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2 Kings 5:1-14
Psalm 30
1 Corinthians 9:24-27
Mark 1:40-45
The Collect of the Day
A leper came to Jesus begging him, and kneeling he said to him, "If you choose, you can make me clean." Moved with pity, Jesus stretched out his hand and touched him, and said to him, "I do choose. Be made clean!" Immediately the leprosy left him, and he was made clean. After sternly warning him he sent him away at once, saying to him, "See that you say nothing to anyone; but go, show yourself to the priest, and offer for your cleansing what Moses commanded, as a testimony to them." But he went out and began to proclaim it freely, and to spread the word, so that Jesus could no longer go into a town openly, but stayed out in the country; and people came to him from every quarter. (Mark 1:40-45)
God's Touch
The Rev. Dr. Bill Stroop, Rector
As she looked back, Maria realized that her life pivoted around the moment when she and her daughter Hannah went shoe shopping.[1] Maria, ever the practical Mom, had chosen blue shoes. Hannah, had other ideas. She held up a pair of bright red patent leather Mary Janes, three sizes too big, and said, "These are my shoes. They are perfect, and red shoes go with anything." After finding a pair that actually fit her feet, Hannah demonstrated the practicality of her new shoes by tapping her toes on the hardwood floor of the shoe store aisle. Oblivious to everything, she closed her eyes, extended her arms and began to dance. She twirled and other shoppers stopped to watch. Hannah finished by falling in a heap on the floor. People applauded, and Hannah stood up, smoothed her dress and said, "Mommy, these are my shoes, don't you think?"
Needless to say, Hannah was a precocious child, and Maria indulged her. She and her older brother Will were anxiously awaiting the birth of a new baby that Maria had conceived several weeks earlier. Hannah wanted this pregnancy to go well – you see her Mom had had several miscarriages. And for Hannah, time was running short. Hannah's impatience wasn't just the kind that is typical of three year olds. Hannah had cancer, and she knew she would die.
In today's gospel, Jesus is on his first preaching tour of Galilee, and he encounters and heals a leper. This is the third healing story in Mark's Gospel, and with each story, there is a greater and greater emphasis on confidence and trust in Jesus' healing abilities. The leper kneeled before Jesus and says, "If you choose, you can make me clean." The leper's posture tells us that he was a suppliant who sensed Jesus' power. Although the leper seemed to believe in Jesus' ability to cure leprosy, the story does not show the kind of confidence that will be called "faith" by Jesus when the woman with the hemorrhage touches his cloak, and for which a sick boy's father will pray.[2] Nonetheless, Jesus did not scold the leper for seeking a cure out of desperation. Jesus was moved by the man's suffering, and he touched the leper in violation of Jewish law against ritualistic defilement.
About a week before Hannah's third birthday, Maria escorted her to the hospital for her second chemotherapy treatment. Carrying her Little Mermaid lunch box in one hand, and grasping Maria's hand with the other, Hannah looked up at her Mom and asked, without fear or concern, "Mommy, do children ever die?" There, in the middle of the parking lot, Maria knew that Hannah wasn't asking her if children ever died. She was asking if Maria was willing to admit that Hannah might die. "Yes, Hannah, sometimes children die," Maria said quietly. Anxiously, Maria then asked Hannah if she knew what happened to children when they die. "Uh-huh," Hanna said. "They go to heaven and keep God company."
The truth can be fierce and unrelenting – particularly when it comes from the mouth of a beloved child. Oftentimes we cannot change things, but we can change the way we live with them. Disease and dying, being rejected by someone we love, losing our job because of economics beyond our control, making mistakes that hurt other people – these are inescapable experiences. And so are our fears of them. And oftentimes our fear causes us to act out of desperation. Our fear of disease, death, rejection leads us to petition God to cure us – to take the affliction away. But if we face those fears head-on, we open ourselves to the possibility of overcoming them and of experiencing true healing. When we are willing to do the best that we can with what we know and feel, then we enter into a spiritual place where God's touch can bubble up from the depths of our being, illuminate our consciousness, and bring peace to ourselves and to others.
Hannah's doctors felt that a bone marrow transplant might extend Hannah's life. It was a tough course, but Hannah overcame whatever fear she might have had, and undertook the ordeal. While she was in the hospital, she did many things that helped the staff and other kids with cancer, and her doctors came to grips with their own fears of death and dying. When Hanna was told that she was strong enough to have real food, she asked for hard rolls and juice. Maria and the doctor were befuddled. "Are you sure that's all you want?" the doctor asked. You could have anything! Pizza, ice cream, chocolate chip cookies." "I want a hard roll and grape juice" she said in exasperation, "like Communion at church." After the food arrived, Maria and her doctor watched as Hannah slowly and deliberately tore the roll to pieces and dipped each one in the juice before putting it in her mouth. In a sacred and divine moment, Hannah consumed the bread and juice while staring silently out the window. It was a healing meal.
Naaman, a great general of the king of Aram, also found himself with leprosy in the story we heard from second kings. At the insistence of the king, Naaman traveled to Israel to see Elisha, the great prophet of Samaria. Naaman is a man, perhaps like you and me, who had certain expectations about what will transpire. First, he apparently believed that a cure will cost him dearly, and so he took much treasure to pay for the treatment. Second, he was certain that a cure should involve some form of ritualistic magic, and was angry when the prophet Elisha did not wave his arms around wildly, call upon Yahweh, burn incense, swing a dead cat around his head, or some such. Third, he did not believe the recipe provided by Elisha. He threw up his hands and went away angry because all he was told to do was simply wash in the river . Naaman looked to the tools and practice of the prophet to effect a cure rather than the faith that laid behind them. Fortunately, his servants convinced him to give up his expectations of how healing should take place, and to let the presence of the divine into his heart where it could do the greatest good.
Hannah's condition got worse instead of better. She had had surgery and chemotherapy, but the tumor grew with a vengeance. It is a puzzling fact that the same genes that allow a baby to develop in the womb are often the same genes involved in cancer. And when those genes cause cells to grow out of control there is little once can do. Hannah had various tubes sticking out of her to allow her doctors to care for her, and she had lost her hair. She was losing ground.
The way Jesus responded to the leper tells us a lot about what healing can mean when a cure becomes less and less likely. The leper could not resume normal social associations and relationships with his community until he had been declared clean and performed the required purification rites – including bathing in the river. Today, we often react to people with AIDS and even cancer with a similar attitude. We fear these conditions, and we sometimes shun people with them. Patients with cancer and AIDS report that friends and family become timid about touching them. Dying persons suffer even more acute forms of isolation. These social forms of isolation can be devastating. And it's not just the diseased we sometimes exclude. We sometimes shun people whose ways of life and value systems differ from our own. But Jesus did not shun the leper – even though that was required by the Law. Jesus touched him. God touched the leper. God healed the man of his isolation through the simple act of human touch.
Near Easter time, Hannah began to lose ground quickly. At about two o'clock one afternoon, Hannah woke up and moaned. Hannah asked for a little more morphine. Her mother punched the button for her and picked her up to hold her in her lap. Maria called her husband, and told him to come home right away. Will came into the room and looked at his Mom. "Is it time?" he asked. "Yes, Will, it is." Will bent down and kissed his sister on the head. Hannah and Will looked at each other in silence, and then Will said, "Mom, I want to wait downstairs, but as soon as Hannah dies, come and get me okay?" Maria nodded. A few minutes later, Hannah's Dad came into the room. With unexpected calmness, Maria told him "Hannah's dying. She's been waiting for you. You need to tell her it's okay to go." Dad fell to his knees, and looked into his daughter's eyes and said, "It's time for you to go Missy. Don't worry about us, we'll be okay." A few minutes later, Hannah passed away.
Will came into the room a little later and said, "Hi, Hannah. I know you're here. I'm glad you're not hurting anymore." He stroked her arm and her hair and her hands. "When will she begin to feel dead?" "I don't know, Will. Soon I think," Maria said, still holding her. "Hey Hannah, I'm going to have some pizza," he said. "I'll be back to check on you in a little while. We'll see if you're more dead then." Even in death, Hannah reached out to Will. Hannah's skin beneath Will's fingers brought comfort.
Jesus reached out to the leper with compassion. Hannah reached out to Will and her family with compassion. Compassion does not feel sorry in the face of suffering because it knows all suffering as its own. We do not suffer alone. Maria did not know when Hannah would draw her last breath. But God knew. And God, as the compassionate, loving Jesus who reached out to the leper two thousand years ago, was right there as Hannah died. God was there with them, and God felt the pain of their loss, just as God felt the experience of Hannah's death. God was with them all, reaching out to them. God was with them in the following days too even as they doubted God's existence, and screamed their anger at God.
After Hannah's died, Maria packed away Hannah's clothes and some favorite toys in a box which she kept under her bed. In time, Maria had another baby girl, who, in time, discovered the box of Hannah's things under her Mom's bed. Hannah's red shoes were never returned to that box after that. They continued to click and dance until the patent leather on the toes rubbed off and the straps split at the buckles.
One day a person Maria had never met dropped off a package at her house. It was a woven rug. The note with the rug said that the weaver had started the rug years ago. One of the weaver's own daughters had heard about Hannah and her struggle with cancer. In some way that the weaver could not explain, Hannah had influenced the weaving of the rug even though they had never met. As Maria unrolled it, she saw that the background of the rug was the same shade of teal as the carpet in their house. In the middle of the rug was a blonde angel holding a large pink rose. "Rose" was the name Hannah had picked out for her younger sister's middle name. Maria believed that Hannah was still reaching out to her, touching her soul, offering her a gift of healing.
Jesus unexpectedly reached out to the leper with compassion. And compassion is the connection between us and everyone else. We belong to each other, and to God. And it is God who is always with us, and it is God who rejoices with us in our triumphs, and is especially close to us when our souls are full of heaviness and our spirits are disquieted. It is God who will make the first move toward healing – perhaps especially when a cure is not possible. All we have to do is open ourselves to the possibility of experiencing God's love and compassion, to give up our expectations of what ought to be, and wash ourselves in the healing river of God's love.
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Naaman, commander of the army of the king of Aram, was a great man and in high favor with his master, because by him the LORD had given victory to Aram. The man, though a mighty warrior, suffered from leprosy. Now the Arameans on one of their raids had taken a young girl captive from the land of Israel, and she served Naaman's wife. She said to her mistress, "If only my lord were with the prophet who is in Samaria! He would cure him of his leprosy." So Naaman went in and told his lord just what the girl from the land of Israel had said. And the king of Aram said, "Go then, and I will send along a letter to the king of Israel." He went, taking with him ten talents of silver, six thousand shekels of gold, and ten sets of garments. He brought the letter to the king of Israel, which read, "When this letter reaches you, know that I have sent to you my servant Naaman, that you may cure him of his leprosy." When the king of Israel read the letter, he tore his clothes and said, "Am I God, to give death or life, that this man sends word to me to cure a man of his leprosy? Just look and see how he is trying to pick a quarrel with me." But when Elisha the man of God heard that the king of Israel had torn his clothes, he sent a message to the king, "Why have you torn your clothes? Let him come to me, that he may learn that there is a prophet in Israel." So Naaman came with his horses and chariots, and halted at the entrance of Elisha's house. Elisha sent a messenger to him, saying, "Go, wash in the Jordan seven times, and your flesh shall be restored and you shall be clean." But Naaman became angry and went away, saying, "I thought that for me he would surely come out, and stand and call on the name of the LORD his God, and would wave his hand over the spot, and cure the leprosy! Are not Abana and Pharpar, the rivers of Damascus, better than all the waters of Israel? Could I not wash in them, and be clean?" He turned and went away in a rage. But his servants approached and said to him, "Father, if the prophet had commanded you to do something difficult, would you not have done it? How much more, when all he said to you was, 'Wash, and be clean'?" So he went down and immersed himself seven times in the Jordan, according to the word of the man of God; his flesh was restored like the flesh of a young boy, and he was clean.
1I will exalt you, O LORD,
because you have lifted me up *
and have not let my enemies triumph over me.
Do you not know that in a race the runners all compete, but only one receives the prize? Run in such a way that you may win it. Athletes exercise self-control in all things; they do it to receive a perishable wreath, but we an imperishable one. So I do not run aimlessly, nor do I box as though beating the air; but I punish my body and enslave it, so that after proclaiming to others I myself should not be disqualified.
A leper came to Jesus begging him, and kneeling he said to him, "If you choose, you can make me clean." Moved with pity, Jesus stretched out his hand and touched him, and said to him, "I do choose. Be made clean!" Immediately the leprosy left him, and he was made clean. After sternly warning him he sent him away at once, saying to him, "See that you say nothing to anyone; but go, show yourself to the priest, and offer for your cleansing what Moses commanded, as a testimony to them." But he went out and began to proclaim it freely, and to spread the word, so that Jesus could no longer go into a town openly, but stayed out in the country; and people came to him from every quarter.
O God, the strength of all who put their trust in you: Mercifully accept our prayers; and because in our weakness we can do nothing good without you, give us the help of your grace, that in keeping your commandments we may please you both in will and deed; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.
[1] The story of Hannah is derived from Maria Housden. Hannah's Gift: Lessons from a Life Fully Lived. ( New York, NY: Bantam Books). 2002.
[2] See Lamar Williamson, Jr. Mark: Interpretation, A Bible Commentary for Teaching and Preaching. (Atlanta, GA: John Knox Press, 1983). 61
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Copyright © 2008, William G. Stroop - All Rights Reserved.
12 February 2009
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