Crossing Invisible Boundaries: What is a Neighborhood Series

There are all kinds of social, economic and political boundaries in any neighborhood.  A government doesn't need to erect a wall for there to be a boundary that divides people through labeling and categories that define how people treat and interact with one another.  City neighborhoods are fascinating social landscapes where one street can house upper middle class residents and the very next street display abject poverty.  The line between these two neighborhoods is not monitored by soldiers or check points but the people living there will not interact or relate to one another. 

Jesus was aware of boundaries in his social context.  There were boundaries between Jews and the Romans, the poor and wealthy land owners, religious leaders and the people they served, those with leprosy forced to live outside the walls of a town and the rest of the inhabitants.  For Jesus every person was a creation of God who bore the image of God even if that image was distorted by social conditions, illness or sin.  In Jesus the fullness of God dwells so that God is filling our humanity with God’s self to give abundant life.  Through Jesus the fullness of our humanity is brought into the presence of God.  Jesus embodied this reality that restored the image of God that’s distorted by social conditions and sin by healing the sick, loving the rejected, and giving life and significance to the outcast. 

One day Jesus encounters a group of lepers who were forced to live outside of the town because their disease made them unclean; not only for health reasons but having leprosy meant you were rejected religiously.  The proper etiquette in such an encounter would be to keep the lepers away from you so that you’re not tainted by their disease and become unclean too.  Instead Jesus allows the lepers to touch him as they beg for healing, lays his hands upon them and restores them to life.  The result is that they go to the priests to be pronounced clean and are restored to society. 

The persistence of boundaries, such as the one with lepers in Jesus’ day, degrades the functioning of a neighborhood.  It’s not that one with a contagious disease doesn’t need to be careful so that there isn’t an epidemic, but that the social stigma and religious condemnation distort the image of God in the person.  We need to dismantle the social, economic and political divisions in a neighborhood so that people can come together to solve the ills of society, but also to be one, to be united in the life that God intends and desires for all of Creation.  The social barriers erected in a neighborhood increase our alienation from God and one another.  In Christ these barriers are overcome to restore us to unity with God and each other in divine love.