Preached on Sunday, February 18, 2018
Scripture Readings: Leviticus
13:40-46; Mark 1:40-45
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| Walking the shores of the Columbia River DesertAire/Mattawa, WA January 2018 |
Three long-time friends
were having a friendly talk, and their talk turned serious. They began to talk
about what they thought were the most important priorities they fulfilled in
their own lives. They wondered, if they were allowed to visit their own
funerals, after their own deaths, what they would find that others thought of
them. They talked about what they would like to hear people say about them,
when they looked into their coffin.
One friend was a physician
and he said, “I would like to hear them say that I was a great doctor who took
his patients seriously, that I was a good golfer, and that I spent plenty of
time with my family.”
Another buddy was a
teacher, and he said: “Well, when they look into my coffin, I want them to say
the same thing about me and my family, and that I turned out an amazing number
of students with the foundation they needed to make a difference in the world.”
The third buddy said:
“When they look into my coffin, I’d like to hear them say: “Look! He’s moving!”
In ancient Israel, even in
the time of Jesus, the scariest people in the world (next to invading soldiers,
and armed bandits) were lepers.
I know almost nothing
about leprosy. I just looked it up, last night, for the first time in several
years. It’s a bacterial infection that damages the skin, the nervous system,
the lungs, and the eyes.
You eventually lose your
sense of pain, so you don’t know when you’re sick, or have a scratch, or
abrasion, or a splinter, or something in your eye. That’s the way leprosy
spreads its infection and damages your whole body. It eventually deforms your
features, and your joints, hands, feet, and mobility.
Leprosy is not highly
contagious except for places where there isn’t good hygiene or sanitation. That
would include most of the ancient world. The mucous from your lungs and nose
would carry the bacteria, through a cough, or a sneeze, or just through
unwashed hands.
The mutilation, or
deformation, it caused and its effect on the joints, and on one’s coordination
and mobility, were terrifying. Leprosy was considered to be a fate worse than death,
and it was a death without a funeral.
Those who were declared to
be unclean with leprosy were immediately forbidden to return to their own homes
and family. They were forbidden to enter any village, or town, or city. They
were required to disfigure their hair, to cover the lower part of their face, to
wear torn clothing, even to wear a special kind of bell that would alert anyone
near them, and to shout, in the presence of other people, “Away! Away! Unclean!
Unclean!”
Their disease was so
terrifying that God’s people were taught by God’s law to consider lepers to be
dead. But there was no funeral for them. No one spoke loving or encouraging
words in their presence.
Leprosy was considered a
punishment from God. Only God could make a person into a leper, and only God
could heal a leper. A leper was unclean, and that meant he or she was polluted,
but the pollution was spiritual.
Death itself, was a
spiritual condition. All humans died and returned to the earth because all
humans carried the weight of sin. In handling a dead body, you needed to
prevent yourself from touching it, skin to skin, even when you were washing the
body. Otherwise you became spiritually unclean.
Your uncleanness, even
though it was a spiritual condition, was contagious. If you touched a body, you
were unclean for seven days, and you, yourself, became untouchable.
You were prohibited from
touching others or being touched for seven days, and then you had to wash from
head to foot. You had to bath completely before you were clean again. Failure
to bathe meant that you had to wait seven more days and then bathe in order to
become officially clean again.
When you touched a dead
body, skin to skin, you carried the weight of death upon you. You were a danger
to everyone around you.
The uncleanness of leprosy
carried the weight of the walking dead, the living dead. Those who touched the
walking, living dead, carried the weight of that uncleanness upon them. They
would probably hear no good words from anyone because they became so dangerous
and scary.
I’m not going to say any
more about this, except to say that Jesus touched the walking, living dead,
skin to skin, when he healed the leper. During his ministry, Jesus repeatedly
handled the walking dead.
Jesus touched the lepers.
Upon himself, Jesus walked under the weight of death. He wore, like a badge of
honor, the uncleanness of the walking dead.
This formed a clear pattern
in Jesus’ life. This pattern reveals the nature and the very purpose of the
great power we call the gospel. Gospel means good news. The pattern of Jesus
taking on himself the contagion of the walking dead shows us what his good news
means for us. Touching the lepers shows what Jesus does for us, and for
everyone.
There’s still another
strange law, found in Deuteronomy (21:23). It says, “Anyone who is hung on a
tree is under God’s curse.” (See, also Galatians 3:13.) The Jews of Jesus’ time
saw the Roman cross as a kind of execution tree that carried the uncleanness of
a cursed death.
When Jesus touched the walking,
living dead, skin to skin, he took upon himself the weight of the curse of their
death.
You can see the pattern.
You can see how it goes all the way through the good news. It became the
passion of Jesus to carry that weight, and he bore more and more of it until he
died and hung on the cursed tree of the cross, as though he carried every curse
for everyone in the world.
That is God’s salvation
given by God to us, when we trust him and put our faith in him; in him alone
and above all else. To be saved is to be rescued by God from the curse of
death, which is also the contagious curse of sin. Jesus carried it all, in our
place, as our substitute.
I believe that, as we are
inspired by the love and faithfulness of God in Christ, our partnership in that
love and faithfulness can help us to carry, for others, the weight that they
carry because of their sin. Because of the human nature we share with others,
and because of the nature of Jesus’ touch upon us, we all belong to the
walking, living dead and we also belong to God. We, like Jesus, can bridge the
gap, and our lives can touch the lives of others in a healing saving way.
Lepers couldn’t enter the
Tabernacle of God. Later on, they couldn’t enter the Temple, in Jerusalem, that
King Solomon built, and which was rebuilt by King Herod, as the time of Jesus’
birth and life and sacrifice came near. They were banned from the house and
presence of God.
As hard as this was upon
them, and as unfair as it seems, the lepers were God’s picture of what we all
are. And without the healing that only God can give, we cannot come into the
house and presence of God. The Jews knew that only God could heal a leper.
So, leprosy truly couldn’t
keep God away from them, but it kept them away from God. So, leprosy was a picture
of sin. Sin doesn’t prevent God from coming to us and touching us, but it keeps
us from coming to God and touching him.
Until God makes us clean,
until Jesus carries the curse, we remain the walking, living dead. We may be
able to know something, but it’s never enough to open the gate to the place
where we see God’s face and know God’s heart, as given to us in Jesus.
When we have seen God’s
face and known God’s heart, then we can follow where God went, in Jesus, and we
can carry help others to carry their curse, their loss, their separation from
God. We can touch them and carry them to Jesus.
It’s the mercy of God that
we normally can’t see into people’s hearts or read their minds. People are
deep, deep mysteries.
Why, we can hardly
understand ourselves. The curse in us, and in others, is mostly hidden as well.
God’s grace carries and covers our own curse is hidden from us. Otherwise we
might get too discouraged to walk with Jesus to the end, and enter the gate to
life and God.
So, by the mercy of God,
we can touch other people, and other people need this more than they know; just
as we need to be touched more than we know. We can touch them and pass on to
them, through Jesus, what they need: at least a little bit of what they need.
We see what this is like
when Jesus met the leper.
The leper was so used to
being completely terrorizing to everyone that he risked his own death by coming
to the crowd that followed Jesus. It seems as though there were always loose
rocks lying around, everywhere in those days. The crowd could have grabbed
those rocks and pitched them, hard as they could, at the leper, till he died.
He was endangering them all so they harbored their right to endanger him.
Jesus always knew, and
always knows, what’s going on. He knew this danger for what it was, the moment
it came.
Maybe the crowd was so
startled by the leper’s bold behavior that they were paralyzed with fear or
shock. So, Jesus stepped in right away. This may have scared the leper himself.
“If you are willing, you
can make me clean.” No one had been willing to do anything for him since the
diagnosis was first announced by the local priest. The leper did need to know
that he needed someone who was willing to take care of him and help him.
You may know someone who
is a leper without knowing it. Somehow, they live in a world where no one has
shown a willingness to help them. No one has followed through.
There is probably someone
around you who needs your willingness. God will help you recognize that person.
Jesus would have let
himself be touched by someone who was unclean. It was bound to happen.
There are people whom we
don’t want to come near to us, let alone touch us. The conventional wisdom of
the world tells us that this is the smart thing to do. It can be very hard work
to let yourself be so touched by such a person.
You may not be able to
succeed to make that person touching you be changed by love. You may not have
the resources to make a real difference. Then you may let them go, and pray and
learn what you can from that experience. But God will help you to recognize
someone who needs you, yourself, to let their life touch yours.
We read, here, that “Jesus
was filled with compassion”. “Filled with compassion” is an odd word that
literally means that his guts were wrenched, and twisted inside him. Has anyone
ever tied your guts in a knot? Welcome to the world of the love of Jesus.
That’s what you get. Don’t
be surprised.
But it was strangely the
gut wrenching feeling of love. My mom would say, about the time when she was
falling for my dad, that the thought of seeing him made her sick.
God’s love, when it takes
human form, in Jesus, or in us, can be that way. Our touching and being touched
(and how we feel about it, and worry about it) can make us sick inside. This
may be the way that we experience a new level of true love that we have never
felt before. Have you felt this?
We read that, “Jesus sent
him away at once with a strong warning.” So Jesus’ guts were tied in a love
knot, and what we hear from him next is almost a shout. It’s almost yelling.
It’s almost anger. When you study these phrases, you find out that this may
truly be so: the anger and the warning of love.
Jesus warned the healed
man to show himself to the priest. There was a seven-day-long process that
began with walking up to a Jewish priest in your village and saying, “You know
that I was a leper, but now I’m healed”. Then the priest has to give you a
complete check-up to see if you look healed. Then you get locked up for seven
days and then you get another check-up. Then, on the eighth day, you offer a
sacrifice to God for the official completion and recognition of your healing.
Then you may go, or try to go, back to the life and the loved ones you left
behind, if you can.
But no one could treat you
like a healed leper, and stop treating you like the walking, living dead you
once were, until the work of the enclosure, and the inspection, and the
sacrifice were done. The leper whom Jesus healed didn’t do that.
Some people are so
desperate to deny their true need that they refuse to take a course of
medication to the end. Or, they refuse to carry out their physical therapy to
the end. They deny their past reality. They deny their need to go all the way,
and see their healing through. Jesus got mad because he knew that this is what
the healed leper would do. He wouldn’t follow his own healing to the end.
It’s right to warn
someone, and it’s right to show anger, if you recognize the danger of someone
not completing the good work of God within them. It’s part of your God-given
responsibility, even though you can’t make anyone do anything they don’t want
to do. But that is the patience of the faithful love of God for us and for
others.
This is the responsibility
of the love God calls us to. We see our calling to this kind of love in the
faithful responsibility that Jesus showed.
We do this by following in
the footsteps of his love. We do this through our direct fellowship with Jesus,
and that means the power of his partnership and his investment in us, through
his Holy Spirit.
This comes from the good
news, the great news, of Jesus. It’s just like the good news of hearing Jesus
say to you: “If you would come after me, then you must deny yourself, take up
your cross, and follow me.” (Mark 8:34) This happens when you know the passion
of Jesus for you, and for others, and when you carry that passionate new heart
within you.
The fullness of the
passionate love of Jesus can be a disturbing love. When you meet this love, it
can fill you up, and empower you to do amazing things. It sets the passion of
Jesus free within you. Others can see you moving and that you are truly alive.
That is what salvation
means. That is the good news.
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