A sermon by John Brierly McCall, D. Min.
Mark 1:40-45
When I go the grocery store I think I’m just John, shopping. But sometimes I have to put on my pastor’s hat. I recently visited with someone who told me how her life is feeling right now. The list of worries is long; bad news is everywhere: Greek debt crisis; saber-rattling in Iran; near civil war in Syria; unemployment; stagnant housing market; fiscal crisis in Augusta; Republican primary candidates trashing each other. I laughed a little when she said she feels like a little yellow duck in a shooting gallery pulled across the stage, just trying to keep her head down.
It brought to mind the comment of the great race car driver Mario Andretti who said: “If everything is under control, you’re going too slow.”
There’s so much that’s clearly beyond our control. At a personal, individual level, scripture reminds us we’re frail and vulnerable. “We have this treasure in earthen vessels,” says Paul. Age and illness, accident and death will have their way with us. Certainly, the real secret of life is adapting to things that happen to us.
But scripture also lifts the promise of healing. Today’s lesson from Mark continues the series of stories of how Jesus healed those who are afflicted in some way. Two weeks ago it was the man possessed by an unclean spirit; last week it was Simon Peter’s mother-in-law; this morning we hear the account of a man with leprosy.
In our vocabulary each of these biblical healings is a miracle. Each appears to contradict reason. Each defies our easy explanations. Each reminds us that healing is all about connecting with God. That’s always true. Again and again, the Gospels tell us, Jesus stepped close to those in need. He touched them. He closed the circle between their need, their prayers, and God’s will.
In today’s few verses we read that this man with leprosy was brazen enough to break the taboos. The book of Leviticus was the manual for distinguishing between those who were holy and those who were not. Lepers were just one group among many who were forced to the edges by the Levitical law. Anyone with a skin disease had to stay out of town, stay off the road, and cry out a warning to anyone who might wander too near.
In the rare event this terrible disease went dormant the Law required the person first to go to the priest to be examined and declared healed. Then there were rituals to be followed and sacrifices to offer at the temple. And only then could someone be restored, reintegrated into the community. {See Leviticus 14:1-20}
The man with leprosy knew all of this. Jesus knew it, too. But he did it anyway. The man begged him for healing, saying “If you choose, you can make me clean.” And Jesus responded. “I do choose: be made clean!”
Interestingly, this story in Mark gives us a glimpse of Jesus’ human side, too. There’s a footnote for verse 41, that says that when the man with leprosy approached him Jesus was moved with anger rather than pity as the text says. Translators are saying there are other ancient texts that say Jesus was angry – impatient, abrupt, or worse – when the man grabbed on to him.
The context is vague. Was Jesus angry at the man? Angry at the interruption? Angry at the laws and rules that heaped social sanctions on top of the physical and mental anguish this man was already carrying? I don’t know. But we can sense there’s something much larger at work.
The man was healed. And then Jesus told him to button his lip and keep it quiet. What an irony that Jesus told him to be quiet and to tell no one of the cure. The man couldn’t keep quiet so Jesus had to pull away and seek refuge from the press of the crowds.
So what I get here is the Jesus recognizes he’s facing one man with leprosy and so much more – here, still in the first chapter of Mark’s Gospel, Jesus is facing the almost limitless pain of God’s people and the almost limitless need for healing, and the almost limitless powers that break us down and cast us aside. Such reality warrants righteous anger!
Jesus understood that he wasn’t the healer any more than a modern doctor actual heals a disease. But he became the man in the middle through whom God could do what God was prepared to do. God intends to restore us to wholeness – easing the pain of those losses and burdens that threaten to overwhelm us.
Many of our prayers for healing seem to go unanswered. And then every once in a while someone is healed. Even when the odds say “no,” God says “yes.” I don’t know why. I really don’t believe God sits in judgment and evaluates your prayers or your faith, saying “that’s a 6.3″… “that’s a 9.9!” If healing were only a matter of finding the right words to soften God’s hard heart to do our bidding, we’d have found the formula a long time ago.
What I do believe and have seen is that healing moves in the other direction. Spiritual healing is God’s first blessing and sometimes physical healing follows. When and if I can align my will with God’s will, I know I move to a deeper, more faithful place where my greatest hope and joy are to know and do what God wants for me.
I say this based on the two places in the Gospel that teach us most clearly about Jesus’ view of prayer. First is the Lord’s Prayer, filled with simplicity and wisdom, within which Jesus teaches us to say: “thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” “Your will be done” – the most fundamental and arguably the hardest expression for any of us.
Jesus’ other teaching about prayer wasn’t addressed to the disciples, but to God alone: in the Garden of Gethsemane on the night he was betrayed, Jesus offered what we may call the perfect prayer: “If it is possible, let this cup pass from me; yet not what I want, but what you want.”
When the spirit is strong and whole, the body often follows. The healthiest among us are those who live with the grace of knowing God in all of their lives – the best and the worst.
We admire people who respond to a grim medical diagnosis by gritting their teeth and declaring that they’re going to fight. That type of courage and determination are remarkable. But don’t overlook the grace of those who have always tried to live in connection with God and who offer the simple prayer: “not what I want but what you want.”
The God we see in scripture is a creator, a father, a mother, a lover-into-being. Here in scripture is the God who feels such compassion for us as to come in Jesus to share our suffering before relieving it. How could we imagine that God seeks our destruction, or delights in our pain, or lies in wait to catch us in our sins? Rather, God is always seeking a path toward healing, wholeness, reconciliation and peace.
Scripture and experience testify that God is at work in our individual lives and in the world. Our fate is not sealed; our destiny is not predetermined. No, our ultimate destiny is a work in progress as we dance with the Holy and seek the will of God in all our lives.
We don’t see leprosy much any more. But there are lots of others who feel unclean. The most obvious may be HIV/AIDS. But, true, too, if you’re an immigrant in native dress on the streets of Portland, if you’re mentally ill, an addict, a single mother on welfare, a homeless veteran holding a sign in Deering Oaks. Without a word spoken, the community can tell you that you don’t belong.
Even in the church we’ve fallen short of being the kind of healing, redeeming community we intend to be. We can be guilty of love at arm’s length; or responding to pain with a stare rather than an embrace. That kind of isolation adds to the burden and the pain, doesn’t it?
Some of us are struggling with lonely places – places of illness and dis-ease. Most of us feel the anxiety that comes from the world’s pain: the struggles of our economy, the threat to our environment, and reluctance of the world’s people to work together for common good. We fret about the world our children and grandchildren will inherit.
We can’t make everything fit our plans, even by fervent prayer.
The dance of life means living with the uncertainties and enduring the suffering that flesh and spirit are heir to. But we can begin up close and personal, faithfully seeking God’s will in our lives, reaching across the divisions and reaching for the outcast.
Like Jesus, we can faithfully try to attune our spirits to God’s and never lose hope. That’s what this church stuff is all about!
Certainly, it’s no wonder that this nameless man, so long ago – who lived with a terrible illness of body and spirit – just couldn’t keep quiet when Jesus touched him and God’s healing power could cure him.
And when that happened he could no longer stay isolated. It was time to shout his joy and rejoin his community. I like the thought from the folksy philosopher, farmer and author, Wendell Berry:
Healing is impossible in loneliness; it is the opposite of loneliness. Conviviality is healing. To be healed we must come with all the other creatures to the feast of Creation.