Wild Turkeys
November 18, 2007
Thanksgiving Celebration
by Rev. Dr. Donna Schaper

If you have ever come upon a field of wild turkeys, you'll know what I mean when I say, that is what one does with wild turkeys: one comes upon them. First they appear, and then they disappear. They walk in groups, oddly shaped, giblets in tow, in a medley of red and black and white and orange, with long necks that many of us only know as soup. Giblets, gizzards, necks, breasts, thighs, and drumsticks -- are all words describing parts of meals many of us will have in a few days.

But wild turkeys transcend meals. We come upon them in what little wild there is left in the world. They are nowhere near Times Square. None wears an iPod, carries a calendar, makes lists, or multi-tasks. They come into a field, glean its leavings, and leave. Like the Holier Spirits, they have a way of doing the now-you-see-me-now-you-don't trick.

Wild turkeys probably don't have good manners, which is what our text today is all about. It is about the "thank you" note. It, too, is a story of a group that just appears. Jesus has left Jerusalem and is on the outside of a small town. A group of lepers keeps their distance from him… in a way similar to that of the wild bird. Jesus comes upon them. They had no appointment. The lepers were not in the anteroom waiting for healing so much as hanging around, gleaning what they could. Like birds, they wouldn't even think of getting too close. For lepers, and wild turkeys, being too close to humans is often dangerous. We might offend them. We might call them yucky or unclean or wild or useless. What good is a leper to anyone? What good is a wild turkey? They don't taste good at all. I know. I've tried. Butter Balls, they are not. They are something different: useless, strange, and wild -- and in those ways, beautiful.

When Jesus comes upon the lepers, they keep their distance, but he does not. He draws near. He heals them. He tells them to go show themselves to the authorities in the village -- and that somehow by going toward the center of the town, they will participate in their own healing.

Yesterday, coming back from a UCC Retreat in New Hampshire, eight of us were in a van together. We had a beautiful trip through snow and fall foliage, only to arrive near NYC and get into gridlock. We had seen a field of wild turkeys, but no lepers. During our 17 hours (just three of gridlock), we studied the text for the day. I can't say I've done much bible study in the back seat of a van, nor have I ever looked at a biblical text from the viewpoint of a little hand-held Internet device, the name of which is what, Drea? Ah, yes -- a BlackBerry.

The study of this interesting text was going well -- until someone opened his computer and started playing a Gardner Taylor sermon on it. Gridlock, BlackBerries, the Bible, and Gardner Taylor. I was again on the edge of a new kind of village.

There we were, suspended between Jerusalem and the villages, outside of town, gleaning what we could. Walk back through the text with me again, please, as we did in the van yesterday. It is pretty confusing. Jesus comes upon the lepers. He tells them to go away -- and then he is upset that only one returns. Apparently our Lord and Savior wants it both ways. He wants us to leave, and he wants us to stay. He wants to heal us, and he wants us to participate in our healing. He wants to equate healing with faith and trust, as opposed to freedom from leprosy. He takes six sentences to heal ten people in a wild, wild way.

The take away for this sermon could be very simple: Even Jesus suffers from appreciation deficit syndrome. Like us, he wants to be thanked. Like us, he wonders why people don't see how much we have done or do or suffer or care. Like us, he wants recognition. He may say that he does his good deeds for their own sake, but in truth, he is does them for the response.

As we became more and more locked in the grid and the van slowed to a halt, we realized we were entering Judson turf with a big van at 7:30 on a Saturday night. Needless to say, there were no parking spaces. We had already gotten one ticket for not moving the van until 11:02 on Thursday morning; we weren't taking any chances. Jeff Mansfield, one of our more theologically astute Community Ministers, said, "All right God, here is the deal. You've heard of the New Sanctuary Movement? It's off if we don't get a parking space real soon." Very few of us like it when we don't get results for our good behavior. Virtue is supposed to yield rewards, and when it doesn't, we get upset.

Apparently, even Jesus did. "Were not nine healed? Why did only one return to give thanks?"

I think there is more to this text than the mandate to send the thank you note and the desire of even the holiest among us to receive one. I think it is about participation in the healing, especially that which occurs on the edges of villages. And I think it is about what wellness really is. Wellness is less the freedom from disease than it is the presence of trust. The lepers trusted Jesus, in the way wild turkeys trust the corn that is left in the field. They walk into the village and show themselves to the authorities. Would a wild turkey come back to say thanks? I think no. So what was it about that foreigner, the Samaritan, who returned to give thanks? If the text is deeper than a moralistic exhortation to give thanks (a good thing to do), if it exists on some deeper level having to do with inside and outside, fear and trust, distance and intimacy, what is that deeper level?

I think the wild turkeys show the way. It happens to be the 30-year anniversary of Steven Spielberg's Close Encounters of the Third Kind. Its theme is very interesting. It is about befriending aliens and how everything changes when we befriend aliens. Jesus was having a close encounter of the third kind with the lepers. He just came upon them. Then he told them that they were healed and that by their going to the village to show their healing to the authorities, they would be well. He got close to the strange, on the edge of the city. He and they came to trust each other. That alone, with or without leprosy, is a kind of healing, when people who usually keep their distance come close. This text joins dozens of texts that make the point that God is on the edge of the city, within the stranger. God hangs out outside. My biggest fear about my country today is that in our vociferous rejection of the stranger we are also rejecting God. The stranger is the way to God. There is no other way.

A church in Los Angeles tells a similar story of how they got involved in sanctuary. As the pastor emeritus said to me, "We had a baby dropped on our doorstep." In other words, he just came upon the wild turkeys in the field. Jesus might say, he just saw the lepers standing there. Something happens -- and we either keep our distance from it, or we enter into it.

The Simi Valley UCC has been very important to the New Sanctuary Movement because Ileana, their spokesperson, is simply remarkable. She was threatened with deportation in May. ICE thought she had two children when they raided her home at dawn. When they heard an infant crying, the two ICE officers stared at each other and one said, "Oh, fuck," meaning that they didn't know there was an infant involved. Ileana saw her opening. Hysterical, with her two older children screaming and crying, she said, "Please don't take me now; give me some time to prepare my children." The officials said, two days. She said, "No, I need a week." She got a week. We happen upon courage. We don't go out looking for it, sometimes we don't even know we have it, until at 5 a.m., an ordinary 29-year-old woman is facing federal authorities in her apartment, with her two children standing next to her and her infant in its crib, and she negotiates for a week. We happen upon courage, in others and ourselves.

Ileana goes to her own large, Roman Catholic parish and begs the priest for help. He says he cannot help her. Then she remembers she has seen something about sanctuary, somewhere. She locates the flyer, calls the number, and gets Andrea. Andrea puts her in touch with her pastor, and next thing the Simi Valley UCC (a church of 80 members in a conservative suburb of Los Angeles) knows, it has a mother and three children living on their property, with 30 volunteers working around the clock to guard and keep them safe. The Minutemen show up at a special sanctuary worship service and try to "liberate" Ileana. The 75-year-old Anglo, Lutheran Bishop is there, and he goes out and prays with the Minutemen (you can see it on YouTube, it is quite beautiful) long enough to get them to disperse. He sends them off with the message, "God Bless America."

Did anyone send a thank you note to Andrea for picking up the call and making the connection for Ileana? Or to the Lutheran Bishop, who at age 75 was smart enough and brave enough to go face to face with the Minutemen on a church doorstep? Or to the thirty volunteers who guard a woman? Or to the New Sanctuary Movement for its wisdom in understanding that we have to have ordinary Anglos in front of ordinary Mexicans or they will not be safe?

So what strange part of us wants to give thanks today? What part of us wants to return to Jesus, after we are healed, and say thank you?

I am grateful that there are some ICE officers who understand that the law they are enforcing is unjust. I am grateful for Ileana's chutzpah at 5 a.m.: "Not two days, give me a week." I am grateful for a God who is present on the edge of towns, within the strange -- a God who gives us close encounters of the third kind.

And I also side with the nine ex-lepers who did not return. I even think Jesus is large enough not to really care about whether he is thanked or not. I think the Holy Spirit is a wild -- not a tamed -- bird, which shows up when and where it will, and does strange things. It keeps its distance, even from the thank you note.

Amen.

Ancient Testimony: Luke 17: 11-19