(Scriptures: Genesis 9:1-17, 1 Peter 3:18-22, Mark 1:9-15)
We are now in the season of Lent, that season of forty days during which we are invited to renew our walk with God and deepen our commitment to following in the way of Christ. The designation of forty days reminds us of the 40 days Jesus spent in the wilderness, wrestling with his identity and his call, and being tempted by Satan. In the same way, we are called to focus on, and perhaps wrestle with, our identity as Christians and our faith in God through Jesus Christ. Christians do this in many ways. Giving up something for Lent – meat, or desserts, or some addictive substance such as cigarettes or alcohol – is one way that Christians remind themselves of the privation Jesus experienced in the wilderness. (Of course, I guess I should caution against giving up church for Lent.) Some Christians seeks relationship with God via the inward journey of prayer and meditation. Others seek relationship with God through the outward journey of doing works of justice and mercy. So while some Christians give something up for Lent, others take something new on for Lent. In many ways, Christians seek to remember and even emulate the practice of Jesus by resisting temptation and drawing close to God.
Characteristically, Mark’s version of this formative period in Jesus’ life is very brief, very compressed – in the words of Sgt Joe Friday: “Just the facts, ma’am”. Mark talks about Jesus being in the wilderness for 40 days, but it takes Mark about 40 seconds to tell us about it. Within a few lines of print we move from the baptism of Jesus to the temptation of Jesus to the beginning of the proclamation of the Gospel by Jesus.
The Revised Common Lectionary associates this brief text from Mark’s gospel with two texts that refer to the story of Noah. The Genesis reading is taken from the end of the Flood account, when Noah and his family and all the animals and birds are out of the Ark, and God promise them never again to destroy all life on earth by flood. And then there’s the text from I Peter which links all of this to the sacrament of baptism.
I have to confess – and part of this is likely due to my being a fairly new pastor, only partway through seminary – that as I prepared this sermon, I really struggled to understand why the creators of the lectionary chose to set the Mark text side by side with these two texts. OK, the Mark text talks about the baptism of Jesus, and the I Peter text explains Christian baptism in terms of the flood account. In the flood account it rained for 40 days and 40 nights, and Jesus was in the wilderness for 40 days and 40 nights being tempted.
I suppose what finally brought the three texts together for me was the message of Jesus as contained in the last line of our reading from Mark: “The time has come. The reign of God has come near. Repent, and believe the Good News.”
What is the Good News? Namely, God’s passionate love for humankind and for all creation – although from the Genesis account, this may not be the most intuitive conclusion. Genesis tells us that within a few generations from the creation, God despaired of humankind, observing that “every inclination of the thoughts of their hearts was only evil continually” and that even the very earth itself was corrupt. Gee, Mr. Writer of Genesis, don’t hold back – tell us what you really think. We’re told that God was sorry he ever created human beings, as the interactions of humans with one another and with other life on earth had begun to spin out of control like a science experiment gone horribly awry. Despite this, we’re told that God resolves to save the best of humanity – as represented by Noah and his family – along with representative samples from all forms of plant and animal life, erase everything and everyone else, and begin afresh. It’s sort of a divine do-over, or what golfers call a mulligan. In today’s reading the floodwaters have receded, Noah, his family, and all the animals and birds are out of the ark, and God gives Noah and his family the same command he gave Adam and Eve – “be fruitful and multiply, fill the earth….” Perhaps with the Cain and Abel history in mind, God also very explicitly commands them this time not to kill one other. And then God for his part promises that he won’t kill them all either, that he will never again wipe out all life by flood. All this God did to maintain relationship with the human beings God created in the Divine image.
Our reading from I Peter uses the Noah story as a metaphor to explain the meaning of baptism. Just as God had through the raging floodwaters washed the corruption from the earth and saved those whom God favored, our sinful nature is drowned in the waters of baptism. Just as the blessing of Noah after the flood represented a sort of second creation, so in baptism we emerge from the water as new creations in Christ. And in a few truly strange verses, the writer of I Peter tells us that not even death ends God’s passionate love affair with humanity, that as Jesus proclaimed the Good News at the beginning of his ministry, after the crucifixion Jesus made proclamation to the Spirits in prison, who in the time of Noah did not obey. So our Good News is that God’s love for humans created in God’s image transcends humanity’s self-destructive impulses, transcends the raging floodwaters, transcends death itself. In Jesus Christ, God quite literally went through hell and high water in order to rescue and save us. Truly, this is good news.
What is our response? For much of the world, their relationship to God, to the Holy, can be characterized by the phrase “out of sight, out of mind” – that is to say, it’s not a priority. And for us in the church, while our relationship with God through Jesus Christ is our reason for coming together, we may be too quick to say “out of sight, out of mind” to those on the outside. A very old fashioned theological tradition compares the church – “big C” church - to the ark, providing a place of refuge and sanctuary from the rising floodwaters of sin and death outside our doors. Not to say that the church is perfect – it has been said, half-jokingly, that if it weren’t for the flood outside, we’d never put up with the stench inside.
One problem with the tradition of the church as “ark” – or, to use the phrase from Luther’s hymn, “a mighty fortress” – is that it doesn’t say much about those outside the ark, outside the fortress. Jesus gives us different images of the Reign of God which he preached – a banquet, a wedding feast, to which we are asked to go into the highways and byways to compel people to come in. Perhaps this is where that strange passage from I Peter comes in, about Jesus in the Spirit making proclamation to the spirits in prison. If Jesus, in the words of the Apostles Creed, “descended into hell” to proclaim Good News - would it be too much trouble for us to venture outside our doors to proclaim good news to our neighbors?
Just as Jesus struggled for forty days in the wilderness with his identity and vocation, so during these 40 days of Lent, we are called to wrestle with our call, as individuals and as the gathered church, with our vocation. Just as Jesus had to reject various temptations to claim glory for himself in ways that bypassed the cross, we in the church face similar temptations to bypass our call to discipleship.
“Lord, who throughout these forty days for us did fast and pray.
Teach us with Thee to mourn our sins and close by thee to stay.” Amen.
Sunday, February 26, 2012
Saturday, February 25, 2012
Meeting Jesus Again for the First Time*
(Scripture: 2 Kings 2:1-12, 2 Corinthians 4:3-6, Mark 9:2-9)
*The title is from a book by theologian Marcus Borg
Have you ever had the experience of meeting someone you know in a particular role, and seeing them in a different context outside that role? Such moments can be revealing. When I was in my teens I washed dishes at a bar and grill in my hometown, at which many of my high school teachers stopped by now and then for a drink at the end of the day – and it was quite different seeing them outside their classroom role, as they let their hair down a bit. For me, a more powerful example was seeing a woman I once tutored in literacy, who I normally experienced as tired and downtrodden, in another setting with her family, dancing with exuberance.
Today is Transfiguration Sunday, the last Sunday before Lent. In the Transfiguration, the inner circle of the disciples – Peter, James, and John – are given a glimpse of Jesus’ glory, in preparation for the journey to Jerusalem and the events of Holy Week. Accounts of the Transfiguration appear in all three of the Synoptic Gospels – Matthew, Mark, and Luke – and some scholars believe that the phrase in the 1st chapter of John’s Gospel – “And we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father’s only son, full of grace and truth” – is John’s reference to the transfiguration. So for at least three of the Gospel writer, and perhaps all four, the account of the Transfiguration was necessary in order to understand who Jesus is.
The Transfiguration comes at a time when the disciples, and especially the inner circle, aren’t quite sure who Jesus is. Not long before, Jesus had asked his disciples “who do you say that I am,” and Peter blurted you, “You are the Messiah.” Jesus than began to speak of the suffering he must undergo. When Peter questioned Jesus’ words, Jesus rebuked him, and began to say that as his followers, they, too, must take up the cross and follow him. Jesus told them, “Those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake, and the sake of the gospel, will save it. He concluded this teaching by saying, “Truly I tell you, there are some standing here who will not taste death until they see that the Kingdom of God has come with power.”
That’s the background. Today’s reading begins by telling us that “six days later” – six days after all this grappling with Jesus’ identity – Jesus took with him Peter, James, and John, and went up to a high mountain, where they went off by themselves. The setting is intended to remind us of the Exodus 24 account of Moses and the elders in God’s presence at Mt. Sinai. As Moses and the elders had been on Mt Sinai with God, so Peter, James and John were on the mountain with Jesus. Suddenly Jesus’ clothing becomes dazzling white. Moses and Elijah appear, representing the law and the prophets – and they dialogue with Jesus. Mark and Matthew don’t tell us what they talk about, but Luke tells us they are talking about what will happen to him in Jerusalem, about the suffering he would undergo. Peter wants to savor the moment, and so he starts babbling about building three huts for Jesus, Moses and Elijah to stay in. A cloud overshadows them, and from the cloud comes a voice, “This is my Son, the Beloved, listen to him!” Jesus heard these words from heaven at his baptism, and now the inner circle of the disciples are given a chance to hear them as well. And then the vision ends, and they are alone with Jesus once again.
Three of the Gospel writers felt their readers needed to know this information in order to understand who Jesus is. Perhaps there was concern that, like Peter, they would think that being Messiah meant that Jesus would not suffer. Or, perhaps, that because Jesus suffered, he couldn’t be the Messiah. But the Gospels want to underscore that Jesus is the Messiah who suffers. He is the suffering Messiah. It’s not one or the other – both are true. Both suffering and glory are part of the package. Both suffering and glory are what Jesus is about. After telling us about Jesus teaching and healing, casting out demons and cleansing lepers, we could come to think that was the entirety of what Jesus had to offer – similar to the way that I thought my boss’s work personality was all there was. But Jesus wants Peter,. James, and John, the closest of his disciples, to know that there was more to Jesus, to get at least a glimpse of Jesus in his fullness.
It can be like that with us. It’s so easy to live on the surface, to live as though what we see is all there is. We see people in their accustomed roles – family member, neighbor, coworker, teller at the bank, barber, hairdresser, owner of the shop where we drop off our dry cleaning – person who sits near us at church - and we think that who these people are to us is who they are in their entirety. We don’t experience people in their full humanity. But because God is at work in our neighbors, as God is at work in us, we and they are not defined by jobs or social roles, but as human beings created in God’s image, and – for Christians – by their baptismal vows as children of God, disciples of Christ, members of Christ’s church. Similarly, if we’ve been hanging around the church for a while, we define the church by our childhood memories, by those we know at church and by those holy moments over our lives that took place in the church. That’s what the church is for us - but that’s not all the church is. In our comfort and coziness we may miss the holiness, the transcendence, the sheer “otherness” of God. God, the Holy One, is present here – to use the Lutheran phrase regarding communion, God is present in, with, and under, not only the elements of communion, but the people who worship here and all that takes place here. Behind all of it – the people, the hymns, the coffee hour, the fellowship – is God, the Holy One, the creator of all things. Like Isaiah, we may go to the Temple expecting the same old same old, only to find ourselves transformed by an encounter with the holy. I’m reminded of these words from writer Annie Dillard:
“On the whole, I do not find Christians, outside of the catacombs, sufficiently sensible of conditions. Does anyone have the foggiest idea what sort of power we so blithely invoke? Or, as I suspect, does no one believe a word of it? The churches are children playing on the floor with their chemistry sets, mixing up a batch of TNT to kill a Sunday morning. It is madness to wear ladies’ straw hats and velvet hats to church; we should all be wearing crash helmets. Ushers should issue life preservers and signal flares; they should lash us to our pews. For the sleeping god may wake someday and take offense, or the waking god may draw us out to where we can never return.”
(Annie Dillard, Teaching a Stone to Talk, Harper & Row, 1982)
At the Transfiguration, Peter, James and John got a glimpse of the power and sheer awesomeness of the One they had called their Master. And they were drawn out to where they could no longer return to the lives they had led before meeting Jesus. Jesus was transfigured, and those who walked with Jesus were transformed. As Jesus became so filled with light that his very clothing became dazzling white, as we draw closer to Christ, the light and love of God shines through us to warm and lighten the way for our neighbors.
Though Peter, James and John had walked many long roads with Jesus, on the mount of Transfiguration it was as though they met Jesus again for the first time. As God’s love works in our lives, may we likewise meet Jesus again for the first time – and in meeting Jesus, may we be reintroduced to our families, our coworkers, our neighbors, perhaps getting a glimpse of them and of ourselves as God sees us, as God’s beloved. May it be so with us. Amen.
*The title is from a book by theologian Marcus Borg
Have you ever had the experience of meeting someone you know in a particular role, and seeing them in a different context outside that role? Such moments can be revealing. When I was in my teens I washed dishes at a bar and grill in my hometown, at which many of my high school teachers stopped by now and then for a drink at the end of the day – and it was quite different seeing them outside their classroom role, as they let their hair down a bit. For me, a more powerful example was seeing a woman I once tutored in literacy, who I normally experienced as tired and downtrodden, in another setting with her family, dancing with exuberance.
Today is Transfiguration Sunday, the last Sunday before Lent. In the Transfiguration, the inner circle of the disciples – Peter, James, and John – are given a glimpse of Jesus’ glory, in preparation for the journey to Jerusalem and the events of Holy Week. Accounts of the Transfiguration appear in all three of the Synoptic Gospels – Matthew, Mark, and Luke – and some scholars believe that the phrase in the 1st chapter of John’s Gospel – “And we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father’s only son, full of grace and truth” – is John’s reference to the transfiguration. So for at least three of the Gospel writer, and perhaps all four, the account of the Transfiguration was necessary in order to understand who Jesus is.
The Transfiguration comes at a time when the disciples, and especially the inner circle, aren’t quite sure who Jesus is. Not long before, Jesus had asked his disciples “who do you say that I am,” and Peter blurted you, “You are the Messiah.” Jesus than began to speak of the suffering he must undergo. When Peter questioned Jesus’ words, Jesus rebuked him, and began to say that as his followers, they, too, must take up the cross and follow him. Jesus told them, “Those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake, and the sake of the gospel, will save it. He concluded this teaching by saying, “Truly I tell you, there are some standing here who will not taste death until they see that the Kingdom of God has come with power.”
That’s the background. Today’s reading begins by telling us that “six days later” – six days after all this grappling with Jesus’ identity – Jesus took with him Peter, James, and John, and went up to a high mountain, where they went off by themselves. The setting is intended to remind us of the Exodus 24 account of Moses and the elders in God’s presence at Mt. Sinai. As Moses and the elders had been on Mt Sinai with God, so Peter, James and John were on the mountain with Jesus. Suddenly Jesus’ clothing becomes dazzling white. Moses and Elijah appear, representing the law and the prophets – and they dialogue with Jesus. Mark and Matthew don’t tell us what they talk about, but Luke tells us they are talking about what will happen to him in Jerusalem, about the suffering he would undergo. Peter wants to savor the moment, and so he starts babbling about building three huts for Jesus, Moses and Elijah to stay in. A cloud overshadows them, and from the cloud comes a voice, “This is my Son, the Beloved, listen to him!” Jesus heard these words from heaven at his baptism, and now the inner circle of the disciples are given a chance to hear them as well. And then the vision ends, and they are alone with Jesus once again.
Three of the Gospel writers felt their readers needed to know this information in order to understand who Jesus is. Perhaps there was concern that, like Peter, they would think that being Messiah meant that Jesus would not suffer. Or, perhaps, that because Jesus suffered, he couldn’t be the Messiah. But the Gospels want to underscore that Jesus is the Messiah who suffers. He is the suffering Messiah. It’s not one or the other – both are true. Both suffering and glory are part of the package. Both suffering and glory are what Jesus is about. After telling us about Jesus teaching and healing, casting out demons and cleansing lepers, we could come to think that was the entirety of what Jesus had to offer – similar to the way that I thought my boss’s work personality was all there was. But Jesus wants Peter,. James, and John, the closest of his disciples, to know that there was more to Jesus, to get at least a glimpse of Jesus in his fullness.
It can be like that with us. It’s so easy to live on the surface, to live as though what we see is all there is. We see people in their accustomed roles – family member, neighbor, coworker, teller at the bank, barber, hairdresser, owner of the shop where we drop off our dry cleaning – person who sits near us at church - and we think that who these people are to us is who they are in their entirety. We don’t experience people in their full humanity. But because God is at work in our neighbors, as God is at work in us, we and they are not defined by jobs or social roles, but as human beings created in God’s image, and – for Christians – by their baptismal vows as children of God, disciples of Christ, members of Christ’s church. Similarly, if we’ve been hanging around the church for a while, we define the church by our childhood memories, by those we know at church and by those holy moments over our lives that took place in the church. That’s what the church is for us - but that’s not all the church is. In our comfort and coziness we may miss the holiness, the transcendence, the sheer “otherness” of God. God, the Holy One, is present here – to use the Lutheran phrase regarding communion, God is present in, with, and under, not only the elements of communion, but the people who worship here and all that takes place here. Behind all of it – the people, the hymns, the coffee hour, the fellowship – is God, the Holy One, the creator of all things. Like Isaiah, we may go to the Temple expecting the same old same old, only to find ourselves transformed by an encounter with the holy. I’m reminded of these words from writer Annie Dillard:
“On the whole, I do not find Christians, outside of the catacombs, sufficiently sensible of conditions. Does anyone have the foggiest idea what sort of power we so blithely invoke? Or, as I suspect, does no one believe a word of it? The churches are children playing on the floor with their chemistry sets, mixing up a batch of TNT to kill a Sunday morning. It is madness to wear ladies’ straw hats and velvet hats to church; we should all be wearing crash helmets. Ushers should issue life preservers and signal flares; they should lash us to our pews. For the sleeping god may wake someday and take offense, or the waking god may draw us out to where we can never return.”
(Annie Dillard, Teaching a Stone to Talk, Harper & Row, 1982)
At the Transfiguration, Peter, James and John got a glimpse of the power and sheer awesomeness of the One they had called their Master. And they were drawn out to where they could no longer return to the lives they had led before meeting Jesus. Jesus was transfigured, and those who walked with Jesus were transformed. As Jesus became so filled with light that his very clothing became dazzling white, as we draw closer to Christ, the light and love of God shines through us to warm and lighten the way for our neighbors.
Though Peter, James and John had walked many long roads with Jesus, on the mount of Transfiguration it was as though they met Jesus again for the first time. As God’s love works in our lives, may we likewise meet Jesus again for the first time – and in meeting Jesus, may we be reintroduced to our families, our coworkers, our neighbors, perhaps getting a glimpse of them and of ourselves as God sees us, as God’s beloved. May it be so with us. Amen.
Reunited
(Scriptures: 2 Kings 5:1-14, 1 Corinthians 9:24-27, Mark 1:40-45)
You may recall the book “To Kill A Mockingbird.” Or maybe you saw the 1962 movie version, which start Gregory Peck as Atticus Finch, an attorney of great moral integrity raising two young children, Scout and Jem, as a widower in small town Alabama, amid the privations of the Depression and rising racial tension. The early chapters tell of everyday events and learning moments in the lives of the young children. Next door to the Finch family is the home of the mysterious, reclusive Boo Radley, who never leaves the house and whom they’ve never actually seen. All sorts of horrible, grotesque rumors circulate about Boo Radley – rumors that he killed his father, that he’s horribly disfigured - and Scout and Jem and their playmates act out these rumors in weird little skits, in view of Boo Radley’s window, in attempts to get Boo Radley to come out of the house. Boo Radley responds, in his way – at night, when they’re asleep, he leaves small presents – a marble, a wood carving - for Scout and Jem in the knothole of a tree. Atticus Finch defends a black man falsely accused of raping a white woman, earning the wrath of the prejudiced white townspeople. Near the end of the book, the Finch children are attacked and saved from harm by – Boo Radley, who finally came out of the house in order to defend them. Boo asks Scout to walk him back to his home, and before she leaves to go back home, she stands on Boo’s porch for a moment and imagines what it’s like to see the world from Boo Radley’s perspective, has compassion for what it’s like to walk around in Boo Radley’s skin.
We’re continuing in Mark’s Gospel – we’re still not yet through the first chapter – and Jesus has begun to expand his ministry. Having left the town in which he healed the demoniac and cured Simon’s mother in law, he is walking in a deserted area where he meets Boo Radley. Well, not Boo Radley, really, but someone just as isolated and reclusive – a person with leprosy, a leper.
Leprosy was a dreaded disease in ancient times – disfiguring and contagious. Along with skin lesions, it caused nerve and eye damage. There was no known cure, and so the only available way to stop the spread of the disease was to isolate those with leprosy from the general population. Leviticus 13:45-46 offers the following instructions:
“The person who has the leprous disease shall wear torn clothes and let the hair of his head be disheveled; and he shall cover his upper lip and cry out, ‘Unclean, unclean.’ He shall remain unclean as long as he has the disease; he is unclean. He shall live alone; his dwelling shall be outside the camp.”
Considering the instructions of Leviticus 13, the leper in our Gospel reading was quite bold in approaching Jesus. How he knew Jesus could heal him, we do not know, but his desperation overcame any qualms about adhering to the instructions of Leviticus. He offered Jesus a choice – to heal the man and restore him to community, or to leave him in isolation. Jesus was moved – the translation above says “moved with pity”, other translations say “moved with anger” (perhaps at the isolation the man was forced to endure). The Greek word variously translated as pity or anger is connected to the Greek word for stomach or bowels – perhaps the man’s situation simply turned Jesus’ stomach. No matter – whatever emotion it was that moved Jesus, Jesus was moved to action. He chose to heal the man. Warning the man not to tell anyone what had happened, he sent the man off to the priest to go through the Temple ritual of restoration to community. Instead, freed from isolation and overwhelmed by gratitude, the man, who for so long was forced to live alone, went everywhere and ran up to everyone he met, proclaiming what Jesus had done for him.
Today leprosy is quite rare, at least in the United States. However, we can readily think of other circumstances in which disease or other social factors lead to isolation, lead to people being treated as lepers, sometimes to prevent the spread of disease, sometimes due to the irrational fears of society. We may think of India with its caste system, in which those on the very lowest rungs of society – the Dalits – are considered untouchables. Traditionally the Dalits – the untouchables – did manual labor considered beneath those of higher castes, such as removing garbage and dead animals and cleaning streets, sewers, and latrines. Traditionally they were thought to be less than human. In India, where Christianity is very much a minority religion, Christianity’s emphasis on equality and critique of the caste system has attracted many converts among the Dalit population, more so than those from higher castes.
We don’t have to travel the globe to encounter those treated as lepers - there are situations closer to home. In the town in which I grew up, in the early 1900’s, in order to prevent the spread of disease, tuberculosis patients were quarantined in a large, forbidding sanitarium outside the town limits. Later, as TB infections became increasingly rare, the facility was used to house the mentally ill and the mentally disabled, shutting them away from society. (My mother spent most of her career working there as a secretary, and as a child I often visited the facility.) Mental illness, to this day, carries a considerable stigma. Employers who would grant medical leave to employees recovering from a heart attack or stroke may not be so generous with someone recovering from severe depression or a psychotic episode. People who wouldn’t think of making jokes about someone with an artificial limb think nothing of making jokes about someone acting as if they’ve gone off their meds. The punch line may be funny – except to those who are on medication for mental illness, for whom the punch line is a verbal punch in the gut.
The homeless are also treated as lepers. A small proportion are mentally ill - during the 1980’s and 1990’s, many institutions for the mentally ill were closed down, and the former residents left to fend for themselves on the streets. Some are returning veterans, missing limbs or suffering from combat-related mental problems, whose reward for putting their lives on the line for their country is a spot on a heating grate and a hand lettered cardboard sign asking for help. And many homeless are folks down on their luck, unemployed in a difficult economy and without a supportive family, and perhaps having turned to drugs or alcohol to make the pain go away, at least for a little while. Our society’s safety net has been shredded in recent decades, and many of us are ourselves only a few paychecks away from that place on a heating grate. Even though the homeless are very much out in public, they are still treated as lepers, as people avoid making eye contact and even cross the street in order to avoid looking at them, let alone talking to them.
And then there was our society’s response to HIV/AIDS. Many of the first victims of AIDS were from groups that our society has often shunned. In the 1980’s and 1990’s, before there were effective treatments, those who contracted HIV/AIDS dealt not only with the lesions, weight loss, and secondary infections brought on by the disease, but all too often with the stigma of being terminated by employers, disowned by families, cut off by friends, shunned by churches. No less a personage than Philadelphia’s very own Cardinal Krol spoke of AIDS as God’s judgment on especially egregious sinners. Many doctors refused to treat AIDS patients. Many funeral homes refused to handle their remains. In life and in death, they were lepers, untouchables.
There are many whom our society continues to treat as lepers, due to disease, poverty, and other social factors. Like the leper in our Gospel passage, these social lepers offer us a choice: if we choose, we can exile them from our presence , or we can embrace them as beloved children of God. Jesus told the healed leper, “Go, and show yourself to the priest.” In Jesus’ day, the priest had the role of reintroducing the healed leper to the wider society. And today, the church still has a role in helping outcasts to be reconciled to their society. We here at Emanuel have no magic cure for illness, but we do have a cure for the isolation of being shunned by society. The love of Christ enables us – indeed, compels us - to include where others exclude, to embrace those whom others shun. Granted, for the safety of our members and our children, there are some we’re just not equipped to welcome – but there are many whom we can embrace, if we’re willing to extend ourselves, to go outside our comfort zones, as Jesus did in healing the leper, even while his guts were churning.
For in the end, we’re every one of us broken in some way or another. All of us struggle with sin, struggle with frailties of body and spirit. Older versions of our prayer of confession included the phrase, “and there is no health in us.” While we try to distance ourselves from those who are different, using phrases like “the homeless” or “the mentally ill” or “the illegal aliens” or “the Muslims” or "the gays", ultimately there’s no “the”, no them, only us, all of us. Ultimately the welcome we offer our society’s untouchables is the welcome God offers us.
It won’t be easy. The path of discipleship is really, really hard sometimes. Sometimes we’ll be moved by pity and compassion, sometimes by anger – sometimes we may have to fight feelings that turn our stomachs. In so doing, we shouldn’t allow ourselves to be paralyzed by the fact that we can’t solve all the world’s problems, that we can’t do everything. We can do something. The fact is that we here at Emanuel already do something. We collect money to feed the hungry. Not a whole lot of strangers find their way here, but we welcome those who do, and they don’t stay strangers for long. We with our small numbers aren’t called to solve all the world’s problems – but we are called to respond faithfully as best we’re able.
Asked by a leper for healing, Jesus said, “I do choose. Be clean.” My prayer is that Emanuel Church will continue to choose to offer healing words and helping acts to those whom God sends our way. Through our choices, may those on society’s margins be restored to community, and moved to proclaim to their neighbors the great things God has done for them. Amen.
You may recall the book “To Kill A Mockingbird.” Or maybe you saw the 1962 movie version, which start Gregory Peck as Atticus Finch, an attorney of great moral integrity raising two young children, Scout and Jem, as a widower in small town Alabama, amid the privations of the Depression and rising racial tension. The early chapters tell of everyday events and learning moments in the lives of the young children. Next door to the Finch family is the home of the mysterious, reclusive Boo Radley, who never leaves the house and whom they’ve never actually seen. All sorts of horrible, grotesque rumors circulate about Boo Radley – rumors that he killed his father, that he’s horribly disfigured - and Scout and Jem and their playmates act out these rumors in weird little skits, in view of Boo Radley’s window, in attempts to get Boo Radley to come out of the house. Boo Radley responds, in his way – at night, when they’re asleep, he leaves small presents – a marble, a wood carving - for Scout and Jem in the knothole of a tree. Atticus Finch defends a black man falsely accused of raping a white woman, earning the wrath of the prejudiced white townspeople. Near the end of the book, the Finch children are attacked and saved from harm by – Boo Radley, who finally came out of the house in order to defend them. Boo asks Scout to walk him back to his home, and before she leaves to go back home, she stands on Boo’s porch for a moment and imagines what it’s like to see the world from Boo Radley’s perspective, has compassion for what it’s like to walk around in Boo Radley’s skin.
We’re continuing in Mark’s Gospel – we’re still not yet through the first chapter – and Jesus has begun to expand his ministry. Having left the town in which he healed the demoniac and cured Simon’s mother in law, he is walking in a deserted area where he meets Boo Radley. Well, not Boo Radley, really, but someone just as isolated and reclusive – a person with leprosy, a leper.
Leprosy was a dreaded disease in ancient times – disfiguring and contagious. Along with skin lesions, it caused nerve and eye damage. There was no known cure, and so the only available way to stop the spread of the disease was to isolate those with leprosy from the general population. Leviticus 13:45-46 offers the following instructions:
“The person who has the leprous disease shall wear torn clothes and let the hair of his head be disheveled; and he shall cover his upper lip and cry out, ‘Unclean, unclean.’ He shall remain unclean as long as he has the disease; he is unclean. He shall live alone; his dwelling shall be outside the camp.”
Considering the instructions of Leviticus 13, the leper in our Gospel reading was quite bold in approaching Jesus. How he knew Jesus could heal him, we do not know, but his desperation overcame any qualms about adhering to the instructions of Leviticus. He offered Jesus a choice – to heal the man and restore him to community, or to leave him in isolation. Jesus was moved – the translation above says “moved with pity”, other translations say “moved with anger” (perhaps at the isolation the man was forced to endure). The Greek word variously translated as pity or anger is connected to the Greek word for stomach or bowels – perhaps the man’s situation simply turned Jesus’ stomach. No matter – whatever emotion it was that moved Jesus, Jesus was moved to action. He chose to heal the man. Warning the man not to tell anyone what had happened, he sent the man off to the priest to go through the Temple ritual of restoration to community. Instead, freed from isolation and overwhelmed by gratitude, the man, who for so long was forced to live alone, went everywhere and ran up to everyone he met, proclaiming what Jesus had done for him.
Today leprosy is quite rare, at least in the United States. However, we can readily think of other circumstances in which disease or other social factors lead to isolation, lead to people being treated as lepers, sometimes to prevent the spread of disease, sometimes due to the irrational fears of society. We may think of India with its caste system, in which those on the very lowest rungs of society – the Dalits – are considered untouchables. Traditionally the Dalits – the untouchables – did manual labor considered beneath those of higher castes, such as removing garbage and dead animals and cleaning streets, sewers, and latrines. Traditionally they were thought to be less than human. In India, where Christianity is very much a minority religion, Christianity’s emphasis on equality and critique of the caste system has attracted many converts among the Dalit population, more so than those from higher castes.
We don’t have to travel the globe to encounter those treated as lepers - there are situations closer to home. In the town in which I grew up, in the early 1900’s, in order to prevent the spread of disease, tuberculosis patients were quarantined in a large, forbidding sanitarium outside the town limits. Later, as TB infections became increasingly rare, the facility was used to house the mentally ill and the mentally disabled, shutting them away from society. (My mother spent most of her career working there as a secretary, and as a child I often visited the facility.) Mental illness, to this day, carries a considerable stigma. Employers who would grant medical leave to employees recovering from a heart attack or stroke may not be so generous with someone recovering from severe depression or a psychotic episode. People who wouldn’t think of making jokes about someone with an artificial limb think nothing of making jokes about someone acting as if they’ve gone off their meds. The punch line may be funny – except to those who are on medication for mental illness, for whom the punch line is a verbal punch in the gut.
The homeless are also treated as lepers. A small proportion are mentally ill - during the 1980’s and 1990’s, many institutions for the mentally ill were closed down, and the former residents left to fend for themselves on the streets. Some are returning veterans, missing limbs or suffering from combat-related mental problems, whose reward for putting their lives on the line for their country is a spot on a heating grate and a hand lettered cardboard sign asking for help. And many homeless are folks down on their luck, unemployed in a difficult economy and without a supportive family, and perhaps having turned to drugs or alcohol to make the pain go away, at least for a little while. Our society’s safety net has been shredded in recent decades, and many of us are ourselves only a few paychecks away from that place on a heating grate. Even though the homeless are very much out in public, they are still treated as lepers, as people avoid making eye contact and even cross the street in order to avoid looking at them, let alone talking to them.
And then there was our society’s response to HIV/AIDS. Many of the first victims of AIDS were from groups that our society has often shunned. In the 1980’s and 1990’s, before there were effective treatments, those who contracted HIV/AIDS dealt not only with the lesions, weight loss, and secondary infections brought on by the disease, but all too often with the stigma of being terminated by employers, disowned by families, cut off by friends, shunned by churches. No less a personage than Philadelphia’s very own Cardinal Krol spoke of AIDS as God’s judgment on especially egregious sinners. Many doctors refused to treat AIDS patients. Many funeral homes refused to handle their remains. In life and in death, they were lepers, untouchables.
There are many whom our society continues to treat as lepers, due to disease, poverty, and other social factors. Like the leper in our Gospel passage, these social lepers offer us a choice: if we choose, we can exile them from our presence , or we can embrace them as beloved children of God. Jesus told the healed leper, “Go, and show yourself to the priest.” In Jesus’ day, the priest had the role of reintroducing the healed leper to the wider society. And today, the church still has a role in helping outcasts to be reconciled to their society. We here at Emanuel have no magic cure for illness, but we do have a cure for the isolation of being shunned by society. The love of Christ enables us – indeed, compels us - to include where others exclude, to embrace those whom others shun. Granted, for the safety of our members and our children, there are some we’re just not equipped to welcome – but there are many whom we can embrace, if we’re willing to extend ourselves, to go outside our comfort zones, as Jesus did in healing the leper, even while his guts were churning.
For in the end, we’re every one of us broken in some way or another. All of us struggle with sin, struggle with frailties of body and spirit. Older versions of our prayer of confession included the phrase, “and there is no health in us.” While we try to distance ourselves from those who are different, using phrases like “the homeless” or “the mentally ill” or “the illegal aliens” or “the Muslims” or "the gays", ultimately there’s no “the”, no them, only us, all of us. Ultimately the welcome we offer our society’s untouchables is the welcome God offers us.
It won’t be easy. The path of discipleship is really, really hard sometimes. Sometimes we’ll be moved by pity and compassion, sometimes by anger – sometimes we may have to fight feelings that turn our stomachs. In so doing, we shouldn’t allow ourselves to be paralyzed by the fact that we can’t solve all the world’s problems, that we can’t do everything. We can do something. The fact is that we here at Emanuel already do something. We collect money to feed the hungry. Not a whole lot of strangers find their way here, but we welcome those who do, and they don’t stay strangers for long. We with our small numbers aren’t called to solve all the world’s problems – but we are called to respond faithfully as best we’re able.
Asked by a leper for healing, Jesus said, “I do choose. Be clean.” My prayer is that Emanuel Church will continue to choose to offer healing words and helping acts to those whom God sends our way. Through our choices, may those on society’s margins be restored to community, and moved to proclaim to their neighbors the great things God has done for them. Amen.
Served and Serving
(Scriptures: Isaiah 40:21-31, I Corinthians 9:16-23, Mark 1:29-39)
We’re continuing along in Mark’s fast moving Gospel – it’s something to realize that already we’ve watched Jesus come to John to be baptized, go out into the wilderness to be tested, begin calling disciples, preach and perform an exorcism – and we’re still only partway through the first chapter! Sometimes I think it must have been exhausting to have been a follower of Jesus, trying to keep up with his fast-moving ministry. Jesus’ actions in the synagogue were very public, but now Jesus spends some time in a more private setting. Apparently the house in which the brothers Simon and Andrew lived was right next door to the synagogue. Having wowed the crowd at the synagogue, Jesus and his (at that time) handful of disciples slip into Simon and Andrew’s house for some down time, some rest and refreshment.
We’re reminded quickly that families in those days were not like the tidy families to which we aspire today – husband, wife, 2.5 kids, a dog, a minivan, all situated in a McMansion way out in the ‘burbs – but rather were large, extended families where three or more generations lived under the same roof. You had lots of people living in relatively close quarters, and privacy was limited. We learn that Simon’s mother-in-law lived with the family – and that this particular day, she’s under the weather – in fact, more than under the weather, she’s deathly sick. You who are parents can probably relate to this story: you’re feeling just plain rotten – maybe you have a migraine or a stomach bug or the flu or such – and all you want to do is lie down, turn off the lights, pull up the covers, and have some peace and quiet as you wait for the fever or migraine to run its course. But your kid brings over some friends from school, and they want run around the house playing cops and robbers, or maybe they try to play Suzy Homemaker and you hear an alarming clanging and clattering and dishes breaking in the kitchen. You shudder….why can’t I have some peace and quiet, just this once. But you haul yourself out of bed and force a smile, because your kids and their friends need you, and that’s what parents do. Obviously in our Gospel reading Simon and Peter and company are adults, not noisy kids – but on hearing she had company downstairs, Simon’s mother-in-law likely shuddered just the same. If she were feeling better, she’d probably be bustling around providing hospitality – but today she’s sick as a dog, and can’t even get out of bed.
For Simon’s mother-in-law, what started out feeling like an intrusion turned into a blessing. Simon and Andrew and Jesus appear in her doorway, and she starts apologizing for being bedfast. But Mark tells us that Jesus steps over to the bed, takes her by the hand, and lifts her out of bed. After all the high drama that had taken place at the synagogue earlier that morning, this is a tender, intimate moment – Jesus reaching down to take the hand of this sick woman, as her sons stand in the doorway watching. And in doing so, Jesus is breaking all sorts of religious and cultural boundaries – healing on the Sabbath – his second such healing that Sabbath day, touching a sick person who would have been considered ritually unclean, not to mention the social boundaries between men and women. But for Jesus, restoration, not respectability, is what matters. The mother-in-law is healed, made whole, restored to health, so much so in fact that she starts waiting on the gathering. And at this point, the women among us are probably rolling their eyes – she’s just gotten out of bed, and already the men stand around expecting her to wait on them. Man may work from sun to sun, but a woman’s work is never done…..
Perhaps some of us have our own stories of situations that started out feeling like a burden but turned into a blessing, started out feeling like an imposition, but wound up being an invitation to healing and wholeness. We have tickets to a game or concert that we’d paid for in advance some time ago, but the day of the game has come and we’re not feeling up for it – but we push ourselves, and the game or concert turns out to be just what we needed. We’ve had a long day at work, but a friend calls, needing to talk – and the conversation turns out to be a time of healing not only for the friend, but for us. Granted, none of us can be on call 24/7, but if we’re too quick to shut others out, we may miss blessings God intended for us in our encounters with others.
All that said, even Jesus – even Mark’s fast-moving, supercaffeinated Jesus - needed some downtime. By the time Jesus had finished his lunch at Simon’s house, the crowds were making their way to see him. At sundown – after the Sabbath was over – those who were sick pressed in on Jesus, and he healed many of them. Having ministered to the crowds, Jesus, who had healed and restored so many, needed some R&R himself, and so he went off to a deserted place to pray. And as Jesus is spending some badly needed quiet time with his Heavenly Father, Simon bumbled onto the scene, reminding Jesus that everyone’s looking for him. But Jesus is not the property of those who gathered at Simon’s house – there are people in other towns who need to hear the Gospel, and so Jesus sets off to proclaim the coming of the Kingdom in the surrounding region.
We are invited to bring our brokenness to Jesus to be healed. But our healing is not something for ourselves alone, but rather is given to us so that we can serve and bless others. Jesus healed Simon’s mother-in-law, and she responded by serving Jesus. In turn, as Jesus prayed, God restored Jesus’ spirit, so that he could continue to proclaim good news to others, in words of mercy and deeds of compassion.
There may be times when God can use even our brokenness to bring good news to others. Roman Catholic writer Henri Nouwen some years ago wrote a book called 'The Wounded Healer', about pastors and other healers whose wounds and weaknesses become opportunities to heal others. We see wounded healers in many places –the person emerging from a difficult time of bereavement who becomes a grief counselor, the battered spouse who gains independence and goes back to volunteer at a women’s crisis hotline or shelter, the recovering alcoholic who starts an AA meeting so that others can embrace sobriety. Some years ago I was at the funeral of a recovering alcoholic – I’ll refer to him as Jack - who had started several AA meetings in the Philadelphia area. Having at one time nearly drank himself to death, he started AA meetings at which the lives of many others were saved. In the eulogy, the pastor reflected that Jack had taken the raging torrents in his own life, and poured them out as cups of cool, life-giving water for those dying of thirst around him.
From our Isaiah reading: “Have you not known? Have you not heard? The Lord is the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth. He does not faint or grow weary; his understanding is unsearchable. He gives power to the faint, and strengthens the powerless. Even youths will faint and be weary, and the young will fall exhausted; but those who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength, they shall mount up with wings like eagles, they shall run and not be weary, they shall walk and not faint.” As we gather in worship and especially as we gather at the table in a few moments, may our weary spirits be renewed and our broken places healed and restored, and may we be channels of renewal, healing and restoration for our friends, our neighbors, for all with whom we come into contact. Amen.
We’re continuing along in Mark’s fast moving Gospel – it’s something to realize that already we’ve watched Jesus come to John to be baptized, go out into the wilderness to be tested, begin calling disciples, preach and perform an exorcism – and we’re still only partway through the first chapter! Sometimes I think it must have been exhausting to have been a follower of Jesus, trying to keep up with his fast-moving ministry. Jesus’ actions in the synagogue were very public, but now Jesus spends some time in a more private setting. Apparently the house in which the brothers Simon and Andrew lived was right next door to the synagogue. Having wowed the crowd at the synagogue, Jesus and his (at that time) handful of disciples slip into Simon and Andrew’s house for some down time, some rest and refreshment.
We’re reminded quickly that families in those days were not like the tidy families to which we aspire today – husband, wife, 2.5 kids, a dog, a minivan, all situated in a McMansion way out in the ‘burbs – but rather were large, extended families where three or more generations lived under the same roof. You had lots of people living in relatively close quarters, and privacy was limited. We learn that Simon’s mother-in-law lived with the family – and that this particular day, she’s under the weather – in fact, more than under the weather, she’s deathly sick. You who are parents can probably relate to this story: you’re feeling just plain rotten – maybe you have a migraine or a stomach bug or the flu or such – and all you want to do is lie down, turn off the lights, pull up the covers, and have some peace and quiet as you wait for the fever or migraine to run its course. But your kid brings over some friends from school, and they want run around the house playing cops and robbers, or maybe they try to play Suzy Homemaker and you hear an alarming clanging and clattering and dishes breaking in the kitchen. You shudder….why can’t I have some peace and quiet, just this once. But you haul yourself out of bed and force a smile, because your kids and their friends need you, and that’s what parents do. Obviously in our Gospel reading Simon and Peter and company are adults, not noisy kids – but on hearing she had company downstairs, Simon’s mother-in-law likely shuddered just the same. If she were feeling better, she’d probably be bustling around providing hospitality – but today she’s sick as a dog, and can’t even get out of bed.
For Simon’s mother-in-law, what started out feeling like an intrusion turned into a blessing. Simon and Andrew and Jesus appear in her doorway, and she starts apologizing for being bedfast. But Mark tells us that Jesus steps over to the bed, takes her by the hand, and lifts her out of bed. After all the high drama that had taken place at the synagogue earlier that morning, this is a tender, intimate moment – Jesus reaching down to take the hand of this sick woman, as her sons stand in the doorway watching. And in doing so, Jesus is breaking all sorts of religious and cultural boundaries – healing on the Sabbath – his second such healing that Sabbath day, touching a sick person who would have been considered ritually unclean, not to mention the social boundaries between men and women. But for Jesus, restoration, not respectability, is what matters. The mother-in-law is healed, made whole, restored to health, so much so in fact that she starts waiting on the gathering. And at this point, the women among us are probably rolling their eyes – she’s just gotten out of bed, and already the men stand around expecting her to wait on them. Man may work from sun to sun, but a woman’s work is never done…..
Perhaps some of us have our own stories of situations that started out feeling like a burden but turned into a blessing, started out feeling like an imposition, but wound up being an invitation to healing and wholeness. We have tickets to a game or concert that we’d paid for in advance some time ago, but the day of the game has come and we’re not feeling up for it – but we push ourselves, and the game or concert turns out to be just what we needed. We’ve had a long day at work, but a friend calls, needing to talk – and the conversation turns out to be a time of healing not only for the friend, but for us. Granted, none of us can be on call 24/7, but if we’re too quick to shut others out, we may miss blessings God intended for us in our encounters with others.
All that said, even Jesus – even Mark’s fast-moving, supercaffeinated Jesus - needed some downtime. By the time Jesus had finished his lunch at Simon’s house, the crowds were making their way to see him. At sundown – after the Sabbath was over – those who were sick pressed in on Jesus, and he healed many of them. Having ministered to the crowds, Jesus, who had healed and restored so many, needed some R&R himself, and so he went off to a deserted place to pray. And as Jesus is spending some badly needed quiet time with his Heavenly Father, Simon bumbled onto the scene, reminding Jesus that everyone’s looking for him. But Jesus is not the property of those who gathered at Simon’s house – there are people in other towns who need to hear the Gospel, and so Jesus sets off to proclaim the coming of the Kingdom in the surrounding region.
We are invited to bring our brokenness to Jesus to be healed. But our healing is not something for ourselves alone, but rather is given to us so that we can serve and bless others. Jesus healed Simon’s mother-in-law, and she responded by serving Jesus. In turn, as Jesus prayed, God restored Jesus’ spirit, so that he could continue to proclaim good news to others, in words of mercy and deeds of compassion.
There may be times when God can use even our brokenness to bring good news to others. Roman Catholic writer Henri Nouwen some years ago wrote a book called 'The Wounded Healer', about pastors and other healers whose wounds and weaknesses become opportunities to heal others. We see wounded healers in many places –the person emerging from a difficult time of bereavement who becomes a grief counselor, the battered spouse who gains independence and goes back to volunteer at a women’s crisis hotline or shelter, the recovering alcoholic who starts an AA meeting so that others can embrace sobriety. Some years ago I was at the funeral of a recovering alcoholic – I’ll refer to him as Jack - who had started several AA meetings in the Philadelphia area. Having at one time nearly drank himself to death, he started AA meetings at which the lives of many others were saved. In the eulogy, the pastor reflected that Jack had taken the raging torrents in his own life, and poured them out as cups of cool, life-giving water for those dying of thirst around him.
From our Isaiah reading: “Have you not known? Have you not heard? The Lord is the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth. He does not faint or grow weary; his understanding is unsearchable. He gives power to the faint, and strengthens the powerless. Even youths will faint and be weary, and the young will fall exhausted; but those who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength, they shall mount up with wings like eagles, they shall run and not be weary, they shall walk and not faint.” As we gather in worship and especially as we gather at the table in a few moments, may our weary spirits be renewed and our broken places healed and restored, and may we be channels of renewal, healing and restoration for our friends, our neighbors, for all with whom we come into contact. Amen.
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