more of whatever it is that is being asked for.

There are some things in life that we will never be totally ready for unless and until we make the leap of faith and commit to doing them with all of our being, despite our doubts and uncertainties.

In the movie, “Beyond Rangoon” Dr Laura Bowman becomes severely depressed after the brutal murder of her son and husband and she loses her interest in life. Family members urge her to take a vacation and she decides on Burma. She doesn’t really realize, and doesn’t really care, about the implications of attending a clandestine, nighttime, pro-democracy rally. She realizes too late that it was dangerous to talk to a former professor who lost his job because of his political views and had to resort to driving a taxi. She loses her passport and realizes that she is on the oppressive government’s hit list and must find a way to escape to Thailand or be killed.

She discovers an intense will to live during her very harrowing journey. At the end of her journey she makes her way across a river which forms the border between Burma and Thailand and narrowly escapes being shot. She arrives at a hospital which is treating casualties from the unrest in Burma. Her trauma skills immediately kick into action and in the midst of the mayhem in the makeshift and very primitive emergency room, the doctor in charge says something like, “I don’t know who you are, or where you came from, but what I really need to know is, how long can you stay?” The change in her life came from her will to live fully in the midst of the reality in which she found herself, and not in mourning the life she wanted to have. She found new purpose in life and was fully committed to it.

What Moses and Jesus needed on the journey was a people committed to being faithful in the situations in which they found themselves.

To find fulfilment in our lives as a people of faith we need to be able to look at life with the eyes of faith, seeing how we can participate in the great adventure upon which we have been called, rather than finding reasons why we can’t just now.

There is a great deal to worry about just now; the most obvious one being the price of food, furnace oil and gasoline. How are we going to get to work and keep warm this winter? We are told that some will have to chose between eating or heating. Farmers are going broke at record rates and we wonder about food security for our province and country. Churches and other agencies will be asked for more assistance this winter. We may wonder if we have enough resources to help others when we don’t know if we will have enough ourselves. Then there are the regular bills and commitments of the churches and other charities and when we dwell on it we can become paralyzed by a fear of being inadequate to the task and wishing for a better time.

Our churches are in the midst of change and contemplation of change. Wishing to turn back the clock to another time will change nothing. Wishing the pews and the offering plates were both full will not make them so. We must be faithful in the place where we are, even when it feels like a desert in many ways.

During the 40 years in the wilderness the people of Israel developed their worship and their identity. They came to know who they were as God’s people and how to live in response to this call. In times of great difficulty the church developed its identity and its mission to the world knowing that the Risen Christ was with them and would never leave them.

This is our task today; to live in faith and in trust, despite the evidence to the contrary. Our task is to choose life despite what may seem like overwhelming odds. Our task is to place our trust in the God of life and liberty and then live accordingly. We all need to commit ourselves to following God fully in this new and even frightening time. We are called to commit to following in the midst of great change even when some of the changes are not to our liking, because we know that we are going with God and that God will not leave us or abandon us.

Amen.

Exodus 1: 1-4, 7-9, 12-20
Psalm
Philippians 3: 4b - 14
Matthew 21: 33-46

Getting “Beyond” the “Thou Shalt Not”

The Shawshank Redemption is a prison escape movie, with a difference. In it an elderly inmate called Brooks Hatlen is released after spending almost his entire life behind bars. The problem is that he cannot cope with life on the outside; after 50 years behind bars, he has become “institutionalized”. He does not feel safe anymore; there is no structure to his life. And, to make matters worse the world has undergone tremendous changes since he had last been “on the outside’. He knows that he cannot cope so he contemplates committing a crime so that they will have to send him back, but instead of doing so, he commits suicide because he cannot cope without the structure that life had behind the wall and the respect he had earned from the younger inmates.

Most people who have spent any amount of time in prison, or in any highly structured environment, do have a hard time adjusting, partially because they are not accustomed to thinking for themselves, or making anything but the smallest of decisions.

Many inmates are released to halfway houses, in an attempt to integrate them into society slowly and with appropriate guidance.

The tradition tells us that the so-called “ten commandments” along with a myriad of other instructions about life and worship were given to the people of Israel early in their wilderness journey.

Sometimes, we need to state the obvious: the people of Israel had been slaves in Egypt and not just for their own lifetime, but for many, many, generations. When they were slaves, it is possible they may have been able to decide what to cook for supper (if indeed they had much choice at all) or whom to marry or what to call their children, but most of life was controlled or highly regimented by the work of making bricks and chipping out stone for the Egyptians’ building projects. If they were like most slave populations, their taskmasters ruled their lives and made their decisions for them. Now, in their freedom they needed guidelines, as to what was and was not acceptable within this new community headed for the promised land.

They also needed an identity. If they were, as the tradition tells us, an extended family, the sense of identity as children of Israel needed to be re-established. In addition, their purpose, of being on a journey to the land of promise needed to be put in front of them once again. If you take a ten generation break from anything, you can be forgiven for forgetting something! The ten commandments, and the rest of “the law” was part of this re-orientation.

We might think these rules a bit of a no-brainer but they were needed in order to establish the norms of this new community.

To us, most of these rules are common sense, but we grew up with them and most of our laws and societal norms are derived from them. Yet, I think that most of us focus far too much on the “thou shalt NOT” part rather than on the kind of community they envisioned.

A manager in an industrial setting decided to quit his job and enroll in divinity school to become a minister. One of the foremen in his company came to his office and told him that he was sorry to see him go, and then said, “you don’t drink, you don’t smoke, you don’t run around with women, ...... I think you’ll make a good minister.”

Being a person of faith, or even a minister, really cannot be evaluated by what one does NOT do, or at least it should not be. If avoiding sin is our primary focus in life, we have not set our sights nearly high enough. Being a person of faith is NOT found in making the avoidance of sin the be all and end all of our Christian journey.

The ten commandments are not about avoiding “wrong actions” as much as they are about forming communities of love, justice and mutual respect. Yet, we sometimes get stuck in traditional interpretations of these laws and forget that they have a positive purpose. Telling a child “don’t hit your sister” is a much easier thing to understand than “be nice to your sister”; because it’s specific. A child will not always have the parent around to tell them what is and is not appropriate in every circumstance. So the child needs to figure out that it is not OK to ruin your sister’s colouring book or breaking his brother’s crayons, on purpose.

The Ten Commandments are part of a larger piece whereby community norms are formed and instilled.

What kind of community could we have, I wonder, if everyone followed these rules, not to the letter, but to the spirit.

It would not take much imagination to see that the world would be a wonderful place if they were completely followed. Yet, it does not take much more imagination to begin to see the need to define at least some of the commandments. Take the one on Sabbath observance, which in its fullest form, there are verses missing from the reading for today, prohibits all work on the Sabbath. IF we want to start getting technical and taking things literally, we must realize first of all, that the actual Sabbath is not “Sunday”, a Christian practice, it is actually Friday at 6pm to Saturday at 6:00 pm. Then we need to figure out what work is? If carrying wood is work, how do you feed your stove and avoid freeing on the Sabbath if you live in Canada in February. Do we all have to have oil or electric heat and programmable thermostats? What about getting a meal ready; do we have to leave the milk carton on the table on Saturday night or can we get it from the fridge on Sunday? What if you have a heart attack on the Sabbath, are the doctor and nurses who saved your life; excused from the commandment for that very hard and highly skilled work.

If I remember correctly, the leaders of the Jewish community eventually expanded the ten commandments into over 600 rules so that most, if not all, conceivable situations that one was apt to encounter, would be covered.

Jesus tried to get them to see that the Sabbath at least was made for human benefit and that no one was intended to split hairs like that! I think that when we approach the ten commandments as a guide to personal morality, with a view to following them “to the letter”, we miss the positive communal focus they were most surely designed to have. We are a very individualistic culture; but individualism is relatively new in the history of the human race (about 300 years). These ten life rules were designed for a culture that knew little about individualism, as we understand it. The Israelites had to learn how to live together, in community.

In 2008 with the economy seemingly on the brink of collapse; farmers going broke and people not able to feed families and heat homes we need a more communal focus. As a church we need to see ourselves as community, not a collection of individuals celebrating together.

World Wide Communion Sunday is a perfect opportunity to reflect on the border free nature of gospel community - the call of the gospel is to find that place beyond race and nationality and creed and skin colour.

The goal of those of us who call upon the name of Christ is to come to the table as part of one community seeking the health of the body and not working on our own individual path of faithfulness. I believe that when we focus on the body and the community the individual will take care of itself.

In the last few days I have been receiving emailed greetings from all over the world - Austria and Australia; from Korea all over Canada, from the United States and all parts in-between and I have sent ours to them.

Let us come to table as part of a world- wide fellowship from every age - the people who follow in the way of Jesus Christ.

Amen.

Deuteronomy 8: 7-18
Psalm 65
2 Corinthians 9: 6-15
Luke 17: 11-19

Lessons in Thanksgiving

Monologue of a Samaritan Mother

Oh, hello. Shalom to you.

Sorry, I didn’t see you right off, I was busy getting a meal for my son. Oh, he’s not a child, he’s grown up and he can certainly get his own food, he’s been doing it for years. But I haven’t been able to wait on him since he was a child, so I am glad to do it.

You might be wondering what happened to my son.

Did he run away from home?

No.

I hate to admit this, but we actually threw him out. He had to leave town too!

Was he taking drugs or breaking curfew?

No.

He was a good boy. He was very helpful to his father and me.

Was he in trouble with the law?

No.

Not in the way you might think. The law told us that he had to go but he did nothing wrong.

I have felt guilty about it for years but when I would get down in the dumps about it, my husband would say, “Sarah darling, we had no choice. It’s the law.” The neighbours told me to forget about him but how can you do that? How can you forget your own child?

And now he’s home. This very morning my boy said he forgave me - imagine that , he forgives me. And then he thanked me for being such a good mom, and he cried. A grown man!

But I bet you are still asking what my boy did to make us kick him out. You are asking why he needed to forgive me.

Actually, we had no choice. I keep saying that, but it’s true. The day came when we couldn’t deny it anymore.

You see, he was always getting scrapes and bruises, like his friends, but unlike them, he claimed that the bruises never hurt - I didn’t really believe him but that’s how some boys think they have to be, tough as nails.

And then one day when I was looking at the latest scrape and at the scars on his legs and the rash on his arms , I knew. Hit me like a ton of bricks. I KNEW why he didn’t feel any pain when he got hurt. The doctors say that’s the way it usually starts; I knew but I could not say it out loud.

L E P R O S Y. It is every mother’s worst nightmare. It’s every father’s worst nightmare.

It’s the worst thing that could have happened to our family.

No one can do a thing about leprosy. The doctors can only tell us that there is no cure. The law says he has to leave house and home and even the town and live with other people who have leprosy. It is in the Torah, God’s law and I don’t suppose the doctors could change the Law, even if they knew anything new about it.

I suppose you also know how small villages work; someone found out and they told someone else and pretty soon the high priest came to our house, took one look at our son and told him to leave. He was just a youth- hardly more than a child. He was not even betrothed - but I guess that is just as well - no young family was depending on him for their food and shelter. Even that would not have made any difference to the law; he had to go regardless.

So we cried and fought, my husband and I, but the law was clear, he had to go. There was a colony for people who had leprosy on the east side of town in the wilderness. We packed up his bag, with an extra coat and a loaf of bread and a few fish - and we sent him off. I even kissed him on the cheek even though I knew I shouldn’t have - leprosy is contagious - but what’s a mother to do?

He knew what was expected of him. He had to stay out of town. If he came into town he had to cry out, “Don’t come near me - I am a leper”. How I hate that word, he may have leprosy, but he is not just a leper, he is a young man who happens to have leprosy. He is the beloved oldest child of John and Sarah, brother of James and Mary, and he happens to have leprosy. He is a child of God. How I hated it when they said, “Oh, their son is a leper”.

We tried to bring him up right. We taught him the traditions of our people, the Samaritans. Even though we are a minority, we believe we are also children of Abraham.

We taught our children to say “thank you” to God for their food at every meal, even though some days there wasn’t much cooking over the fire. Even though the clothes were hand-me-downs from my sister’s boys, he was always thankful to have a longer robe to cover up those scarred and bony knees. We taught them him to say please and thank you, if he borrowed a hoe or a toy and especially to his friends’ moms when they were fed them after play. We tried to teach him about generosity. We tried to teach them that thankful living is a way of life, not just for the good times. We tried to teach him that God made everything and we are just borrowing it for our time on earth. We tried to tell him that he has a duty to care for the land for his grandchildren - and DO you know how HARD it is to teach a boy to think of his grandchildren. When even an hour is a long time to wait, how do you get a boy to think ahead for 40 years, or more! We tried though. And we hoped it stuck.

I could see my husband’s face in his. He also looked like my side of the family. And his face was so innocent - until that day when he realized that everyone would be afraid of him, until he realized that he would have to beg for food and that almost no one gave good food to the beggar. Most of the time they just give old food they were about to throw out: stale bread, fish left in the sun too long, with the ribs pulling away from the insides when you cleaned them, food that you had rescued from the dogs on the street. They would think that this kind of food would be “good enough for those people” and they would feel good about their generosity! RIGHT! ?

We tried, John and I, to take food out to the colony. We went as far as we dared and we wrapped it up and left notes for him. I always said I loved him and I wish I could spare more.

And at night, I cried.

And we did this, year after year.

Then, one day, I heard a story coming up and down the streets - I heard that a new teacher was in town. He was a Jew but he didn’t hate us Samaritans, like most Jews do. He was also a healer. I heard that lame people were ab le to walk again. I heard that a man who had been born blind come to be able to see.

I heard that the man went by the name of Jesus - I heard that some stuck up their noses and said that we didn’t need to listent to him because he has no father, just a mother - but I say, he is a child of God and loved just the same. And if he knew a mother’s love that is a very powerful love.

I heard another story about this man. I was going to the well one day, much later than usual, when I ran into Tabitha - the woman on the back street who has such poor luck with men - but who am I to judge. This Jesus talked to her one day and he didn’t judge her. She thought he was a prophet. She told everyone and I saw such a change in her eyes, I knew that he had to be someone special if he was the cause.

So when I heard he was going to be in town again I had to go and listen to him, I had to get a note to my boy to see if he and his friends could manage to get there, to hear him, to ask him ------- Turns out, they already knew and they were already there , at the edge of the crowd - and instead of calling out for food, they were calling out to him for mercy - I knew they wanted healing.

Jesus went over to them. He talked to them. He told them to go to the priest. Now that might seem odd to you, but the ONLY reason a person with leprosy would go to a priest was to get a certificate of health - and I think they knew the reason. They knew that they would be healed if they went. They all ran off as fast as they could - like scalded cats; they ALL did.

But then, my boy turned around. He knew, even without looking that the healing had taken place and I think he remembered some of what John and I tried to teach him - say thank you and remember God is reallythe owner of everything.

May be he became closer to God when he was out in that poor excuse for a camp. Maybe he saw something in Jesus’ eyes that touched his soul - I don’t know but he went back and he said thank you to Jesus and Jesus told him that he was healed and WELL.

He was made WELL , not just healed. Wow! We could all use a dose of wellness, couldn’t we.

So, my boy, after he came back from the priest with his certificate of health in his hand he came home, waving it, to our house, and we embraced and we cried and I just had to get him a lunch - its just some wine, sone cheese and some bread we are all out of figs, we are all out of fruit, but he is welcome to all the food in the house - and as soon as John brings home his pay tonight and sees him I know HE will go out and buy all the food he can.

My son was lost and now he is found.

I was lost and now I am found.

Thanks be to God.