Lord Jesus, in this hour of worship, we see you reaching out and healing the untouchables, the sick, the broken. We see you rebuking evil and restoring those who hurt to wholeness. Empower us, O Lord, to live and to love as you lived and loved! Amen.

 

 

 

 

“The hardest part of the whole thing,” he said, “has been the loneliness.”

 

“You mean the loneliness of not getting to go to work, not getting out and about, not being able to see people?” 

 

He had a very serious illness with a lousy prognosis. He was pretty much confined to his home.

 

“No,” he said. “It’s the loneliness of friends avoiding me. People not coming around to see me anymore the way they used to.”

 

“Well, why would they do that?”

 

“I’m not sure,” he said. “Part of it is, I guess they just don’t know what to say, and part of it is, even though it’s not contagious, they don’t want to catch what I’ve got.”

 

Wow. Everyone in this room knows that it shouldn’t be that way. And yet, many folks, including some of us, struggle with being around people who are sick, people who are bereaved, people who are in sorrow, people who are hurting in some particular way. There are folks who are in trouble – people who have been victims of misfortune. Folks have been laid off from their jobs. People are going through a divorce. People are having serious trouble with their kids. And on and on.

 

There is a sense in which many treat these folks as if they were contagious. They have problems. Yes! And we don’t want to catch what they have. Anybody here know what I’m talking about?

 

This is what we see in our text today. A man has leprosy. He’s a very sick man. It was such a hideous disease. It was back in the days, of course, before they even knew the word “contagious” or how that whole thing worked. But it was a hideous disease, and Scripture forbid anyone from even touching a leper. If you had leprosy, there were rules. You lived over here, and everybody else lived over there. When people got together in the public, you were not welcomed to join them. You could not even go to temple to worship. According to biblical law, this person was called “unclean.” There was to be no contact with unclean people. So the shunning, the isolation, the loneliness, on top of being sick, was horrendous. 

 

But, when the man in our text today encounters Jesus, he saw the possibility of deliverance. Filled with hope, he grovels. He falls to his knees before Jesus. This desperate man begs, “If you will, you can make me clean.”

 

Some of our Bibles today say that Jesus, in response, was filled with pity, had compassion. No. No. The original word of Mark’s text, say the scholars, is that Jesus was filled with anger. Isn’t that interesting? When Jesus looked at this poor man, his heart was filled with rage. Did you know that the fully-human Jesus got angry? The literal translation of the word “anger” in Scripture is “snorts,” “boils over.”   Don’t you just love the image of Jesus snorting? Boiling over? Jesus boils over at seeing the effects of this illness on this poor man, how it ravaged his body, how it isolated him more importantly from the warmth of the caring comfort of the community. 

 

I think. I don’t know this. It doesn’t say this, but I think Jesus is angry at the evil of it all. This is not the way God intended life to be. This is not the way God intended the world to be.

 

Remember another time in Scripture when Jesus got angry. He went to the temple and cleansed it. He took a whip and drove out the moneychangers – people who were selling forgiveness and salvation. They were folks who had transformed God’s temple into a den of thieves. Jesus got angry sometimes.

 

This is not the way God intends God’s people to live. This is not part of God’s good and loving purposes for God’s world. It made Jesus angry, indignant, enraged. 

 

The question today: Do you become angry? Sure you do. Do you become angry when you see what disease is doing to Dick, and to Bill, and to Karl, and Connie, and Susie, and Elaine, and a whole host of others who are seeking health and wholeness and wellness? Does it make you angry when the world consumes two barrels of oil for every barrel discovered? Does it make you angry when 30,000,000 men, women, and children in this country do not have healthcare coverage insurance? Does it make you angry that more blood and more money are being spent on an unattainable goal of a total military victory in Iraq? Does it make you angry when Hamas wins a majority of Palestinian elections, when the Iranians are openly going to work to develop nuclear capacity? Does it make you angry? If it does, folks, good news today. You are in good company. Even a loving pet snaps and snarls when injured. 

 

Are there people in this house today who are mourning, who are grieving a loss, a death, a divorce, a move, an accident, a disaster, or some other major loss in your lives? If so, please know that the anger you feel is just part of the process of coming to terms with that loss. People like Elizabeth Kubler-Ross remind us that underlying that anger, that rage, is a sense of the unfairness of it all. And that is a very acceptable and good reason to be mad.

 

The biblical Job argued long and bitterly that it was not right. It was unfair for good people to suffer. Job wanted to haul God into court and argue his case against the Almighty (Job 13). 

 

By the same token, we must be very careful not to misdirect very real feelings – normal feelings – of anger. It happens sometimes, you know. An employee who feels unjustly terminated returns to a workplace with a gun and gives rise to a terrible, terrible, tragic evil.

 

William Blake put it well. He said:

 

Point Number 1: Be sure to handle this very normal, real feeling of anger appropriately.

 

Point Number 2: Consider rethinking how you understand God in that whole process. You know… Often people speak very glibly about accepting God’s will. Then they go around beating themselves up because they have a very hard time doing so. The problem is folks often equate God’s will with bad things, with suffering, with loss, with illness, with pain, with natural disasters.

 

There was an ancient poet that wrote The Book of Wisdom. It’s been around a long time and it offered a counter proposal. He said:

 

Folks, you’ve studied Scripture. You know God’s will from the moment of creation has been to give life, not destroy it. The divine plan has been that people live in harmony with God and with one another. It’s been spelled out for everybody in the Ten Commandments. Jesus comes and says, “I have come that you might have life, and have it in all of its abundance, all of its fullness” (John 10).

 

So when the leper cries out to Jesus, “If you will, you can make me clean,” Jesus moved, according to Mark, with indignation by the utter injustice of it all has pity. Then he is filled with compassion. According to Mark, he resolutely announces, “I will!” By that reply Jesus shows that he can, in fact, heal even the most dreaded diseases. And that is good news, folks. It is really, really good news. God wills healing. At the very core of the universe, God wills healing. And that is a significant thing to hear if you are in involved in and devoted yourself to the healing of the physical, the psychological, the spiritual, the social, the economic, even the international disorders that exist. That is a powerful thing to hear. God is on the side of the healers.

 

Now does that mean that God always and in every case heals? Everyone in this room knows the answer to that is “no.” St. Paul, the greatest evangelist, the greatest servant of Christ, lived his whole life with a thorn in the flesh. There are some things we just have to learn to live with. It goes with the territory. Jesus, himself, in a crucial hour, prayed much like the leper in our story today: “Father, all things are possible with you.” (That’s a good thing to remember.) “Take this cup of suffering from me, and yet, Father, nevertheless, not what I will but want you want.”

 

The bottom line, folks: God is God, and we are not. The power of God is the healing force that everyone in this room has experienced from time to time. Our medical people are the folks who can help in that effort. God is the one who cures. You and I – our job is to care. We don’t cure. We care. That’s what we do.

 

Carol Luebbering, in a wonderful little article she wrote called “Being Angry with God,” says, “Whether you are healthy or whether you are struggling with illness, keep the conversation with God going. If healing comes, rejoice. Sing, give thanks and praise. But know that on the other hand you may not receive a miracle – the one you hoped for – because miracles, by definition, are rare occasions. They do happen. There’s nothing wrong in asking for it, but they’re rare. Either way, God is the one who never ever lets us go, who watches over us, cares for us, walks with us, even suffers with us.”

 

That’s what this cross you see in front of you that you look at every Sunday is here to remind. 

 

The question today: What disorder, what disease, what unfairness, what evil stirs, inflames your righteous indignation? It’s a good thing. It’s important. It’s real. But today I think it’s good enough for us to see how our Lord models the ministry of healing. 

1.      We are to will healing. That’s our stance. 

2.      We are to touch even the untouchables. 

3.      We are to stand in opposition to disease.

4.      We are to support efforts to eradicate it wherever we find it.

 

Most of all, like our Stephen Ministers and other people in this church, we are to have compassion. We are to move past our righteous indignation and have compassion on those who suffer. We are to be willing to walk beside those who are hurting as a caring Christian friend. We are to be a person who listens, and cares, and prays for, and supports, and encourages. We are to be there with others as a caregiver for as long as it’s needed. This is a service, folks, we can offer anyone in this community of faith this very day. So if you know somebody who needs that kind of care, let us know, because sometimes you are going to be like you are today – a caregiver. But there will come a time in your life and mine when we will need to be a care receiver. 

 

But all of us are invited today and everyday to join that leper in Scripture. Come to the feet of Jesus and simply pray, “If you will, Lord, you can make me clean.”

 

And we all say together… “Amen.”

 

 

Jesus, Master Healer, you come to us when we need you most and, in truth, you were there before we even cried out! Join your heart to ours as we embrace this healing for ourselves, and for others. Like you, may we be at their side with your message of compassion even before they utter a cry. Amen.