David Orendorff        Mark 1:40-45        February 15, 2009

By every rule in the book Jesus should not touch the leper.  At the time it was believed that leprosy was very contagious.  Spiritually the leper was someone obviously cursed by God, or so the good religious folk thought.  The leper was someone that no one should be with, let alone touch.  But in an ever widening circle of mercy the leper is touched by Jesus and included in the kingdom of God.

I am going to show you a picture of a leper.  Those of you with soft stomachs may want to look away.  This is not a particularly gruesome picture; I thought that might be too much.  And I am only showing this one picture because more than one is certainly too much.  But the fact that I felt the need to warn you and even felt the need to limit your visual exposure to leprosy attests to the repulsion we experience around lepers.

This is early leprosy.  Leprosy’s proper name is Hanson’s Disease and it is a bacterial infection whose source is uncertain.  Currently there are an estimated 6,500 cases of Hanson Disease in the US and half a million worldwide.  It is a rare disease and currently very treatable.  95% of us are immune to Hanson’s disease and it is rarely passed from person to person.  A fun fact is that the nine banded armadillo is the only other animal susceptible to Hanson’s disease.

What makes leprosy so repugnant is that it is so visible.  In the first century many skin diseases were categorized as leprosy and the consequence was social ostracism.  Until the mid twentieth century lepers had to live out of town, often in caves or camps as colonies.  Currently there remain only a few leper colonies in the world.  Such treatment is now seen as unethical.  I like to think we Christians had something to do with these ethics.

In Jesus day and for a long time following, if a leper absolutely had to come near others, or should others inadvertently come near them, they were to ring a bell and shout that they were unclean.  There was no known cure, but if the leprosy should disappear then Leviticus 14:2-32 offered a quite specific and elaborate process that would permit the leper to return to their family and village.  It is this process to which Jesus refers when he sends the cleansed leper to the priest.  But note he says this is a proof for the people of the leper’s cleanliness, not a proof to God.

The physical disaster of leprosy is compounded by its social disaster.  Being cast from church, family and village, even from God if Leviticus has its way, removes from every human what they need most, loving contact.  Not only does the leper suffer the agony of the disease, they suffer the agony of being alone in their disease.

To be a leper means to be untouchable.  I have heard sermons in which all kinds of images are used for the untouchables from the victims of AIDS or cancer to the severely mentally ill and the homeless panhandler.  I think of the reaction of some people when Tent City, a moving homeless encampment, or a halfway house for sex offenders is brought to their neighborhood.  We know our lepers.

I found a cartoon which says it well. A man is standing in the hallway talking through the door to, I presume, his wife - “Since I went broke people seem to avoid me, as if I had an infectious disease…  Am I overreacting?  Susan?  Susan??!”  Susan is putting on a sterile, surgical mask.

And leprosy isn’t just what others suffer; it can be our suffering as well.  In each of us is a shadow side, a leprous self that we hide from others in fear they will reject us and send us away from church, family and village. I am not going to dwell on it because just to mention it is enough.  If, for this, you think the kingdom of God is not for you, you are wrong, very wrong.  The kingdom of God includes you fully, even your shadow.

Wanting something visual for the sermon I went looking online for a picture of Jesus healing the leper and found an 1864 painting by Jean-Marie Melchior Doze.

What interested me more than the painting was that I found it on the blog site of someone identifying himself as Godinla.  Godinla writes of himself, “Drifting like a speck of dust. Used to be a viable member of society.  Now, just filling a seat in the game of life.”  And he offers this poem on his social leprosy:

I am contagion.

I am vile pestilence.

I am epidemic.

I am scourge.

I am plague.

I am calamity.

I am affliction.

I am die Seuche.

I am virus.

I am suffering.

I am suffering.

I am sadness.

I am sad.

Where is Jesus when you need him?

Jesus touches Godinla when somoene reaches out and writes on his blog page, “You are not any of those things.”

Jose Ramirez Jr. tells his story of being a leper in his book “Squint: My Journey with Leprosy.” Jose’s interview can be found in the archives of NPR.[1] In 1968 Jose was in high school and was diagnosed with leprosy.  He was then forced to live in the last leprosarium in the U.S. at Carville. LA. He speaks eloquently of how the residents told him their stories of “lost love, lost families and lost hopes.”

There is a Jesus touching in Jose’s story.  The village at Carville feared the adolescent Jose would grow hopeless and so they adopted him as a son and gave him reason to love and hope anew.  Lepers touching lepers (as it most often is) made the leprosarium a home and the kingdom of God for Jose.

And there is further redemption in his story.  When he returned home he was afraid that he might somehow infect his brothers and sisters and they too would have to experience what he did in lost love, lost family and lost hope.  So one morning, to protect them, he set to marking his eating utensils so his siblings wouldn’t use them.  Jose could barely speak through his tears when he told how his mother seeing and understanding what he was doing came to him, grabbed the plate he was holding and broke it on the ground saying, “Please, never do that again.”  Jose’s mother brought him fully home, touched him with the Holy Spirit and included him in the kingdom of God.

Why does Jesus touch and so many of you touch lepers in spite of the strong social and religious taboos?  Our scripture says Jesus was moved with pity.  I need to spend some time with the word “pity.”  For us, pity often has a condescending sense.  But the word being translated, splagcnisqeis, in no way carries that sense of pity.  I have talked about splagcnisqeis before because it is one of my favorite words.

Splagcnisqeis is a compound word indicating a movement of the life giving parts of the body.  It’s that funny feeling you get in your lower abdomen when moved to act by compassion.  It is the Holy Spirit in us, moving us to care.  What Mark is saying is that when Jesus encountered the leper he was more moved to give life to the leper than he was inhibited by the social and religious laws that make the leper an outcast.  The Holy Spirit cares more about healing life than controlling life; more about ways to include than the need to exclude.

Someone felt splagcnisqeis for Godinla and touched him. A village of lepers felt splagcnisqeis for Jose and touched him.  Jose’s mother felt splagcnisqeis for Jose and touched him.  At some time someone has felt splagcnisqeis for you and touched you.  And dollars to donuts you have felt splagcnisqeis for someone and touched them.  It is the Holy Spirit moving us to be the kingdom of God that touches and heals lepers; that restores the outcast to family, church and village.  It is the every growing circle of the kingdom of God moving in us as the Holy Spirit to give life.

If you are now feeling the movement of the Holy Spirit in you, the desire to give the touch of life, I invite you during communion to come to the altar or cross and pray God’s power to give life will be in you.  And if you are feeling the need to be touched by Jesus, come to the altar or cross and say in the privacy of your mind, “Lord, if you will, you can make me clean.”  But whatever you do as you eat the bread and drink the cup, trust with all you are that the power of the kingdom of God; the very Spirit of God enters you, cleanses you and makes your touch holy and healing.  Trust with all you are that the Holy Spirit is in you and your loving touch brings the outcast home.

Last week I spoke of how in Mark’s gospel the kingdom of God is an ever expanding circle, including larger and larger groups.  The good news begun when the Holy Spirit enters Jesus at his baptism has now spread well beyond his disciples, church, family, village or region.  This circle has grown to those who are included in no group, who are in fact excluded from every group.  In healing the leper Jesus has let all those who have been told to stay out that they are now to enter into the kingdom of God; that God’s healing grace is for them and that they are the vessel of the Holy Spirit for others.

The time of the Lord is fulfilled, the kingdom of God is at hand; change your pessimistic mind, trust the good news.

Shalom and amen.

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[1] http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=100121791&sc=emaf