"I do choose," Jesus says, to you (and those people, too)

Jesus stops along the way in this Sunday's reading from Mark to heal a leper who had confidence that Jesus was there even for him.  Jesus crossed the boundary separating this person with leprosy from the rest of society.  It is a hard truth that we create boundaries between us and other children of God all the time.  Yet Christ is in the business of breaking down those barriers, and drawing us all closer.  Christ reaches out to you, wherever you are, crossing whatever barriers separate you, to say, "I do choose" you!

6^th Sunday after the Epiphany (Year B) – Sunday, February 12, 2012

Christ Evangelical Lutheran Church, Lancaster, PA

Texts: Mark 1:40-45

In 1939, a young, German Lutheran pastor named Dietrich Bonhoeffer boarded the last ship that left New York for Germany before the war began. From any reasonable point-of-view, he was going the wrong way. After all, he had fled the country in the first place for a good reason. He just couldn't stop telling people that the church is about this Savior we have, Jesus Christ, and the way that he just can't help but bring people together when we seem determined to drive them apart. In his native Germany, the church had been effectively taken over by the Nazi regime, and its proclamation was made to serve Nazi theology. Bonhoeffer's insistence that Christ was actually not about world domination and racial purity put him in very dangerous waters.

I speak of something I didn't live through (some of you did live through it), but it seems to me that there is hardly a more stark example than the Holocaust of how we make lepers out of each other. You might be wondering what I'm talking about. Making lepers? Isn't that a disease that you get or are born with, or something? Well, yes, it is a disease, a skin disease that physically and spiritually dominates people. In Israel, there had always been a law about lepers. That's right. You couldn't go near them. They had to live outside of town. You definitely could not touch them. Why? Because it would make you unclean, according to laws which are in the Bible. It would make you unfit to enter the temple or to worship God. It was assumed by many that lepers, or their parents more likely, had done something to deserve their fate. You just didn't go near those people.

So obviously, we can't literally make people turn into lepers, and why would we? Well, maybe we need lepers in our lives. Maybe we need people to push away, so that we can be in the center of things. After all, for us to be on the inside, there has to be somebody on the outside. Hitler needed a pervasive enemy, one that was among the people and all around them, against which he could rally the German people to his cause. Enter the Jews. But, tragically, we cannot for a moment forget that we have done, and continue to do the same thing, all the time. No, we're not killing people, of course. But we are making lepers out of them. Our society justified the systematic enslavement of an entire race, so that another race could grow more crops for less money. We're the ones who speak of bad neighborhoods so that we can be reminded that we live in good ones. We comfort ourselves that we are natural-born citizens by speaking of immigrants. We remind ourselves that we are saints by speaking of sinners. There have to be bad guys in order for there to be good guys. As it turns out, we need lepers in our lives. And if we can't find them, we're pretty good at turning people into them.

We can't say for sure why God told the Israelites that lepers, and many others, were ritually unclean and unfit to worship God. Holiness as God's chosen people out of the nations was the chief concern. Here today as Christians, we're obviously concerned about holiness also. But if our holiness requires the dehumanization of others, that is, turning people into things, that is, making lepers out of them, then our holiness has little to do with the holiness of Jesus Christ. It is clear that in Jesus, God is calling us to holiness not by separating the so-called “holy” people from the lepers, but by together seeking after the kingdom of God. 

 

The story of Jesus is the story of God's reckless love. It's the story of a love so great that it forgives all sin. It's a love that also reveals just how broken we all are. We cannot live up to God's standard. We're not going to stop turning other children of God into lepers. It's what we mean when we say, “we are in bondage to sin.” So the grace of God was powerfully revealed when the leper approached, not too quickly, taking each painful step, likely receiving not-so-kind warnings to stay away from the famous rabbi. Somehow, someway, thanks be to God, the leper trusts that this rabbi will be different. “If you choose, you can make me clean.” I know you can do it. Jesus is not moved with disgust, or moved away by the stench, but he's moved with compassion. “I do choose. Be made clean!” I do choose. You.

Jesus, our Lord, our Savior, didn't need to push people away. He didn't need to feel like he was on the inside and somebody else had to be on the outside. He knew he was held in the very center of his Father's heart. Through Christ, you are as well. “I do choose,” he said, to break down this crusty, old barrier held up by fear and hate. “I do choose,” Christ says, to show you what love is all about. I do choose. You. Even when we choose to keep making lepers out of people.

But this decision, this choice to embrace the leper, was not without consequences. Like any real choice, there was a cost involved. Jesus hoped this man would keep this healing to himself, after all he had places to go and many towns in which to share this message about God's kingdom. But of course the leper couldn't keep it to himself! He proclaimed it freely so that Jesus could no longer go into a town openly. The crowds would envelop him. The crowds were beginning to attract attention from people in high places. They kept Jesus out in what this translation calls “the country,” but could just as well be translated, “lonely places,” or “desert places,” or “wilderness.” At the end of this story, the leper on the outside is brought in to the town and the great teacher is forced from the towns to the outside, to desert, lonely places. 

 

Jesus chose to stop for the possessed, and the sick, and the dying, and the lepers, and the prostitutes and tax collectors, sinners all. Jesus accepted the cost of merging the inside and the outside. He was willing to bear the consequences of refusing to push people away like we do, in our brokenness. He was willing to stand alone, as the disciples rejected him and then deserted and denied him, one by one. On the cross, Jesus said, “I do choose” to each and every one of you. 

 

What if we honored Jesus' choice? What if we chose to live as if Jesus really chose each and every person on this earth? What if there are no good guys and bad guys, no natural citizens and illegals, no Americans and Iranians and Russians and Dominicans and Palestinians, just people for whom Christ died? What if there are no saints and no sinners, just people who are at the same time both sinners and saints, people who have fallen short of the glory of God but are now justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus?

If we were to think that way, and live that way, it might cost us, like it cost Jesus. Surely at times we will run away from this cost. Dietrich Bonhoeffer had an idea of what it could cost him, yet ignoring the desperate pleas of his friends and colleagues, he got on that ship and went back to Germany, where people needed to hear about this Jesus who had nothing to do with ghettos and gas chambers. He was executed in April 1945 after helping start the Confessing Church which proclaimed the Christ who chooses all people and drives away no one. It probably won't cost us our lives, thank God, but following this Jesus often bears a cost. When we follow Jesus to those whom we make lepers – to the immigrants, the poverty-stricken, the prisoners, the drug dealers, or even just the young people who seem to live in a different world than us – when we follow Jesus to them, we will likely pay a price – in reputation, or in money or possessions, and in how we see ourselves. We might ourselves be pushed outside, to lonely places. But there we will not be alone. When we separate ourselves by continuing to push others away, we will not be alone there either. We will find ourselves in the company of our Lord Jesus Christ who was crucified outside Jerusalem with criminals. At the crosses in your lives, with those our world crucifies, you will find this God, whose grace is sufficient for you, whose power is made perfect in weakness. Amen.