A Trusting Moment: Jesus and the Leper

Trust. It’s a good word. We think of “trust falls”, in which someone closes their eyes and falls backwards, trusting the rest of the team to catch them. We think of living with difficult decisions, made possible because we trust the people who made the decision. There are also times and situations in which trust has been broken and lost. Illustrations from life abound. Trust is basic to life, and lack of trust makes life hard to live.

But what happens when trust is broken? How can we learn to trust again once someone has betrayed our trust? If we have failed someone else, how can we rebuild trust so that they can trust us again?

The questions become more difficult when the church and our faith as followers of Jesus are involved. Some people find it hard to trust God because they have been hurt by someone in the church. Difficult life situations can leave us feeling as though we cannot trust anyone, even God. God has done all that can be done to heal our broken trust: God sent Jesus, God’s Son, who died on the cross in our place. What more could God do to demonstrate God’s love? However, the question remains, how can we learn to trust God again? How can we learn to trust other people again?

These questions are in my mind as we reflect on the Scripture passages this morning and ask what God is saying to us through our reading of “God’s Word Written”.

Psalm 32

This is called “a psalm of David”. So many of David’s psalms refer to this kind of experience: “While I kept silence, my body wasted away through my groaning all day long. For day and night your hand was heavy upon me; my strength was dried up as by the heat of summer.” We don’t know the specific situation – whether it was while he was on the run from King Saul and feeling as though he would never escape, or whether it was one of his family problems after he became king. Whatever the situation was, David felt that he could not trust anyone; his problems were overwhelming, and he cried out to God for help.

David assumed that his troubles were his own fault, so he confessed his faults to God and asked God for help. He described the result this way: “Therefore let all who are faithful offer prayer to you; at a time of distress, the rush of mighty waters shall not reach them. You are a hiding place for me; you preserve me from trouble; you surround me with glad cries of deliverance.”

This may be our experience also. When we get into trouble so that others no longer trust us, we can confess our fault. God forgives us and restores us, and in time our friends and acquaintances may also realize that we are now worth trusting. But what happens when the situation is not our fault? What then? Consider the story from Mark 1, a brief passage about the healing of someone with a debilitating skin disease.

Mark 1

Our translations normally refer to the healing of a leper, so I observe briefly concerning the disease itself. Leprosy today is a skin disease that did not exist in the Near East during the time of the Old Testament. The “leper” in our story would have had some kind of skin condition, ranging from a case of what we might call eczema to something really disfiguring. The basic problem came when the sore was oozing and the liquid was held to be contagious and unclean.

Modern leprosy is mildly contagious and (among other things) can destroy the nerve endings in limbs. Until recently there was no good treatment for it, and people could lose fingers or toes to fire because they had no feeling in them. Lepers used to be treated in isolation wards, but today someone with the modern disease can live an almost normal life.

Leprosy in the OT – the variety of skin conditions covered by the Levitical Law – was not necessarily physically debilitating, but it made the person with the skin problem ritually unclean. Since an oozing sore could contaminate others in the community, they had to remain separated from everyone else – a little bit like people today who must spend two weeks in quarantine when they return from a cross-border trip. The community would care for the afflicted person, but the afflicted one could not come into the synagogue and worship with the rest of the community until they were again “clean”.

We do not normally think in these categories: Ritually clean and ritually unclean. It’s hard for us to wrap our minds around them.  Truth to tell, we do use them, although we don't use the language and may not understand them. When we shame people for views that don't fit our narrative, or when we engage in cancel culture, we are using this way of thinking, in which the person we shame becomes unclean and must be avoided lest they contaminate us with their uncleanness.

We also meet these categories in Canada today through other religions and cultures. I teach World Religions at Providence, and I take students in my class to visit various places of worship in Winnipeg. When we go to Shaarey Zedek in Winnipeg, a conservative synagogue across the river from the legislature, I see a sign that “holy objects” such as the special clothes one wears to Sabbath prayers (a yarmulke or prayer shawl, for example) should not be taken into the washroom. Although they would not become physically unclean, they would be in some sense spiritually contaminated.

Similarly, when we visit the mosque in Winnipeg, we remove our shoes before we enter the prayer hall – a matter of ritual “cleanness”. Muslims today observe these categories carefully. I heard of one Muslim family in which they held that men should not touch women before going into prayers, so – in order to annoy her brother – a young girl in the family would touch him just before he went into prayers. Then he had to go and do a ritual washing to be “clean” again.

Most of us don’t use the language of clean and unclean, but the people in Jesus’ day saw life this way. People with this skin condition were “unclean” and contact with them made others unclean. Such people normally lived outside the village and avoided contact with people until the condition was healed or went away. We can overstate their exclusion – their families cared for them and loved them; but to be called “leper” was a bad thing. The passage begins, “A leper came to him, begging him …”: These are the words of someone who has become desperate because of his affliction.

Observe the sequence that follows.

1) The leper says, “If you want to, you can heal me.” 2) Before he answered at all, Jesus reached out and touched him. 3) Jesus says, “Of course I want to. Be healed (clean).” 4) Immediately the sufferer is healed. 5) Jesus gives him two instructions:

• Don’t tell anyone what happened. (Right! How can he possibly avoid telling what happened? We call this “the Messianic secret”. Jesus knew that people were looking for a miracle-worker as the Messiah, and he kept quiet about his identity so that he could teach his disciples more about the Messiah as a suffering servant.)
• Go to the priests so that they can verify your healing and you can rejoin the community. Jesus heals him physically and spiritually and communally.

6) The healed man started to tell his story over and over, and Jesus retreated into seclusion to continue his ministry with his disciples.

Application

Come back to our question: How do we rebuild trust/learn to trust again once trust has been broken? What does this encounter between Jesus and the “leper” teach us?

When the problem lies between us and God, the Psalm tells us to bring our brokenness to God. In God there is healing and new life. The story in Mark 1 tells us how a broken person learns to trust again. The sufferer calls out to Jesus for help. That is one basic step required to rebuild trust: Admit the problem. Name the brokenness. Ask for help.

In the gospel reading, the broken man asked Jesus, the Messiah, for help. Our opening hymn this morning contains the words, “We are each other’s bread and wine.” That is, we are the Body of Christ to each other. Some churches have a confessional booth where the broken person can confess to a priest, who then acts and speaks on behalf of Jesus. In Anabaptism, we act on behalf of Jesus for each other. The “priesthood of all believers” means that any one of us can act as a priest for any other. Sometimes people think that it means we are a priest for ourselves and that we approach God directly without any human help. We do indeed have direct access to God: It is a wonderful gift. But more importantly, we can confess our brokenness to each other, and our brothers and sisters mediate the presence of Christ to us.

The first step, then, is that the broken person admits their brokenness. That admission – calling out as the leper in Mark did – leads to an equally important response. Note what Jesus did. Even before he spoke words of healing, “Jesus stretched out his hand and touched him.”

Separated by a pandemic that has tortured “huggers” by forcing them to stay six feet away from people, some of us are hungering for a hug. I think this leper was like that. For months, perhaps for years, no one would touch him, because touching him would make them also ritually unclean. Jesus ignored such fears and reached out and touched him. This simple act of acceptance spoke more than any words could have. The leper says, “If you want to, you can heal me.” Can you hear the anticipation of rejection in his voice? “No one wants to help me. I am an outcast! I am worthless!” Jesus’ first action is to remind him, “I love you. I care for you. You are valuable!”

The second step, then, is to respond to the broken person with simple acceptance, with a simple demonstration of that person’s value – whether it is through a handshake, a hug, a high five, or any other action that communicates clearly, “You are valuable, and I care about you.”

This communication comes from each of us as individuals and from all of us as a community. Another of our favourite hymns says it clearly:

Heart with loving heart united, met to know God’s holy will./ Let his love in us ignited more and more our spirits fill./ He the Head, we are his members; we reflect the light he is./ He the Master, we disciples, he is ours and we are his.

May we all so love each other and all selfish claims deny,/ so that each one for the other will not hesitate to die./ Even so our Lord has loved us; for our lives he gave his life./ Still he grieves and still he suffers, for our selfishness and strife.

Since, O Lord, you have demanded that our lives your love should show/ so we wait to be commanded forth into your world to go./ Kindle in us love’s compassion so that everyone may see/ in our fellowship the promise of a new humanity.

We reach out in love and acceptance individually and corporately, because the truth is that we are all broken people, and we all need to learn to trust again.

Step One: Admit our brokenness. Step Two: Accept the broken one openly and fully. Then there is a third step. Rebuilding trust is a lifelong process, and it is frankly impossible without divine intervention. Jesus touched the broken man, and then he did more. He healed him. Healing and saving were not two different things in Jewish thinking. By saying “Be clean,” Jesus was saying also, “Be whole.” That is one reason he sent him to the priests to be pronounced clean: That pronouncement meant also that he could worship with God’s people in the synagogue. He was restored to right relationship with God and with his community.

Step Three, then, is to embrace this lifelong process of building trust within our community. Trust-building is a hard and time-consuming process, but when it is done right the effects are remarkable. In an essay titled “Sesame and Lilies”, John Ruskin wrote the following:

During the [riots] of 1848, all the houses in Paris were being searched for firearms by the mob. The one I was living in contained none, as the master of the house repeatedly assured the furious and incredulous Republicans. They were going to lay violent hands on him when his wife, an English lady, hearing the loud discussion, came bravely forward and assured them that no arms were concealed.  “You are English, we believe you; the English always tell the truth,” was the immediate answer, and the rioters quietly left.

The English people no longer have this reputation, but in the 1800s this was indeed how they were known. This took place at the height of the influence of the English Evangelical movement and is a remarkable testimony. When rioters leave quietly because they trust the speaker, you can see how powerful trust is. Equally, when we break trust, it takes time to rebuild it. We work at this as individuals and as community, and as we work God does the miracle of making us clean.

The broken and healed man couldn’t keep quiet about what had happened to him. That’s another sermon, but you can see it coming: God’s action in and through us is the source of our witness to the world. God’s healing is a spark of divine fire that warms up the whole world around us.

28 June 2020

Steinbach Mennonite Church

Texts:

Psalm 32: 1-7

The Joy of Forgiveness

Of David. A Maskil.

 ¹Happy are those whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered. ²Happy are those to whom the Lord imputes no iniquity, and in whose spirit there is no deceit.

³While I kept silence, my body wasted away through my groaning all day long. ⁴For day and night your hand was heavy upon me; my strength was dried up as by the heat of summer. Selah

⁵Then I acknowledged my sin to you, and I did not hide my iniquity; I said, “I will confess my transgressions to the Lord,” and you forgave the guilt of my sin. Selah

⁶Therefore let all who are faithful offer prayer to you; at a time of distress, the rush of mighty waters shall not reach them. ⁷You are a hiding place for me; you preserve me from trouble; you surround me with glad cries of deliverance. Selah

Mark 1: 40-45

Jesus Cleanses a Leper

⁴⁰ A leper came to him begging him, and kneeling he said to him, “If you choose, you can make me clean.” ⁴¹ Moved with pity, Jesus stretched out his hand and touched him, and said to him, “I do choose. Be made clean!” ⁴² Immediately the leprosy left him, and he was made clean. ⁴³ After sternly warning him he sent him away at once, ⁴⁴ saying to him, “See that you say nothing to anyone; but go, show yourself to the priest, and offer for your cleansing what Moses commanded, as a testimony to them.” ⁴⁵ But he went out and began to proclaim it freely, and to spread the word, so that Jesus could no longer go into a town openly, but stayed out in the country; and people came to him from every quarter.