Dietary habits of big fish and social inclusion

Matthew 8:2-4; Mark 1: 40-45; Luke 5: 12-16

Luke 5: 13b:  ‘I do choose. Be made clean.’ 

In the culture I live within in West Central Scotland we tend to compartmentalise our lives; family, work, church, physical, social and psychological. All separate like departments in large shop.  It’s not very satisfactory but we do it. We tend to label people and prophesy about them on the basis of their age, gender, class and a host of other things. We mostly get it wrong because were not prophets we simply describe the world using one set of values, attitudes and beliefs and come up with one set of understandings / meanings. There is a danger in thinking that every culture does the same and makes meaning of life the same way. This of course is not the case. Culture is very diverse and indeed within cultures there is diversity. To be a male, female or transgender truck driver would offer three very different life experiences and very different experiences and meanings of say family, work or church.  In Jesus time and space skin disorders were not only seen as physical disabilities but were used by some to define a person socially, personally and religiously. The psychological effects of skin disorders and how people who suffered from them were treated led to sufferers to be described as feeling and indeed telling their life stories using specific language for example ‘being unclean’. This was more than a physical description of their skin disorder it was how they were seen as people in their culture; physical, social and psychological outcasts. It’s easier to see the physical and to see physical changes so we tend to concentrate on them. It’s much more difficult to talk about the social and the psychological. They are ‘unseen’ like invisible hands moving chess pieces on a board.  The social and the psychological have to be constructed like bodies through language, symbols and expressed ideas. That’s why we miss them and overly concentrates on the physical parts of the stories like walking on water, raising the dead or curing leprosy.  In Jesus day the use of the terms sociology and psychology would not have been used. These ways of compartmentalising the world describing and understanding human life are relatively new, a product of the Enlightenment. They form part of a modern and post-modern way of understanding the world. Obviously people had psycho-social, economic and political relationships in first century Israel / Palestine but they discussed these parts of their lives in different ways than we do. But they are discussed and stories told about them.  First century Israel / Palestine is a very different culture and therefore they make sense and meaning in different ways to us, using different language and series of symbolic headings to describe their life. This does not make their experience out of reach to us. Like using a type of ‘Rosetta Stone’ we can translate complex social settings using their stories: language studies, behavioural studies, social and religious studies to give ourselves an insight into what is actually ‘going on’ in a recorded story within an ancient text. We can look behind, within and in front of the text; we can treat the story holistically, carefully and respectfully and avoid or at least perhaps minimise imposing our cultural meanings on the story.  In the life story of Jesus as told in the scriptures Jesus appears in stories and tells stories in order to make sense of life and of the questions being asked within His culture. These stories, both historical events and parables give us a route to understanding and meaning of who Jesus is and who He calls us to be. The enlightenment gave us new disciplines for understanding biblical stories; we can access more meaning than the physical healings, walking on water and the dietary habits of big fish and their desire to swallow travellers avoiding going to Nineveh going on in the stories of Jesus. Yes Jesus mentions Jonah in one of His stories but the story is not about the dietary habits of the big fish! So, in today’s reading (story) about a man with leprosy; what are the question(s) being asked by the text? What are the social-psychological relationships you can identify, religious practices and what does Jesus bring to the: values, attitudes and beliefs of people in the story?