"Hearing, Seeing, Feeling"
Up close with Jesus.
Sermon Preached by
The Rev. Dr. Andrew Stirling
Sunday, January 28, 2007
Text: Mark 1:40-2-12
It is uncanny how one mistranslated word, one misunderstood phrase, one digit in the wrong place can make all the difference in the world to how we understand life and how we carry on our lives. Not long ago, a friend of mine told me how he had called at 1-800 number to purchase something from a magazine. He dialled the number, only to find out that what he had called to purchase was to be paid for by the minute and not by the object! He had called 1-900 not 1-800! Poor man, he is still recovering!
Then, I thought back to an ad on television when I was in Bermuda. It was an Air Canada ad, trying to entice us to come to Canada and it had a little jingle at the end. I thought it was rather catchy, although I never quite understood it. When one day my father announced that we were going to Canada on vacation and were flying via Air Canada, I felt a little uncomfortable. So, I got on the plane with some degree of fear and trepidation, and headed to Montreal.
We landed in Montreal, and all my fears were allayed. It was a lovely landing. Everything was fine. What was Air Canada thinking, putting that ad on? Well, a 10-year-old boy had misunderstood. You see, the ad had said, “Come fly Air Canada and see our vast new land!” But I heard, “Fly Air Canada, and see how fast you land!” I had had visions of blown tires as we arrived in Montreal - just a slight misunderstanding, but one that had caused me sleepless nights for weeks!
Well, in the 12th and the 13 centuries, many people who were re-reading St. Jerome's Latin translation of Isaiah 53, that famous passage that talks about the suffering servant in the future being “afflicted and cursed,” read his translation as “afflicted with leprosy and cursed.” (For a thousand years, leprosy had been seen as the most terrible disease).
The Crusaders were among these readers. They assumed that Jesus must have been a leper. They read all the passages about his being an outcast, and being crucified outside the city wall, and how he had no place to lay his head, and they made the assumption that Jesus was a leper. As a result of that assumption, the Crusaders created what they called “lazar houses,” after the person of Lazarus. Wherever the Crusaders went, they set up these houses as places where lepers could find relief and camaraderie and healing. By the end of the 13 century, there were 2,000 lazar houses in France alone. Such was the commitment of the Crusaders to try to help the lepers, because they believed that Jesus had been a leper.
The Crusaders literally interpreted that wonderful line from the Gospel of Matthew, “Whatever you had done for the least of one of these, my children, you have done for me.” All of this on the basis of one mistranslated and misunderstood word! And yet, there is a profound truth in what the Crusaders did. For all the mistranslation and the misunderstanding, the healing of lepers was very much a part of the ministry of Jesus, even though there is absolutely no evidence to suggest Jesus himself was one.
In today's passage from the very beginning of the Gospel of Mark, Jesus performs two healings. The first is the healing of a leper, and the second is the healing of a paralytic. Now, in both cases, Jesus follows a classic procedure that Mark captures. First of all, there is a request of Jesus to do something. Secondly, there is Jesus' response, by word or by touch, to the request. Third, there is the healing itself. And fourth, there is wonder and awe on the part of people about what Jesus has done.
This classic text follows the same procedure in many ways: Jesus performs the miracle and he heals the leper. But, he also tells people not to say anything about it, to keep it to themselves and to hush it up. You see, he feared he would be seen as just another miracle-worker, just another healer among many others. The fear was that everyone would come to him just simply to be healed and nothing more. In other words, his whole ministry would be wrapped up in one function, rather than in proclaiming the kingdom of God, which was the very nature of its existence.
The second concern that he had and it was understandable, was that it would derail his ministry in Galilee. If that was all he was seen to do, with large crowds gathering and following him, it would derail everything else that he had to do in his Galilean ministry, and he feared that this one issue would dominate everything.
He was also concerned attention would not be placed on the fact that he was doing God's work, but that the attention would be to him, as the person. He was worried that everything would become about the messenger and not the message. Attention would be centered on him, and he feared that the ministry would degenerate into just a crowd following a superstar through the streets of Galilee, rather than them listening to what he was saying. That is why he wanted to keep it a mystery.
But did it work? No! Because, no sooner had he performed this miracle, than the people became full of awe and wonder, and they had to tell everyone what Jesus had done. They were overwhelmed by his ministry, and they wanted to let the whole world know. No matter how much Jesus wanted to keep it a mystery, he couldn't. His miracle was too great, and word was getting out!
What is it about these miracles that make them so meaningful for us today? What can we glean from what Jesus said and did, for our own understanding of his ministry and of ours? Well, first of all, there is no question that we see revealed in these healings the power of Jesus' touch. The leper comes to Jesus and says, “Jesus, if you want to, make me clean.” Mark tells us that Jesus reached out to him in his unclean state. He responded to him.
Now, this must have been an amazing thing to do, because, if you were a leper in the time of Jesus, you were an outcast in every single sense of the word. You would have been in isolation not only physically, but also spiritually. You would have had little or no human contact. And, what do we read? Jesus reaches out and he touches the leper.
At the time, leprosy was a very horrible disease. In fact, the leprosy bacilli deadens the nerves and the nerves in the hands and the feet would completely die. One reason lepers would lose fingers and toes, hands and feet, is that they had no sense of touch, no sense of feeling, and they would damage themselves and not know it. They had no contact with the world around them, so when Jesus reaches out and touches them, he is doing something radical.
The great Dr. Paul Brand, who for years was a Christian missionary doctor in India, tells a story of how, when he went to a colony of lepers, he wrapped his arms around one young leper and gave him a big hug. All of a sudden, the leper began to cry, and he looked terrified. Dr. Brand said to one of the translators who spoke Tamil, “What have I done to this man?”
He replied, “You have done nothing wrong. You just don't understand that never before in this man's life has anyone ever touched him. He doesn't know what to do. He is overwhelmed.”
That is what leprosy was like, and is like (although we call it Hansen's disease today). It is a terrible, dreadful disease and you are an outcast in every sense of the word. The Book of Leviticus says, “If you have leprosy, you are not to live in the confines of the city, but outside the walls.” If you were a leper, you could not go within six feet of a person who was clean. If you were a leper, you had to wear a shroud, as if you were going to your own burial.
Yet Jesus reached out and touched this leper! What a risk he took in doing so! He risked his very reputation: At the beginning of his ministry he was reaching out to the unclean. It could have derailed everything Jesus was trying to do. He was associating himself with a person who had a horrible stigma in society and who was a spiritual and a moral reject, and Jesus risked his reputation by touching him.
He risked becoming ill himself. People had no real idea how leprosy was contracted, but they suspected through touch, and that was why they kept lepers at a distance, for fear of it spreading. When Jesus touched the leper, he had no idea what was going to happen. Jesus took a risk because the religious people were around and they were saying “Don't touch! Don't touch!” Jesus, nevertheless, reached out and touched him.
And the leper risked much also. The leper could have reached out to Jesus to ask for healing, and could have been left unhealed. He could have reached out to the Son of God and been rejected by this man, this Jesus of Nazareth. Nevertheless, in his desperation, he said, “If you are willing, would you make me clean?”
In the 19th century, there was a great violinist from Norway called Ole Bull. He played in all the great theatres and concert halls of Europe from Vienna to Paris to Rome. He was known throughout the world for his brilliance and his famous touch with the violin. One day, he went for a walk in the woods in his native Norway, and he got lost. He came across a shack in the woods and he went in because he was cold and hungry. There he found a hermit who welcomed him and gave him a hot meal.
The hermit, who had no idea who his guest was, said, “I would like to entertain you.” He got out his old violin with a broken string and a slightly cracked surface. In a crude way, because he had taught himself, the hermit began to play. It wasn't very good, but he played passionately.
Ole Bull said to him, “Do you think I could play it for a moment?”
The hermit said, “Oh, I've been here all my life and it is a very hard instrument to master, but go ahead if you think you must.” He handed him the violin. Ole Bull took off one of the strings from the bow, he tuned it delicately and he began to play.
The hermit was stunned! He watched his hands and his fingers and he said, “How do you do that?”
It's all in the fingers! It's all in the touch!” The hermit sat in awe.
Can you imagine what the leper must have felt like to watch the touch of Jesus on his skin after years of isolation and then to know he had been healed? Can you imagine the power of that moment and the grace of that touch? Jesus risked everything to heal the leper. But, it was not just leprosy that Jesus healed. The story that follows right after this one shows the power of hearing and seeing.
This next story that Mark tells is of a paralytic, a man who wasn't able to earn his keep, a man probably of little or no substance, because if you were physically ill in the time of Jesus, you were dependent on the good graces of family and friends. Four of this man's friends decided to take him to Jesus, to be healed, just like the leper, who came to Jesus and said, “Would you heal me?” These four lowered their friend through the roof of the house where Jesus was, because there was a large crowd gathered around and they couldn't take him through it, and they wanted Jesus to heal him. Jesus saw what they did, and he healed their friend.
In other words, Jesus heard by watching. He looked at the friends' deed, and he realized their faith and he honoured that faith. Goethe once said, “In the highest things, it is not what is said, but it is what is done that speaks the loudest.” He was right: It is in the deed, it is in the act. It was in that act of love of lowering him down that Jesus honoured the faith and the appeal of the friends, and he reached out to them. He reached out, he healed the man, and he said, “Your sins are forgiven.”
Now, in today's context, this might seem like a very strange statement: “Your sins are forgiven.” But, many then believed that people's illnesses were due to something that they had done wrong. So, Jesus not only then addresses the physical illness, he also addresses what many people believed to be the underlying problem: the sin. Well, the religious leaders went crazy! “Who is he to forgive sins?” they said. They had read Exodus 34:7, which says, “Only God can forgive sins,” and here is this Jesus forgiving sins!
Jesus was forgiving sins because he was the very presence of God. So, when he deals with this man, he heals him by saying, “Your sins are forgiven.” And Jesus says to the religious leaders, “Now, look, don't mock me.” There is within Jesus, in both the healing of the leper and the healing of this paralytic, a degree of anger. In fact, in the Greek, you can feel it. The word “compassion” that is used to describe Jesus' approach to the leper and indeed, to the paralytic, suggests that there is an inner, visceral anger in Jesus, in his spleen when he performs these healings. What he is angry at is the rejection of the leper, and what he is angry at is the rejection of his healing by the religious leaders. So, while he has compassion on the innocent and he has compassion on the victim, he is angry at those standing at a distance, and saying he cannot do what he is doing, but still he persists, and still he carries on to heal.
This week there was a fascinating article in the sports section of The Toronto Star. (I always go there first!) It was a story about the soccer player, David Beckham. (I am sure you knew I would get around to it eventually!) I read it with great interest, because it was not about his great exploits when he played for Manchester United, it was not about the fact that he played for England and my cousin-in-law was the one who first picked him for that team, it was not about his exploits in Real Madrid, nor was it about his wife or the $250 million that he is going to get for playing for Los Angeles. It was about a phone call.
The phone call came to a 19-year-old girl called Rebecca Johnstone. She lives in Hamilton, Ontario and has been diagnosed with terminal cancer. The doctors have decided there is not much more they can do for her. Her aunt, knowing that this young woman, nicknamed “Becca,” is a huge soccer fan - her room is plastered with pictures of David Beckham - phoned David Beckham in Madrid with a request.
A few days later, there was a phone call at the house. The mother answered the phone. An Englishman came on and said that he would like to speak to Rebecca Johnston. The mother said, “I am sorry, she is so terribly ill that she can't get to the phone today.”
He said, “That's all right. I'll call back at another time. Don't worry.”
Then, the mother said, “Should I say who called?”
He replied, “Oh, just tell her David Beckham called.” The mother nearly died! She ran to the back of the house, got her daughter who could barely move after all her treatments and therapy and brought her to the phone.
Rebecca Johnstone and David Beckham talked about Rebecca's soccer career: what position she had played; what goals she had scored; what she loved most about the game. Then, Beckham said to her, “Now, is there anything I can do for you?”
She said, “No, there is nothing you can do for me now. It is too late.”
So, he said, “I tell you what I will do, I will send you my shirt anyway.” Within days, his shirt arrived, inscribed, “To Rebecca, With Love, David Beckham, 23.” She hasn't taken it off! She probably won't. She probably won't survive, but one call meant the world to her.
Now, cynics can say, “It's good publicity!” But the people who understand the power of one act of kindness know that it is something more. For that girl, it was probably one of the great moments in her life. Can you imagine being a leper and having the Son of God tell you, “I want you to go to the holiest people and show yourself to them because I touched you.” Can you imagine being a paralytic, who had never walked and was on a mat lowered through a roof through all the crowds, and having Jesus Christ tell you, “Your sins are forgiven.” Can you imagine the power of those words? It is almost incomprehensible!
My friends, so often, we still keep treat Jesus of Nazareth at a distance. Like a leper, we just hold him away from ourselves, and like a paralyzed man, we look at him from a distance. Yet, I believe that we need to bring him, the Son of God, closer. We need to allow him to touch our lives. We need to allow ourselves to hear his words. We need to be restored. Jesus is interested in holiness, no question, and he is also interested in our wholeness. So, too, to those who need the touch of love, the touch needs to be given.
You see, the Crusaders had misread the passage, but they got the sentiment right: “Whatever you do for these the least of my children, you have done for me.” Whenever you reach out to a person in need, you do it for Christ. Whenever you speak the word of truth in love, you do it for Christ. Whenever you feel the power of forgiveness, you feel it through Christ. Whenever you give that forgiveness, you do it because of Christ. The power of his touch, the power of his seeing faith, and the power of hearing his Word is forever. Amen.
This is a verbatim transcription of the original sermon.