when we’re stuck
Wonderings:
I wonder where in your life you feel stuck? And what does it feel like?
I wonder if you’ve been shunned? Or felt ostracized?
Reflection based on these wonderings + the readings assigned for the Second Sunday of Pentecost in Year A of our Lectionary (Proper 5a).
Genesis 12:1-9; Psalm 33:1-12; Matthew 9:9-13, 18-26
Let us speak, and listen, held in the presence of our loving, liberating, and life-giving God. Amen.
We ended our time of reflection last week with this question: I wonder what you’ve inherited that isn’t working, that you need to reshape in order to move forward? And as I’ve sat with that question, I’ve gotten a little frustrated with myself for asking it. Because I wondered if that question might have subtly suggested to you, my friends, that if you just identify the part of your inheritance that you wanted to reshape then…you’d be well on your way. It would be as simple as that.
One of the things that was passed down to me was the expectation that you can do almost anything with the right insight, or a pure intention, or enough effort. And that isn’t working for me anymore, I’m trying to reshape that, in order to grow and to heal myself, and in order to become a more effective part of justice movements. But in this instance, I was worried that I had simply passed on that expectation to you, my friends, my people. Just…think harder. Try harder. Believe in it more. Manifest it. If that’s how that wondering came across to you last week, I’m sorry.
There’s an even simpler reason I felt frustrated by that question about moving forward, as if moving forward would be easy once you just figured it out. I often feel profoundly stuck. I feel stuck in some patterns that aren't serving me or anyone else—and even when I have a very clear idea and a beautiful insight about what to do differently and I intend to be different…I don't know how to actually make that real. Because I’m stuck.
So I want to give some time today to our stuckness, and how our loving, liberating, and life-giving God comes to meet us precisely there.
In our Gospel lesson today, there are two characters who seem to be stuck. The first is this “Matthew” in the very first line: the tax collector that Jesus calls. Bit of context here: people in first century Israel Palestine really hated tax collectors. First, because in most small villages and towns they would be the most visible local face of the Roman Empire and its wealth-extraction regime. These people are collecting taxes on behalf of the empire, taking a little bit off the top when people sell, and when people buy, to send to the emperor, to find his banquets and his imperial war-machine.
People also hate tax collectors because they would often add hidden fees and take an additional percentage for themselves in most of these transactions; people would feel compelled to pay this extortionary fee because this tax collector has the Roman soldiers on speed dial—and if they get involved maybe they'll want to get them in the action and add their own fee or just straight up demand a bribe, and then these poor people will be out even more money that they don’t really have.
So Matthew has no friends. From context it’s likely that he is an observant follower of the Law of Moses and he ought to be integrated into the social fabric of his society, but he has forfeited that in order to collaborate with the empire that is oppressing his people. He is extremely problematic. He was cancelled long ago, and almost seems to be reveling in his pariah status.
And I say he’s stuck because there’s no way that this deal is actually working out for him, emotionally, spiritually. He has to be miserable. Filthy rich and terribly lonely. But how is he going to get out? Who would ever trust him again? Would he have to repay the money he extorted from people? What would it take to rehabilitate his reputation? What would the Romans do, if Matthew turned away from them? He is stuck.
But in the story Jesus goes directly to this person who is stuck in the web of consequences from his own selfish choices, and Jesus says, “come, follow me.” And somehow Matthew is able to accept that invitation—to take the hand of the person who is offering to pull him out, and bring him into community with a bunch of other people who have a problematic past—people who are trying to reshape something they inherited, or trying to do a new thing with the time they have left, and who are doing that good work together, encouraging and sustaining one another.
So here’s one piece of good news for those of us who are trying to move forward, but feel stuck. When we’re stuck, God will come and meet us in that place. And if we assent to it, God will bring us into a community where we don’t have to struggle alone, where we can get exactly the kind of help we need from people who have been there before, and are in it, with us.
The other character who seems stuck in the story is this woman that Jesus heals on his way to healing someone else. We are not told this woman’s name, we are told only that she has been hemorrhaging for 12 years. Contact with blood is one of the things that would make someone ritually unclean, and so unable to enter the Temple, or to fully participate in communal life in this time. And it’s not so clear from the translation, but it's likely that this is heavy and irregular menstrual bleeding, which her neighbors would have regarded as extra dangerous. So what this boils down to is that this woman has been physically ill for 12 years, and for that whole time she has been socially ostracized, because people fear contact with her; they don’t want to be near her.
This woman is stuck, not because of any choice she made, but because there's nothing that she can do to heal herself and there's nothing she can do to change the normative, punitive expectations of her culture about what a body is supposed to look like, how her body is supposed to work. There’s nothing she can do to get the help she needs, or to change the culture of shame that diminishes her suffering. She's stuck and so she throws herself at Jesus, in the desperate hope that maybe this miracle worker could do something for her when nothing else has worked.
And even though she touches barely the hem of his cloak turns and sees her and he is not afraid; after years and years of others averting their eyes, Jesus sees her and he does not push her away for having the body that she has, he says I see you. And something in that insistence upon being seen, being touched—it makes a difference. The story suggests, the body that hadn’t been working for her is made whole, and her society is made whole because she is part of it again.
I take that as a bit of good news that God, our healer and liberator, doesn't need us to have it all figured out. Doesn't need the beautiful insight or the perfectly realized strategy in order to meet us in our stuck place. God wants our healing and our wholeness, and will work with even our desperate moves. We don’t have to do it all on our own.
Jesus reached out with compassion to this tax collector trapped in the consequences of his choices and he heals this woman imprisoned in other people’s prejudices. And, as you notice, it pisses people off. “Why does this guy eat with tax collectors and sinners?” This conflict, I think, is key to understanding the wisdom of the Gospel of Matthew, and how it might speak to us in our own lives and our own time. We too need to “go and learn what this means,” that God desires mercy and not sacrifice.
But taking that on today is a bit too much for my newborn dad brain. So we’ll be unpacking that over the next few weeks—learning together about the radical spiritual and political vision that Jesus embodies and calls us into. We don’t have to do it all at once.
So let’s close this time of shared reflection with one more wondering:
I wonder if your growth or healing has ever provoked resistance in the people around you? If your flourishing ever pissed people off?
