Beasts of Sabbath

Dropsy –

It’s an old, old diagnosis of an old, old human sorrow:  grotesque swelling of the body by  retention of water.  Now we call it edema and we have names for various causes of it.   But in old books, in medical records from other generations, and in the third world where starved children suffer swollen bellies from it, dropsy is still the name for a suffering we, too, can see.  I see them, in the grocery store, riding on motor carts, or painfully pushing one gargantuan leg in front of the other.  At Walmart or Walgreens, the necessary places people have to go.  And I look away.  So as not to stare.  Take furtive peeks.  Feel sorry.  Am appalled.  This happens among us.

Jesus saw a man with dropsy on the Sabbath, at the home of a community leader where he had been invited for dinner.  And he healed the man, and asked everyone there, did they think it was right to do this on the Sabbath.  And they said nothing, because it wasn’t, according to the teachings, and they knew he knew that already; and because he had done a good thing, they could see that, too.  He watched them, then, choosing places at table in this house of distinction.  He began to talk about choosing where to sit at a wedding feast, which is also an occasion of distinction.

I’ve never seen people with dropsy at a wedding feast.  Or, for that matter, at a nice dinner party.  And in truth I can only think of one who made it to church, and she needed her husband and her cane to get out of the car, up the ramp, down the aisle.  Maybe they decline some invitations, saying it is too hard for them.  But the fact is they know they appear grotesque, and we shrink away.  They see the little peeks, and the way we avert our eyes.

And we all see that the distinctions in seating at the feasts of life correlate with how we look.   Jesus saw this, too, so we know this has been true for a very long time.   He often used the wedding feast as an image for the reign of God, and once he talked about clothing being the foolish distinction we use, and once about foolish preparations.  But in this story, he is talking about who sits where.  And he admonishes them all not to seat themselves too high up in the chain of desirability, for it may be that the host will embarrass them by asking them to move down and make room for someone they have overlooked.  Better, according to Jesus, to be asked to move up, than down.

We all know games of false humility that arise from this story:  how men will hold the door for women but keep them out of the boardroom;  how churches will build ramps but find reasons not to ask people in wheel chairs to be Deacons;  how sex becomes a commodity in life, that can hold you back or help you advance in your work; how races and cultures can be considered grotesque, and unacceptable (think of what happened to Trayvon Martin, or go see Fruitvale Station or 20 Feet From Stardom, both true stories).

In our culture, social gatherings become red carpet events, the beautiful enter to be admired by the ordinary for their distinction, and the afflicted hide their wounds as best they can, or if they cannot, stay home.

Luke’s gospel presents several Sabbath healings of people with grotesque afflictions, the bent-over woman, the woman with a bleeding discharge, the man with dropsy.

Each story is a version of Beauty and the Beast.  Beauty sees in the Beast what the rest of the world does not, and refuses to see a being unlike herself.   At last, through a kiss, she restores him to his sense that he has his beauty again.  Jesus, the beauty in Luke’s tales, restores many whom the rest see as grotesque, and presses the rest to see as he sees, to love as he loves, to become those who can heal distinctions based on illness, appearance, poverty,  social roles, race, religion.

Sabbath, he struggles to make clear, is a day in which we recognize our lives and life itself as Gift.  Not, What We Make of It.  But, What We Find in It.  Which, in each life, will include something grotesque, something painful and hard, some beastly part of others and of us.  Sabbath welcomes us to a time when all the distinctions fall away and the original blessing of creation is heard again by all:  It is Good.

In the final act of Jesus’ story, he will become the Beast.  And in his grotesque body, he will wait.  Is waiting still, to be set free among us, here on earth, by a human kiss, once again.

Mary Oliver, the Cape Cod poet, says it this way:

Beauty without purpose is beauty without virtue.  But

all beautiful things, inherently, have this function-

to excite the viewers toward sublime thought.

Glory to the world, that good teacher. . . . .

As for the body, it is solid and strong and curious

and full of detail; it wants to polish itself; it

wants to love another body;  it is the only vessel in

the world that can hold, in a mix of power and

sweetness:  words, song, gesture, passion, ideas,

ingenuity, devotion, merriment, vanity, and virtue.

Keep some room in your heart for the unimaginable.

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Illustrations:

1.  Naaman is Cured of Leprousy. c.1150, from the Meuse Valley.  Bristish Museum, London.  Vanderbilt Divinity School Library, Art in the Christian Tradition.

2.  Wedding at Cana, He Qi, China.  Vanderbilt Divinity School,

Art in the Christian Tradition.

3.  Crucifixion, Altdorfer, Albrecht, 1515-1516, Kassel, German, Vanderbilt Divinity School, Art in the Christian Tradition.

4.  Crucifixion, F. N. Souza, 1959.  Vanderbilt Divinity School, Art in the Christian Tradition.