The God Who Touches
Epiphany 6b, February 12, 2012, Transfiguration Sunday
II Kings 5:1-14 with Mark 1:40-45 in the b.g.
I tell you 2 brief stories to push us into the Gospel text for this morning. It was 1978. The landscape of the country of Iran was undergoing changes of seismic proportions. The former puppet leader had been thrown out. Islamic rule was coming to the fore. The complete details of what this might mean was yet to be determined. But for most of the Jewish people living in Iran it was a clear signal that they needed to leave immediately. I happened to be at the Tel Aviv airport on the first day that Iranian Jews started arriving in Israel. There were literally hundreds of their loved ones gathered at the airport, keeping vigil, hoping and praying that their loved ones would safely escape Iran. Many of the people waiting in the arrivals that day were themselves survivors of the Holocaust. They were painfully aware of what could happen.
I will never forget my experience that day. The Tel Aviv arrivals area is like a large airplane hanger divided in half by a wall of bullet proof glass that runs from the floor to the top of the 30 foot ceiling. As the people arriving from Tehran were waiting to clear customs they would run up to the glass frantically searching for a sighting of their loved ones. If and when they found each other they would put their hands together and then kiss through the glass. Tears ran freely. Sobs of joy emanated throughout the building. Separation, not knowing if they would ever again be able to be together had been interminable. But now, in moments they would be restored to each other's arms.
A second story: the first marriage that I ever was privileged to conduct as a pastor was of a very young couple: 21 and 19 years of age. They were married in October. But then the following January the young man suffered an aneurism and died very suddenly. He left home that morning, kissed his wife good bye and never returned. I arrived at his parents' home moments after the RCMP officers had just told them that their son was dead. I will never forget that father's words, "I can't believe it. It would have been better for my family, for everyone if I had died. How can I live without my son?"
Sometimes the chasms of our lives and deaths are greater than any physical gorge known to humanity. Such chasms make the Grand Canyon look like a mere crack.
I tell you these stories because they can thrust into some of the experience of the leper in Mark's Gospel. We don't know how long he has been suffering from his leprosy. But I can tell you this, that in his time and culture all lepers were required to cover their lower lip, wear torn clothing and cry out in a loud voice when anyone came near to them, "UNCLEAN! UNCLEAN!" All of this meant that lepers were separated from their family, from being able to work, from all of those relationships and things they had needed and once depended upon. So, this man is desperate! He has been living with great loss.
Mark tells us that this man suffering from leprosy approaches Jesus, begging, kneeling. He is completely and absolutely vulnerable. From his vulnerability he speaks to Jesus, "If you choose, you can make me clean."
If you choose! Wow. This man still harbors hope. Perhaps it's just a wild thought or maybe a statement of faith. We don't know the interior state of his mind. We do know that he is looking for restoration to community, to family, to work, to life. That search has somehow brought him to Jesus.
Amazingly, Jesus is able to bridge the gap for this man. Jesus is moved by compassion. The Greek conveys the sense of Jesus' intestines turning as he encounters this man. Perhaps Jesus is moved out of empathy for him, or even anger at a system that insists on excluding people, separating them from those they need the most by using of all things, God's name, to complete that exclusion. Whatever the case, Jesus stretches out his hand. He touches that leper, the one who may not have experienced human touch in a very long time. As Jesus touches him, He says to him, " I DO CHOOSE. BE MADE CLEAN!"
The impact is incredible. Mark tells it this way: "Immediately" the leprosy left the man. He was made "clean". Here clean doesn't merely mean that whatever skin ailment the man was suffering from had now been removed. Mark's account isn't a commercial for softer skin. No, this man is made CLEAN. Now he is allowed to return home, to be with those who love and cherish him. He is allowed to go back to working, to providing food and shelter for those he loves. His relationships with others can be restored. We have no idea of what this might mean for the way he relates to God.
It's an amazing story! But does it have anything to do with us?
Aren't we are a people who are separated from others in so many ways. We are a people who know separation. Ageism occurs when disparate world views arise among people because they are of different ages. Some then are dismissed by others as being irrelevant or even simple. Besides ageism there is also racism. We sometimes succumb to thinking that all Asians or all Caucasians or certain other ethnic groups all do certain things the same way because of the color of their skin or the idiosyncracies of their culture. Such "stereotyping" blinds us to the amazing realities of each other, to our commonalities, the complexities of we people, even to the conviction that all are created in God's image.
I could just as easily point to a number of other perceived realities that create chasms between people or between people and creation. Some of these realities are stereotypes we may hold regarding gender, or particular interpretations of scriptures as if we human beings are completely over or separate from the rest of creation.
But what does God or Jesus have to do with any of these chasms?
My response to that question both from this text and from the witness of many who have come is this: EVERYTHING! Just as Jesus reached across the barriers to bring a man with leprosy back into community with others and with God, so too the risen Jesus wills to reach across whatever gaps separate us from others, from creation and God to restore us!
God can do this in a myriad of ways. God can use common ordinary people like you and me. See the seemingly "ordinary" people that God employs to bring about Naaman's healing in our first lesson. Those people included a captured servant girl who didn't hesitate to tell others that God could help her "master". Other people included Naaman's own servants who cared enough about him to point out the folly of his misplaced anger. No, he didn't have to do anything complex to experience God's healing. All he needed was to obey God's instruction.
Even now God may use ordinary people like us, including us, to trust God, to live caring for others and so point them in both word and actions to the loving, powerful reality of God who heals and restores the leper and Naaman.
The source of all such action is not the peoples' own power or strength, but the power and strength of God in Jesus Christ. God's power is so different than our power. It is not magic. It is exercised at great cost to God. God's loving power in Christ can bridge any and all chasms relegating them to obscurity.
This power and love of God works for new life for people and creation. Death frequently attempts to stake permanent claims on us. Death does visit our relationships seeking to claim our very lives. Jesus knows that fully. But death experiences its limits when Jesus encounters it. For all who derive their hope, their love, their ability to care for others and for themselves from Him, gaps are crossed, sometimes even obliterated.
May we be among these people. As we are being touched by God and discovering that barriers which separated us at one time from each other are being thrown aside, may we like the former leper and Naaman learn to unashamedly point to the One who gives us life and brings us new life. May we do so in both word and deed, individually and collectively.
For in such thankfulness and humility God's kingdom comes even among and through us. Amen and Amen.