Epiphany 6
February 12, 2006
Rev. Andrew Walmisley

Jesus cleanses the leper. It’s important to consider how this is not merely a healing miracle, but one that involves a broad constellation of things: ritual uncleanness, fear, danger, the breaking of time-honored religious taboos, and, above all the touch of the untouchable – all of which pushed Jesus beyond the tightly devised boundaries of the religious system of his time. Uncleanness was a contamination, akin to radiation, that was communicated from the unclean person or object to the otherwise ritually clean individual. In a culture that valued community above all things, the possibility of being cast out of community was too horrible to contemplate, for your very humanity was constructed in relation to your place in the community. To be rendered unclean meant that in a very real sense, you ceased to exist and so it behooved you to do whatever the Law required to get yourself ritually clean again. It could involve a variety of rituals prescribed by the priest, such as taking special baths or offering certain sacrifices. But certain things and people remained in a perpetual state of uncleanness: foods, such as pork and shellfish; the shedding of blood in menstruation, rendering all women potentially unclean; the uncircumcised gentile; and the leper, whose skin disease might have been the classic leprosy known as Hansen’s disease, or any number of skin cancers or other dermatological conditions.

Jesus “stretches out his hand and touches the leper.” Can we honestly understand how earth-shattering this gesture of absolute compassion really is? By touching the leper, Jesus not only risks contracting the terrible disease himself (which was erroneously thought to be highly contagious), but places himself outside the community of Israel by rendering himself unclean. Jesus is an iconoclast who shatters every notion of religion governed by ritual observance; a revolutionary who shifts the concern of God from cultic obligation to passionate and, one might say, promiscuous love – promiscuous because God’s love is lavish and indiscriminate in every possible way. There are no outsiders to God’s love and this is the essence of the life and teaching of Jesus, whose identity shifts from being Messiah of a people to the Saviour of the world. By touching the leper, embracing the stranger, and offering full inclusion to women, he knew that he was placing himself outside his own faith community, while at the same time pushing “community” to a startlingly radical, universal new level of meaning.

Why, then, are we so afraid to touch one another? And here I don’t necessarily mean hugging each other during the passing of the Peace! I mean, really reaching out to one another with the same kind of unabashed and fearless love that Jesus showed to the likes of the leper? The fact is, that so many of us feel like we are the leper, untouchable and unlovable. If we reach out to others, they may reject our love, which is what most of us feel we deserve anyway. But, be fearless in loving, sisters and brothers, because you are the Beloved of God, loved with an unconditional and undying Love! This fact alone should liberate you to show others how much you love them! Perhaps we are afraid to touch others because we have been touched in hurtful, inappropriate, or violent ways and fear that we are unclean and will pass this uncleanness on to others in some way. Fear not, Beloved of God, for God loves you into healing and renders all clean. Your compassionate touch will cleanse and heal others too.

I have begun to realize that my recent diagnosis of prostate cancer has given me the gift of bringing to a startling and beautiful clarity the depth of my love for Christ and others. I am reminded of the little plaque my old Welsh grandmother had on her wall: “I pass this way but once. Any kindness or good deed that I may show to others, let me do it now, for I shall not pass this way again.” And so, I now have a deeper longing to touch others with my love: to embrace my children with deep affection and tell them how much I love them; to show Jonathan on every day how I cherish him and thank God for his presence in my life; to be more attentive in my love and presence to you all and to my friends, as well as to the strangers I encounter each day. Jesus teaches us that our loving must break down every barrier and be fearless in its expression. We were, after all, put here to love, and “we pass this way but once.” How fearless are you in the expression of your love? Now is the time to “stretch our your hand and touch” with the love of Christ all whom you meet on this journey of life. Start with your friends and family – and don’t wait until it is too late!

But there is another important lesson that we may learn from the story of Jesus and the leper. In his fearless commitment to compassion, he was willing to challenge the inhumanity of his religion – he was a toppler of idols, an iconoclast, in standing for the higher truth of the Gospel of unconditional Love. Indeed, Jesus was a heretic of sorts, a courageous questioner of conventional wisdom and of all previously accepted orthodoxies. He wrestled with God and tradition and chose death over conformity to either the political vision of Rome or the religious rigidity of the Jewish leadership of his time. Just as he was willing to touch the “unclean” leper and reveal the radical compassion of God, he was willing to reach out and “touch” the religious assumptions of his people and risk the terrible consequences. And since his time, the people we admire most have been unconventional – men and women willing to push the religious envelope and bring the Church closer to a true and honest vision of God. Think of St. Paul, Athanasius, Francis of Assisi, Julian of Norwich, Martin Luther, John Wesley, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Martin Luther King, Mother Teresa, Desmond Tutu. All of these men and women have wrestled fearlessly with God through the night and prevailed, opening up for us all a grander, less tribal or exclusionary, understanding of the nature of God in Christ.

While I deplore the mocking of anyone’s most deeply held convictions, I am firm in my commitment to freedom of expression. I believe that Islam is made weaker when people choose violence in response to perceived threats to the untarnished truth, just as the mission of our own Christian faith is weakened by those who would suggest that evolutionary theory is a threat to the belief in a Creator-God or that the inclusion of more people in the institution of marriage weakens Christian marriage.

I am proud and inspired to be part of a community that is willing to reach out and touch any kind of “sacred cow”; that questions relentlessly all assumptions about the truth; that believes that doubt holds the key to a honest faith. We are Jacob wrestling the angel through the night, constantly asking questions, getting few answers, but making it to a brighter and truer dawn. We are Jesus, reaching out to touch that leper, perhaps not knowing the consequences of that touch. How will we be changed if we dare to touch one another with love? To let them in to touch us with their love. What in us will die if we open our hearts to the stranger or outsider and bring him or her in? How will it be for us to see our old idols of religiosity or morality toppled? Are there any questions too dangerous to ask? In truth, the depth of our faith will be measured in the final analysis by the degree to which we have the courage both to love and to question fearlessly.