Difficult Questions, Challenging Responses

Pastor Kyle Clark

Gospel Lesson: Mark 1:40-45

February 15, 2009

Sixth Sunday after Ephiphany 

Ask people about the things they fear the most and one of the most frequent responses would be the fear of contracting some deadly disease. Since the beginning of time humans have been afraid of disease. For centuries we have struggled to discover their mysterious causes and their elusive cures. There have been times in our history when disease has caused extreme fear and panic. The worst may very well have been the 14th century when one out of four people in the known world contracted the bubonic plague. Sixty million people perished – 25 percent of the world’s population wiped out. Since then the world has faced equally terrifying outbreaks of yellow fever, malaria, diphtheria, scarlet fever, and the list goes on. Malaria, in fact, continues to devastate millions in Africa each year. Always those afflicted were shunned and kept outside the community.

Early in 20th century, scarlet fever struck fear into the hearts of many. More recently, in the 1950s it was polio. Many of us will remember the images of stricken children with leg braces or confined to wheelchairs. In the 70s and 80s cancer became the threat to humanity that frightened millions. All of us sitting here this morning have been affected by cancer either directly ourselves or indirectly as someone close to us has suffered with it. The 90s brought forth a new generation of diseases. HIV/AIDS continues to grow in epidemic proportions around the globe. Talk to many teens and twenty-somethings and they will tell you AIDS is the disease they fear. Today, in addition to these, we are familiar with such strange and frightening diseases like avian flu and SARS and flesh eating bacteria.

Then there are those specific diseases that, while they don’t cause great fear on a wide scale basis, are terrifying for us personally. Diseases like Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s, which rob people of their identity and their dignity.  There is liver disease, heart disease, diabetes, multiple sclerosis, mental illnesses and others, which perhaps for you cause great anxiety and fear. All of these diseases have caused those who suffer with them to feel isolated and alone. Society is uncomfortable dealing with people who have them. We don’t want to see them, we don’t want to talk to them and we sure don’t want to touch them. So, in our “fear” we build up barriers and exclude them from participating in the community (and we justify this by saying that it’s best for everybody when often times its really only good for those who haven’t contracted or been exposed).

Every generation has its diseases and the fears that accompany them. In the first century the disease that created widespread fear was leprosy. People then were afraid of leprosy just as we today are afraid of cancer and HIV/AIDS. Although what we know as leprosy today is not the same disease as the leprosy of the first century, both are horrible, painful, disfiguring diseases. The leprosy described in the Bible was a highly contagious skin disease characterized by large white spots on the skin that would eventually become raw, painful lesions. Those infected were ostracized. There were, in fact, specific rules that had to be followed when leprosy was suspected (described in Leviticus 13-14):

·         They shall wear torn clothes and let the hair of their head be disheveled;

·         They shall cover their upper lip and cry out, “unclean, unclean.”

·         They shall remain unclean as long as they have the disease;

·         They shall live alone and their dwelling shall be outside the city;

·         They were not to come within several feet of another uninfected person nor were they to allow another person to come near them. Certainly they were not to allow anyone to touch them;

·         They would only be readmitted into society if they were somehow healed and determined to be “clean” by a priest and only then after performing the prescribed sacrifices and rituals.

This is the condition of the man in our text this morning.

So Jesus is out preaching when he encounters this man. Last week, in the passage immediately preceding our text today, you may recall Jesus healing Peter’s mother-in-law. The next day Jesus rises early and goes out to pray. When the disciples find him they tell him that many people have come to be healed, but Jesus says to them, “Let’s go somewhere else so I can preach because …[that’s what I came to do].”

You may also recall from last week that we discussed that while Jesus certainly performed many healing miracles during his earthly ministry, his main concern was not in healing but rather preaching, spreading the good news about the Kingdom of God, specifically the in-breaking of God’s kingdom, God’s dominion, God’s rule in the world. This message stood in marked opposition to the powers of the day that hid behind restrictive rules to keep some people, those who were not like them, those who were not clean, out and isolated.

So, Jesus is out preaching when he encounters this diseased man. In Mark’s Gospel, this story is the first of several stories that deal with Jesus challenging and violating the boundaries of ritual practice. Later on Jesus heals and forgives a paralytic; he calls Levi, a tax collector, to be a disciple; he associates with sinners and even more tax collectors; he breaks the Sabbath law by collecting grain to eat; and he heals on the Sabbath. In all these stories Jesus puts himself in opposition to the religious leaders. We are beginning to see that in many ways, Mark’s understanding of faithful discipleship is one that will not let rules, or customs or rituals stand in a person’s way of getting to Jesus or (and this is key) prevent Jesus from getting to people.

The leper is the first one to violate the ritual law. He crosses the purity boundary by approaching Jesus. His primary concern is being made clean so that he can re-enter Jewish society. Jesus is emotionally moved by this man. He reaches out to him and touches him. According to the law, this action renders Jesus ritually unclean.

Now one could argue that Jesus risks incurring uncleanness in order to help others. But this is an overly simplistic assessment. Nowhere in any of the Gospels do we read of Jesus ever going through the ritual cleansing process after this or any other encounter. Rather, in Jesus, God establishes a new order – one in which the old rules about purity and cleanliness and worthiness become obsolete. With this new order comes a new authority – Jesus himself.

Jesus sends the man to see the priests. Why the command to say nothing to anyone, though? Surely the news of his healing would have been a powerful witness, right? Well, some have suggested that Jesus’ popularity among the citizens had already begun to swell. If news about his ability to heal got out he would be swarmed with those desiring to be cured. Have you ever been somewhere, at an event or a restaurant, and a celebrity arrives? They get mobbed. People pestering them for autographs and pictures; they can’t do what they really want to do. That doesn’t happen very often with preachers, but I’ve seen it happen with folks more famous then me. If Jesus was swarmed by the crowds wanting to be healed, he could not do what he wanted to do – preach the Kingdom of God! Now, I don’t know if this is why Jesus warned the leper not to talk about it or not. What I do know is that the leper’s disobedience made life more difficult for Jesus, because he was not able to enter into the city.

This story began with Jesus on the inside and the leper on the outside. It ends with their having traded places. The leper, now clean, has been restored to an accepted place in the community. Jesus is now outside the barriers of the community and the barriers of the religious establishment. From this point on, Jesus and the religious leaders will remain in opposition to each other.

As I thought about this text this week, I was forced to face some difficult questions that I don’t know that I have the answers to. I believe that Christ comes to us in the proclamation of the Word and celebration of the Sacraments during worship. These are essential components in participating in the life of the community of faith. Yet I also know there are very real and very personal experiences that people have with God through miraculous healings, visions or other events. What is the relationship between these personal encounters with Christ and the rituals of our worship service? Does the church try to control Jesus? Do we have “rules” in the church that Jesus might break today? What self-imposed rules do we need to break in order to get closer to Jesus? We know about the physical diseases but what about the social diseases we suffer with, racism, elitism, sexism, materialism, and maybe the most isolating of all classism and her twin children poverty and addiction? Who are the “lepers”, those outside, those we don’t want to touch and we don’t want to allow into our community and would Jesus touch them? Have we ever felt like this leper? Have we ever experienced Christ like this leper where we have been healed, cleansed, restored to wholeness? If so, when and how did we respond? Maybe a more troubling question, at least for those of us “in the Church”, is, “are we ever like the priests, the religious establishment keeping others locked out, pushed out and closed out, because they are not like us?” Is it the Church, the Church universal, is it our local church that needs a new witness about the power and authority of Jesus? If so, when is it time to witness and when is it time to be silent?

One thing I am sure of is that Methodists generally have no problem with the silence part. We can easily follow Jesus’ command to be quiet, to say nothing to anyone. Part of this is due to our skepticism of evangelism, because we have seen and experienced evangelism done badly. But part of our saying nothing is due to our reluctance to step out of our own comfort zone.

But evangelism is more than just telling some one the story of Christ and inviting them to church. Effective evangelism begins with our silence as we listen to and really see all those around us as God’s children. There are times when talking about our positive experience with Christ might be counter-productive. For the good news about salvation in Christ to be good news for the hearer, it must address their needs and their concerns in the here and now.

We can’t mistake, however, the need for silence as a relaxation of our responsibility, our call to witness. There can be no question that Jesus called the leper to be a witness to others – maybe not with words, but for sure by his actions. I believe that Jesus calls every Christian to be a witness as well, and we all do give witness. Our witness may be good or it may be bad, but we do give a witness every day by our words and our actions. They say much about who we are individually and who we are as a people of God.

History has shown that eventually cures to physical diseases are found. I believe that one day, with God’s help, we will find a cure for cancer and HIV/AIDS. I also believe that we have the cure for the social diseases of racism, sexism, elitism, materialism and classism, if we will but allow the love of Christ to flow through us.

The story is told of the time Mother Teresa was escorting Catholic Bishop William Curlin of Charlotte, NC, through her clinic in Calcutta.

“Would you like to see Jesus?” she asked him. She led him around several walls to a man lying on a leather pallet. This poor man had things that were clearly visible crawling both on his body and inside his body, under the skin. As the bishop stood there in shock, Mother Teresa kneels down and gently wraps her arms around this poor man, holding him like a mother would hold her baby.

“Here he is.” she said.

Confused, the Bishop asks, “Who?”

“Jesus. Didn’t he say, ‘You will find me in the least person on the earth?’ Isn’t this Jesus challenging us to reach out in love?”

It is in the reaching across all the barriers that divide us, in the name of Christ, that we offer healing, cleansing, and acceptance into the community of believers -- we offer Christ. Perhaps the question we each need to wrestle with then is not whether we are on the inside or the outside or even if we are on the right side or the wrong side of these dividing barriers but rather are we reaching across those barriers by our words, by our actions, by our witness? And if we are not, why aren’t we? How can we? Each of us, if we are intentional about our faith, have to wrestle with the challenge of answering these difficult questions. By God’s grace, the love of Christ, the direction of the Holy Spirit we can break these barriers that divide. 

In the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

Amen!