Jesus heals
Sermon for the 6th Sunday after Epiphany, year B
Bible reading: Mark 1:40-45
Since the 6th January, the church has been journeying through the season of Epiphany. Epiphany shows us the manifestation of God’s Son Jesus. In other words, this is the season where we witness Jesus in action – his dramatic baptism in the river Jordan, his salvation revealed to Jew and Gentile alike, his miracles, and his glory revealed briefly on a nearby mountain top.
Christmas had Jesus passive, a mere baby in the hay. Yes, there were amazing things going on around him, unprecedented things, but he slept through most of it.
But now, in his early 30s, he is kinetic. He is vocal. And his words and actions reveal much about the man. They assure us that he is, can only be – as was becoming increasingly obvious – the very Son of God.
Again today, Jesus speaks. He acts. Another layer of mystery is peeled away and we hear and see God at work in the world. On this occasion Jesus bumps into a man who is suffering from a terrible disease. This ought to be interesting. The man has leprosy.
Now in that time and place, if you had symptoms of this disease you didn’t first go to a doctor as you would these days. You would be required to go and show yourself to the priest. And if the priest confirmed that you had leprosy, you would be pronounced ‘unclean’. But it didn’t end there. An unclean person was not allowed to be in the temple or synagogue. In fact a person with leprosy was to keep away from people altogether!
And so it was with this man. He was shut out from the worshipping community, excluded from society. If he had any friends at all, they were fellow diseased outcasts. He had the humiliation of an unsightly disease. Lesions and nodules would have accompanied the tell-tale pale patches of skin. His disease would have been made worse by burns and open wounds, the result of nerve damage. Imagine arranging hot coals on a cooking fire or handling utensils near boiling water with no sensation in your hands. You are an accident waiting to happen.
What’s more, this man had yet another added humiliation. He had to cover his upper lip and yell “Unclean! Unclean!” as a warning to anyone who happened to be passing by.
Now do you see how wretched his life had become? More lonely, more humiliating than a person living with HIV/AIDS in society today.
But Jesus passes through his turf one day. And the man dares to approach him. If Jesus were any normal person, he’d back away. He’d recoil and make a wide berth. He’d have nothing to do with this ‘untouchable’. But with the man at his feet imploring him for healing, our Lord does the unthinkable. He touches this leper. He touches the untouchable. The man is healed, made clean again.
What did Jesus do that day? He cured a man of leprosy – right? And so Jesus shows that God is compassionate, that he is both willing and able to heal.
But look closer yet. What did our Lord really do? He took hold of this man, this outcast, this untouchable, and re-united him with the people of God. Not simply by thrusting an unclean man back into the synagogue, for that would hardly have helped the poor wretch. No, Jesus actually made it possible for this man to return in accord with the law by restoring him to cleanliness. He rejoined that which was broken and separated. He returned this estranged man to his true place of belonging – with the communion of saints. This miracle of healing was not just of life or limb, but of the whole person. It was a soul cure.
And that is what Christ has come to do in the world. Many say he was a great teacher. He was all of that, but so much more. Many say he was a great prophet. He was all of that too, and then more.
During these weeks of Epiphany, we not only discover who Jesus is, we also find out why he made his appearance. He came to bring back the strays. He came to return you to your true place of belonging. He came to bring you back into the arms of a loving and compassionate God.
This event speaks to us, because once we were outsiders, spiritual ‘untouchables’ because of the leprosy of sin. We were alienated from God, and outcasts from the moment the first humans were cast out from Eden. Once we were all ‘no people’, as Peter puts. Now we are God’s people.
You see, sin is not just being cheeky or mischievous. It is a serious disease. It takes what God designed and created for dignified purposes, and insidiously destroys it. Like a scorching bushfire, it reduces lives and property to charred rubble and ashes. Sin makes a most unsightly and wretched mess of everyone. It casts us away from God, and violently divides humanity. And we all struggle with its symptoms daily.
But God send his Son Jesus to cure us from this disease, and bring us back. He has redeemed us .That’s what the word means – to be brought or bought back. Luther put it so brilliantly in his explanation to the 2nd article of the Creed:
Jesus Christ has redeemed me, a lost and condemned person, purchased and won me from all sins, from death, and from the power of the devil; not with gold or silver, but with his holy, precious blood, and with his innocent suffering and death…
We marvel at our Lord’s power over a terrible and debilitating disease. The deeper disease of sin is no more beyond his power to heal. The result is redemption and people are brought back to God.
A Christian is someone who has been brought back to God through the words and actions of Jesus Christ the Son. Faith is that which welcomes these wonderful reconciling words and actions. And despite its increasing hedonism and secularism, Australia still has some of the marks of its Christian background. The overwhelming outpouring of support for bushfire victims is evidence that a benevolent and philanthropic God has formed our thinking.
But that cannot be sustained apart from fellowship with God and his church. More and more we are seeing people severed from the city of God. Now, there are two types of people who you will find outside the community of God’s church.
Firstly there are those who will not be healed. They choose to ignore Christ. I am reminded of our Lord’s grief over Jerusalem when he said, O how often would I have gathered your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you would not!
(Matthew 23:37).
But then there are those who long to return, but feel unworthy. They feel they cannot. Sin has labelled them ‘unclean’, and their consciences torture them with sores of guilt and remorse. They are spiritual untouchables in their own eyes. They see themselves as beyond hope.
Such people need to know that Jesus is not repelled by them. He does not recoil when they call on his name. They need to look at the example of the leper, and to seize the same faith and hope that dares to fall at Jesus’ feet and cry, If you will, you can make me clean.
They need to hear our Lord’s immediate response to their plea: I will; be clean.
Without a doubt God wills your well being. He wants to make you clean. He doesn’t need time to consider the gravity of your particular case. He doesn’t require you to try every other avenue first or struggle through an arduous workout of penance beforehand. Penitence is good. It’s the attitude of sorrow because of one’s sins. But because Christ has paid the price, penance can give way to the simple prayer of faith. In Christ, God meets us where we are, in our humiliating, embarrassing, unclean state. He takes us just as we are. The hymn writer of Just as I am knew this astoundingly good news:
Just as I am, and waiting not
To rid my soul of one dark blot,
To Thee whose blood can cleanse each spot,
O Lamb of God, I come.
And so, fellow healed lepers, join with me today in returning to God’s presence with thanksgiving. And by all means tell the world if you wish! To be sure, Jesus had instructed the healed leper not to make a big hullabaloo that day, for the work of his ministry would have been hindered by a sudden rush of sensationalism. But now that his work is done, make this good news known to a nation, to a world that needs to be brought home, back into a living fellowship with God and his people, never to be cast out and alone again.
And as for heaven itself, there we will be forever with the Lord. There and then our limiting and injured temporal bodies will be restored to perfection and be completely devoted to the praise of God. No more evidence of the leprosy of sin. Rather, in Augustine’s words in City of God:
There will be such poise, such grace, such beauty as become a place where nothing unbecoming can be found.