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The Blurred Lines
I came across a Chuck McCabe song called the “Partisan Polka.” The first verse goes like this,” When I was just a kid my father sat me on his knee, he said, ‘it’s time you knew a thing or two about this family. You can trust what I tell you boy, and trust in the Lord, but never trust a man who drives a Ford.’ And if you ain’t one of us, you must be one of them. It’s a matter, boy, of simple loyalty. You say you want to be man, step up and name your brand. Cause if you ain’t one of us you must be one of them.” I grew up in a time and a place where people liked things pure, no gray zones or ambiguities. We knew who the good guys were and who the bad guys were – Ford or Chevy people, Camels or Lucky’s, Coke or Pepsi. In the cowboy movies, the good guys wore white hats. In politics we were red, white and blue, never pink. You knew who you could trust or not, mostly by their last name, the place of their birth or the firmness of their handshake. We knew who was one of us and who was one of them and we liked it that way. But, once I got outside a five mile radius of Eudora, Kansas, those distinctions got muddy very quickly. There were even moments in the 60s when I began to wonder, even whether we Americans were the good guys, then if there were any good guys at all. And as life’s ambiguities began to pile up I began to wonder where I could go for simple and distinct categories for good and bad, in and out, friend or foe. And being a person of faith on the track to be a United Methodist minister, that was the first place I looked. And, the more I looked the more apparent it became that the Bible is complicit in blurring the lines - especially the gospels - especially Jesus. You used to be able to tell the good guys from the bad guys by whether they kept the Law of Moses. But, in the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus says that motivations also matter. You can keep the letter of the Law and still sin in your heart. He kept hanging out with and blessing foreigners – even commented on their faith, the like of which he had not seen in Israel. Just when everybody knew that the rich were the bad guys, he started going to their homes for dinner. He invited a man who collected taxes for the Roman occupation to be one of his disciples – no vetting or background checks. The people with whom he conflicted the most were the Pharisees, the most religious and righteous people the society had to offer. He said that the righteousness of the righteous was like filthy rags, the last would be first and the greatest people were the servants. I was a disciple of one who not only crossed the lines, blurred the lines, he obliterated the lines. All of a sudden you couldn’t tell who was in and who was out, who to love and hate. Jesus represented a new game, all bets off, everybody on an even playing field regardless of ethnicity, family name, status, even one’s place on the righteous / sinner continuum. A good Samaritan! Give me a break. Chuck McCabe’s song goes on, “Now I can’t keep it straight, who and why I’m supposed to hate. Though I try to play the game, I hate everyone the same.” That’s one way; the Jesus way is even harder, to love everyone the same. I found the biblical epiphany strangely liberating. I used to worry about the fact that I didn’t look like any of the other ministerial students in seminary. I didn’t look or sound the part and I was single. Everybody knows a preacher has to have a wife who can play piano. In this new reality of blurred lines and celebrated ambiguities, I was released from all that. Grew my hair long like I had always wanted to - goes back to my boyhood trauma watching a barber coming at my ears with a straight razor. I decided to be a line blurrer like my Lord. People would take one look at me and pigeon hole me both politically and theologically. Imagine their consternation when they discovered that I voted for Barry Goldwater in the ’64 election and that I am more an evangelical than a bleeding heart liberal. Started doing music programs for churches with the music of Simon and Garfunkel and Bob Dylan and Phil Oaks, Leonard Cohen – to blur the line between sacred and secular. There is only meaningful and trivial but all creativity is divine. I used to recite the words to the theme song from “Alfie,” an “R” rated movie about promiscuity and abortion. Then I would ask, “Is it sacred or secular?” What’s it all about Alfie? Is it just for the moment we live? And if only fools are kind, Alfie, then I guess that it’s wise to be cruel. And if life belongs only to the strong, what would you lend on an old golden rule? I believe in love, Alfie. Without true love you just exist, and until you find the love you’ve missed, you’re nothing. So when you walk, let your heart lead the way, and you’ll find love any day.” The way the world keeps the religion of Jesus impotent is by convincing his disciples, us, to stay in our boundaries. Keep religion in the church and let politics, economics, business relations, human relations remain “pure.” Our Lord wouldn’t hear of that. Rather he would say, “Seek first the kingdom of God and God’s righteousness in all arenas of life and you will be blessed in all arenas of life – because all areas of life mush together and affect one another. Jesus was just supposed to heal the man that they let down through the roof, but he had to go and confuse the issue. He said, “Your sins are forgiven.” For Jesus the healing of the spirit was more important than the healing of the body, but to show the skeptics that he had authority to do both, he did both. Jesus blurred the line between spiritual and physical healing. Leprosy in those days was a type of sin, a metaphor of sorts, it made one a deformity and a social outcast. After Jesus “cleansed” the man, a word with both spiritual and physical implications, he told him to show himself to the priest. Physical and spiritual cleansing were not separated but all came under the purview of the church. When Jesus came to Jerusalem on what we call Palm Sunday, the crowds chanted, “Hosanna!” which means, “Lord, save us!” The kind of saving they had in mind was probably the political kind. Raise an army and get the Romans off our backs. But, Jesus went about the work of another kind of saving – but the two were never entirely separate. When Paul witnessed to the jailor, the jailor asked, “what must I do to be saved?” He was talking about saving his neck, not his soul. The Romans were going to be all over him for the destruction of the prison. But, Paul told him about Jesus and baptized him and his whole household. Did Paul miss the point of the question or did he understand that he followed One who blurred those lines and had power on either side of them, that salvation is a matter of the whole being and every department of life? Faith turns the engines of healing on. In the story of the paralyzed man, it wasn’t even his faith, it was the faith of his friends that Jesus marveled at which prompted his pronouncement that his sins had been forgiven. Sins first then the body. When Jesus asked the man by the pool waiting for the waters to be stirred, if he wanted to be healed, maybe that was the real question. You want to be healed of your infirmity but with me you get the whole deal. The salvation of our Lord is going to change your life in more ways than just the one that is most pressing for you now. You sure you want to start down that road? Your healing may include some new pains, releasing some long held attitudes and prejudices you have used to keep life pure and uncomplicated. New responsibilities for others who are still infirm – can you live with the new image of helper rather than helpless? What if your healing meant that you had to treat everyone like a child of God and start by loving your enemies? That’s part of the package of getting your legs back. Rising up and walking is also a metaphor for a spiritual awakening. “I once was lost but now I’m found, was blind but now I see.” Amazing grace can be threatening. One thing is not ambiguous or without definition in scripture and that is that Jesus has power. Power to save no matter what sort of saving you need, power to heal whatever part of your being needs healing. Sometimes people have to be healed of physical infirmities before they can be whole in spirit. Henry Ward Beecher said, “Half the spiritual difficulties that men and women suffer arise from a morbid state of health.” Sometimes it is their spiritual disease that inhibits their physical wellness. No matter – Jesus is the great physician and the scriptures assure that the prayers of the faithful will be efficacious. So come; bring whatever faith you can muster and depend on the faith of your friends. Come to where the healing waters flow, the fountain of life for all God’s children.
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