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"And Touched Him"
Epiphany
6B
February 15, 2009Mark
1: 40-45
Grace to you and peace from God our Father and Lord and Savior Jesus Christ! I want to tell you a story, it’s a real story, a true story. It takes place at my home church in Citrus Heights California, part of the Sacramento metropolitan area. It’s the story of a friend of mine, named Roger. Roger really exists, and Roger is his real name. I first met Roger when he and his family joined our church. Roger was preparing to retire from the Air Force. Roger and I both applied and were accepted for Stephen Minster training. Stephen Ministry, for those of you who don’t know, is Christian-based care-giving by lay-people. It requires a minimum 2-3 year commitment, 50 hours of initial training, and continuing education and peer supervision every two weeks for the period of your Stephen Ministry. We completed our training and were commissioned together, with others, before the congregation. As it happens, my wife Cindy was the director of Stephen Ministries for our church. Sometime after Roger and I were commissioned, she got a call from Stephen Ministry headquarters in St. Louis. They were in a bit of a sticky wicket as Roger’s wife, who is from England, used to say. They had received a call from the family of a man who was dying from AIDS. The man was in hospice care, and for whatever reason, the churches around him were unable to take him as a care-receiver. Now, think back to mid-nineties – AIDS was thought of as the modern-day equivalent of leprosy – people weren’t sure how you got it, how it was transmitted, only that there was no cure and would surely result in death. Cindy asked for a few details – e.g., where is the care-receiver located? Well, she was warned it wasn’t particularly convenient, as near as they could tell it was about 30 miles from our church. Well convenience didn’t enter into it, and Cindy said we would take him on as a care-receiver. She met with the man, then after deliberation and prayer, asked Roger if he was willing to take him as a care-receiver, telling Roger that the man lived about 30 miles away, and that he was dying of AIDS. Roger said he would do it and arranged for his first meeting with the man. They met, and as the two of them were talking, Roger noticed that he was in discomfort – aside from dying a miserable death from a miserable disease. The man asked if Roger would rub his feet. Roger did so. And he continued to do so every visit until the man died. When Roger relayed this story in supervision, I was struck. I remembered our pastor telling us at our initial class, that when we went to see a care-receiver, we went as Christ, that the care-receiver would see Jesus, in us. I also thought of this text. How the leper approached Jesus. Now you need to know that in Old Testament days leprosy was thought to be a punishment from God. In Leviticus, lepers were commanded to wear their hair unkempt and disheveled, to wear torn clothes, to keep their lower face covered, to stay away from people and to cry “unclean, unclean” whenever approaching a place where people were. If a leper entered a dwelling place or building, that place was unclean. They wouldn’t worship in Temple or Synagogue, and if a leper was standing in the shade under a tree and you passed under the tree, you were regarded as polluted and in need of ritual cleansing. And here comes this man, right up to Jesus, kneeling, begging Jesus, “If you choose, you can make me clean.” Notice that the man said “…make me clean,” not “cure me,” but “make me clean.” Other diseases could be cured, but leprosy was cleansed. And Jesus, who could have told the man to go and dip himself in the River Jordan, or who could have simply said “go and show yourself to the priests,” or who could have healed him from a distance as he did the centurion’s servant, does the unthinkable. Showing no regard for the mores of society, Jesus stretches out his hand, and touches the leper, saying, “I do choose. Be made clean.” He touched him! Showing no regard for putting himself at risk, humanly speaking, Jesus touches the man. In some respects it’s a foreshadowing of what will come when Jesus touches us through the cross and takes our sins upon himself. Jesus then commands him to show himself to the priest and “offer for cleansing what Moses commanded, as a testimony to them.” And the man goes, and as we are sometimes given to do, he disobeys Jesus, and in his enthusiasm, tells everyone what has been done to him, thereby hindering, impeding Christ’s ministry to others. In our enthusiasm for our own agendas we occasional impede Christ and his ministry to others. Instead of reaching out and touching, caring for someone, building a person up, showing compassion, and love, witnessing our faith, we tear down, we give a negative witness of our faith. And Jesus, instead of working through us, is in the wilderness. Now we have been commanded, commissioned to witness to our faith, to make disciples, to build up the body of Christ, the body of the church, but we can only do it through compassion, through caring, through love which is, like our faith, a gift from God. There is no other way. Reach out with the love of Christ. Amen. Rev. Bruce Hannem, Associate Pastor
Lutheran Church of the Cross, Nisswa, Minnesota |
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