February 15, 2015: The Sixth Sunday in Ordinary Time
Leviticus 13:1-2, 44-46: The one who bears the sore of leprosy shall keep his garments rent and his head bare and shall muffle his beard; he shall cry out , “Unclean, unclean!” … He shall dwell apart, making his abode outside the camp.”
Psalm 32: I turn to you, Lord, in time of trouble, and you fill me with the joy of salvatinon.
1 Corinthians 10:31-11:1: Brothers and sisters:, whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, everything for the glory of God. Avoid giving offense. … be imitators of me, as I am of Christ.
Mark 1:40-45: A leper came to Jesus and kneeling down begged him and said, “If yo wish, you can make me clean. Moved with pity, he stretched out his hand, touched him, and said to him, “I do will it. Be made clean.”
February is the Month of the Passion of the Lord.
No outcasts were cast out far enough in Jesus’ world to make him shun them – not Roman collaborators, not lepers, not prostitutes, not the crazed, not the possessed. Are there people now who could possibly be outside his encompassing love?
- Garry Wills
Diane’s Reflection for February 15, 2015
Scabs and pustules and sores, oh my….
I don’t know what the words sound like in their original language, but I know that the way they come out in English is nothing short of hideous. “Scab” and “pustule” and “blotch” and “sore” – these are all ugly words for ugly things, and the ugliest thing of all is the fear that is lurking behind them. Nowadays, leprosy seems fairly exotic to us; we can’t begin to imagine how Moses’ people lived in daily terror of it, frightened by its contagiousness and knowing that there was no cure. And so the Law of Moses had a lot of extremely specific instructions about exactly how to deal with it. Some of those rules were rooted in what sounds like common sense, the product of the time’s best medical knowledge. Obviously, it’s a good idea to try to keep contagious diseases from spreading. And Leviticus acknowledges something that not everybody in those far-off days did: that not every single skin diseases was necessarily the dreaded leprosy. The law did its best to separate leprosy from other, more benign skin diseases, using careful examination and strict quarantine.
But unfortunately, as sometimes happens, the culture was rather less merciful than the law. In that same spirit that animated Job’s so-called comforters last week, it more or less punished the victim of leprosy for having his horrid disease. In those days, people assumed – as unfortunately some still do today – that a disease like leprosy, or any great misfortune, was a direct punishment for sin. And because leprosy was such a terrible punishment, why, you must have done something very very bad to deserve it. As if it wasn’t bad enough already to have a disease that made your fingers and toes fall off and your face rot away right before your eyes, you were specifically instructed that The one who bears the sore of leprosy shall keep his garments rent and his head bare, and shall muffle his beard; he shall cry out, ‘Unclean, unclean!’ As long as the sore is on him he shall declare himself unclean since he is in fact unclean. He shall dwell apart, making his abode outside the camp.
So if you had leprosy, it destroyed more than your body. It destroyed your identity as a human being. You became your disease: You were called by its name instead of your own; you were not a person -- you were no longer Joshua or Aaron or Sarah, beloved father or lifelong friend or dearest older sister, you were, in fact, now nothing but a leper, whose name would never again be spoken in tenderness. And if you were known to be a leper, you were absolutely cut off from every shred of the life you had known. No one but another leper could even come near you. And no one would ever touch you in love again. Never – not even at the moment of your dying.
Can you imagine anything more terrible?
And then Jesus comes along. Jesus comes along, and changes everything. The very first sentence of this Gospel is a surprise, because it begins by saying A leper came to Jesus. Reread that first reading, and think about the strangeness of what is happening: because a leper never comes up to anybody. There were centuries of taboos on the subject – and nobody would have known the rules better than a leper, who had to keep himself apart from the world, who had to warn anyone within hearing distance to “keep away, I am unclean!” And yet there was something about this man Jesus that broke through the wall of all those taboos; something gave this particular leper enough courage to go up to Jesus, and kneel, and reach up his poor mangled hands in yearning. The leper didn’t exactly beg, although the Gospel uses that word in our translation; it was more as if he somehow recognized an amazing thing about Jesus, and simply stated it as an obvious fact: “If you wish,” the leper said humbly, quietly, “you can make me clean.” And, oh, listen to how the Gospel describes exactly what happened next: Moved with pity, Jesus stretched out his hand, touched him, and said to him, “I do will it. Be made clean.” The leprosy left him immediately, and he was made clean.
You see, one of the terrible things about leprosy is that if you were a leper, no one even had pity for your suffering. It was your own fault, after all, your own sin that had made you an unclean wretch. Go away, leper! your former neighbors cried out whenever they saw you now – prepared to throw a rock at you, if you didn’t shuffle off fast enough. Whatever miraculous healing happened in today’s Gospel, it began well before the leprosy vanished from the man’s bloodstream and the surface of his body: It began when the man found the courage to approach another human being, and even more when he looked into Jesus’ wise dark eyes and saw the love and the pity that shone so deep in them. The leper knelt, trembling at his own audacity, until he looked up into those eyes, and knew, all at once, that he was loved – no matter what. And even as he tried to take in that extraordinary, life-changing knowledge, he saw, as if in slow motion, Jesus put out his own hand – deliberately, gently, reach out to the man with his strong brown carpenter’s hand. And Jesus tenderly, lovingly, unmistakably, physically touched him – touched him, touched a leper, whom no one had touched for years. How many deep wounds were healed in that moment; how many poisonous aching hurts at long last found their cure!
Of course, the former leper told everybody what had happened. How could he not? And even though Jesus clearly warned him not to, I expect he wasn’t really too surprised. After all, Jesus knows us better than we ever know ourselves. And loves us anyway – no matter what sins or sorrows we bear, no matter what kinds of invisible spiritual leprosies we might try to hide from the world. Jesus is willing to cleanse us completely, if we are willing to be cleaned. In Jesus’ name. --- Diane Sylvain
Scripture Notes from the Sourcebook:
THE FIRST READING comes from a section of Leviticus that describes the purity codes relating to unclean animals, childbirth, leprosy, and bodily cleanliness. A priest is to declare a person who bears the sores of leprosy “unclean.” Today’s reading, however, does not provide for the healing of lepers as the ritual codes in the next chapter of Leviticus do. The Lord wants people to be healed. The link with today’s First Reading and Gospel is Jesus’ healing of the leper. No one’s homes will be outside and away from God. Once healed, all will dwell with God.
RESPONSORIAL PSALM 32: A hymn of thanksgiving, this psalm praises the Lord for the joy that is ours through God’s forgiveness of sin. Following upon the First reading, it is easy to connect sin with illness and disease. Today, we know that sin causes neither. Whatever the sin, God asks us to confess it. We rejoice in the Lord for the healing of our relationships made necessary by sin and for our wholeness restored.
SECOND READING: Paul’s advice in this brief reading is to keep everyone else in mind when we act. Selfishness does not lead to God’s glory, imitating Christ’s unselfish ways does. Letting God’s glory be foremost in our minds and hearts, Paul calls us to imitate him just as he imitates Christ.
THE GOSPEL: Healed by Jesus, the leper is no longer unclean, nor is he an outsider in Jesus’ world. He, too, like those without leprosy, dwells with God in Jesus. We do not know whether or not the leper followed Jesus’ instructions to show himself to the priest as required by the purity laws. We do know that he disobeyed Jesus’ command to not tell anyone how he was healed. He couldn’t help but publicize the miracle and lead others to Jesus.
--Sourcebook for Sundays, Seasons & Weekends (2015 edition.)
"The worst disease isn’t leprosy. It’s being unwanted, left out, forgotten." - Mother Teresa
“LORD, HELP ME!”
Jesus speaks and it is done. It is like the word of God at the beginning of creation: "Let there be light, and there was light." His words are words of power, not commentaries and admonitions.
The ancient world was terrified of leprosy. By Jewish law the sufferer was isolated totally from society: “The leper...shall wear torn clothes and let the hair of his head hang loose, and he shall cover his upper lip and cry, ‘Unclean, unclean’. He shall dwell alone in a habitation outside the camp” (Leviticus 13:45f). The law specified further than a leper had to keep a distance of two metres from other people, and if the other person was downwind from the leper the distance had to be fifty metres. No leper would ever have approached an orthodox rabbi, but the leper in this story approached Jesus confidently for help. This was exceptional, but even more exceptional was what followed: “Jesus stretched out his hand and touched him....” That touch healed him - healed his disease, yes, but healed also his feeling that he not only had a disease but was a disease; it healed his isolation, his loneliness, his despair, his belief that he was cursed by God.... This is the God revealed by Jesus, a “Father of Mercies.”
By touching the leper, Jesus was defiled in the eyes of Levitical law. The leper broke the Law in approaching Jesus, and Jesus in turn broke through the Law to reach and touch the afflicted man. "For our sake," wrote St Paul, "God made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God" (2 Corinthians 5:21). In the minds of many people, somehow, the bad news replaced the good news. The bad news is that we would have to be good before we could approach the Lord. This is not the Gospel; it is approximately the religion of the Pharisees. The good news is that we can approach the Lord no matter what our condition or circumstances. Our Faith is more than a system of morality or a set of admonitions on how we should be; it is Good News, for that is what the word 'Gospel' means. It is a revelation of God, "the Father of Mercies." Jesus came to demonstrate what the Father is like. He could have behaved as a severe moral judge, condemning the sinful; in fact that was what was expected of a prophet. Instead he reached out in mercy to failures and outcasts. He could have invented any kind of parable to say what the Father was like; he invented the parable of the Prodigal Son (Luke 15). Jesus reaches out and welcomes sinners while they are still in their sin. He reaches out to the afflicted and heals them. Our prayer can therefore be very simple: "Lord, help me!" (Matthew 15:25).
–Donagh O’Shea, from Today’s Good News, the website of the Irish Dominicans
Some people see scars, and it is wounding they remember. To me they are proof of the fact that there is healing. ― Linda Hogan __________________________________________________________ AND WHAT IF YOU DON’T GET HEALED?
Last week the news came that a friend of mine has been diagnosed with a brain tumor. It is large, and it is grim; the doctors measure his life in months, perhaps weeks. A stained glass artist who has devoted his life to finding beautiful ways to capture light, Joe—making his own path as ever—is finding other ways to measure and mark these remaining days. …
Living on the other side of the country, I am missing being present for this but am grateful for the words that come across the miles, words that tell of how Joe is entering his dying in much the same way that he has entered his living. The tumor has impacted his speech and visual recognition skills. But a note comes from a friend who writes of how even when Joe struggles with words, “he seems, to me, even more himself than ever. He’s almost translucent with grace. And I have been so moved by the ‘random’ words that, at times, come instead of the one he’s trying for. It’s almost as if the words that he has most often expressed come easily; blessing, blest, grace, friends, church, my voice, your voice…”
I gather up these words as I ponder the words that Mark offers in the reading from his Gospel this week, words about a leper who finds healing in his encounter with Jesus. “If you choose, you can make me clean,” he says to Jesus. Stretching out his hand and touching him, Jesus says, “I do choose. Be made clean!”
It is a mystery to me how Jesus chooses, and where, and why. I cannot fathom how he chooses at times to stretch out his hand, and at other times seems to withhold it; how he chooses against the restoration that he offers with such ease in stories such as this one. Why the leper, and not Joe? Why the mother-in-law of Simon, as we saw last week, and not millions of others across the ages who have lived with illness and pain?
I know, of course, there are few answers to these questions in this lifetime. And I know that it is better to look for the miracles that do come, including the daily wonders of connection in the midst of a world that pushes us toward isolation, the marvels of friendship and community that return to us and gather around us when life breaks us open.
I do not let Christ off the hook for the ways he sometimes chooses. And yet I think about my friend across the country, speaking the words that have come most easily to him. Blessing. Blest. Grace. How in the midst of the tumor that grows and the days that dwindle, there is something in him that is fiercely intact and persistently whole. Friends. Church. That knows still how to capture the light. My voice. Your voice. That rises up to freely proclaim, to offer testimony in the luminous way he has always done and will do until the last breath leaves him.
Joe is having an exhibit at his studio this weekend, wanting to have this chance to share with friends his artwork from across the years. “Bring food. Bring joy,” Joe says in the invitation.
This day. This hour. In each moment given to us, may we bring sustenance. May we bring joy. Whatever illness we bear, whatever wounds we carry, may we be ministers of healing to one another, and may the wholeness that persists within us rise up and shine through, offering testimony in the ways that only we can offer.
- Jan Richardson. See more at: http://paintedprayerbook.com/2012/02/05/epiphany-6-what-the-light-shines-through/#sthash.sK5EZMAO.dpuf
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ON BEING A CRIPPLE
I learned that one never finishes adjusting to MS. I don’t know now why I thought one would. One does not, after all, finish adjusting to life, and MS is simply a fact of my life—not my favorite fact, of course—but as ordinary as my nose and my tropical fish and my yellow Mazda station wagon. It may at any time get worse, but no amount of worry or anticipation can prepare me for a new loss. My life is a lesson in losses. I learn one at a time.
And I had best be patient in the learning, since I’ll have to do it like it or not. …
This gentleness [my illness has taught me] is part of the reason that I’m not sorry to be a cripple. I didn’t have it before. Perhaps I’d have developed it anyway—how could I know such a thing?—and I wish I had more of it, but I’m glad of what I have. It has opened and enriched my life enormously. This sense that my frailty and need must be mirrored in others, that in searching for and shaping a stable core in a life wrenched by change and loss, change and loss, I must recognize the same process, under individual conditions, in the lives around me. I do not deprecate such knowledge, however I’ve come by it.
All the same, if a cure were found, would I take it? In a minute. I may be a cripple, but I’m only occasionally a loony and never a saint. Anyway, in my brand of theology God doesn’t give bonus points for a limp. I’d take a cure; I just don’t need one. A friend who also has MS startled me once by asking, “Do you ever say to yourself, ‘Why me, Lord?”’ “No, Michael, I don’t,” I told him, “because whenever I try, the only response I can think of is ‘Why not?”’ If I could make a cosmic deal, whom would I put in my place? What in my life would I give up in exchange for sound limbs and a thrilling rush of energy? No one. Nothing. I might as well do the job myself. Now that I’m getting the hang of it.
– Nancy Mairs, from On Being a Cripple
TWO TRADIONAL PRAYERS FOR HEALING
Thou, my soul’s healer,
Keep me at even,
Keep me at morning
Keep me at noon,
On a rough course faring,
Help and safeguard
My means this night.
I am tired, astray, and stumbling,
Shield Thou me from snare and sin.
-- from the Highlands of Scotland
AN IRISH PRAYER FOR HEALING
Father above, Christ of love,
Holy Spirit, healing dove,
Fill my heart, O Triune God.
From sickness heal; from sorrow seal; I beg as I kneel;
Fill my heart, O Triune God.
My body cleanse; my soul defend; my life whole again;
Fill my heart, O Triune God.
Mary lift me, Michael carry me,
Brendan lead me, Brigid hold me,
Patrick protect me, Columba guide me,
To the perfect place
Of healing grace,
Where I may see His Face,
And dwell in the heart of the Triune God.
Amen.
--both prayers from http://anamchara.blogs.com/anamchara/2009/03/celtic-prayer-in-lent.html