AN UNTOUCHABLE MAN AND A TOUCHING ACT OF LOVE

“AN UNTOUCHABLE MAN AND A TOUCHING ACT OF LOVE”

MARK 1:30-40

40 And a leper came to him, imploring him, and kneeling said to him, “If you will, you can make me clean.”

41 Moved with pity, he stretched out his hand and touched him and said to him, “I will; be clean.”

42 And immediately the leprosy left him, and he was made clean.

43 And Jesus sternly charged him and sent him away at once,

44 and said to him, “See that you say nothing to anyone, but go, show yourself to the priest and offer for your cleansing what Moses commanded, for a proof to them.”

45 But he went out and began to talk freely about it, and to spread the news, so that Jesus could no longer openly enter a town, but was out in desolate places, and people were coming to him from every quarter.

Would you jump out of an airplane? With a parachute of course. Did you hear about the young man who jumped out of an airplane and almost didn’t live to tell about it? It was all over the news a week or so ago. It all started when Daniel Pharr’s girlfriend gave him a skydiving lesson for a Christmas present. It was something that he really wanted to do. So, earlier this month Daniel Pharr jumped out of an airplane at 13,500 feet. It was a tandem jump which meant that he was hooked up to an instructor when he jumped out of the airplane. After free falling for a minute or so Chip Steele, the instructor, pulled the cord that opened the parachute. While they were descending Daniel mentioned to him how quiet it was up there among the clouds. The instructor replied, “Welcome to my world.” When Daniel asked him another question a few seconds later he didn’t answer. So, he turned around and asked the question again. That’s when he discovered that the instructor had suffered a sudden heart attack and was dead. Can you imagine what that must have been like? Daniel had to work the toggle cords that you use to steer the parachute. It wasn’t an easy task for a first time skydiver. If he had pulled the cords too hard the parachute would have spun wildly out of control and he would have died as well. Fortunately he reached the ground safely. Despite his frightening ordeal Daniel Pharr says that he’d like to go skydiving again. His mother says that she wants him to keep “both feet on the ground.”

How about you? Would you jump out of an airplane? You might if you’re a person who doesn’t mind living life on the edge. When you look at Jesus you see that he often lived his life on the edge. You can see that by looking at what he did to heal that leper. We’re told that the leper ran up to Jesus and pleaded with him. He knelt down in front of Jesus and cried out, “If you will, you can make me clean.” Jesus was filled with pity for the leper and responded by stretching out his hand and touching him. He then said to him, “I will; be clean.”

When Jesus touched the leper he was definitely living on the edge. That’s because people back then thought that leprosy was a contagious disease. They weren’t as advanced as we are today when it comes to medicine. Although sometimes you have to wonder. Just ask the man who wasn’t feeling very well after he got back from a trip to Africa. His symptoms eventually led him to the hospital where he underwent every test imaginable. After undergoing all those test the man woke up in a room all alone. The door was closed and the shades pulled down. Before he could figure out what was going on the phone next to his bed rang. When he answered it he discovered that it was his doctor. “I’m sorry,” the doctor said, “but you seem to have contracted some kind of rare disease. So, I’ve placed you in isolation and I’m going to put you on a diet of pizza, pancakes and pita bread.” The man was stunned. “Will that cure me?” he asked. “No,” the doctor replied, “but it’s the only food that we can slide under the door.”

That’s what it was like back then when it came to leprosy. People thought that leprosy was contagious. So, if you got leprosy it made you ritually unclean. Not only that but if you touched someone with leprosy it made you ritually unclean. That’s where we see Jesus living on the edge. You see Jesus could have healed the leper without touching him. He could have healed him by just uttering the words and commanding him to be clean. We know that Jesus could have done that because that’s exactly what he did with a man who was unable to walk. Jesus said to him, “Rise take up your pallet and walk” and that’s exactly what happened. (Mark 2:11-12)

Jesus also could have healed the leper by telling him to go and wash his scaly skin in the Jordan River. That’s what the prophet Elisha did in the Old Testament with a Syrian general by the name of Naaman. (II Kings 5)

Jesus didn’t take the easy way out though. He reached out and touched the leper. Jesus did that because he didn’t just want to heal the man’s broken body. He also wanted to heal his lonely heart. Don’t forget. This was a man with leprosy which meant he had been forced to live on the outskirts of society for years and years. No New Year’s Eve parties for him. No sitting around the table and singing “Happy Birthday” to him. If he was married when he was stricken with leprosy he would have been forced to leave his wife and his children to go off and live by himself in the wilderness somewhere. No one to hug. No one to talk to and if people saw him walking toward them they would have run the other way in terror.

That’s why Jesus touched him. He didn’t want to just heal his broken body. He also wanted to heal his lonely heart. In doing what he did though Jesus was definitely living on the edge, but that’s a Christ like love does. It means you go the extra mile. You take that risk. You refuse to go along with the crowd. You give that extra dollar to someone in need. You love someone even if there’s no guarantee that the person is going to love you back. You say what needs to be said even if you know that it might make you unpopular.

That last one is the reason why I was intrigued by an email that I received about a month ago. In the email a man talk about a friend of his who lived in Germany during World War II. The friend told him that, “Very few people were true Nazis. I was one of those who just thought the Nazis were a bunch of fools. So, the majority just sat back and let it all happen. Then before we knew it, they owned us, and we had lost control, and the end of the world had come. I ended up in a concentration camp and the Allies destroyed my factories.” The man who wrote this email then goes on to take the lesson that his German friend learned and apply it to what we see going on today. This is what he writes in the email.

“We are told again and again by ‘experts’ and ‘talking heads’ that Islam is a religion of peace, and that the vast majority of Muslims just want to live in peace. Although this unqualified assertion may be true, it is entirely irrelevant. It is meaningless fluff, meant to make us feel better, and meant to somehow diminish the spectra of fanatics rampaging across the globe in the name of Islam. The fact is that the fanatics rule Islam at this moment in history. It is the fanatics who march. It is the fanatics who wage any one of 50 shooting wars worldwide. It is the fanatics who systematically slaughter Christian or tribal groups throughout Africa and are gradually taking over the entire continent in an Islamic wave. It is the fanatics who bomb, behead, murder or honor-kill. It is the fanatics who take over mosque after mosque. It is the fanatics who zealously spread the stoning and hanging of rape victims and homosexuals. It is the fanatics who teach their young to kill and to become suicide bombers. The hard quantifiable fact is that the peaceful majority, the ‘silent majority,’ is cowed and extraneous…Peace-loving Muslims have been made irrelevant by their silence. Peace-loving Muslims will become our enemy if they don’t speak up. Because like my friend from Germany, they will awaken one day and find that the fanatics own them, and the end of their world will have begun.”

While those words may be politically incorrect they are filled with wisdom and they are the words of someone who understands what Jesus did when he reached out and touched that leper.

When the love of Christ is in you it means you will live your life on the edge. That can be risky but it can also be incredibly rewarding! Just look again at what happened to Jesus and that leper. Jesus didn’t just heal him. Jesus reached out and healed him by touching him. It healed his broken body but it also healed his lonely heart. What Jesus did was risky but it was also incredibly rewarding. It filled that former leper with a joy that couldn’t be contained and because of that he and Jesus experienced an incredible grace filled moment.

I experienced one of those living on the edge grace filled moments on June 26, 1983. That was the day I was ordained to the Christian ministry. During the ordination service I presided over the Sacrament of Communion for the first time. I said the Prayer of Consecration. I blessed the elements. Then I sat down and watched as the deacons brought the bread and the cup to everyone who had come to share in this moment of celebration. Sitting there in the front pew was my step-mother; a devote Catholic who had raised me. I suddenly realized that I had put her in a very awkward position. Because she was a devote Catholic who attended parochial schools all the way through high school and went Mass every single week she knew that it was a mortal sin for her to receive the Sacrament of Communion in a Protestant Church. That is why I can tell you that one of the greatest gifts I have ever received in my life came when this courageous and loving woman reached out and humbly and gratefully received the bread and the cup that her son had blessed.

When the love of Christ is in you it can be risky but it can also be incredibly rewarding. That’s why I always end our time together with the same words:

People of God our service of worship is over.

Let us go forth to continue our service of love…and in light of what Jesus did with that leper I’ll add this: Even if it means living life on the edge. Amen.

February 15, 2009 Rev. Dr. Richard A. Hughes