John
4:5-42
“Basura!”
That was one of the most hurtful,
sad things that I have ever heard come out of a child’s mouth.
“Basura! Hey, Basura!”
Two or three of the kids who attended our after-school program in
Allentown were shouting to a man across the street. He had been walking along, not bothering
anyone, not even looking around much as far as I could tell. The kids, who lived around the corner,
obviously knew the man, but I hadn’t seen him before, and I had a feeling that
he must have known them.
“Hey, Basura!”
I made them go inside right away and
they started down the hallway with their backpacks like always, but I made them
stop and come back and sit down on the steps inside the door. I looked at them and said, “No usamos
estas palabras. Esta un persona, no
basura!” They stared at me with
surprise. I didn’t want them to know
that when they spoke to each other in Spanish I understood them and heard the
things they talked about right there in front of me. I switched back to English. “Why did you shout that?”
“It’s his name,” they told me.
“Nobody is named Basura.” (“Basura” is Spanish for “trash”.)
“It’s his nickname,” one of them
tried.
I’ll pat myself on the back for
telling them, “Not around here it isn’t.”
Those kids heard the lesson, and
they got it. I didn’t have to go any
further. Enough people called them
names. Enough people jumped on them for
no good reason all the time. Enough
people saw them as Puerto Rican, or poor, or kids, or some combination of that,
and that became their name. Never Emilio
or Freddy. They knew that man had a name
and even if they didn’t know what that name was, they knew that it was not
“Basura” any more than their names were “Hey, you!” or “You, kid!” I can only hope that the man across the
street hadn’t heard “Basura!” so many times that he himself came to think
someone was talking to him when he heard it.
That happens, you know.
People get put down and told how
awful they are, and sooner or later some of them are in danger of coming to
believe it. Not everyone, by any means,
takes it to heart, but some do. Either
way, people who are routinely and systematically discounted have a real
challenge in front of them and an unfair burden put upon them, often at their
most vulnerable moments and often from the most formative times in their lives.
Yet they also have Jesus on their
side, calling out the falsehoods and the lies that constant repetition by the
world tries to impress on their spirits.
The woman at the well, the Samaritan woman at the well, is the classic
example.
Jesus was taking a shortcut through
Samaritan territory near the town of Sychar.
“Jesus, tired out by his
journey, was sitting by the well. It was
about noon. A Samaritan woman came to
draw water, and Jesus said to her, ‘Give me a drink.’ (His disciples had gone to the city to buy
food.) The Samaritan woman said to him,
‘How is it that you, a Jew, ask a drink of me, a woman of Samaria?’ (Jews do not share things in common with
Samaritans.)” [John 4:6-9]
Even
without John’s side comment you can tell she knew how at that time Samaritans
were seen by Jews and how women were treated by men. Whatever she may have thought about those
attitudes, she expected them. That’s
part of the tragedy when people are regularly and systematically denied their
dignity. It comes to be seen as
“normal”, by everyone involved. It
comes to be seen as predictable.
Situations are debased right from the start.
Not for Jesus, though. He wasn’t so much concerned about the labels
as he was about the person, and what life had done to her. Somehow (we aren’t told the full story) she
had been drawn into a terrible position where she was having to haul water in
the heat of the day (when the best time would have been early on) and was there
on her own (instead of appearing when others gathered) and it may all have had
to do with the situation Jesus outlines (to her surprise).
“Jesus said to her, ‘Go
call your husband and come back.’ The
woman answered him, ‘I have no husband.’
Jesus said to her, ‘You are right in saying, “I have no husband;” for
you have had five husbands, and the one you have now is not your husband. What you have said is true!’” [John
4:16-18]
You
don’t have to stretch your imagination too far to figure out that someone
married five times has had some kind of trauma in her life. Nor do you have to work hard to figure out
what might have been said to or about her in the village.
It
may, though, leave you wondering what she thought about herself. How much did she see herself as a
victim? How much did she think she
deserved whatever abuse and insult she received? What exactly were her wounds and her scars? Maybe it’s better that we don’t know
specifics. Instead, we know something
more general that applies to anybody at all who for any reason at all has had
their spirit crushed or bruised. Jesus
said,
“Those who drink of the
water that I will give them will never be thirsty. The water that I will give will become in
them a spring of water gushing up to eternal life.” [John
4:14]
It
isn’t simply that Jesus doesn’t treat us as trash or look down on anybody. It isn’t just that he dealt with a Samaritan
woman with respect. It isn’t just that
he touched lepers that nobody else would go near. It isn’t only that he heard the sorrow in the
cries of a man possessed by demons. It
isn’t simply that he saw a poor man lying on the ground outside a rich man’s
gate as being headed for a far better position in eternity than the rich man
held on earth. It isn’t just that he
called for compassion toward a woman that the crowd wanted to stone, or even
that he prayed for his own executioners from the cross.
It’s that by this, and so much more
– by his entire life and his entire being – he opens the door for human beings
to enter into a life free from the ravages that sin and hatred work within us,
a life that is no longer bound by anything unpleasing to God. He opens up the life of the spirit to all
people, so that they – we – can live as God sees us, not as people do, or as we
may see ourselves. Paul wrote to the Romans,
“For all who are led by
the Spirit of God are children of God.
For you did not receive a spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but
you have received a spirit of adoption.
When we cry, ‘Abba! Father!’ it
is that very Spirit bearing witness with our spirit that we are children of
God, and if children, then heirs, heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ –
if, in fact, we suffer with him so that we may also be glorified with
him.” [Romans 8:14-17]
You
are not “Basura”. Far from it.
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