In the Lent II passages of Wilda Gafney's women's lectionary, we hear about Jacob leaving Laban's ranch in the dead of night with Laban's two daughters and a bunch of his flock. Laban catches up to them and insists Jacob agrees to make a covenant to stay exclusively committed to Laban's daughters. In the Gospel, there is the story of the woman who touched Jesus' garment and received Jesus' healing (and blessing) from more than a decade of constant menstrual flow. In both cases, the women were extended privileges that were not routinely extended to most women in that day. Life in that time for women and any people stuck with any kind of characteristic outside the dominating male culture resulted in exclusion and frequently death or abuse. That has been a human "norm" for eons.
Humans have had an ugly vocabulary that gets used somewhere in the world daily. Words like pogrom, misogeny, genocide, segregation, apartheid, terrorism, homophobia, and a slew of epithets demeaning "undesirable" ethnic groups. Frequently, governments or wealthy classes use awful terms to raise their own lofty arrogance and privilege or to build their dominance and social cohesiveness using hate. They exaggerate despicability of others to seek security for strictly "their own." It's a disgusting human social quality.
Jesus is pro-human dignity. In his interaction with this woman, he adopts her problem as his problem. He calls a halt to the clamoring crowd. He puts them all on pause, while his complete attention is lovingly directed toward her plight. Many doctors have let her down. She is ostracized by her community. She likely has difficulty meeting basic needs like food and water. She's considered "unclean" and "untouchable" in Judaism. And while her mere touch of his garment heals her, that moment is too significant to her life to let it pass anonymously. It needs the attention of the crowd. "This People! This is what true faith looks like!"
We are living in a fraught, ugly time. The forces of exclusion are marching. Those with the hardest lives and the shunned ones are being targeted with blame and scapegoated for every perceived wrong. They're being bound and placed on transport planes out of the country (in place of the trains that did the same in 1939 Germany.) I think the clamoring crowds need some lessons in faith, lessons in human dignity, and to be reminded of Jesus pausing the crowd to look inwardly at their immoral constructs. All people are of sacred worth, imbued with dignity and deserving of respect. Kindness, generosity, and faith keep civility alive in society. Walking the way of Jesus is to notice the smaller, insignificant people dwelling on the edges, the ones society considers "dangerous," or "of little worth." We're to see their need and bring what aid we can to them. Our communities should be places people can thrive, where they're healed and welcomed, and not be punished and or kicked aside. This is the Way.
