12 February 2012                                                                               Mark 1: 40-45

We are given two great stories of miraculous healings in today’s lessons.  In one, we see a great prophet of the Old Testament, Elisha, wonderfully healing an enemy military commander of his leprosy in a complicated process of washings.  In the Gospel Jesus simply does away with the leprosy by touching the leper.  But what are we to make of these stories?  The Old Testament story was surely related in order to magnify the prophet and the prophet’s God over against the gods of the Aramaeans and over against the falsification of the true God within Israel.  Jesus was also out to make a case for the kind of God he called His Father.  Miraculous healings were one of the ways in which He set forth the Kingdom agenda of proclaiming that His Father was returning to Israel as its true King through Him.  Restoration to health was one of the signs of the Kingdom’s presence. 

But if that is where we leave it all—it was nice that Jesus healed the leper and that shows He was the Son of God, the true Messiah— then where is the point of identification for us in the story?  Are the miracles just records of old deeds or are they teaching us something we need to know about and put into action?  Some people think that the lesson is that we also are supposed to perform miracles.  As far as I can see, this doesn’t work very well.  No one ever worked miracles as Jesus worked them.  On the other hand, if we ran across a leper in our day, we certainly would know what to do for him, wouldn’t we?  We could take him to a hospital and a cure would be readily available.

I have not always thought so, but it seems to me now that this is also Kingdom work.  Jesus did not pass down his miracle-working ability to very many people.  But the extension of medical care to many sick people in His Name is certainly related to the progress of the Kingdom, isn’t it?   Christians did not invent the idea of a hospital exactly—there are records of something like places for the sick or travelers to find assistance before Christ in other parts of the world.  But Christians took it seriously and after the official adoption of Christianity by the Roman Empire, there was an expansion of the provision of hospital care across the empire. I read that beginning in the 4^th century “construction of a hospital in every cathedral town was begun. Among the earliest were those built by the physician Saint Sampson in Constantinople and by Basil, bishop of Caesarea in modern-day Turkey. Called the "Basilias", the latter resembled a city and included housing for doctors and nurses and separate buildings for various classes of patients. There was a separate section for lepers. Some hospitals maintained libraries and training programs, and doctors compiled their medical and pharmacological studies in manuscripts. Thus in-patient medical care in the sense of what we today consider a hospital, was an invention driven by Christian mercy and Byzantine innovation.”  [Wikipedia]   

Mark narrated his tale in order to show how the process of God becoming King was working—healing by healing, as people were restored to wholeness.  So physical healing is a sign of the presence of the Kingdom, even if it is done by rational means and financial provision, rather than by sheer miracle.  The motivation to reach out to heal those who are injured or diseased, is a way of being like Jesus—even amongst those who do not know Him, but especially amongst those who do.  Providing health care for people who need it is a serious problem in our own day.  Yet it seems like Kingdom work to try to secure it for everyone who needs it.  In our country this is all tied up together with health insurance and makes it all very complicated.  But the goal for Christians is surely to respond to our neighbors as Jesus did to His, by providing a means for healing and restoration to health.   As we look further into the story we find other motives that support the practical aim of healing.

First of all, Jesus was moved with pity.  So much seems obvious.  But is it always obvious that Jesus’ followers today are moved with pity?  What is pity?  It is a sympathetic grief or sorrow for the needs of other people, which can lead one to take measures to help.  This is a natural human quality.  It is hard to imagine that there is anyone alive who cannot feel pity for someone.  To be wholly without pity would be a sign of damnation for sure.  

But I think it is also fair to say that our pity is fairly well managed—that is, there are some classes or groups of people for whom it is difficult to feel pity.   There are people we don’t like.  Some people don’t like whole classes or races of people different from themselves—for those, there is no pity in their hearts.  Some people are to blame for their problems and predicaments, and some of us have difficulty feeling pity for them—they made their bed, now let them lie in it.  Then there are people who make us afraid and we have a hard time feeling pity for them, either.  These may be people of different ethnic backgrounds, or people whose ways of life are a threat to us—or perhaps, even our official national enemies. 

Jesus was generally filled with pity for all sorts and classes of people.  Even those toward whom he directed his stern disapproval—scribes and pharisees—he pitied and would have helped if they had been willing to receive it.  What is the quality of our mercy, our pity?  Is it lavish and unrestricted or guarded and well-managed?  Are we like Jesus in the quality of our pity?  Do people instinctively know that, whatever they have done or whoever they are, if they come to us they will be met with sympathetic understanding and compassion?  If so, then God is reigning, the Kingdom is present, around and through us.

Secondly, Jesus was willing to help.  It is one thing to have fine feelings of grief and sorrow for the needs of others, it is another thing to be willing to act.  Here is where we can also be like Jesus, though it may be a little more difficult for us to decide what help we can offer.  Sometimes the needs are obvious and we can readily meet them.  A hungry person wants food—we can supply that food—so we give it.  Pity has issued in good works.  End of story.  Sometimes it is more complicated.  Giving help requires thoughtfulness and prudence.  We may not only be unable to provide the required assistance, but even if we could, it might not be the right thing to do.  Or it may be that what is needed is not what is wanted and our offer to help is not received.  It may also be that we are at the end of our resources and can only refer someone to a place he can get help.  Sometimes it is easier simply not to be available—a willingness to help is often time-consuming.  It is an interruption in plans that have already been made.  Jesus was constantly being interrupted in his preaching and teaching by people what wanted something from him.  It is amazing how often he stopped what he was doing and responded to them.  This must surely indicate to us that the needs of people are a high priority for his followers.  Responding to the needs of our neighbors is one way that God reigns—wanting to be Kingdom people, for example, is the reason for our current effort to find an outreach project as a parish.

Not only was Jesus willing to help, but he was also willing to touch.  Many of the ancient commentators mention this.  Jesus could have healed this leper at a distance, but instead he placed his hand on him—he established contact.  Of course, in Jesus’ case, it was a way of saying to the man that he was no longer unclean and that Jesus was not afraid to touch him.  The poor man also needed a human touch after so long on the outside of human community.  And that is another quality for the disciple of Jesus to look for in himself or herself.  Do I help those I help at a distance or up close and personal?  That is, are we open to community, to some deep human contact?  People in need are often lonely people.  Do we offer a relationship—even a partial one?  Sometimes that is impossible, but sometimes the message given to those who want our help is that we are ready to assist but don’t consider them candidates for friendship.  In other words, they are not our sort and we would prefer that a distance be kept.  How unlike our Lord that is.  Yet it is also true that those kinds of barriers are very hard to break down.  Sometimes those who come for help to us have a feeling that they are not worthy of our friendship or community and hold themselves back.  It takes a determined effort to extend our touch.  Our vestry began our development process with the conviction that we have strong social relationships in this parish—we touch each other.  Jesus’ touch is visible in this—can we extend it more intentionally to others?  That is a question that our poverty task force is trying to answer.

Finally, our Lord told the leper not to tell anyone.  Why did he do it?  Well, I think he was taking his own advice.  Remember?  When you do a good deed, don’t let the right hand know what the left hand is doing.  It is not necessary to advertise your good deeds—God knows and the person you have helped.  That is enough.   It is surprising sometimes how these things work out, though.  The person who has received help goes and tells—and it is mostly other people who need help.  So there are more.  That is also what Jesus found—and partly he had to keep that aspect of his ministry in check so it wouldn’t take over his whole life.  As it was, said Mark, he could no longer publicly go into any town or he would be mobbed.  We can sympathize, perhaps, especially when there is something in us that would like for the publicity about our helping ministry to be among our own sort of people, so they would know how good we are!  Maybe we could even attract more church members that way who would be impressed with our high-mindedness.   Jesus wasn’t worried about that.  He worked with those whom God gave Him, doing what God had given Him to do.  This seems slightly contradictory to our effort at a public kind of outreach project.  It is a fine line – we don’t aim to advertise ourselves as so very good, but we do want to focus ourselves around our own identity.  So that we could say to others, see: this is what we do.  Wouldn’t you like to be a part of that?

That is what I see in this story—and I find these qualities of our Lord very attractive and challenging.  They were all built around an incredibly deep relationship with the Father, developed and maintained, as we saw in last Sunday’s gospel, from extended periods of prayer off by Himself.  If we want to be like our Lord, doing the kind of works He did, having the heart He did, then we will have to be with the Father as He was—there is no other way to live at that level of trust and confidence, which is so non-defensive and open in love towards others.