February 5, 2012

2 Kings 5:1-14 (p. 293)
1Naaman, commander of the army of the king of Aram, was a great man and in high favor with his master, because by him the LORD had given victory to Aram. The man, though a mighty warrior, suffered from leprosy. 2Now the Arameans on one of their raids had taken a young girl captive from the land of Israel, and she served Naaman’s wife. 3The girl said to her mistress, “If only my lord were with the prophet who is in Samaria! He would cure him of his leprosy.” 4So Naaman went in and told the king just what the girl from the land of Israel had said. 5And the king of Aram said, “Go then, and I will send along a letter to the king of Israel.” Naaman went, taking with him ten talents of silver, six thousand shekels of gold, and ten sets of garments. 6He brought the letter to the king of Israel, which read, “When this letter reaches you, know that I have sent to you my servant Naaman, that you may cure him of his leprosy.” 7When the king of Israel read the letter, he tore his clothes and said, “Am I God, to give death or life, that this man sends word to me to cure a man of his leprosy? Just look and see how he is trying to pick a quarrel with me.” 8But when Elisha the man of God heard that the king of Israel had torn his clothes, he sent a message to the king, “Why have you torn your clothes? Let him come to me, that he may learn that there is a prophet in Israel.”
9So Naaman came with his horses and chariots, and halted at the entrance of Elisha’s house.10Elisha sent a messenger to him, saying, “Go, wash in the Jordan seven times, and your flesh shall be restored and you shall be clean.”11But Naaman became angry and went away, saying, “I thought that for me he would surely come out, and stand and call on the name of the LORD his God, and would wave his hand over the spot, and cure the leprosy!12Are not Abana and Pharpar, the rivers of Damascus, better than all the waters of Israel? Could I not wash in them, and be clean?” He turned and went away in a rage.13But his servants approached and said to him, “Father, if the prophet had commanded you to do something difficult, would you not have done it? How much more, when all he said to you was, ‘Wash, and be clean’?”14So he went down and immersed himself seven times in the Jordan, according to the word of the man of God; his flesh was restored like the flesh of a young boy, and he was clean. Then he returned to the man of God, he and all his company; he came and stood before him and said: Now I know that there is no god in all the earth except in Israel.

This is the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God!


Mark 1:40-45 (p. 813)
40A leper came to Jesus begging him, and kneeling he said to him, “If you choose, you can make me clean.” 41Moved with pity, Jesus stretched out his hand and touched him, and said to him, “I do choose. Be made clean!” 42Immediately the leprosy left him, and he was made clean. 43After sternly warning him Jesus sent him away at once, 44saying to him, “See that you say nothing to anyone; but go, show yourself to the priest, and offer for your cleansing what Moses commanded, as a testimony to them.” 45But he went out and began to proclaim it freely, and to spread the word, so that Jesus could no longer go into a town openly, but stayed out in the country; and people came to him from every quarter.

This is the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God!

Sermon

Leprosy – for centuries that word has evoked fear. Those afflicted with this skin disease were often forced to leave their families and homes, and live in colonies away the community. One of the more famous leper colonies in recent times was located on the island of Moloka’i in the kingdom of Hawai’i during the last half of the 1800’s. There was an outbreak of leprosy brought to the islands by sailors and other visitors.

Conditions were pretty horrible in the colony as no one who was healthy was willing to go near the area. And deliveries of food, medicine and other necessities were insufficient. Eventually, a Roman Catholic priest named Father Damien chose to live and care for the people there. He set about improving conditions, organizing farms and the building of homes and schools. It wasn’t long before Father Damien contracted leprosy himself, but he didn’t stop working. Toward the end of his life four more volunteers joined him to provide pastoral care, to set up a small hospital, and to continue constructing and maintaining buildings in the community. He finally died in 1889, sixteen years after he first began his ministry to the lepers.

A statue of Father Damien, now Saint Damien, currently stands outside the Hawai’i State Capitol Building. What has most impressed people about Father Damien was his willingness at the cost of his own life to reach out, touch, and care for those who were rejected by society. Why did he do it? Perhaps this morning’s story from Mark’s gospel was one reason.

This morning we have 2 stories of healing. And I’m glad we have 2 accounts of healing, 2 different kinds of stories, because I think healings happen in many, varied ways. It’s important for us not to think that healing happens only in one, specific way. These stories have similarities and differences. Both men are suffering from leprosy. Both men are seeking healing. And, in the end, by the power of God, both men are healed.

Leprosy was a disease that caused fear and isolation. According to the Old Testament, having leprosy made you ritually unclean and required that you be banished from the community. They believed that getting this disease was punishment for having sinned. You have leprosy? You must have sinned in the eyes of God. The book of Leviticus includes two whole chapters on identifying the skin disease, how to tell when it has healed, and what kind of ritual to follow to be declared clean again, and able to rejoin the community. Until you were declared clean you had to stay away from people; touching another person made him or her unclean, too. You had to identify yourself, shouting “Unclean! Unclean!” so that no one would accidentally have contact with you. You were put out of the community, away from your family, away from work, forced to beg, isolated and feared.

Now, while both men in our stories are lepers, Naaman is a rich man, a powerful man. He’s a warrior and the general for the king of Aram, in what is now Syria. Naaman has wealth and power and prestige. The one thing he doesn’t have is his health. Fortunately for him, a slave girl, whose name we don’t even know, tells him about a prophet in Israel who can cure him. Naaman gathers his riches together and heads on over to Israel. Except, he doesn’t go to the prophet. Naaman, with his cargo of costly garments and silver and gold, goes directly to the king of Israel. Now the king of Israel is savvy enough, is faithful enough, to be alarmed by this, and asks the correct question: “Am I God?” The king knows only God can heal.

Naaman eventually finds his way to the prophet Elisha’s house…and stands outside, horses and chariots and all his finery. And Naaman is outraged. First of all, Elisha didn’t even bother to come out and see him, much less wave his hands in the air and cure him. Secondly, Elisha sends some flunky out to him with a message: “Go and wash 7 times, in the Jordan River, no less.” At this point Naaman shakes his head thinking “The Jordan – what a sewer! I’ve got better rivers back in Syria. Why can’t I just go home, and wash there?” But, desperate people do desperate things. And so, eventually, Naaman goes to the Jordan, and washes, and is made clean, is healed.

The leper, in the gospel of Mark, is an Israelite, not like Naaman. But Mark’s leper is an outsider in his own community. He cannot be with his own family. He cannot work. He cannot go to the synagogue. He cannot come close to anyone in town. And yet the man approaches Jesus. Pretty gutsy. But then, desperate people do desperate things. The leper gets down on his knees and begs (actually the word there is really more like urges or exhorts), and he says to Jesus, “if you choose, you can make me clean.” And Jesus says, “I do choose” and touches the leper. And the leper is made clean, is healed.

What is the response of both Naaman and the leper to their being cured? They both go and give public witness to God for their healing. Naaman shamefacedly goes back to Elisha, and says “now I see there is no other god except the God of Israel.” The leper in Mark’s Gospel ignores Jesus instruction to go straight to temple, do not pass Go, and do not tell anyone about your healing. Just show yourself to the priests, be pronounced cured, and return to your community. No, the leper pays no attention to Jesus’ instructions. Instead, he goes out, and proclaims freely, he preaches, the good news of God, that the kingdom has come near. And this is what the kingdom looks like: people are healed, people are restored, people are given new life where before there was only suffering.

What’s surprising in these stories is there is anger in them. Naaman is pretty ticked off that he was being asked to wash in the dirty Jordan. And Elisha was not about to put up with Naaman’s “I’m Mr. High and Mighty” act; won’t even come out to speak to him face to face. In the story of Jesus and the leper, we’re told Jesus was filled with compassion, or was moved by pity. However, some of the oldest handwritten copies of Mark have a different Greek word here that clearly means, “Filled with anger, Jesus stretched out his hand and touched the man.”

Jesus angry? Not my Jesus. No, this has to be wrong. Jesus doesn’t get angry, at least not at us – he only gets angry at the bad guys like the Pharisees. It’s possible some of the first scribes copying the Gospel of Mark thought the same thing and tried to soften the story by changing the word. After all, why would Jesus be angry? And who was Jesus angry with?

The leper? Well, I suppose he had a right to be angry at the leper. He was unclean, and healing the man meant Jesus had to touch him. That would make Jesus unclean as well. He’d have to call a halt to his ministry and go through the rather complicated, costly, and lengthy ritual to be declared clean again. I could see Jesus being angry at that.

Or, perhaps, Jesus knew what would happen after he declared the man clean. He knew the man would ignore Jesus. He knew the man would go around the countryside and testify to everyone what Jesus did. Perhaps Jesus knew this would happen, and that he would have to change his plans. That might have made Jesus angry.

But Mark never tells us why Jesus is angry so all we can do is guess. I don’t think Jesus was angry at the leper. His willingness to reach out and touch him doesn’t reflect anger, but love, love for one who has had to live in the margins of society. No, I think Jesus was angry at the disease and the system that forced the leper to spend the rest of his life apart from his community and family and to beg in order to survive.

One would think that today with our modern understanding of disease and all the tools for fighting it, we wouldn’t have these attitudes anymore, but they continue. In the 1980’s HIV and AIDS became the new leprosy. For several years the cause and means of transmission of this disease was unknown, and worse, we had no ways to fight it. Becoming infected with AIDS was a death sentence and also meant suffering in isolation from a fearful society, abandoned even by one’s family.

As medicine began to understand how the virus operated, how it was transmitted, and came up with a way to slow its progress, churches took a more active role in caring for those who were infected and abandoned. The church I attended near Albany joined one such organization forming a Care Team to support a man suffering from AIDS. The disease had so weakened him he was unable to do many basic chores. His family refused to have anything to do with him, so our care team became his family. They cleaned his apartment, cooked meals, and drove him to doctor’s appointments and the store. Pastor Nancy was on the team and she admitted the first time the team sat down and shared a meal with him, she was a little nervous. She knew how the disease spread and that she wasn’t in any danger, but fear of the unknown is powerful. Eventually, she got over her fear and continued to be a part of the team until we moved to Florida. When the young man finally succumbed to the disease, our church held his funeral service. His family never showed up. I don’t know how Jesus felt, but it made me angry and sad.

But there’s another reason I feel a bit of anger when I hear these healing stories. As we’ve mentioned before, in the Gospel of Mark things happen “immediately” (the word for “immediately” occurs 43 times in this Gospel). The leper was healed immediately. Peter’s mother-in-law was cured immediately. And yet we all know healing doesn’t happen immediately.

It takes weeks for your surgeon just to schedule the surgery. It takes a full 2 weeks of antibiotics to get rid of the bronchitis, and even then, you’ll probably have to have a second round. It takes at least 6 weeks for the antidepressants to begin to work. It takes weeks and months for the chemotherapy to work, and years before you can say if you are “cured” are not. Now, I’m not saying all of that is not the work of God for healing and wholeness. But I am saying that it does not seem to match the description of healings we have been given in the Gospel.

And we all know people who do not receive a healing, people for whom, it seems, there was no cure. And so what are we to say, in the face of that? How do we believe, when our own experiences do not match the Gospel record? How are we supposed to believe, when there is suffering and death and disease, when Christ is Lord of all, and the people we love still die?

I don’t have any pat answers for you. But I do have testimony: the God I know and worship is a God of life, and healing and wholeness. God does, indeed, choose life and health for us, and for all creation. I also know we live in a broken world, in which the kingdom has come near, but is not fully, completely, here yet.

One of the places I catch a glimpse of that kingdom is when we learn of a family in need in our community and this congregation responds “immediately” and abundantly to that need.

And one of the places I catch a glimpse of that kingdom is when we come and gather around this table. At one point in the communion liturgy, the pastor says “Lift up your hearts.” And the congregation responds, “We lift them up to the Lord.” We lift up our hearts, and by the power of the Holy Spirit we are lifted up, joined to Christ, who is in heaven, seated, we say, at the right hand of God the Father.

For just a moment we are lifted up to join the one who knows what it is to suffer, to join the one who suffered for us. For just a moment we are lifted up, with all the company of saints, our loved ones who went before us, to sit, and be fed, and to love. For just a moment there is no more pain or disease or death, only wholeness and healing. For just a moment we catch a glimpse of the kingdom. And that’s enough to keep me going. Thanks be to God.