How many of you came here today in a car or truck? – I did too. Did you take a moment this morning to check out the engine? To make sure the battery was fully charged? To do any kind of check that your car was going to work right this morning? Neither did I. Cars today work so well that we just get in and expect them to work, and then we get quite upset when the don’t.
Compared to our bodies, cars are relatively simple machines. So many things have to happen just right in our bodies every day that if something goes wrong, we can’t just go to the mechanic (or doctor), we have to go to the mechanic who only works on fuel pumps (or our hearts). That doctor doesn’t work on any other part of the body. And when something does go wrong, do you think “well, everything has been working so well it makes sense that something would have to break down eventually?” Neither do I. I usually think “why did this have to happen to me? And why now of all times?”
In our gospel today we have a leper; a man who got a skin disease. He wasn’t born with it. Earlier in his life, he had been an active member of his community. He was healthy, respected, had a family.
And then he got leprosy. In the Bible, leprosy is really a fate worse than death. Once you get it, you are totally isolated from the rest of society. You don’t get to go to temple. You don’t get to work. You don’t even get to touch another human being. If you see a healthy person coming towards you, you have to shout “unclean, unclean” so that they don’t accidentally touch you.
Our leper has no hope.
And then he sees Jesus. Not only does he see Jesus, but he recognizes him. He kneels at Jesus’ feet and says “If you choose, you can make me clean.” He is so depressed by his situation that he doesn’t actually ask to be healed. He leaves that decision up to Jesus. Does Jesus heal him?
Yes.
But in our reading, Mark tells us something more than the power of Jesus to heal even leprosy.
Jesus was “moved with pity.” That short phrase warms my heart. This is what most modern translations say. Some ancient translations say something quite different. “Being angry, he stretched out his hand.” This is another possible translation of the same words (which by the way are directly translated as “moved as to his bowels.”) Why would Jesus be angry?
Would he be angry at the leper for coming up to him? I don’t think so. That wouldn’t fit with anything else in the gospels.
Was he angry that, once again, he was being asked to heal? I don’t think that’s it either. Jesus sometimes looked for time alone, but even then he healed when asked.
I think that Jesus was angered by the inhuman way that this man and others like him had to live. Jesus was angry about a world where someone had to live with no hope.
So Jesus did the one thing that society told him he couldn’t do. He touched the leper. In other healing stories, Jesus sometimes just used words to heal. But in this one, he touched the unclean man and made him clean.
We don’t see a lot of leprosy around here, but we do have diseases that leave people without hope, diseases that isolate people, diseases that we are sure we will never get.
We may not have the power to heal the disease as Jesus did, but we do have the power to heal the hopelessness and isolation.
We have the power to reach out and touch those who are pushed aside by society and show them the hope which comes from the love of God.
And when that day comes when you feel like there is no hope, when I feel like there is no hope, ….
That is when we give thanks that we are all people of God. That is when we give thanks that we live as Christ taught us to live. That is when we give thanks for the love that we share with each other and with all of God’s people.
Amen.
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