Break the Plates

A sermon for the sixth Sunday after Epiphany given at the United Church of Acworth, Acworth, NH on February 12, 2012.

2 Kings 5:1-14

Psalm 30

1 Corinthians 9:24-27

Mark 1:40-45

We read that a “leper” came to Jesus begging for healing.

When I was young and heard about lepers I always had to do a double take – did you say “leopard”?

You have to understand, my earliest encounters with the stories of Jesus were in South Africa where such creatures do dwell.

Not a leopard, but a leper came to Jesus.

A leper is one who has the disease known since ancient times that is traditionally called leprosy.

Given all of the negative baggage that the term leper has come to bear, we now call leprosy Hansen’s disease or HD.

HD is a chronic infectious disease caused by a particular bacteria. “It primarily involves the nerves, skin, and mucous membranes. If untreated, there can be progressive and permanent damage to the skin, limbs, and eyes….Nerve injury leads to a loss of feeling in hands and feet, rendering them more vulnerable to repeated injury and infection. Nerve injury also causes muscle weakness and paralysis. Due to infection and other changes, bones are reabsorbed and fingers and toes become shortened. None of these disabilities need occur with early diagnosis and treatment.”**

The person with HD is a person who is visibly set apart from others. They feel the pain of isolation and being a stigma. While one who has Hansen’s disease in today’s world can get incredible support, others throughout history went without such understanding and support.

Communities that did not understand the illness and feared its spread made laws to separate “lepers” out and keep them from infecting others.

Scientists today are still unsure how HD is transmitted and why certain few individuals contract it while others don’t. It is not, as many have thought over the centuries, a highly contagious disease, rather it is considered only mildly communicable. Many who contract Hansen’s have no previous contact with another who had the disease.

People fear the unknown and people fear that which reminds of them of their frailty in life. Hansen’s scares people and has scared people and caused people in their fear to exclude the one who suffers from the disease.

Hansen’s is only fatal in rare cases. So individuals who have the disease will typically live long lives bearing the marks and scars, physically and emotionally of the disease.

Jose Ramirez Jr. has fought a life-long battle with Hansen’s disease.

Ramirez was interviewed on NPR’s All Things Considered in 2009.

There is moment in that interview that is particularly moving as Ramirez tells a story of his return home after receiving the diagnosis of leprosy.

Having heard all about the disease and having seen others at the hospital with disfigured bodies and faces, Ramirez felt a compulsion to prevent the disease from spreading to this family members.

He determined to mark off his own utencils and dishes so that only he would be the one using them. Ramirez took tape and marked them and other things as his so that they could remain separate from those of the healthy family members.

Ramirez chokes up in the interview as he recalls his mother’s reaction. His mother was cooking tortillas early in the morning and saw him marking the plates In anger she went over to him and broke the plates on the ground telling him “please never do that again.”

Ramirez’s mother did not want him to separate himself from the rest of the family, he was one of them and would not be a stigma.

We are challenged in stories like these to consider how we react when one among us, a friend, a family member, is set apart by society by illness, by circumstance. How do we react to the stranger in our midst? How do we react to the friend who has become strange?

Many of us know very well how to get along in society, how to survive in community by saying just the right things and doing just the right things so as not to upset expectations.

When the expectation is to exclude someone, do we go along? When the social norm is to separate ourselves from those who have been afflicted by circumstances beyond their control, do we separate?

Jesus’ response to the leper is not just another healing story – it’s a story on par with the Good Samaritan. Jesus is upsetting received wisdom and rules about how to deal with the unclean, the unacceptable. Jesus is breaking social norms in the name of love.

“If you will, you can make me clean.”

Moved with pity, he stretched out his hand and touched him and said to him, “I will; be clean.”

It was expected that a person with leprosy would stay separate and that no one should touch that person.

Jesus, in compassion breaks that expectation, touches and heals.

Jesus’ compassion is real compassion. It’s the compassion that breaks through our constructed notions of who deserves God’s grace, who we should speak to, touch, associate with. This compassion breaks through and reaches out to help.

As we sit under the darkness and heaviness of the event at Walpole Middle School we think of how some individuals among us can become so overwhelmed with pain and brokenness – can be set apart by a darkness overtaking their mind.

Many of us don’t know how to handle difficult circumstances in our own lives and avoid thinking about our own pain – and consequently when someone else is suffering under the weight of the brokenness of this world, under depression or hatred or anger – we avoid that person like they carry an infectious disease.

We don’t see as Jesus sees. We don’t feel as Jesus feels. We think to separate, he longs to bring that one into the fold, we think to avoid, Jesus wills to make whole.

And we hear in today’s readings the powerful words of our Lord who does the unexpected and when the untouchable reaches out, Jesus reaches back and the words he says, “I will, be clean” resound like plates breaking into a thousand pieces on the floor. Love where we would have fear. Healing for a broken soul.

Break the plates, friends. Don’t follow the world’s logic of separation from the unclean, the broken, the least of these in this world. Let the love and compassion of Christ our Savior fill you with such a desire for wholeness and healing that you long to reach out and be a help, a light of hope to the one who’s suffering.

Break the plates. Don’t accept the lines of party politics and social association. Let the compassion of Jesus break through. Love transcends our group identification – let God’s compassion lead you to break out of comfortable corners into the open field where lie the wounded of the world.

Break the plates. Live a life that speaks to the reality that you yourself once were lost, but now you’re found.

Break the plates. Recognize that those people that you call “them” are just as loved by God, just as much recipients of God’s grace as those people that you call “us”.

Break… the expectations of those around you and march to a different beat.

Don’t be misled by superficial boundaries – don’t be cowed into following society’s demarcations of who is worthy or unworthy of time or attention.

I don’t know of any in Acworth who have Hansen’s disease but I can think of others who we’d rather not visit, rather not talk to. Some individuals, were we to be caught associating with “them” it would be “social suicide.”

But friends, “those who lose their life for Jesus’ sake, and for the sake of the gospel, will save it.”

What good is it to gain or maintain status in the town but forfeit your soul.

This boy in Walpole was reaching out – but we hear cries for help as complaints.

We hear cries for help as adolescent drama. We hear cries for help and we say not my job. May we hear cries for help and seek help for the one in need.

The person with the disease which made him an untouchable and a social outcast, which made him someone that no one would want to relate to – this person came to Jesus and said If you are willing you can make me clean.

Jesus reached out and touched the man and said “I will, be clean.”

Friends, Let us allow God’s radical compassion shown in Jesus change us, that we as community of Jesus-followers might truly be salt and light to this community, might show in our lives the kind of compassion that breaks the unwritten rules when those rules need breaking.

Fear is a paralyzing phenomenon. But, friends we are called beyond fear, fear of death, fear of people’s gossip or judgment, fear of people’s rejection, we are called beyond fear, to love – a love that gives life. Perfect love drives out fear.

Break the plates. Is there someone in your life who you’ve been avoiding or ignoring? Is there someone who’s become a stigma? Is there someone whose sadness makes you want to avoid them?

Break the plates. Show the love and hospitality of our great God and reach out your hand to them.

Break the plates. It will be a blessing to them and it most certainly will be a blessing to you.

God is calling us in the compassion of Jesus to remember our common humanity, our common plight in the road called life and follow Jesus in giving and showing compassion –the radical kind that breaks the plates of exclusion and isolation so rampant in our world.

May God so inspire us with love that we might be agents of his healing in this broken world.

Amen.

**excerpted from "Author Recounts His 'Journey With Leprosy'" at npr.org.