Once there was
a CEO of a small company. He had a hundred employees in his small company. His
employees were valued people to him because they kept their heads down, worked
hard, and were about as honest as could be expected. One of the CEO’s employees
was particularly valuable to him. In fact, he considered him almost a slave,
not because of his actual status, but because the employee was always so
willing to do anything that needed to be done. He was the one the CEO could
count on for the worst tasks.
One day this favored employee became
ill. The CEO was distraught. He couldn’t imagine the company functioning
without his ‘go-to guy.’ Suppose he died? What would the company do? What would
the CEO do without him?
The CEO heard
about a healer, some kind of faith healer, maybe a doctor no one had heard of
before. This man was healing people right and left. But the CEO was reluctant
to see the healer about his employee. You see, the CEO’s company specialized in
weaponry, and worse, the CEO’s people had conquered the country where his
business was now located. He would never be an insider. Furthermore, he wasn’t
a native. And this healer guy, this new kind of doctor, he was one of them. The healer was an insider, a
native.
It wasn’t that the CEO hadn’t tried,
really he had. He’d made friends with the native people. They wouldn’t enter
his home because their religion said entering his home would make them ritually
unclean. But, he’d had patio parties so they didn’t have to go inside. The CEO
had even adopted some of the ways of their religion to show his respect for the
natives. He’d given a goodly portion of his company’s profits to build one of
their houses of worship. But would anybody be his advocate with this healer?
Would anyone help his dependable and faithful employee see this faith healer?
It turned out all the CEO’s sucking
up paid off. The CEO approached some of the religious leaders and they agreed
to see the faith healer on his behalf. The religious leaders were pretty
earnest about pleading his case to the faith healer. They said, “This CEO,
despite being an outsider, one of the conquerors, loves us. He gave his profits
to build one of our houses of worship.” So the faith healer set out to the
CEO’s house, even though he knew he
would become unclean if he entered the CEO’s house.
The faith healer was almost at the
house when the CEO sent him a message. The message said, “Listen, you’re
willing to become unclean by being in my house and healing my beloved employee.
I can’t ask you to do that. But I have a hundred employees at my command and
when I say, ‘Go,’ they go. When I say, ‘Come,’ my employees come. Even my
beloved best employee, who’s like a slave to me, does this. When I say to him,
‘Do this,’ he does it. I can’t come to you. I’m sure you understand why. I’m
too important and my position in this community is such that I can’t to come to
you. There are too many risks to my career and my community standing. But I
believe you can heal just by saying the word. You can heal without even coming
to my house.”
When the healer received the message
he turned to the religious leaders and said, “Look at this conqueror, this
outsider, this man who doesn’t fully subscribe to our faith. Yet he has faith.
I will bless him by healing his beloved employee. I haven’t seen such faith in
any of you.” And that’s the end of
this story, except that the employee was healed.
So what does this story tell us? Who
are the insiders? Who are the outsiders? Who receives God’s blessing? Perhaps
the insiders are those who hear of hope and love and respond with open and
willing hearts. And perhaps the outsiders are those who have heard the words
for years but whose hearts are closed and unwilling. The CEO, the outsider, had
ears to hear and eyes to see and a heart that was open and loving. The insiders
had shut their eyes and closed their ears and had hearts that were hard and
unwilling to see beyond the normal. Only the CEO was willing to be open to
something that was not his usual culture, not his usual way of operating, and beyond
his comfort level. And the CEO was blessed and his employee was healed.
Perhaps we should no longer be
surprised by the unlikely and astonishing places God’s blessing shows up. God’s
surprising blessing could even show up for those who are markedly different
from us, to the outsiders, the non-natives, those who are strange to us, those
we hate, even those who are the enemy. In this story, who is really inside and who
is really outside?
If the answers surprise you, remember
this: Jesus asks us to do only that which he did himself. “Love your enemies,
do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you.”[1]
AMEN.
The Rev Nicolette
Papanek
©2016
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