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.

Healer of our Every Ill

We are broken people who live in a broken world. “Tell me something I don’t know,” I can hear someone say under their breath. “This is not news!” I have a friend who recently lost his mother. She gave him physical life, carrying him first in her womb and then in her arms. Now she is gone, and he experiences a brokenness that many of us have also felt. Another friend is nearing the end of a ten-year prison sentence. A bad decision in his university years, connected to drugs, has left him in a difficult place, with long-term implications for his life.

Many of us have been broken, but our world too is broken. This past week I read a news story about the head of the EPA in the United States, who wondered aloud if perhaps global warming is good for us. I grew up with Moody Science Films. I remember how they stressed the amazing wonder of the fine tuning of creation. If the earth were tilted on its access a little less or more than it is, or if the amount of radiation we receive from the sun were a little more than it is, or several other variables were not finely tuned, we would not have life on planet earth. God created wonderfully fine-tuned earth, and EPA head Scott Pruitt thinks that maybe we can tune it a little better. Wow!

One could multiply examples: The effects of racism and of consumerism and on and on. We live in a broken world. We know that our brokenness comes from sin because we know that God created a good earth and gave it to us. Human rebellion broke our relationship with God, and as a result we live with the long-term results of human sin (Genesis 1 to 3). We know that God wants to heal our brokenness and give us new life and new joy in a fully restored relationship with God. So, we turn to our passage in Mark 1 to see what God is doing in our lives.

Mark 1: 29-39

Mark begins the story of Jesus abruptly and dramatically. There is no birth narrative, just the announcement that this is the gospel of Jesus the Messiah, the Son of God. John the Baptist bursts on the scene, and then comes Jesus. Jesus is baptised and then tempted in the area near Jerusalem. Then the action shifts north to Galilee, where he preaches the gospel of repentance. He calls his disciples and then begins teaching in the town of Capernaum, on the north shore of Lake Galilee. At the close of the sermon, he casts out an evil spirit, setting the stage for our passage. Jesus went with Simon and Andrew to their home in Capernaum or Bethsaida (about three miles away). There they find Simon’s mother-in-law sick with a fever. Jesus healed her. The news spread quickly. Soon crowds of people, with sick and possessed family members, pressed around Jesus, and he healed everyone who came to him. Jesus left early in the morning, looking for space and silence. Simon and his friends found Jesus and asked him to come back to heal more people, but Jesus went instead on a preaching tour in the surrounding towns and villages. We see two basic points in these verses.

1. Jesus delights in healing people’s brokenness. When Simon’s mother-in-law was sick, he healed her. When people brought their sick friends, he healed them. Jesus healed people physically and spiritually, emotionally and mentally. We can take this as a basic principle of reality: God wants to make us whole. God has made us for an eternity of delight and joy in God’s presence, which includes removing our brokenness.

2. Jesus does not heal for the sake of healing. He said, “Let us go somewhere else—to the nearby villages—so I can preach there also. That is why I have come.” Jesus came to preach the coming reality of God’s reign. God’s reign includes reconciliation and wholeness, but begins with repentance. Therefore, Jesus begins with getting people to think. The healings and exorcisms of chapter one serve God’s purpose in at least two ways – by getting people to acknowledge their own brokenness (repentance), and by helping people start to ask, “Who is this man?” Jesus wants to provoke people to examine themselves and to turn to him. The healings of his ministry meet human need, but they do so in order to do God’s will.

We turn, then, to Job 7.

Job 1: 1-7

You know the story of Job. It begins in the courts of Heaven, with God and the angels. Satan joins them, and God holds up Job as a man of unusual integrity and devotion to God. Satan credits Job’s goodness to a kind of quid pro quo: God blesses Job, and Job praises God. Remove your blessings, he challenges God, and Job will curse you. God allows Satan to remove Job’s possessions, children, and other physical and emotional blessings. As a side note to this morning’s thoughts, you observe that this action lays the brokenness of our world at the feet of Satan, not of God. Nevertheless, God is ultimately in charge, and Job knows it.

Job’s wife says, “Curse God and die” (Job 2:9). Job refuses. Three of Job’s friends come to him. They sit and weep with him for seven days, a remarkable show of support. Then they try to make sense of what has happened to Job. Their explanations reduce to one basic thought: You must have done something wrong. Job defends himself without fear. His conscience is clear. He knows that he has honoured God throughout his life, and he calls God to account.

In the last act of the story, God appears. God does not answer Job’s questions, but says only, “Look at me.” God asks, “Who are you, anyway?’ and redirects Job’s attention to God. Job repents (of what, we wonder) “in dust and ashes” (Job 42:6), and God restores him to full health, with more possessions and children than before. God also tells the three friends to plead with Job to pray for them, because Job is righteous and they are not. They do so, and they all live happily ever after.

Job 7 comes near the beginning of the story. Job is in despair. He knows that life is short and full of pain, and he is ready to die and leave this world behind. He cannot see hope beyond his pain and says, “My days are swifter than a weaver’s shuttle, and they come to an end without hope. Remember, O God, that my life is but a breath; my eyes will never see happiness again.”

From this brief excerpt, we see clearly that any appeal to the prosperity gospel is false. Job suffers even though he is clearly righteous. The friends’ claim that he must have sinned brings down God’s wrath at the end of the story. We see that there are those seasons of life when all that we can see is darkness, when we also say, “I will never see happiness again.”

We see also that God had one primary purpose in all that happened to Job: God’s purpose was (and is) to glorify God. Job’s suffering was a lens to direct everyone who saw to God. God used Job’s pain to respond to the charge that people are only good when God blesses them. However well or however little we understand the pain Job experienced (and I do not understand it at all well), one thing is clear: God’s glory is the final answer to the pain and brokenness of this world.

Synthesis

This point is the connecting point with Mark 1. In Mark’s gospel, Jesus healed the sick to stimulate the question, “Who is this man?” He wanted them to see God. In Job 7, the underlying theme of Job’s suffering (visible only when we get to the end of the story) is that it strips away Job’s defenses until he sees God’s greatness and glory. This does not mean that God breaks us so that we can see God. It doesn’t explain pain and suffering. Rather, this point tells us what happens in our brokenness.

You remember the sermon on the first Sunday of Advent last year. Julia Thiessen told us the First Nations story of the raven. The raven broke the containers of light so that light could stream through the brokenness into our dark world. That is like the truth I’m stating here – that God uses our brokenness to reveal the light of God. 

The Man Who Was Thursday

One hundred and ten years ago, G.K. Chesterton wrote a small book called The Man Who Was Thursday. It’s a strange little book, which Chesterton described as coming from a time early in his life when his ideas about what he believed were quite unsettled and unsystematic. Bear with me while I try to describe it.

Gabriel Syme is a detective who is given the job of infiltrating a circle of anarchists in London, England. The Anarchists want to destroy society, and Syme is recruited by a large man in a dark room to infiltrate the anarchists’ central governing council, which has seven members named after the days of the week. When he tries to join the council, his chief rival is an anarchist named Gregory, a real anarchist. Syme is elected over Gregory, and he joins the council as Thursday. The head of the council is Sunday, who calls a meeting to plan a political assassination, but instead tells the council that one of them (Tuesday) is a traitor and a policeman. He expels Tuesday, threatening him with destruction if he ever talks about them. 

After the meeting, Syme is followed by one of the others, who also turns out to be a policeman, recruited by a large man in a dark room to infiltrate the anarchists. One by one they uncover each member of the council, from Monday to Saturday, and find that they are all policemen, recruited by the same large man in a dark room. They realise that Sunday is the large man in a dark room, and pursue him all around Europe and England, going through agonies and danger that threaten their lives and almost destroy them. Finally, they catch up with Sunday in a mansion in the English countryside, where they are each given a room and bath to clean up, and then they join Sunday in a great banquet. They have suffered greatly together, and now they sit down to eat with their tormentor. As they eat, they realise that Sunday represents both God and the One who has led them into great danger – much like Job. As they talk during the banquet, Gregory, the real anarchist, walks in and challenges all of them. I read now from the book. 

There was complete silence in the starlit garden, and then the black-browed Secretary, implacable, turned in his chair towards Sunday, and said in a harsh voice—

“Who and what are you?” “I am the Sabbath,” said the other without moving. “I am the peace of God.” 

The Secretary [who was Monday] started up …. “I know what you mean,” he cried, “and it is exactly that that I cannot forgive you. I know you are contentment, optimism, what do they call the thing, an ultimate reconciliation. Well, I am not reconciled. If you were the man in the dark room, why were you also Sunday, an offense to the sunlight? If you were from the first our father and our friend, why were you also our greatest enemy? … Oh, I can forgive God His anger, though it destroyed nations; but I cannot forgive Him His peace.” …

[Each member of the council makes his complaint in turn and Sunday replies.] “I have heard your complaints in order. And here, I think, comes another to complain, and we will hear him also.” …

“Gregory!” gasped Syme, half-rising from his seat. “Why, this is the real anarchist!” “Yes,” said Gregory, with a great and dangerous restraint, “I am the real anarchist.” 

“‘Now there was a day,’” murmured [Saturday], who seemed really to have fallen asleep, “‘when the sons of God came to present themselves before the Lord, and Satan came also among them.’” 

“You are right,” said Gregory, and gazed all round. “I am a destroyer. I would destroy the world if I could.” … You are the Law, and you have never been broken. … … I do not curse you for being cruel. … I curse you for being safe! … Oh, I could forgive you everything, you that rule all mankind, if I could feel for once that you had suffered for one hour a real agony such as I—” 

Syme sprang to his feet, shaking from head to foot. “I see everything,” he cried, “everything that there is …. It is not true that we have never been broken. We have been broken upon the wheel. It is not true that we have never descended from these thrones. We have descended into hell. … I repel the slander; we have not been happy. I can answer for every one of the great guards of Law whom he has accused. At least—” 

He had turned his eyes so as to see suddenly the great face of Sunday, which wore a strange smile. “Have you,” he cried in a dreadful voice, “have you ever suffered?” 

As he gazed, the great face grew to an awful size, grew … larger and larger, filling the whole sky; then everything went black. Only in the [darkness] he seemed to hear a distant voice saying a commonplace text that he had heard somewhere, “Can ye drink of the cup that I drink of?”

Conclusion

Chesterton expresses something beyond our understanding here. God comes to us most clearly in our brokenness and vulnerability. When we are broken and accept our brokenness, we find Jesus, who was broken on the cross. We live, someone has said, in a cross-shaped world. In the darkness of systemic racism, we find Jesus. In the loss of the mother who first carried us in our arms, we find Jesus. In the fear that I feel when I think of the way that we abuse the earth, we find that Jesus is there – not there in our abuse, but there in our fear. I can embrace the darkness of our broken world, because there I find the light of Jesus.

Remember Mark’s gospel. Jesus loves to heal. God loves to heal. He is the healer of our every ill. Jesus is the great healer who comes to us in life and in death and gives us life, life deeper than all the pain and suffering of this world. The path to healing is the path of the cross.

This week we begin the season of Lent – the path that leads to the cross, and therefore also the path of our healing. Jesus is indeed “healer of our every ill.” I love this time in the church’s year, in which we find that our deepest fears are the place where God is most at work, bringing to birth “joy unspeakable and full of glory.”

“Healer of our every ill, light of each tomorrow,

Give us peace beyond our fear, and hope beyond our sorrow.”

Steinbach Mennonite Church

11 February 2018

Texts

Job 7: 1-7

7 “Do not mortals have hard service on earth? Are not their days like those of hired labourers? ² Like a slave longing for the evening shadows, or a hired labourer waiting to be paid, ³ so I have been allotted months of futility, and nights of misery have been assigned to me. ⁴ When I lie down I think, ‘How long before I get up?’ The night drags on, and I toss and turn until dawn. ⁵ My body is clothed with worms and scabs; my skin is broken and festering.

⁶ “My days are swifter than a weaver’s shuttle, and they come to an end without hope. ⁷ Remember, O God, that my life is but a breath; my eyes will never see happiness again.”

Mark 1: 29-39

²⁹ As soon as they left the synagogue, they went with James and John to the home of Simon and Andrew. ³⁰ Simon’s mother-in-law was in bed with a fever, and they immediately told Jesus about her. ³¹ So he went to her, took her hand and helped her up. The fever left her and she began to wait on them. ³² That evening after sunset the people brought to Jesus all the sick and demon-possessed. ³³ The whole town gathered at the door, ³⁴ and Jesus healed many who had various diseases. He also drove out many demons, but he would not let the demons speak because they knew who he was.
³⁵ Very early in the morning, while it was still dark, Jesus got up, left the house and went off to a solitary place, where he prayed. ³⁶ Simon and his companions went to look for him, ³⁷ and when they found him, they exclaimed: “Everyone is looking for you!” ³⁸ Jesus replied, “Let us go somewhere else—to the nearby villages—so I can preach there also. That is why I have come.” ³⁹ So he traveled throughout Galilee, preaching in their synagogues and driving out demons.