Margins are spaces on the edge of a page. They keep the words from spilling off. Every book has them. They make us think of marginal spaces in our society. There are people on the margins who marginalized. For most part the margins go unnoticed. Margins in the case of the book do not stand for the book. They do not define its message. But the message of the book becomes pronounced only through the marginalization of the margins. Same is true of the people of the margins. They do not figure in what the mainline world esteems itself. The dwellers of the margins are like any other person but they are broken and crucified people. They are unhomed people. They are exiled in their own land.
Incarnation brings God on the margins. The alpha and the omega, the creator of the universe becomes God in human flesh. He was born on the margin in a stable with cattle. God becomes marginal in incarnation. Jesus is born as illegitimate child from the point of view of the world. His illegitimacy reveals his marginality. He is thought to be misfit in the society of his birth. Nazareth! What good can come from there? Jesus carried the stigma of his native place. He also takes the marginal people as his disciples. The fishermen, tax collectors and other lowly people. ‘Why does he eats , drinks and mingle with the tax collectors ?’ asks the privileged. Jesus embraces the marginalized. He says it is not the healthy who need the doctor but the sick. Jesus cares for the forgotten people: widows , demon-possessed, sick, widows, adulterers , prostitutes and the Samaritans. Jesus came to margins to heal the margins. Jesus changes the margins. He drew new lines of acceptance.
Being marginal became central with Jesus. His scheme of things that last is first. The lost is more precious than those that did not stray . His authority is one that of a servant leader. In Jesus the marginalized one , God’s anawim found the place of restoration. The periphery or the margin became the new center of all action. Jesus brings about pericentralization. Death on the cross takes Jesus on the extremes of the margin. By dying he redefined all margins and his resurrection transformed them. The marginalized and the crucified people, therefore, have a hope of redemption. Jesus enabled the marginalized speak their truth and he himself experienced the truth by being marginalized himself.
We have the challenge to read the margins and also read scriptures from the margin and embrace mission from the margins. Reading the margin will enable us to understand. Reading the margins requires us to scrutinize how privilege is distributed in our society. Can may see the distribution of the privilege as cultural capital. Pierre Bourdieu teaches us about social capital. Marginal people lack cultural capital of a society. Hence, reading the margins also open us to understand the power relations in our society. People experience marginality very deeply. Embracing the hermeneutics of suspicion, we can read the scripture from the context of the margin. It is a prophetic reading. Such a reading will lead us to adopt margin as a space of mission. Our mission has the challenge to be inclusive and shun aside all exclusivism. The marginal call us to ethical responsibility. Jesus is in the margins. Joining him in the margin is a way of joining his mission.
