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.

Part Four: Some Applications

I continue to ask myself, how can I interact with those whose positions are radically different from my own, as well as those with whom I disagree mildly, and do so in a respectful way. Here are three basic steps in point form. All of this is incredibly elementary; anyone who has worked seriously with conflict management would find my ruminations so basic as to be laughable.

But we are in a time when no one is laughing. Instead, we are mocking and taunting and trying to other our opponents – political or otherwise – out of the public square altogether. With that situation in mind, I offer these beginning steps, not exhaustive, but indicative of the kind of respectful communication we need.

1.   Assume that the other person has something worthwhile to say. Even if he/she is badly wrong overall, assume that the person you are speaking with is reasonably intelligent and has seen or heard some need that their position expresses. Consider the issue of poverty. 
            Some conservatives tend to assume that liberals or progressives are blind about the realities of life. Begin by listening to the progressive you know and ask why they are so passionate about any given position. As one young progressive burst out in my presence, “I hate poverty!” She had seen enough of what poverty does to children to hate it – rightfully so. One cannot dismiss that passion lightly without losing a Christian awareness of the justice of God.

Some liberals tend to assume that conservatives care only about their pocketbook. Begin by listening to the conservative you know and find out what really moves them. You may find (as I have) that they also care about the poor and that they are willing to mentor those who find themselves trapped in poverty. They see more value in the personal approach than in dealing with structures.

            Both positions have merit. Lyndon Johnson’s War on Poverty did not work. I spent a summer in the projects of San Francisco and saw the way that personal worldviews trap people even when the government gives them “a hand up”. I am not an economist or a political scientist. I do not know the precise shape that dealing with poverty should take. But I am reasonably sure that action requires personal involvement à la conservatism and structural change à la a liberal perspective. We do better to hear each other than to destroy each other.

2.      Assume that the other person is not wrong about everything. This is the converse of number one. C.S. Lewis has observed that to be wrong in every respect would take more than normal creativity. He is right. But often in today’s polarized conversations both sides speak as thought the other side has no contribution to make. Liberals/conservatives are always wrong!

Donald Trump did not originate this destructive attitude, but he has perfected it in his drive in the White House to undo anything that President Obama did. It seems sometimes as though his policy is driven by the principle, “If Obama said or did it, I am against it.” Such an approach makes for a reactive and destructive administration.

Progressives can be just as destructive in their approach. When Franklin Graham’s Samaritan Purse showed up to help fight the pandemic in New York City, many progressives tried to have SP excluded from the work to care for those afflicted with the coronavirus. Instead of banding together in a common cause, they made it clear that Graham was not an acceptable human being and could not share the city’s space with them.

To both sides I say: Assume that your opponent is sometimes right. Trump is not clever enough to be wrong about everything. For all that he was a university professor type of President, neither is Obama clever enough to be wrong about everything. Humanize the other! Recognize God’s image in the person across from you. Assume they are sometimes right, because they are!

3.      Don’t assume you know the other person’s motivations. I read somewhere that a Democratic Senator from Montana gave that advice to his successor, crediting it with helping him to work successfully as a Blue Senator in a Red State. I would amend it to add the word “meaning”: Don’t assume you know the other person’s motivations or meaning – especially after only one statement.

I read many comments in social media that are brilliant in the acerbic biting wit. The contain enough acid to destroy any good will between people, but they do not contribute to understanding. Instead, we can ask questions for clarification: “Did you mean what I think you mean?”

Like the first two, this basic principle is not confined to one side or the other in any conversation. We assume sometimes that what we said is so clear that the other must have understood it. Unfortunately, what the other understood is not what we said. And vice versa. This point is a basic communication principle that I have heard given in marriage counselling. It is worth using more broadly than just with one’s spouse.

Such steps will not fix our problems, but they may help create a climate in which we can move towards constructive action. I think of the national conversation in the USA and in Canada following the killing of George Floyd on the streets of Minneapolis.

Some people are convinced that anyone who does not embrace Black Lives Matter are racists. If such people are your friends, take time to listen to them; ask what they mean; probe deeper to be sure you do understand; don’t assume they are racists; treat them with respect. You can state your own position clearly, while listening to their position respectfully. There is a reasonable possibility that you may find they were more right than you thought and that you agree with each other more than you expected.

Some people are convinced that anyone who does embrace BLM are socialists (at the least) and more likely communists, bent on destroying American and Canadian society. If such people, who do embrace BLM, are your friends, ask what they mean; probe deeper to be sure you do understand; don’t assume they are racists; treat them with respect. You can state your own position clearly, while listening to their position respectfully. There is a reasonable possibility that you may find they were more right than you thought and that you agree with each other more than you expected.

A closing thought: This approach requires an open and vulnerable spirit. Not everyone will accept such engagement. Some people will flame you. We dare not attack back. This approach also means that we accept our ideas may change. Americans and Canadians have come to value the ability to not change one’s mind. I believe that such “strength” is a chimera, a fable, a failure of imagination. Instead, we are growing all of our lives until we die. Open and honest conversations help us stay alive. Refusing to change, ever, just means that we die before we die.