O Lord, you…restored me to life.
Texts: Mark 1:40-45; 2 Kings 5:1-14; Psalm 30
How many of you have heard the phrase: Cleanliness is next to Godliness. I realize stuff like that, still swimming in my mind, may no longer be familiar let alone relevant. I continually remind myself to be careful so I don’t find myself in the realm of geezer-dom. My mom often used that phrase, Cleanliness is next to Godliness. As a kid, I heard that as saying God is making me wash the dishes. God is making me vacuum the living room. At the same time, I was hearing enough about God’s grace freely given, even to those who are not clean. So…
There is another phrase I remember from an advertisement in the early 1960’s. It was, You meet the nicest people on a Honda. Honda motorcycles needed to break through the image, that motorcycles were associated with people of questionable character, the kind of person you did not want your sons to become or your daughters to date.
Both of those phrases may be helpful in understanding what is going on in our Gospel reading. We continue looking at Mark chapter one as if it is a resume of this Jesus. In words and in deeds, he is telling us who he is. He is showing us what God is doing on earth as in heaven.
Two weeks ago we saw Jesus casting out unclean or evil spirits. Last week we saw Jesus heal a person. We don’t know for certain, but we can believe he is touching the emotional as well as the physical aspects of life. Today we watch as Jesus encounters a man cursed by leprosy. We know that the word used in the Bible may refer to a variety of skin conditions, from simple acne to bacterial diseases that rot away the flesh and deform the bones. We know that any such visible symptom required the person to be separated from the community.
Whenever I read of these regulations in the Bible, I remember Wilbur Benson. Wilbur was a retired pharmacologist, a member of Saint Andrew’s in the 1980’s and 90’s. Once he gave a lesson on portions of the Bible from the perspective of pharmacology. He suggested Moses was the first public health officer, ever. What Wilbur did, was to show how the various regulations we find in the Bible, that may seem to be awfully picky, really make sense if we are thinking of public health. In Leviticus 14, we read about taking out portions of a house that the Bible refers to as leprosy – may be a form of mold. We know what mold can do to our health. We may find some regulations excessively picky. What I see, is that since our society often sees cleanliness and health only as a matter of science, having no connection to religious faith, people have become much more judgmental. What Wilbur did for me was to help me see that the Bible makes a lot of sense if we think of God’s whole creation – the physical, the emotional, the spiritual.
In our story, we see a man encountering Jesus and asking to be made clean. We realize part of this has to do with skin that looks disgusting. Part of this has to do with being separated from the community. It was necessary for the person to be quarantined for public health. But there was also a stigma – pushing the person into isolation and loneliness, an emotional pain that may have been greater than the physical pain. Folks who understand the culture and society of Bible times tell us that this need for separation often became an excuse for judging, belittling. The societal stigma became a curse, with some elevating themselves as better, more deserving. I think of that Honda commercial – reminding us to be careful and not make demeaning assumptions about folks too quickly.
We also overhear the man, as he approaches Jesus. If you choose… I want to caution us, how we interpret that phrase. What does it mean to pray for God’s will? We realize that the outcome of our prayers may not always be what we feel would be best. The pain of disease and death still devastates our bodies and our families, our friends and our communities.
I want to step back into the Old Testament reading for a moment. You can play around with this story from a lot of angles. For now, contrast the attitude of the mighty warrior with that of the slave girl. The slave girl says, God can do this through the prophet. The warrior says, Surely I have to do something comparable to my status. The man in our Gospel story carries forward the faith of the slave girl. He is bold to say to Jesus, I know you can do this! He is also humble, saying It is not ultimately up to me! Unlike the warrior, faith does not make a claim about what I can do. Like the young girl’s confidence, like the man’s humility, faith says that God wants to do things on earth, as it is in heaven.
So what does Jesus’ choose? The particulars will vary. But we know that Jesus chooses to make God’s creation in each of us to be whole. My dad taught us to remember the words from the New Testament, the blood of Jesus Christ cleanses us… Just like the flow of blood purifies the body of toxins, so Jesus wants to keep our spirits clean – to cleanse whatever it may be that separates us from the people around us.
Jesus chooses to make us whole in our relations with one another. In our world deeply divided, deeply suspicious, Jesus wants us to see others, in this room, on the other side of the world, as children of the same heavenly Father.
