You’re contagious
Healing of the 10 Lepers by JESUS MAFA, a response to the New Testament readings from the Lectionary by a Christian community in Cameroon, Africa.
Each of the readings was selected and adapted to dramatic interpretation by the community members. Photographs of their interpretations were made, and these were then transcribed to paintings.
Wonderings…
I wonder if you’ve ever been surprised to discover that one of your enemies was more complex or sympathetic than you had believed.
I wonder in whose presence you feel more grounded, more courageous, more yourself.
Reflection on these Wonderings + Texts for Year C, Proper 23
2 Kings 5:1-3, 7-15c; Psalm 111; Luke 17:11-19
Let us speak, and listen, held in the presence of our loving, liberating, and life-giving God. Amen.
I wonder what comes up—how your body responds—when I tell you that you, and the person sitting next to you, are both contagious right now…
I know this is sensitive territory, given that some of us may be immunocompromised, or love people who are immunocompromised, so I want to be clear that I am not speaking about viruses or bacteria; this is a thought exercise, not a public health warning.
But I bet that at the word “contagious,” some part of you went zzzzt—clenched, or withdrew, or got ready to run. And I want to keep our reflection today as close as possible to the part of us that reacted instinctively. That is ready to fight, or flee, or freeze. That part of us reacts so fast: no thinking, no discernment. And for good reasons. Evolutionarily speaking, that part of us has been fine tuned to keep us alive.
Reflecting in this way—close to the bone—this is a new thing for me; a challenge. I was broadly trained to read scripture in the way it’s most commonly been read for the last 500 years: to read the Bible as a book of knowledge. And reading the Bible that way fit perfectly with the understanding of human beings that has been dominant for the same 500 years—as brains on a stick. So much of our culture—especially our hyperindividualized American culture—assumes that we are—or ought to be–self-contained, self-sufficient individuals. We are expected to be rational actors who are transparent to themselves, who patiently weigh costs and benefits, and make every choice consciously. Thus, as rational actors, we should read the Bible for facts about the world, or for rules that we’re supposed to obey, or, if we’re liberals, for ethical ideals…
But I’ve come to understand the Bible as a book of wisdom. Wisdom is what speaks to us on the level of our actual experience as people with bodies that go zzzzt. Scripture certainly speaks to us as creatures with the capacity for expansive reflection and abstract thought, thanks to the big neocortex that we have recently evolved. But I think the wisdom that scripture offers us is about putting that big brain into healthy dialogue with the older, cruder, all-emotion-and-instinct-and-no-reflection parts of us. Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky called it “type 1 thinking.” Others call it the “downstairs” of the brain or the “reptile brain.” Whatever we call it, evolutionary psychologists would tell us that a lot of the time, this part of the brain is actually running the show, and our conscious minds are playing catch up. Especially in times of stress, this ancient part of our brain is keen to push aside our more complex faculties to grab the wheel.
The Bible speaks to us not as brains on a stick but as creatures who experience strong emotions, and then write a story about why those emotions are rationally justified: we come up with an argument for why our roommate has violated a house rule after our bodies are flushed and ready to fight. The Bible offers wisdom to us as creatures who become aware that we are in pain after we’ve yanked our hand away from the stove; who recoil at the sight of oozing lesions on somebody’s skin. The Bible speaks to us as people who are contagious to each other—who so easily “catch” the anxiety, or outrage, or of those in our tribe. The Bible speaks to us as people who instantly reduce somebody who is not on our team or of our tribe to a prejudicial caricature, to a less-than-human threat, to a slur.
Samaritans—I mean, you know what they’re like.
Those ancient parts of our brain evolved to keep us protected from predators and poisonous berries: and they are always running a threat analysis on our environment. And those parts of our brain also evolved to keep us connected to a social group: human beings are cooperative, social animals; herd animals who depend on a tribe for mutual protection, and shared meals, and songs that make meaning out of our lives. So those ancient parts of our brain are also continually running in the background asking—how am I doing in the social and political dynamics of my tribe? Am I at risk of being pushed out? And it’s also continually asking is there anybody else here who presents a danger to the group? Do *I* need to recruit others to help me push them out?
So let’s engage our reptile brain in some brief reflection on these stories from scripture today. Let’s acknowledge that if we encountered people walking around with open sores marking a contagious skin condition, we would cross to the other side of the street. And let’s acknowledge that pretty much everybody in these ancient societies would have done the same thing.
So let’s keep our reptile brain active here, but switch perspectives. And let’s imagine with our non-rational, emotionally driven brain stems what it would do to you if the people in your community reacted to your body with visceral disgust. Dozens of times a day, for years. What would it do to you if you were pushed outside the walls of your little town to live on the ashheap? A brain on a stick might develop a complex analysis, but the emotional brain would likely say,
“Why I am not receiving care or offered belonging? Because I am not worthy of it. Because I am disgusting; I am an abomination. ”
And because none of us here are brains on a stick, I bet that some of us here, maybe many of us here, harbor thoughts like that deep down in a dark closet of the heart. We might have stories our ancient brains told to make sense of hurts that go way back, pain that we suffered before we had the capacity for reflection, or that overwhelmed our capacity to handle it.
We’re rarely given the occasion to even acknowledge those kinds of hurts because we’re supposed to be self-possessed, self-contained individuals who don’t feel such non-rational, earthy, sticky things. But we can feel that stuff here; we can learn to name it together. We can recognize that we are not alone in this.
Notice that the ten lepers do not approach Jesus—they call out to him from a distance. They know that their very being stirs up a disgust response in others. Notice that Naaman the commander of the Aramean army has developed a massive superiority complex to compensate for the shame of his disease.
What is the good news here—for lepers, and for the powerful, ancient parts of ourselves that tell us a story with shame at the center of it?
Let’s try this. I want to return to the second wondering question I asked a while back. I wonder in whose presence you feel more grounded, more courageous, more yourself?
[…]
There is something about them—a grace, an ease. They themselves are grounded, or courageous—and it’s contagious. You catch it from them.
We might be frightened by the devil, but we’re drawn to those that ain’t afraid. And when we’re around them, we’re infected by their courage. Infection is a scary word, but it also points us beyond the zero-sum thinking that has also been so dominant in the last 500 years; when we’re infected by someone else’s ease—they don’t become less at ease. When we catch courage from someone else, we don’t take some of their courage away. We share without loss.
What we see in the lives of the prophets like Elisha and in the life and teachings of Jesus is a contagious capacity for blessing and self-offering; a contagious wellness that restores other people to health. A contagious integrity that brings people back into connection with themselves, with their neighbors, and with God. God who is much more than a bearded dude on a cloud-throne: the God who is life that includes, even embraces death, and so dissolves death’s power. The God who is love that embraces the shamed and shaming parts of us, and so dissolves their power. The God who is peace that is at peace with our anxiety and grievance and trauma, and so allows those parts of our life to settle, and be heard, and let go of the wheel.
Jesus and Elisha, and other holy people throughout the ages are people who have gotten a big dose of that life and love and peace. And it has infected even the ancient parts of their brain so that when they see a leper they think, oh this child of God must be so lonely, as I have been lonely. This beloved being must feel so ashamed, as I have felt ashamed. St. Francis, who we remembered last week, had a deathly fear of lepers as a young man. But when he caught the lifegiving spirit of God, he was not content to be separated from any human being, anyone bearing the Divine Image. So we went to a leper colony and embraced the people there, one by one. Even kissing their sores.
Like contagious dis-ease, this contagious life, love, peace does not respect borders or affiliations. It’s for Jews and Gentiles, Judeans and Samaritans. People we call safe, and people we fear, or hate, or hold in contempt.
And it is for us. May we catch it, and may we be extremely contagious.
Amen.
