Henrietta United
Rev.
David Inglis
Mark 1:40-45
“Touched”–A Leper’s Story
Scripture:
40A leper came to him begging him, and kneeling he
said to him, "If you choose, you can make me clean." 41Moved with
pity, Jesus stretched out his hand and touched him, and said to him, "I do
choose. Be made clean!" 42Immediately the leprosy left him, and he was
made clean. 43After sternly warning him he sent him away at once, 44saying to
him, "See that you say nothing to anyone; but go, show yourself to the
priest, and offer for your cleansing what Moses commanded, as a testimony to
them." 45But he went out and began to proclaim it freely, and to spread
the word, so that Jesus could no longer go into a town openly, but stayed out
in the country; and people came to him from every quarter.
Dramatic monologue:
I’ll never forget that morning when my soul began its
long slide into a pit of darkness that was so deep I thought I would never come
out. It started when I woke up one
morning feeling achy and weak. “I hope I’m not coming down with something,” I
thought. My arm itched. As I scratched it, I felt little bumps on my
arm, and saw red blotches. A little ping
of fear zipped through me. “This couldn’t be leprosy, could it?” No, I was a decent, upstanding man. There’s no way God would inflict that
horrible disease on me. “It must just be a rash,” I thought. I put my cloak on and pulled the sleeves down
as far as they would go. Out of sight,
out of mind.
My wife Esther was already baking bread. “Good morning, Samuel. Did you forget that morning is the time you
wake up?” Our children tried to keep
from laughing.
“I guess I just needed a little extra sleep. I’m feeling a little off this morning.”
“Well, I hope you’re not feeling so off that you
can’t go to the market to get something for that chair you finally finished and
bring back some flour and oil. I just
used up all we had left.”
“Sure, I can do that.”
I tried to eat more than I felt like so that she
wouldn’t worry, and I carried the chair out the door. Boy, my joints ached. It was tempting to sit in the chair at the
market, but I forced myself to stand so people could see it. After awhile, I heard Nathan the leper coming
up the street. “Unclean! Unclean!
Unclean!” he cried. “Can you throw me a
little bread? A little bread for a
miserable, starving man?”
I remember when he was Nathan the potter, not Nathan
the leper. He seemed like just an
ordinary man–honest enough, and he made some nice pots. But then we began seeing bumps on his
face. The Law of Moses required him to
shout “Unclean! Unclean!” wherever he went, because just touching a leper or
touching something a leper touched would make you unclean, and you would
be unacceptable to God until you made certain sacrifices and went through a
kind of religious bathing. His whole
house would be unclean if he lived there, so he had to move out and the house
had to be cleansed by the priest. He had
to live with the other lepers outside of town, who built makeshift shelters
with whatever they could find, and begged for people to have pity on them and
throw them food. But most people thought
God was punishing lepers for something and were afraid to get close to them, so
they just looked away and crossed the street.
Nathan’s bumps had gotten worse and worse, and now
his whole face was disfigured into a grotesque mass of oozing nodules. I couldn’t even remember what he had looked
like five years ago when he was Nathan the potter.
I scratched
my itching arm under my cloak, and for the first time I wondered what it must
be like to be Nathan.
Over the next few days I tried changing clothes when
Esther wasn’t looking, and I kept my arms covered when we were in bed so she
couldn’t feel them. But pretty soon some
bumps started appearing on the backs of my hands and on my face.
“Samuel, what’s that on your skin? She pulled up my sleeve, and she saw it
all. She drew back, and the room grew
dead silent. A big wave of fear passed
through both of us, and tumbled our minds like shells in the surf.
At that moment, life as I had known it was over. “Samuel,” she said. “What in God’s name did
you do to bring this on yourself?” I
knew I didn’t keep each law perfectly like the Pharisees said we should. But I didn’t think I was worse than anyone
else I knew. Maybe it was the lustful
thoughts I sometimes had about Isaac’s wife Ruth. Maybe it was that I hadn’t lowered my price
for a stool to widow Hannah, even though I knew it was a hardship. It could have been anything, or nothing–how
could I know? Esther made me show myself
to the priest to see if I had leprosy and was unclean. I already knew what he was going to say.
I had to move out right away so the priest could
cleanse our house and family with sacrifices, prayers and ritual washings. I couldn’t hug little Andrew or Sarah
good-bye. I heard them all crying as I
walked away, carrying what felt like a huge lead weight in my chest.
I was now
Samuel the leper. “Unclean! Unclean!” I forced myself to say as I walked
down the street, totally at a loss as to where I was going. My startled neighbors looked at me in
disbelief, stared intently at the tell-tale lumps on my face, and drew away. I knew they would be hurrying to spread the
news to everyone who knew me.
“Unclean!
Unclean!” The words stuck in my
throat as it sank in that I was saying them about my own self. I, Samuel, was unclean, unacceptable,
unworthy to be in anybody’s company, even my own family. As time went on, my mouth got more used to
saying it. But I never stopped feeling
those words striking my own spirit like a whip that was beating me down, down,
down into a place of such desolate darkness and aching emptiness that I longed
for death every day. I had no place in
the world, no home, no one to greet me or touch me or acknowledge that I was
anything but a despicable curse on the human race.
Now my friends, I wonder if you have every been in a
place anything like that. I realized
that this place felt a little familiar to me, though of course I had never had
leprosy before. It felt something like
when my mother had caught me hiding my neighbor’s toy wooden sword under my
mat, which I had taken because I so much wanted a toy like that. ”You thief!” she cried and beat me with a
stick. She called me “thief” for a long time after that. I tumbled into that hole of shame and
loneliness when my father told me to go with him to market and help him carry
the benches he had made, the same day that my friend’s father had invited my
friend and me out on his fishing boat. I
had protested and started to cry. My
father slapped me across the face and said, “Stop that crying! Crying is for babies. It’s time you started acting like a man.”
Have you ever been in a hole like that too? Eventually we find our way out of those holes,
though, you know, I think a part of our soul can get left in holes like that
for a very long time–like the place in me where tears come from. But I saw no way out of this hole I was in
now. People with this kind of leprosy
got worse and worse, year by year, until they finally died. There was no place for me to go but to the
edge of town where the other lepers lived out their living deaths, smelling
like filth and disease and despair.
I ached to be seen, touched, held by somebody. But there was nobody. My only friend was in what I remembered about
Job, who was tested severely by Satan to see if he believed in God just because
God had blessed him to richly. When
Satan had inflicted him with horrible sores from the top of his head to the
souls of his feet and Job was sitting in the ashes scraping himself with a
piece of broken pottery, Job’s wife said to him, “Do you still persist in your
integrity? Curse God and die.” But Job said to her, “Shall we receive the
good at the hand of God, and not receive the bad?” (Job 2:9-10). Somehow, Job managed to hold onto a little
shred of faith, in spite of losing everything.
Well, my smoldering flame of faith was just about out
when I heard about a holy man named Jesus, who had recently come to Capernaum
preaching about hope and God’s kingdom being at hand, and healing people of all
kinds of sickness. Nathan the leper told
me that Jacob, a blind old beggar that we used to see looking for handouts, had
actually been running around saying that Jesus had made him able to see
again. And then we began hearing other
stories of people who had been crippled who were walking, and people who had
been possessed by demons who were filled with peace.
I knew that anyone who was blind or crippled or
possessed knew something of the dark hole of loneliness, shame, and desolation
that I knew. This man of God was pulling
them out of their holes and back into life.
Would Jesus do that for a leper too, or would a holy man have to draw
back and walk away, so that he himself didn’t become unclean? If Jesus turned away, I knew my flame of
faith would die, and my despair would be total.
Did I dare to risk it?
I knew that if I didn’t try, I would live out my days
regretting it. So I walked into town on
my wobbly legs crying “Unclean!
Unclean!” I didn’t know where to
find Jesus. All I could trust is that if
God hadn’t forgotten me, maybe he would lead me to him somehow. Before long I saw him, walking my way with a
group of people who were excitedly following close behind. I froze.
Maybe they all would turn away from me in disgust.
I guess I had expected Jesus to look something like
Moses--large, imposing, dressed in fine flowing robes, carrying a scepter or
something. But Jesus was about 30, I’d
guess, dressed plainly, and he had a broad smile and dancing eyes that told me
I didn’t have to be afraid of him. I’d
almost say he radiated light, love, and peace.
As he approached, I knelt down in the road and looked into his
face. He focused right in on me.
I saw no disgust as he looked at my disfigured face
and filthy clothes. I completely forgot
to cry, “Unclean.” I simply said,
"If you choose, you can make me clean." I will never forget the
expression on his face as he bent down and looked into my eyes, and into that
dark tomb I lived in. Tears formed in the corners of his eyes as our souls
met. You can’t imagine what that did for
me. As I felt his warm breath on my
face, I felt the warm love of his spirit breathing life into my soul.
He put out his hand and touched my face. Did you hear that? He touched my
diseased face with his holy hand! And he
said, "I do choose. Be made clean!" Right away, I started to feel clean,
whole and alive–from the inside of my soul, flowing all the way out to my
skin. In fact, I had never felt more clean. What was this power that he had? I didn’t know. But I knew it was from God.
He told me not to tell anyone, but to show myself to
the priest and be proven cleansed. Well,
of course I did go to the priest as fast as my spindly legs would carry
me. But how could I not tell
anyone?! It was this new life inside me
that ran and told Esther, and Andrew and Sarah, and then my neighbors and
anyone who would listen to me.
I wonder if there’s a part of your soul that has gotten stuck in that dark hole of shame, loneliness, and lovelessness. I think it happens to everyone. I wish I could give you the picture of Jesus’ face that I can still see so clearly, finding me in my dark hole, and shedding a tear of compassion for me. Can you see him looking at you like that? Can you feel the warm breath of his love blowing life into your soul, wherever it is caught, and letting you know that no soul belongs in that dark place of loneliness? Can you believe that God created you to live fully and love freely with your whole being–every bit of you opening and learning and giving and receiving–with no part of your soul condemned to the hell of rejection? Believe it, my friends. I’m here to tell you that Jesus is here for you like that. And I’m here to tell you that we can all be Jesuses to each other–we can see and receive and touch each other back to life, just like Jesus did to me.