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SBL Annual Meeting Papers — November 2007 WORKING DRAFT: Please do not cite without permission of the author Cleaning the Lepered Skins: Can a leper change his spots (see Jer. 13:23)? Out, out, damn spot! And so Spot goes out --to pee, to poop and to play. Yes, to play. And so do we, with this story about the Jesus cleaning the ten lepered skins. Although we are Psychology and Biblical Studies--abbreviated P&BS, we will not urinate or defecate (we're beyond the anal stage), but we will recreate. The way that we play is through wordplay. (We are still in our oral stage.) And that's how I play. Those of you who are familiar with my work--either from my writings or my presentations in this section--know that I like to play with words, that I like punning. In order to give some reason to my rhyme, I have referred in my work to Sigmund Freud, Carl Jung, Jacques Lacan, Hillman, Franz Fanon, Rene Girard, Melanie Klein, and D. W. Winnecott. Here, though, I would like to take a more personal approach. My Punning PilgrimageI have been playing with words all my life. It started early, at least as far back at age 6. My father's corporate newspaper ran a story on me with a headline, "Like a Cartoonist, Mike Willett is Quick with a Pun and a Pun." The article included a picture of me, with my crewcut and jagged-tooth smile, and a "Popeye" comic strip I had drawn, in which Popeye beats Bluto up for stealing his girl Olive Oyl. (At an early age I was socialized into the myth of redemptive violence.) So the punster is not the professor but the preschooler. And exactly what does he do when he puns? He plays with the thing that is most precious to him, that he holds mastery over: language. His parents were not particularly wordsmithy, so it was the way that he held them at bay, the way that he kept them entertained if not a bit bewildered. Indeed, he experienced his parents as oppressive. His mother said after his father’s death when Mike was 16, "Your father wanted you to be perfect." Mike, then, was plagued by anxiety and aggression, anxiety that he would not measure up to the impossible standards and that would have disastrous consequences, and aggression toward these standards and standard-bearers. I suppose that in this way, Mike’s parents were “standard bears.” Punning and wordplay, then, was the way Mike expressed his anxiety and aggression. When he was punning and running (and gunning), his anxiety and aggression was relieved. He felt less anxious and less aggressive. More than that, he felt powerful, omnipotent. He felt impotent with his parents’ strict, sticky, stupid standards, but he felt omnipotent when punning. He made his own world, his own meaning. Like Popeye, he fought the powers, but not with fists but with finesse, finessing the language. So when I play with biblical texts, I let the punning and penning Mike come out and play. It still relieves my anxiety and aggression, anxiety about meeting those introjected parental standards, and aggression toward the “guardians of the text,” those scholars and churchmen (and I mean “men’) who work (not play) a text to solidify their own power and to oppress others. If they were to use Freud's language (which of course they don’t), these folks are operating on the reality principle rather than the pleasure principle. Punning, though, is pure pleasure. It allows the unconscious to express itself, the unconscious of the interpreter and the unconscious of the text. What is the text saying just below the surface, that it’s not aware that it’s saying? My puns are motivated by desire, desire for the text and for the power behind the text. Perhaps this is why I have been so interested in the last few years in the Gospel miracle stories, those magnificent, magical, marvelous miracle stories that take pleasure in reality by playing with it. I too want a miracle, a healing, an exorcism. And punning is miraculous for me. Let's turn that 6-year-old loose on a miracle story. Miracle stories themselves play with reality. So I will play with the story of the 10 lepers in Luke 17:11-19. Here's the story, in my own translation: And when he was going to Jerusalem, Punning and Playing on/with the PassageSetting (17:11). So we meet the “Jerusalem-journeying Jesus,” which we meet in much of Luke (9:51-18:27). To Jerusalem he has set his face (9:51); he has faced his set. So set ready go. And go he does, to Jerusalem, in Jerusalem. It's the city that finds prophet in killing (13:33-34), and it’s also the site of Jesus' exodus, his dying/rising (9:31; 18:31-33). No wonder people were looking for the Jerusalem of redemption (2:38). So Jesus is jogging to Jerusalem, and he passes between Samaria and Galilee. What!? Jesus has been on his Jerusalem jaunt for nearly 8 chapters, and he's only gotten this far! Early on, he already passed through a rejecting Samaritan village (9:52). What's he been doing--wilderness wandering? I wonder as he wanders. In his wonderful wanderings to Jerusalem, he enters a village. Jesus is always gaping and villaging (instead of raping and pillaging) in Luke, always going into villages (8:1; 9:52, 56; 10:38; 13:22; 24:28). Apparently it takes a village to raise a Lukan Lord, though from fiery James and John's view it takes a Lord to raze a village (9:54-55). And exactly what village is this? It's a “certain village,” I'm certain. Indeed, "a certain village" is where MaryMartha live (10:38). Oh Mary don't you weep, and Martha don't you moan!” Jesus is coming back! Maybe this time Martha won't be so many-things worried, choosing Maryly the needful one thing (10:41-42). Need (17:12-13). But before Jesus can get to the MaryMartha Mansion, he sees coming toward him ten lepers, one with each of the ten lost silver coins (15:8). Maybe these lepers are the parabolic ten slaves each with ten pounds (19:13-25). These ten constitute a miniature leper colony . . .and Jesus comes to decolonize them. He comes to change their spotty record. These are not the first lepers who’ve leaped to Jesus. No, once when he was citified (as opposed to vilified), a leper came to him, and he cleanly touched him (5:12-14). In this way, Jesus is Elisha-like (1 Kings 5:1-27; Luke 4:27), and he likes it. But Jesus doesn't touch these lepered folks, for they keep their distance. If you're going to heal us, it's going to be a distance healing. We don't want to unclean this mean clean healing machine Jesus. So they take dis stance. And they voice-lift and say, "Jesus Master, have mercy on us" (Yesou epistata, eleeson hemas). They don’t say, “Kyrie eleeson.” This is not a mass; there are only ten of them. They call Jesus epistata, disciple-like (5:5; 8:24, 45; 9:33, 49; 17:13), so these folks are disciple-wannabes. And parabolic Lazarus-like and blind man-like, they ask for Master mercy (16:24; 18:38-39). Master, mercy. They want Jesus to ferry them across the Mercy. They want to get into the Mercy beat. They sing with Pretty Woman Roy Orbison, "Grrr. Mercy!" Mercy me, master. But what Jesus says seems merciless at first. Go show selves to priests. Uh, Jesus, didn’t you forget something? You told that other lepered guy, “Be cleansed” (5:13). Don’t you want to say that and then send them to the priests, again like you did with him? Apparently not. They’re just supposed to go to the priests (and expose themselves), and like a good cleaned-up lepered person, make a cleansing, testifying offering (5:14). It testifies to the priestly people that Jesus is kingdom-bringing outside the priestly program, and they have got to recognize it. Miracle (17:14). And while the ten were prancing to the priests, their lepered skins were cleansed (ekatharisthesan). They were catharized--right before their eyes. They had a catharsis! No longer unclean, no longer impure! Jesus has told two Johndisciples when they asked if he was the coming one, he pointed to blindseeing, lamewalking, deafhearing, deadraising, and lepercleaning (7:22). So he’s the one, baby, the one to come, anointed to proclaim the Lord’s favorite year (4:19). Responses: (1) One of Those Healed Responds to His Healing (17:15-16). One of the ten sees that he was cleanly healed, the Lordspowerfully healed (5:17; 6:18), paralytically, centurionslavishly, womanhemorrhagingly, uncleanspiritedly, dropsily, highpriestsearily healed (5:17; 7:7; 8:47; 9:42; 14:4; 22:51). He is one of those devilishly oppressed whom Jesus with God healed (Acts 10:38). So this man is well-healed! Healed but also cured? Medical anthropologists make a distinction between the curing of a disease, that is, a biological phenomenon, and the healing of an illness, that is, a social, spiritual, emotional condition, so that healing often happens without cure. This man saw that he was healed, apparently something had changed. What does he see? The light, that his skin condition no longer separates him from God, that the psycho-socio-loco “heartbreak of psoriasis” is over? Or does he see a physical change in his skin condition? Good question, and I have a good answer: Dunno! Whatever the healed man sees, he turns his cleansed body around and he joins Luke’s healed and healing-observing choir—consisting of the ex-paralytic singing bass, the blind man singing tenor, the formerly bent-over woman singing soprano, and the crowds as the chorus (“Hallelujah”), and together they glorify God (Luke 5:25,26; 7:16; 13:13; 18:43). He’s seen the light and so he glogloglorifies God. His widowedsonny faith has been raised, and he says, “Great! A risen-among-us prophet” (7:16). And he derives much profit from that. And though this guy is God-glorifying, his countenance falls--at Jesus' feet! He finds there a couple of beggars--the city leper begging for cleaning services (5:12) and Jairus begging for a house call for his dying daughter (8:41-42). And at Jesus’ feet, which are beautiful because he’s a peace-announcer and a good-news-bringer (Isa. 52:7), the man thanks him, not parabolically and pharisaically thanking God that he's not tax-collector-like (Luke 18:11). No, he glorifies God and thanks Jesus that he has been healed. God empowers, Jesus heals. And I’ll tell you a secret. That God-glorifying, Jesus-thanking clean-skin lepered man was—are you ready for this?—a Samaritan. That’s right, but how did Jesus know? By the color of his skin: he had a Samari-Tan! And he is a good Samaritan. He was a villager who non-received the face-set-toward-Jerusalem-Jesus (Luke 9:52), but then on his Jerusalem-Jericho jaunt he saw the beaten-beside-the-road man, and, unlike the LevitePriest, he compassioned the man (10:33-35). Indeed, he probably got his skin disease from helping that guy, or maybe it was from the inn, where he took the wounded man. You know, they just don’t clean like they used to. Responses: (2) Jesus' Responds to the Samaritan (17:17-19). Jesus says, “Uh, I might have been wrong (though I’m usually not because I’m a prophet) but didn’t I count ten people who were mercifully cleansed? Uh, where are the other nine? (“They’re self-exposing to the priests, like you said.”) Didn’t any of them turn-round and raise praises except this foreigner, this allogenes, this other-born? Apparently the proper way to praise God is to thank Jesus, and the others, presumably Galileans, didn’t do that. They’re just like the Levitepriest—ungrateful, uncompassionate, not like this good Samaritan, this good “ferner.” Now he knows about cleaning. And he doesn’t need a visa or a green card. A foreigner, huh? Hey, Jesus, have you got in mind Isaiah 56:3-8, which talks about foreigners and eunuchs being included in the restored Israel. Verses 6-8 say: 6 And the foreigners who join themselves to the Lord, So gathered now is this God-glorifying, Jesus-thanking cleaned lepered man. His offering, which he was told to make for his cleansing but which he probably didn’t because he didn’t want to have anything to do with Jerusalem-loyal priests, will now be altared-accepted in LordGod’s all-people prayer-house. Indeed, in a little while, when Jesus finally gets to Jerusalem, he drives out temple-sellers so it can prayerfully house all (Luke 19:45-46). So Jesus tells this guy to get up (Quit looking at my
beautiful feet!) and go. (After all, he’s had a Damascus Road experience, and Jesus
tells SaulPaul to get up and go, Acts 22:10.) Go to the gathering of
Israel’s outcasts, to which you too are now gathered. Go get gathered!
Don’t go self-expose to the priests, like I told you before. Just
go! But go with saving faith (maybe saving face too). Jesus says, “Your
faith has saved you.” What you sayeth has faved you. Your glorying-God
and thanking-Jesus has made you a favorite. Your face has sated you.
Your Jesus- feet fallen face has sated your desire for healing. “Your
faith has saved you (He pistis sou sesoken se).” This
is the same benediction that Jesus has given to the weeping, kissing,
anointing, loving—and forgiven—woman (Luke 7:50), to the
hemorrhaging, touching—and immediately healed—woman (8:48),
and to the mercy-shouting, blind—and healed—man (18:42).
Jesus saves? Faith in Jesus’ healing, cleansing, saving mercy heals,
cleanses, and saves. What happens to the Samaritan? Maybe he goes to the city of Samaria and is one of those eager-Philip-listeners and exorcism-and-healing seers (Acts 8:6-7). And maybe his clean lepered skin is baptized and is laid-on with Peter-John hands and he Spirit-received (8:12). And maybe he’s a Samaritan villager who believes in John-Peter’s good news proclamation (8:25), reversing their earlier inhospitality to the Jerusalem-bound Jesus. Boy, it’s good that heavenly fire didn’t come down on them then. Imagine Luke’s two volumes Samaritan-less. The beaten man would still be by the side of the road, Jesus would still be waiting for a cleansed leper to thank him, and nobody would have been there to hear Peter-John’s good news. No Samaritans. That would not be good! ConclusionOkay, quick-penny-punny Mike has now stopped playing. I hope you had fun; I know that he did. His aggression and anxiety have been expressed, though he still feels a bit anxious about your response to all this. But what about the text? How was it expressing its aggression and anxiety? Certainly there is aggression toward the nine, spoken in Jesus’ sarcastic voice, “Weren’t there ten? Where are the other nine?” Yet there also ambivalence toward the Samaritan: while he is set up as a model of faith, he is still labeled a “foreigner.” Though he’s in the house, he’s not yet a member of the family, for Jesus does not address him as a “child of Abraham,” as he does the up-and-down-a-tree Zacchaeus (Luke 19:10) and the straightened woman (13:16). Maybe the text is expressing its aggression toward Jesus, and that has been deflected onto the Samaritan and the Galileans. My faith—in words, in wordplay, in puns—has saved me. |
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