The Rev. Carol S. Wedell
February 15, 2007

I have a question for the children and youth here today.  Do you find it easy to approach a teacher to ask for help?  Do your parents encourage doing so?

In my experience, many of us learn in childhood not to ask questions.  Oh, not directly.  Directly we are told that "there is no such thing as a dumb question."  But all it takes is another student overhearing and saying, "you didn't get that???" in utter amazement, or an exasperated look from a teacher as she says "I've gone over this several times in class already" and it will be a long time before the next question is asked.

It only gets harder when we need more than a question answered.  Many, if not most adults find it difficult to ask others for help.  As I heard one of you say this week, "But I was taught to believe that I don't need help to handle my problems!"  In many parts of western culture we are encouraged not to name our desires out loud, or to be audacious enough to ask for the things that we need. Yet most parents, (Mark and I included), try to empower their children to speak for themselves, to be self-sufficient, but also to learn how to find their own voice and appropriately ask for help that may be needed.

As a woman going to seminary in the late 1970's, I quickly learned that I needed to find my own voice and use it, or pack my bags and go home.  At that time women comprised about a third of the student body, and there were plenty of men who thought we had no place there.  I don't think I realized until a few years ago what an impact that made on me.  I recently heard a young female seminarian say, "we really don't like talking to women who were ordained 25 or 30 years ago - they are all so angry!"  Ouch!

It didn't take long in the parish to figure out that chronic anger wasn't a particularly helpful resource for ministry.  However, it did come in handy early on when I needed to advocate for myself.  I was probably 28 or 29, the first woman on the staff of a large church in Indiana.   I had been asked to co-coordinate a special worship service with an Episcopalian colleague down the road.  Not surprisingly, I don't remember his name, so we'll call him Ron.  Ron was a bit older than me - but not much, maybe 35 or so.

Ron and I met in my office to begin planning the service.  We made some headway and then agreed that we would meet again in a couple of weeks.  I walked out of my office with him and said goodbye, to which he replied, "Good-bye honey."  To say that I was stunned is an understatement.  He was gone before I finally picked my jaw up off the floor.

I went and vented to one of my other colleagues and decided that would never happen again.  The next time Ron and I met, we finished the details of the service, and as he walked out I said in a calm, even voice that didn't betray my trepidation, "And Ron, don't ever call me "honey" again. Only my mother or husband have the right to call me that."

Don't get me wrong.  There are plenty of parishioners, generally older than me, that occasionally call me by some term of endearment, and mean it quite sincerely.  I'm not offended by that.  But his use of the word "honey" had quite a different meaning.  He was attempting to put me in my place, saying in not so many words,  "I'm the one in charge around here.  You don't belong."  The problem was that I knew that I did belong, that my place was around the same table as everyone else.

Today's short, but familiar story from the gospel of Mark has a similar theme.  A leper comes to Jesus begging to be made clean.  Leprosy, what is correctly called Hansen's disease today, was the most dreaded disease of the time.  Most of the time in Jesus' day it was not actually Hansen's disease, but any kind of skin disease - eczema, psoriasis, or even a simple rash.  Those who had it - that is any kind of problem with their skin - were literally kicked out of town and out of people's lives.  The lived in miserable little clusters with other "lepers" on whatever tidbits of food might be thrown to them.  It's likely that more of them died of starvation than from the disease.

Obviously, this was not merely a physical problem, but a spiritual, emotional and mental problem as well.  They were not allowed to worship.  They could have no contact with their family.  Fred Craddock describes the leper's loneliness, living as "a corpse haunting the edges of the community he could no longer enter." So if you had leprosy you lost everything - job, family, place in the community - everything. 

People with leprosy were cast out because of very specific Jewish laws.  Here's what we read from the book of Leviticus:  "The person with the leprous disease shall wear torn clothes and let the hair of his head be disheveled; and he shall cover his upper lip and cry out, ‘Unclean, unclean!'  He shall remain unclean as long as he has the disease.  He shall live alone, his dwelling place shall be outside the community."  Likewise, anyone who touched a person with leprosy was considered unclean.  Being unclean meant being removed from the community, barred from the Temple, and an elaborate and potentially expensive series of rituals and sacrifices was required to be made clean again.

From where we sit it may be easy to consider these laws as harsh.  But they were not cold-hearted.  They were intended to keep the Hebrew people safe and stable.  So people with leprosy kept their distance, miserable in every way. 

But this man with leprosy does something quite different.  He doesn't stay away and call out "unclean! unclean!".  Modern and ancient ‘leprosy' are not identical, but they have much in common: dread, stigma, alienation.  Shockingly, this man blatantly disregards the biblical rules: he approaches Jesus. It is surprising that he wasn't stoned.  Can you imagine as he makes his way through the crowd?  An instant path would be made available to him, as everyone tried to avoid contact with this contaminated man.  But Jesus doesn't go with them.  Instead, he stays right where he is.

It's interesting to me that Jesus is not the initiator here.  Rather, the one with leprosy, who knew quite clearly that he was breaking the law, was desperate enough to make his way to Jesus. He advocates for himself.  He has the audacity to ask for help.  He refuses to submit to the stigma and the segregation. The person with leprosy acts with incredible vulnerability - such that it startles us if we think about it.  That much openness is almost frightening.  We wonder if we would have that much courage.   The man is not voiceless.  No, he calls out to Jesus, "If you choose, you can make me clean."

Literally, the man is calling Jesus to his side, a repeated calling.  The Greek word here is used as a prayer of plea for help.  The words chosen are very important.  Notice that the man with leprosy did not say, "if you choose, you can make me well."  The man asked for "cleanliness" which would have given him a way back to the world and life for which he longed.

The scholars cannot agree on the word used concerning Jesus' response.  Different manuscripts vary from compassion, pity or anger.  What is clear is that all of these are "gut" responses are from the center of Jesus' being.  Richard Swanson says, "Jesus felt his stomach turn."

Notice what Jesus does.  He not only speaks the word of healing which we know would have been enough.  No, Jesus reaches out his arm and touches the man, saying, "I do choose.  Be made clean."  And all of the broken parts of this man are made whole again.  Boundaries are crossed; issues of power are addressed; unclean becomes clean; the sick become whole.  With that one provocative touch, Jesus places himself in the firing line of those who were at home in the world of rules and an established and accepted system, that routinely treated people as "less than human" and threw them away like trash.

Who are the people treated as lepers today?  We could point to some - people with AIDS, folks who are homeless or poor; addicts or individuals with certain forms of mental illness.  They certainly understand what it means to be shoved to the side, ignored, and left out on the fringes of community.  So do folks with various disabilities, as the world is unprepared to make the accommodations that would enable them to be full participants. In today's fragile economy, more and more folks are finding themselves on the outside looking in.  All it takes is one catastrophic illness and all financial plans are out the window, and (with not too much bad luck) any one of us is out of our house and on the outside edge of a community that had been our home. We could so easily find ourselves on the margin, too, where most folks wouldn't want their lives to touch ours.

What are we called to do?  Bring more food for the Foodbank?  Great idea.  Donate time or money to facilities that work with the homeless?  That's good too. Sacrifice some of our luxuries so that others might have basic necessities?  A good way to go.  Even more we are called to disregard the barriers that keep us at arm's length.  As followers of Jesus we are called to embody the same kind of compassion and engagement with people as he did:  unafraid to touch the untouchable, to be open and welcoming to folks who are "different," to cross unnecessary barriers that supposedly keep us "safe."

But there is a deeper truth, isn't there?  For on some level all of us have been like the man with leprosy.  You see, he isn't the disease, he isn't a leper - he is a human being, who happens to have that particular disease. We aren't cancer or arthritis, or knee pain.  We are people who may struggle with those illnesses or situations. All of us are in need of healing, or wholeness. Is there anyone here who hasn't been bruised by the damage of labels due to gender, medical condition, or simply the hurtful terms of childhood?  "Sissy."  "Nerd."  "Chicken."  "Fatty."  "Weird."  "Stupid."  "Stuck-up."  "Clutz." " Idiot."  And that doesn't count the names I won't use here in church!  I would guess that the vast majority of us have been, to some degree, defined by those who have rejected us.  "Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me!"  Right.  Those bold words don't stop the hurting heart, or the pain of being excluded and left out.

Here is the good news, my friends. When the man with leprosy knelt down before Jesus it was far more than his skin that was scarred.  He was desperate to hear words of inclusion:  "Yes!  I am a human being.  Yes!   I am a beloved child of God!  Yes!  I am worthy of being a full member of the community!  "Yes! I am a person capable of giving and receiving love!  Yes!  I want to be touched and to touch others, and not have them pull back in fear.  Yes!  I am a creature shaped by God's own hand and filled with the breath of the Spirit!  Yes! God looks at me and says, Yes, yes, yes!" (with thanks to Thomas Troeger for the bulk of this dialogue).

The man with leprosy had the audacity to ask Jesus for what he needed. He found the courage to risk that Jesus would accept him.   And he was given back his life.  The same is available for us, if we but ask.  For as Jesus reached out and touched the man with leprosy, his grace and healing are available to us, as well.  If you have never felt that type of healing touch, I encourage you (actually I encourage all) of you to come to the Service of Healing and Wholeness, Sunday evening, March 1^st.   The healing love of Jesus was not reserved for the 1^st century.  It is available to every one of us.

As followers of Jesus, it doesn't end there.  For while we are all like the man with leprosy, as Christians we are empowered by God to carry on the work of Jesus here and now. We are called to be God's partners in the quest for wholeness whether it relates to our own lives, the well-being of others, the health of congregations, or justice across the globe.  We are called not only to have the audacity to ask for what we need, but to speak for those whose voices have been drowned out, and empower them to ask for themselves.

Do we have the audacity to ask?  By God's grace may it be so!