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Epiphany 6 – Year B

Preached on February 12, 2012

At St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Brookline

The Reverend Jeffrey W. Mello

 

2 Kings 5:1—14; ; 1 Corinthians 9:24—27; Mark 1:40—45

 

Today’s readings point out how, all too often in our search for God, in our quest for wholeness, we can end up looking in the wrong direction all together. In seeking these things, we tend to look up. Because we have imagined heaven up there somewhere, we look up for God. When we plan our careers, we dream about moving up. Social ladder climbers climb up.

 

I wonder if the reading from Kings and the Gospel from Mark don’t invite us to shift our perspective all together, and invite us to take a step down the ladder. I wonder if they don’t invite us to take a step away from where it is we think we should be, and perhaps a step closer to God.

 

I was aware of the ladder we are all on from a very early age. Most vividly, I remember Jimmy Collins. He was a classmate of mine in Junior High School. Now, I was sort of thin and not very athletically inclined but Jimmy was smaller, and even less athletic. While I did pretty well in school, Jimmy was really smart. I was well behaved, most of the time but Jimmy was so well behaved they made him a hall monitor.

 

Because of the social ladders that seem to dictate most of our Junior High School experiences, I was pretty low on the social ladder. But Jimmy was lower. And as long as Jimmy was one rung lower than me on the ladder, it was Jimmy, and not me, whose books got flipped. It was Jimmy, and not me, who got pushed into lockers. And because I was so busy looking up the ladder, seeking approval from and striving to be like those I saw as above, I was silent in any defense of Jimmy. I’ve never been able to shake the thought of what I might have lost from not turning around and seeing Jimmy, from not connecting with someone who shared my ineptitude at all things athletic, from not providing one another community rather than the isolation those above were trying to enforce.

 

We have all spent time on those ladders, and we still do. There are those we see as below us, and those who we see as above. While we may not act towards those below us the same way we did in Junior High School, we often find ways of reasserting our place above them. Instead of names, to those below us we hurl pity. Instead of pushing them into lockers, we push them into the margins.

 

And maybe those above us on the ladder now aren’t the captains of the football teams, or the most popular kid in school. But maybe they are the ones we think have all the luck. Those living the lives we aspire to. Those who have the things we covet.

 

What’s the next rung on your ladder? Chances are it’s a step closer to those above you, and a step away from those below.

 

It’s not hard to imagine the rung below us. They are the ones we create institutions and systems and neighborhoods for; to separate us from them.

 

Microsoft is getting a lot of flack, with good reason, for a new app they developed. This new feature, nicknamed the “avoid ghetto” app, will tell pedestrians when they are approaching an unsafe area, and give them alternate routes. While Microsoft says the app will use crime statistics, it doesn’t say which ones.

 

But I’d venture to guess it won’t protect me from places where insider trading and domestic violence are the prevalent crimes. It isn’t too far a stretch to imagine this app will be able to be customized based on any statistic available through the census bureau. Imagine, planning your day trying to avoid any group of people you want.

 

But even without an app or a smartphone, we do everything in our power to separate ourselves from those who represent what we are trying to move away from those who are so different from us. Different from us and not, we think, in a good way. Different in a way that challenges us and scares us. Different in a way like they have something we might catch. Different like someone with leprosy.

 

Naaman is in quite a pickle. He is a great warrior and brought his country, Aram, to victory over Israel. Now he has leprosy. His servant, a young girl from Israel suggests he go to see the prophet in Israel for healing. What is he supposed to do? Find healing in the land they conquered? Seek divine intervention from the God their God defeated? But he is desperate, so he goes.

 

To make himself feel better to goes to the King and brings along silver and gold and fabric; some of which they probably took from Israel in the first place. He lowers himself to see the King of Israel, but gets sent to the prophet. He lowers himself to go to the prophet Elisha, but is greeted by Elisha’s messenger. And then the deal-breaker. He is told by the messenger to bathe seven times in the Jordan and he will be healed. No way, he says. If bathing is all it takes, he will bathe in the rivers in his homeland, thank you very much. As he is about to turn on his heel and leave, when his servants convince him to bathe. Finally, he takes the advice of his servants. And he is healed.

 

For Naaman, healing, restoration to the community, a return to wholeness comes not from Kings, not from up above the ladder, but from the very lowest rung of all.

 

So, too, healing comes from the lowest rung in the Gospel of Mark. Although this story is called “the healing of the Leper” and, indeed that is what happens, I believe Jesus, too, experiences a profound healing and sense of wholeness in this interaction. Remember just last week? Jesus heals Simons mother-in-law and leaves town before things get out of control. Suddenly Jesus finds himself out on the margin.

 

As he tries to escape the crowd, he hears a voice, “If you choose, you can make me clean.” I imagine Jesus stops. He takes a deep breath. He turns and sees this man, on his knees begging to be made whole. Cast out of society, this man is at his most vulnerable. At a time when this man needs his community the most, he is isolated and left to his own fate.

 

Jesus is so moved by this, he cries out in anguish. The translation that comes to us as “moved with pity” can also be translated “with great anger”. I think it was both. In a moment when Jesus is feeling marginalized, when he is trying to escape from the great need behind him, he is confronted with the true reality of marginalization, and he is angered at the brutal truth of how people are being treated in the name of God.

 

So He touches the untouchable. He breaks every rule and risks being ostracized himself by those who had been his followers up to this moment. He risks all that. He changes all that, with a touch. “I do choose”, Jesus says. And in that moment, both of them, the Christ and the Leper are restored to wholeness. They are both renewed in their purpose. Both of them embark on spreading the Good News of God to a world that is facing in the other direction.

 

Maybe we need to seriously consider who we have placed above us on the ladders of our lives. Maybe we need to turn around and see those whom we have placed below and ask ourselves how it is they might reveal something about what it is we need to be healed. What we need to be made whole.

 

Maybe, in order to do this, we have to climb down the ladder all together, so that we are not relating to one another from above or below, but on equal ground, standing together on holy ground.

Imagine if we didn’t have to spend so much time and energy hanging on to the ladder, but had both hands free to do God’s work in the world. If we had others to do it with, not above us or below us, but beside us. Nothing less, and nothing more, than brother and sisters in Christ, each of whom have the potential to heal us. Each of whom have the capacity to make us whole.

 

Let us take a step down the ladder, a step toward God, who waits for us, and who chooses to make us whole.

 

AMEN.

 

 

 

© 2012 The Reverend Jeffrey W. Mello