February 15, 2009
Mark 1.40-45
In this morning’s Gospel, in which Jesus encounters the leper, we find what the great Anglican theologian Reginald Fuller describes as a “threefold pattern.” We find, first of all, the diagnosis. The man Jesus encounters is a leper. Next, we find the cure. Jesus touches the man, Jesus says to him, “Be made clean.” By touch and by word, the man is cured. Finally we have the demonstration. He is commanded to go to the priest in accordance with the Law.
It is a simple, very straightforward story. But what we find this morning it is not so much what Jesus says that captures our attention. It is what Jesus does. Or rather, it is what Jesus feels.
On hearing the leper’s pleas, Jesus was moved with pity. Pity might not be the right word here. The Greek word used in the original manuscript means something much more than just being filled with pity. The Greek word can be translated literally to mean he was moved in his bowels.
Now as uncomfortable as that may sound to our modern ears, this is important. The meaning here is that Jesus wasn’t simply “moved to pity.” He was moved to his very core with compassion. This may seem to strange to us. When we think of being moved to compassion, we may not think of it coming from..of all places…our bowels. When we think of compassion, we might think of it coming from possibly our hearts. But this idea of the important feelings and emotions coming from our very core is a belief that has been long-held.
Think about love, for example. When we fall in love, we often don’t feel love in our chests—in our hearts—despite the popular tradition of heart-shaped valentines—which this past weekend has been filled with. More often than not, we feel that deep and abiding love in our core. Remember what it felt like to fall in love for the first time. It felt oftentimes like you were sick to your stomach, didn’t it? I think that’s because it does truly come from that deep center of ourselves. The same can be said for anger. Oftentimes, when we feel angry, we end up feeling almost sick—sick in that center. Or when we get stressed out, we find ourselves tightening up in that place. So, when we hear about Jesus being moved deeply—being moved from his bowels—we find that Jesus is feeling compassion from the very center of not only his body, but in a sense, from his very soul and spirit.
This compassion of Jesus knew no bounds. He was so deeply moved that he became almost driven in his compassion. This compassion drove Jesus to break the religious law of his time. Jesus actually touched a leper—the poster child of uncleanliness for Jews in Jesus’ day. According to the Law of his day, doing so should have made Jesus unclean as well. But this compassion of Jesus drove him to do the impossible. It was not the uncleanliness of the leper that prevailed. It was not the binding structures of the Law that won out. It was the pureness of Jesus’ compassion that won out.
Driven by his compassion—driven by that emotion that came up from that place deep within him—Jesus healed what everyone believed could not be healed. In a sense, what Jesus does, is he becomes, in many ways, the leper. That’s what it means to have compassion—to put one’s self in another’s place. Jesus understands in a very deep and profound way what it is like to be this marginalized man. Jesus does not simply float around like some demi-god—detached from those suffering people who come to him for healing, granting a healing here and there from on-high. Jesus is not so far above the sufferings of the people around him. Jesus actually feels for the leper. And touching him, Jesus healed him.
One of my favorite group of people commemorated in the Episcopal Church is Sister Constance and the so-called “Martyrs of Memphis.” Sr. Constance, along with Sisters Thecla, Ruth and Frances, where Episcopal nuns (yes, there are Episcopal nuns), members of the Order of St. Mary. In the summer of 1878, these sisters, along with two Episcopal priests, Charles Carroll Parsons and Louis Schuyler, were serving in Memphis Tennessee when an outbreak of Yellow Fever spread through out the city. Yellow Fever is a highly contagious disease and, in 1878, was lethal. This was a plague in the purest sense of the word. Hundreds of people died. And many people not affected, simply turned away and left. But not these sisters and priests. Knowing full well that their decision to stay and minister to the sick and dying possibly meant their own exposure to the Fever and their eventual death, they decided to stay. And one by one they contracted the Fever and died.
But, even then, they saved hundreds of orphaned children from dying unattended and alone after their parents had died. Today, there is a beautiful ikon of the martyrs of Memphis, written by Br Tobias Haller, BSG. In it, we can see each of the martyrs and above them is Jesus. In the ikon he is represented as a child, a reminder to all of us that when those nuns and priests stayed to help those children, they were truly serving Christ.
Constance and her companions knew the kind of compassion that moved Jesus. It was a similar compassion that no doubt moved them to stay, to minister against the odds, to minister when everyone else thought what they were doing was foolish and suicidal. These women, these white women in that segregated world, were, by circumstances privileged. And yet they became, like the leper, marginalized. They, like Jesus, were moved deeply—at their very core—toward doing something—doing anything—to make a change in the world. They, in the truest sense, helped further the Kingdom of God among themselves.
This is what the Kingdom of God is. It isn’t just waiting for us in some heady, cloud-filled afterlife. It is right here—right now—in our very midst. It begins here. It begins now. The kingdom of God comes among us when we make that move outside our boundaries—outside those lines that hold us in place and make us less than we are. When we hear of Jesus being moved to his very core by the pleas of those who want to be healed, how can we not be moved in a similar way when we hear the pleas of those around us who want our help and compassion? How can we not strive to do just that in our own world—to open ourselves to such an extent that we not just do, but feel the Kingdom of God into being.
So take to heart the example of the Martyrs of Memphis. Let the memory of Jesus’ deep-felt compassion for the leper move deep within you as well as you strive to do good and to bring the Kingdom of God closer for yourself and for those who are pleading to you.
Mark 1.40-45
In this morning’s Gospel, in which Jesus encounters the leper, we find what the great Anglican theologian Reginald Fuller describes as a “threefold pattern.” We find, first of all, the diagnosis. The man Jesus encounters is a leper. Next, we find the cure. Jesus touches the man, Jesus says to him, “Be made clean.” By touch and by word, the man is cured. Finally we have the demonstration. He is commanded to go to the priest in accordance with the Law.
It is a simple, very straightforward story. But what we find this morning it is not so much what Jesus says that captures our attention. It is what Jesus does. Or rather, it is what Jesus feels.
On hearing the leper’s pleas, Jesus was moved with pity. Pity might not be the right word here. The Greek word used in the original manuscript means something much more than just being filled with pity. The Greek word can be translated literally to mean he was moved in his bowels.
Now as uncomfortable as that may sound to our modern ears, this is important. The meaning here is that Jesus wasn’t simply “moved to pity.” He was moved to his very core with compassion. This may seem to strange to us. When we think of being moved to compassion, we may not think of it coming from..of all places…our bowels. When we think of compassion, we might think of it coming from possibly our hearts. But this idea of the important feelings and emotions coming from our very core is a belief that has been long-held.
Think about love, for example. When we fall in love, we often don’t feel love in our chests—in our hearts—despite the popular tradition of heart-shaped valentines—which this past weekend has been filled with. More often than not, we feel that deep and abiding love in our core. Remember what it felt like to fall in love for the first time. It felt oftentimes like you were sick to your stomach, didn’t it? I think that’s because it does truly come from that deep center of ourselves. The same can be said for anger. Oftentimes, when we feel angry, we end up feeling almost sick—sick in that center. Or when we get stressed out, we find ourselves tightening up in that place. So, when we hear about Jesus being moved deeply—being moved from his bowels—we find that Jesus is feeling compassion from the very center of not only his body, but in a sense, from his very soul and spirit.
This compassion of Jesus knew no bounds. He was so deeply moved that he became almost driven in his compassion. This compassion drove Jesus to break the religious law of his time. Jesus actually touched a leper—the poster child of uncleanliness for Jews in Jesus’ day. According to the Law of his day, doing so should have made Jesus unclean as well. But this compassion of Jesus drove him to do the impossible. It was not the uncleanliness of the leper that prevailed. It was not the binding structures of the Law that won out. It was the pureness of Jesus’ compassion that won out.
Driven by his compassion—driven by that emotion that came up from that place deep within him—Jesus healed what everyone believed could not be healed. In a sense, what Jesus does, is he becomes, in many ways, the leper. That’s what it means to have compassion—to put one’s self in another’s place. Jesus understands in a very deep and profound way what it is like to be this marginalized man. Jesus does not simply float around like some demi-god—detached from those suffering people who come to him for healing, granting a healing here and there from on-high. Jesus is not so far above the sufferings of the people around him. Jesus actually feels for the leper. And touching him, Jesus healed him.
One of my favorite group of people commemorated in the Episcopal Church is Sister Constance and the so-called “Martyrs of Memphis.” Sr. Constance, along with Sisters Thecla, Ruth and Frances, where Episcopal nuns (yes, there are Episcopal nuns), members of the Order of St. Mary. In the summer of 1878, these sisters, along with two Episcopal priests, Charles Carroll Parsons and Louis Schuyler, were serving in Memphis Tennessee when an outbreak of Yellow Fever spread through out the city. Yellow Fever is a highly contagious disease and, in 1878, was lethal. This was a plague in the purest sense of the word. Hundreds of people died. And many people not affected, simply turned away and left. But not these sisters and priests. Knowing full well that their decision to stay and minister to the sick and dying possibly meant their own exposure to the Fever and their eventual death, they decided to stay. And one by one they contracted the Fever and died.
But, even then, they saved hundreds of orphaned children from dying unattended and alone after their parents had died. Today, there is a beautiful ikon of the martyrs of Memphis, written by Br Tobias Haller, BSG. In it, we can see each of the martyrs and above them is Jesus. In the ikon he is represented as a child, a reminder to all of us that when those nuns and priests stayed to help those children, they were truly serving Christ.
Constance and her companions knew the kind of compassion that moved Jesus. It was a similar compassion that no doubt moved them to stay, to minister against the odds, to minister when everyone else thought what they were doing was foolish and suicidal. These women, these white women in that segregated world, were, by circumstances privileged. And yet they became, like the leper, marginalized. They, like Jesus, were moved deeply—at their very core—toward doing something—doing anything—to make a change in the world. They, in the truest sense, helped further the Kingdom of God among themselves.
This is what the Kingdom of God is. It isn’t just waiting for us in some heady, cloud-filled afterlife. It is right here—right now—in our very midst. It begins here. It begins now. The kingdom of God comes among us when we make that move outside our boundaries—outside those lines that hold us in place and make us less than we are. When we hear of Jesus being moved to his very core by the pleas of those who want to be healed, how can we not be moved in a similar way when we hear the pleas of those around us who want our help and compassion? How can we not strive to do just that in our own world—to open ourselves to such an extent that we not just do, but feel the Kingdom of God into being.
So take to heart the example of the Martyrs of Memphis. Let the memory of Jesus’ deep-felt compassion for the leper move deep within you as well as you strive to do good and to bring the Kingdom of God closer for yourself and for those who are pleading to you.
No comments:
Post a Comment