February 15, 2009

Psalm 30

Mark 1:40-45

 

Becoming Whole

 

            I majored in philosophy in college and have forgotten almost everything except for one philosophical concept – monads.  It is the Renaissance philosopher Leibniz’s concept of the building blocks of reality being made up of monads instead of atoms. I liked that funny word. Each monad was a complete entity in itself and contained the entire universe within it. But no monad can affect or see or relate to another one. I envisioned a monad as a wooden block with no windows completely shut off from any communication or contact with another monad.  I remember laughing and thinking that this is the way we humans often behave.  But then again, perhaps it is not a laughing matter.  

Last week on the TV show “Life on Mars,” a character on the show said very poignantly, “We live, we die and no one knows why. There has to be more.”  Isn’t this what the leper in our story from Mark was crying out to Jesus? He was a dead man walking, living on the fringes of society and forbidden to come into contact with any other human being. He was just like a monad. The Jewish Law said that illnesses and infirmities were a punishment from God because of sin.  These people were unclean and only a holy man could intervene between the physical and the spiritual world and cleanse the defective person. The leper did not ask Jesus to heal him; he asked to be cleansed so he could re-enter society again.  

There were no doctors in this time period.  Neither was there a concept of diseases caused by microbes. The microscope showed us those little germs just 150 years ago. Healing or cleansing that is talked about in the New Testament is making people whole again so that they could be apart of the community in which they lived. Healing or cleansing is a spiritual, not clinical activity, and is very different from our concept of curing.  

Our story said that Jesus was moved with pity. A better translation from the Greek would be “a great emotion welled up from the very depths of Jesus,” and he rips apart the boundaries of his culture and actually touches the leper. He broke every rule in the book. Of course, this touching made Jesus unclean also, but that is another story. We are not told precisely what happened when he touched him, except that the leper was made clean. Yet, Jesus knew that would not be enough for the man to become whole again so he had him go to the priests so that their rituals could declare him clean. Jesus asked the man to keep quiet about all of this, but how do you keep such joy locked up. You can’t. He shouted his joy from the roof tops. Keep this leaping leper’s gamut of emotions in mind as I read you parts of Psalm 30.  

            “As for me, I said in my prosperity, ‘I shall never be moved….You had established me as a strong mountain….” (This is his smugness before leprosy happened to him.)  “You hid your face; I was dismayed.” (God has punished him - for what we do not know.) 

(Now the leper asks for healing.)  “What profit is there in my death, if I go down to the Pit? Will the dust praise you? Hear, O Lord, and be gracious to me!” (And the Lord did heal him and the pain is replaced by dancing.)  “O Lord, you…restored me to life from among those gone down to the Pit.  You have turned my mourning into dancing…and clothed me with joy, so that my soul may praise you and not be silent.”  (Can you blame the leper?)  Jesus felt compassion to the point of rage about this isolation of the leper caused by the Jewish law. He became the healing conduit of God for the restoration of the leper to his community. The leper belongs again.  

Roger Gench tells a story about “a person who was making a telephone call, and even before he finished dialing knew he had made a mistake. The phone rang once and twice, then someone picked it up and a husky voice says, "You’ve got the wrong number" and hangs up. Mystified, the man dialed the number again. "I said you’ve got the wrong number," said the voice. The man thought to himself, "How could he possibly know that it was the wrong number." Curiosity made the man dial the number again. "Is this you again?" "Yea," said the man, "and I’m wondering how you could possibly know I had the wrong number even before I said anything." "You figure it out," and the phone again slammed down. Persistent, the man called back. "Did you figure it out?" said the husky voice. The man answered, "The only thing I can figure out is that no one ever calls you." "You got it," said the voice and the phone went dead for the fourth time. Then the man made the call for the fifth time. "What do you want now," said the voice. "I thought I’d call just to say hello." "Hello? Why?" "Well, if nobody ever calls you, I thought maybe I should."  

We all know at least one person who is feeling like he or she is on the outside looking in, whom nobody calls, who feels stigmatized, and who is a monad. But let me put this on the table for us to closely look at. It is more than one person we know. Many of us are crippled and cut off in community by…let’s call it “life’s stuff.” Find your jail cell in these handicap descriptions:  loneliness, depression, abandonment, guilt, fear, anger, self-righteousness, cancer, heart disease, pimples, weight, unworthiness, alcoholism, drugs, and the list goes on and on.  Life happens, and the older we get it seems to happen more.  

We live, we die, and no one knows why. It does not have to be that way. There is more. God’s plan for us is to be connected with love to one another and to Him and this connection is for today, tomorrow, and forever. A monad existence is rejected by Jesus when his outrage and compassion wells up from within and he reaches out and touches the leper.  The holy man of God brings healing. And you, yes, you are to reach out and touch someone with God’s healing.  But it is so hard to do. And deep down you know why. It is hard to reach out to another person in pain when you are in emotional and physical pain also. How can you reach out to another in pain when you run from your own pain? And we run very hard to stay one step ahead of this pain. Exhausted, we try to bury it with TV, alcohol, eating, overwork and anything else that can anesthetize us. We let pain rather than love run our lives. We become pain’s victims and eventually perpetrators of more pain.  

We don’t have to have leprosy to be shut off from others. Our wounds that have not been touched by the healing forgiveness and grace of God make us lepers with one another. Like the leper, we are to come to God and let him make us whole again. In order for us to do this, it is necessary to not deny our pain but to embrace it, own it, feel it, and ask God to take it from us and make us whole. “Hear, O Lord, be gracious to me!”  

When you have received wholeness from God’s mercy and forgiveness, you then have the power to heal and cleanse and restore others to wholeness.  You are a holy person and can be a conduit for God’s healing love. We are called to touch others, to carry one another’s’ burdens, and to bring others into communion with our creator God who longs to embrace us all with his love. Together God’s children can sing with the Psalmist:“Weeping may linger for the night, but joy comes with the morning….You have turned my mourning into dancing; you have taken off my sackcloth         and clothed me with joy, so that my soul may praise you and not be silent. O Lord my God, I will give thinks to you forever.”