Sixth Sunday of the Year, B

Leviticus 13:1-2, 44-46

1 Corinthians 10:31-11:1
Mark 1:40-45

This Sunday's gospel tells us of Jesus' cure of a man afflicted with leprosy (a term referring to any repulsive skin disease) and the readings contain a lot of material for thought. First of all leprosy was not an easy illness to handle in ancient days, just as Ebola would scare all of us, these days!  For fear of contaminating others, the patients were driven away from the neighborhood and restricted from using common roads, stores and facilities. They must let others in the society know that they were lepers by not covering their hairs. They must also wear torn pants and clothing. If there is any reason for them to step outside their isolated camps they have to alert others by shouting “unclean, unclean, and unclean.” This disease had the power of separating members of a family from each other, since contact with them would make others unclean! It is terrible to be isolated from our community. Here, we might want to think of what isolate us from our family members, friends, and community, and even from the love of God. What separates us from the love of God?

Instead of avoiding, rejecting or stigmatizing the leper, Jesus touched and healed him. This is surprising because during the time of Jesus in ancient Israel, leprosy was a dreaded disease like the Ebola or HIV/AIDS of our time. Contacting leprosy was a matter of life and death.  Anyone with leprosy was to stay afar but, somehow, the leper of the gospel reading today got close to Jesus and begged him to make him clean so that he could return to normal society.  If a leper touched a clean person, he or she would become unclean and would also have to live apart from normal society. But, we hear that Jesus was “moved with pity” and touched him and made him clean. 

Like the leper, today, we are individually and collectively afflicted by several forms of diseases which have separated us from others. We too are “lepers” in one way or the other: morally, socially and spiritually. Some of us are suffering from diseases of the body such as terminal and chronic illnesses and diseases of the mind such as traumas, psychological disorders, emotional imbalances,  just to mention but a few. Several nations have their own diseases like terrorism, (especially the boko haram insurgence in Nigeria and the terror of the Islamic State in the West), electoral tension and violence, war, corruption, strange epidemics like the bird flu, ebola, etc. In the midst of these problems, who do we run to for healing?

The leper in the Gospel reading teaches us what to do and who to meet when we need help. He knew Jesus could heal him and that was why he broke the rule which forbade them from approaching the healthy when he ran to Jesus and requested for healing. At the end, he was healed. Jesus still invites all who are overburdened with diseases to come to him. He alone can guarantee us healing with his saving hands. But can we muster the courage to come out of our hideouts and approach him for healing? Today, we are challenged not just by physical diseases but by a more serious disease called sin which destroys the soul. Sin is the leprosy of the soul. It is the worst disease we can think of because it not only separates us from God, it also spoils our relationship with one another, darkens our souls, makes us candidates for hell, makes us unclean, keeps us troubled, robs us of our innocence and separates us from the community of the faithful. It has personal and social consequences. When it becomes national like that of Sodom and Gomorrah, it could destroy a whole nation and who knows if what we are suffering in Nigeria today is not as a result of our sins. 

Let us learn from Jesus today how to approach “the untouchables and outcasts,” the sick, the weak, the poor, and those we find difficult to love in our society. Jesus communicates the love and mercy of God in signs that speaks more eloquently than words.  There is no gain saying that in our world today many still suffer and die from the stigma we have placed on them because of their poverty, sickness, or weakness. Do we offer them mercy and help as Jesus did? Jesus has set a model for us Christians on how to have pity on others; how to have compassion. What does that mean? It is summarized in this particular gospel passage as reaching out to them and touching them. 

Paul writing to the Corinthians challenges us to imitate Christ by being ministers of healing.  We are to lovingly touch those aspects of hurting lives which need healing.  So many in our society and church need healing and acceptance (divorced and remarried, those who have had abortion, AIDS patients, homosexuals, victims of violence, racism, sexism, ageism, and all who are hurt by life). As individual Christians and as a community we must risk touching and healing.  Jesus showed us the way.

So, who is the unclean for us? Whom don’t we want to touch? Or, perhaps, whom don’t we touch because we never tried or never even thought about it? Who is not a part of our normal groupings? They are often invisible. We probably won’t find them in our subdivision or down the road from our acreage. Where are these people who are separated from us? We probably won’t find them here in church, nor will we find them in line with us at our grocery store or at the mall.

I find the words of the leper "If you wish you can make me clean…" very powerful and full of hope.  I thought of this when I read an email a friend sent me a couple of weeks ago.  It was a short story about a woman confiding to her therapist:  She said, “My husband and I can’t say two words to each other without getting into an argument.  The second he comes in the door we are at each other’s throats.  Deep down, I know the love’s still there but it seems hopelessly buried.”

The therapist listened intently, then reached into his drawer, and pulled out a bottle and handed it to her.  “This is a special water, holy water from a sacred spring in India,” the therapist explained.  “For the next week, whenever your husband’s about to enter the room, take two tablespoons, but don’t swallow right away…take a moment and look into his eyes.  After a couple of seconds, swallow it.  You should notice an improvement in your interaction right away.”

She went home and anxiously waited for him to come home.  When he walked in; she forgot the tablespoon and just took a swig of the blessed water and silently held his gaze.  He gave her a suspicious look, then grinned curiously.  After a bit she swallowed the water and asked how his day went.  Amazingly, they didn’t argue.  In fact, they had one of the warmest and loving conversations they had had in recent memory.  As each night passed she performed the same ritual…suddenly as if a veil was lifted, she saw him in a whole new light; she saw him as if it were the first time again…the man she fell in love with.

The following week the woman returned to her therapist, proclaiming that the treatment had healed her marriage and that she needed more of this miraculous water…and fast.  He smiled and revealed that the potent elixir was nothing but store-bought Mountain Spring water.  

Obviously, it was not the “magical” water that reconnects these two spouses.  Rather it is the woman’s desire to heal her relationship with her husband that brings about their reconciliation.  The miracle that healed the turbulent marriage was not the water but her willingness to drink it; to stop and look at her husband with new eyes, to put aside her urge to lash out from hurts and disappointments and speak, first from the love they cherish in one another.

If we could take a moment and reflect on our lives, we can see times when we reduce others to “lepers”…people who are broken and don’t measure up to our standards of righteousness and goodness, who don’t “fit” our image of propriety and success.  Or perhaps we become swallowed up in our own sense of “uncleanness”… unworthiness and remove ourselves from family and community.  The request the leper makes of Jesus is a challenge to all of us who now seek to follow him.

Our prayer is simple, “If you wish, you can make me clean…” what is needed first is the will to put aside our own fears and doubts and interests to do so.  Jesus promises us the grace to be imitators of his compassion and forgiveness whenever we are ready to take the first step in healing the wounds and cleaning the “leprosy” that afflicts us and divides us from one another. If we can just take the first sip from this simple prayer and hold on it in our hearts, I believe we will experience Jesus’ compassionate touch and hear his comforting words:  “I do will it. Be made clean.”

Leviticus 13:1-2, 44-46
1 Corinthians 10:31-11:1
Mark 1:40-45

This Sunday's gospel tells us of Jesus' cure of a man afflicted with leprosy (a term referring to any repulsive skin disease) and the readings contain a lot of material for thought. First of all leprosy was not an easy illness to handle in ancient days, just as Ebola would scare all of us, these days!  For fear of contaminating others, the patients were driven away from the neighborhood and restricted from using common roads, stores and facilities. They must let others in the society know that they were lepers by not covering their hairs. They must also wear torn pants and clothing. If there is any reason for them to step outside their isolated camps they have to alert others by shouting “unclean, unclean, and unclean.” This disease had the power of separating members of a family from each other, since contact with them would make others unclean! It is terrible to be isolated from our community. Here, we might want to think of what isolate us from our family members, friends, and community, and even from the love of God. What separates us from the love of God?

Instead of avoiding, rejecting or stigmatizing the leper, Jesus touched and healed him. This is surprising because during the time of Jesus in ancient Israel, leprosy was a dreaded disease like the Ebola or HIV/AIDS of our time. Contacting leprosy was a matter of life and death.  Anyone with leprosy was to stay afar but, somehow, the leper of the gospel reading today got close to Jesus and begged him to make him clean so that he could return to normal society.  If a leper touched a clean person, he or she would become unclean and would also have to live apart from normal society. But, we hear that Jesus was “moved with pity” and touched him and made him clean. 

Like the leper, today, we are individually and collectively afflicted by several forms of diseases which have separated us from others. We too are “lepers” in one way or the other: morally, socially and spiritually. Some of us are suffering from diseases of the body such as terminal and chronic illnesses and diseases of the mind such as traumas, psychological disorders, emotional imbalances,  just to mention but a few. Several nations have their own diseases like terrorism, (especially the boko haram insurgence in Nigeria and the terror of the Islamic State in the West), electoral tension and violence, war, corruption, strange epidemics like the bird flu, ebola, etc. In the midst of these problems, who do we run to for healing?

The leper in the Gospel reading teaches us what to do and who to meet when we need help. He knew Jesus could heal him and that was why he broke the rule which forbade them from approaching the healthy when he ran to Jesus and requested for healing. At the end, he was healed. Jesus still invites all who are overburdened with diseases to come to him. He alone can guarantee us healing with his saving hands. But can we muster the courage to come out of our hideouts and approach him for healing? Today, we are challenged not just by physical diseases but by a more serious disease called sin which destroys the soul. Sin is the leprosy of the soul. It is the worst disease we can think of because it not only separates us from God, it also spoils our relationship with one another, darkens our souls, makes us candidates for hell, makes us unclean, keeps us troubled, robs us of our innocence and separates us from the community of the faithful. It has personal and social consequences. When it becomes national like that of Sodom and Gomorrah, it could destroy a whole nation and who knows if what we are suffering in Nigeria today is not as a result of our sins. 

Let us learn from Jesus today how to approach “the untouchables and outcasts,” the sick, the weak, the poor, and those we find difficult to love in our society. Jesus communicates the love and mercy of God in signs that speaks more eloquently than words.  There is no gain saying that in our world today many still suffer and die from the stigma we have placed on them because of their poverty, sickness, or weakness. Do we offer them mercy and help as Jesus did? Jesus has set a model for us Christians on how to have pity on others; how to have compassion. What does that mean? It is summarized in this particular gospel passage as reaching out to them and touching them. 

Paul writing to the Corinthians challenges us to imitate Christ by being ministers of healing.  We are to lovingly touch those aspects of hurting lives which need healing.  So many in our society and church need healing and acceptance (divorced and remarried, those who have had abortion, AIDS patients, homosexuals, victims of violence, racism, sexism, ageism, and all who are hurt by life). As individual Christians and as a community we must risk touching and healing.  Jesus showed us the way.

So, who is the unclean for us? Whom don’t we want to touch? Or, perhaps, whom don’t we touch because we never tried or never even thought about it? Who is not a part of our normal groupings? They are often invisible. We probably won’t find them in our subdivision or down the road from our acreage. Where are these people who are separated from us? We probably won’t find them here in church, nor will we find them in line with us at our grocery store or at the mall.

I find the words of the leper "If you wish you can make me clean…" very powerful and full of hope.  I thought of this when I read an email a friend sent me a couple of weeks ago.  It was a short story about a woman confiding to her therapist:  She said, “My husband and I can’t say two words to each other without getting into an argument.  The second he comes in the door we are at each other’s throats.  Deep down, I know the love’s still there but it seems hopelessly buried.”

The therapist listened intently, then reached into his drawer, and pulled out a bottle and handed it to her.  “This is a special water, holy water from a sacred spring in India,” the therapist explained.  “For the next week, whenever your husband’s about to enter the room, take two tablespoons, but don’t swallow right away…take a moment and look into his eyes.  After a couple of seconds, swallow it.  You should notice an improvement in your interaction right away.”

She went home and anxiously waited for him to come home.  When he walked in; she forgot the tablespoon and just took a swig of the blessed water and silently held his gaze.  He gave her a suspicious look, then grinned curiously.  After a bit she swallowed the water and asked how his day went.  Amazingly, they didn’t argue.  In fact, they had one of the warmest and loving conversations they had had in recent memory.  As each night passed she performed the same ritual…suddenly as if a veil was lifted, she saw him in a whole new light; she saw him as if it were the first time again…the man she fell in love with.

The following week the woman returned to her therapist, proclaiming that the treatment had healed her marriage and that she needed more of this miraculous water…and fast.  He smiled and revealed that the potent elixir was nothing but store-bought Mountain Spring water.  

Obviously, it was not the “magical” water that reconnects these two spouses.  Rather it is the woman’s desire to heal her relationship with her husband that brings about their reconciliation.  The miracle that healed the turbulent marriage was not the water but her willingness to drink it; to stop and look at her husband with new eyes, to put aside her urge to lash out from hurts and disappointments and speak, first from the love they cherish in one another.

If we could take a moment and reflect on our lives, we can see times when we reduce others to “lepers”…people who are broken and don’t measure up to our standards of righteousness and goodness, who don’t “fit” our image of propriety and success.  Or perhaps we become swallowed up in our own sense of “uncleanness”… unworthiness and remove ourselves from family and community.  The request the leper makes of Jesus is a challenge to all of us who now seek to follow him.

Our prayer is simple, “If you wish, you can make me clean…” what is needed first is the will to put aside our own fears and doubts and interests to do so.  Jesus promises us the grace to be imitators of his compassion and forgiveness whenever we are ready to take the first step in healing the wounds and cleaning the “leprosy” that afflicts us and divides us from one another. If we can just take the first sip from this simple prayer and hold on it in our hearts, I believe we will experience Jesus’ compassionate touch and hear his comforting words:  “I do will it. Be made clean.”