Hearing this, Jesus said, “It is not those who are healthy who need a doctor, but those who are ill. I did not come to call the religious, but the outcast.”
in the face of a thought
stopped too soon
settled into shoulds and oughts
never looking deeper
than unhelpful blame
rise demythologizing reversalspeople exiled
defined as wild and weed
everywhere they breathe
needed as unholy examples
invisible comfort for those not them
don’t need alliesa doctor with a screwdriver
to tune a larger setting
now that would be useful
with larger internal space
than even an infinite beyond
carries enough we-ness to go aroundsuch a doctor knows wilderness
temptations given into or resisted
are a measure of a life
listen for the vibrations of adjustment
turning a cry to exterminate
to a tardis of mutual grace
The saying about healthy and sick people is common folk knowledge that well predates its use here.
The on-going question about those who don’t currently follow the basic rules of the religion of the day is where difficulties arise.
Our first reading of “righteous” focuses on being right, being good, doing things correctly. Given a wilderness motif, these are the people who have built a walled city in the midst of beasts and warring factions.
Seen from inside, that which keeps us safe is seen to be the rules and regulations we follow. From the outside such rectitude appears fragile. The loss of one precept will leave a hole in the dike that a finger cannot fill and will all too soon transform a small spout into a raging deluge.
When “I AM comes” the vision is larger than even health/sickness, the following of the latest pharmacological cure-all or blood-marker. In a feasting setting, we are to remember Passover, quail, water from a rock, manna, and milk and honey. We are to again work toward a Year of Jubilee resetting all the little advantages we have accumulated and hold over each next lower class/status. A step toward Jubilee is to live with and call to the river, to the wilderness, those not walled in and who have nothing more than enough.