We’re
supposed to be stewards of the earth but instead we’re users and abusers. We’re supposed to be taking care of the weak
and the powerless but we’re more concerned about seeming weak and powerless. We’re supposed to be building community but
instead we have lost the ability to come together and listen to each other. We’re supposed to be cultivating values and
yet we admire and elect people who are ruthless egotists. We’re supposed to co-operate with each other
and yet we can’t seem to have civil conversations about important matters
without resorting to name calling and insults.
One pundit
asked a pertinent question this week: “is
our very culture in North America going through burn-out?” I think they might be on to something. Burn out is, according to Psychology today,
“a state of emotional, mental, and often physical exhaustion brought on by
prolonged or repeated stress. Symptoms include cynicism, depression, and
lethargy that most often occur when a person is not in control of how a job is
carried out, at work or at home, or is asked to complete tasks that conflict
with their sense of self.” This is made worse if people feel like they have no
support or help or hope.
I wonder if
that’s what was happening with the people waiting for Moses. 40 days and 40 nights is a number that is
often used in the Bible to indicate an important length of time. Noah endured 40 days and nights of rain
falling. Joseph was mourned for 40 days
and nights by all the people of Egypt. Job
had 40 days to get the Ninevites to change their behaviours. Jesus spent 40
days and nights fasting in the desert and 40 days after the resurrection before
leaving the Apostles again. So this is a
long time both literally and symbolically.
The people
felt abandoned without their leaders.
They were in a state of not knowing what would happen next. Our translation says that the people turned
to Aaron, brother of Moses, looking for leadership, but a more accurate
translation might be ‘turned on’ or even ‘turned against’. Talk about cynicism and depression! Their culture was at a crossroads. It doesn’t help that Moses came down with 10
commandments that they were supposed to obey and then went into a pile of
details and amendments and blueprints of how to follow those commandments that
were far more detailed. Then he disappeared up the mountain, leaving Aaron and
the people to struggle with how to make this new constitution work in real
life. Not easy work. No wonder the people turned!
They didn’t
lose Moses, they lost their connection to the Divine, they lost their
connection to a future vision, they lost their connection to hope. They wanted to see and hear and touch and own
the connection to the holiness they craved.
They knew they needed to be thankful but they didn’t know how. So they broke the very first commandment they
had been given and once they did that, the other commandments also fell by the
wayside. They partied hard. They acted the way other cultures acted, they
worshipped in the ways other religions worshipped. And God, wanting a different vision, craving
a different relationship, hoping for a different outcome, in this story
anyways, reacted with anger and disappointment.
Jesus too
was disappointed. He healed 10
untouchables who had lived with social distancing practices for most of their
lives and only one person figured it out.
10% rate is pretty abysmal, and what made it worse, the people he
thought would get it, would understand the significance of the healing, his
fellow religious community, totally missed the point. Only the foreigner understood. Only the foreigner turned back. Only the foreigner figured it out.
It would be
as if an Egyptian charioteer showed up in the middle of the wilderness and
said, oh, this is amazing, I love the 10 commandments, I love the ambiguity of
not knowing where we’re going, and I love the idea of no longer depending on
Pharaoh and the gods of my childhood.
Wouldn’t that have surprised Aaron and the Israelites!
Who are the
Samaritans in Athabasca who get it? Who
know the source of their healing and are grateful? Who can we be learning from that will
surprise us?
I have been
working, again it seems, on the homeless situation in our town. A few weeks ago, Roy Jacobs died at the
skatepark down by the riverfront, and a concerned group of citizens are working
to help support a mat program for the winter.
The banks are involved as their lobbies were used as warming centres last
year. We even have the mental health
professionals involved. But we don’t
have the homeless at the table. The
leper that came back to Jesus to say thank you was told that his faith had made
him well. When we put ourselves in the
place of God or Jesus, trying to fix and heal others, we are tempted into
building a Golden Calf to our own talents and skills. Instead, we need to remember that it’s not
about us fixing, or saving or advising or correcting others. That’s what the residential schools really
were about. Us assuming that we have the
answers and can heal the problems of the world.
We jump to quick conclusions and judgements and can burn out in our need
to solve other people’s problems. We can
become cynical and angry. Instead, let
us turn to the one who is the source of all healing, and turn with openness and
curiosity to those around us who are suffering the isolation of modern forms of
leprosy. Let us listen to them as Jesus
listened to the foreigner. It will be by
that kind of empowerment of our neighbors that healing, real lasting healing
will come about. And that will be
something we can truly be very thankful for!
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