Bellarmine University
“We Do Not Think Like God”
Rev. Ronald Knott
February 15, 2015
Moved with pity, Jesus touched the leper.
Mark 1:41
I have never met a person with leprosy, but I have visited the tomb of St. Damien the Belgian leper priest of Molokai, Hawaii. However, I have known several people who have died with AIDS and who were treated like lepers. This was especially true twenty-five years ago. I was called several times to do those funerals by people I had never met, because I had the reputation of being the pastor of a church where everyone was welcomed.
Some families were so embarrassed by how their family member died that they made up some other excuse about the cause of death. Other families were so embarrassed that some members did not even attend those funeral.
The reason they asked me was the fact that I would, at least, not preach hell and damnation over their family members. I was often moved with pity, not so much that someone died – people die all the time - but that people, not only lost a loved one, but also had to go through an unnecessary and painful embarrassment because of a disease.
I am proud to say that I started the first parish fund-raiser here in Louisville, a downtown dessert festival went on for about 25 years, to assist those who were abandoned by their families.
Nazareth Home across the street was the first nursing home to invite AIDS patients in Kentucky. The ignorance surrounding AIDS has subsided, but it has not gone away. The members of the small Westboro Baptist Church in Topeka are still carrying out their gay-hating demonstrations at funerals of people who have died from complications relating to AIDS, gay victims of murder and even American servicemen.
Leprosy was the AIDS of ancient Israel. Leprosy, like all diseases back then, was seen as punishment by God for sin. The Book of Leviticus tells us how horrible the disease itself was, as well as how horrible people’s response was to it. Leprosy was not only a painful, disfiguring disease that led to the loss of extremities, one by one, over a twenty or thirty year period. Lepers were required to wear ripped clothing, to shave their heads, to cover their faces and to call out “unclean, unclean” when they saw someone coming so that people could run away from them. Lepers were required to live apart, in caves and cemeteries. Besides that, both the leper and the people around him believed it was God’s punishment for sin. So the leper not only had to suffer physical and emotional pain, but worst of all, had to endure it cut off from society and die believing that God hated him as well.
It is against this background, this history and these rules that Jesus’ words and actions stand out in bold contrast. Jesus did two things that would have been shocking in his culture: moved with pity, he touched the leper and spoke to him. Only a pariah would understand how important those two things really are. Think about it: being sick and slowly dying with no one to touch you or talk to you for years because you and everybody else believed God hated you for something you had done - maybe you didn’t even know what it was! When Jesus touched the leper and talked to the him, that in itself must have carried a healing as powerful for him as the physical healing itself. By touching him and speaking to him, Jesus reconnected this man to his dignity in God’s eyes, as well as well as his own and those watching.
The leper must have heard about the compassion of Jesus because we are told that he took the risk of approaching Jesus on his knees, instead of warning him away as was the custom.
By healing this man and many other rejects of society - the blind, the crippled and the mentally ill - Jesus taught the crowd that a disease is just a disease, a handicap is just a handicap, not some punishment from God for sin. Getting people in those days to believe these things took a miraculous physical cure. The God that Jesus embodied was a compassionate and loving Father, not some kind of super sadist god with a chip on his shoulder! In his miracles, the message of God’s love is more important than the physical cure, spiritual healing is always more important than physical healing.
What can we learn from the cure of the leper? The thing that Jesus taught us here and everywhere in the gospel is that all of us have worth, no matter what condition we are in and we will be judged by how we treat each other. Jesus did not fix every person he came upon, and neither can we, but he did teach us how to notice each other, to do what we can to reverence and respect every person, especially the weakest and most vulnerable among us, and to be the touch and voice of God himself.
The lepers of our day and time are the elderly, the mentally ill, the handicapped, the imprisoned, the diseased, foreigners, and the poor. In our society, the rich, the beautiful, the capable, the popular, the well-connected and the healthy are worshipped, while the old, the handicapped, the sick, the failures and the poor are often isolated, ignored, shunned and relegated to the margins. It is to them, especially, that Pope Francis says we must go.
One of the earliest and most enduring teachings in all the Scriptures is the teaching that “we are our brothers and sisters keepers.” That teaching is repeated in hundreds of ways throughout the Bible. St. John says, “If we say we love God and hate our neighbor, we are liars.” The whole point of the Good Samaritan story that Jesus told his disciples is that we be inspired to do the same for each other, regardless of who it is or what condition they are in. St. Paul teaches us that “the member of the body that is most hurting should get the greatest care from the other members.” Jesus told those who would hind behind pious religious duties that “it is not those who say “Lord, Lord,” but those who do the will of God.” He goes on to tell us that when it comes to our final judgment, “As long as you failed to do it for one of these least ones, you failed to do it for me.”
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