Christ the Healer: Restoring Relationships
Mark 1:40-45
February 12, 2006
Rev. Nancy Pfaltzgraf
During the height of the segregation storm, there was a little girl who went on her first day of first grade to a newly integrated school. At the end of the day her anxious mother met her at the door and asked, "How did everything go, honey?"
"Oh mother! You know what? A little black girl sat next to me!"
With a fearful heart -expecting that this might be a traumatic event for her daughter, but wanting to remain calm- the mother asked simply, "And what happened?"
Smiling, the little girl replied, "We were both so scared we held hands all day."
This week witnessed the funeral of Coretta Scott King, whose life was devoted to fulfilling a dream she shared with her husband: the creation of a society where those little girls could hold hands without fear. At her funeral, Coretta's youngest child, Bernice said that her mother's purpose in life was to spread her father's message of peace and unconditional love. "Thank you, mother, for your incredible example of Christ-like love and obedience," she said.
With a deep belief in the value and dignity of all people and the dream of a world where people lived together in harmony and peace, Coretta Scott King labored unceasingly to heal brokenness, hatred, alienation and fear. She was indeed an example of Christ-like love and obedience, for Christ the Healer was and is in the business of restoring relationships.
As we pick up Mark's story, Jesus is traveling throughout Galilee. During his travels "a leper came to him, begging on his knees, 'If you want to, you can cleanse me.'"[Mark 1:40] It is an odd scene, a strange request; not a plea exactly, but rather part statement of extreme faith and part challenge. If you want to... If you choose to... you can heal me, cleanse me, restore my relationships and my life. This leper had absolute confidence that Jesus could heal him; what he didn't know was whether Jesus wanted to heal him. After all, in approaching Jesus, in coming close enough to touch him this leper was breaking the law and crossing an uncrossable barrier. The code in Leviticus is quite clear:
45"Any person with a serious skin disease must wear torn clothes, leave his hair loose and unbrushed, cover his upper lip, and cry out, "Unclean! Unclean!' 46As long as anyone has the sores, that one continues to be ritually unclean. That person must live alone; he or she must live outside the camp. [Leviticus 13:45-6]
Can you imagine what it would have been like? Forcibly exiled from family and friends; blocked from any form of work; forced to scavenge the garbage dumps for food; viewed with fear, suspicion, hatred and disdain; not even allowed to enter the synagogue to seek the solace and comfort of God. And if someone did happen to touch one so diseased, that person also became unclean, an outcast until the proper rituals were performed and the proper penalties paid. No wonder this seeker was uncertain how Jesus would react to his approach. Perhaps he had gone to other healers; perhaps he had sought other cures, only to be turned away.
Seeing this leper, knowing full well the brokenness, the hatred, the ignorance and the fear that demeaned this child of God and reduced him to something less than a fully alive human being, our text says Jesus was "deeply moved." The actual literal meaning of the word Mark uses here is "his guts turned within him." Some translations capture this deeper sense by saying Jesus was "angry" -not at the leper, but at the alienation, not at the physical condition but at
the barrier that had been erected between this man and God. "Jesus put out his hand, touched him, and said, 'I want to. Be clean.'"[Mark 1:41] In one swift move Jesus crossed the line, tore down the barrier, dismantled the wall, identified himself with this outcast. Jesus who many times healed simply with a word; Jesus who didn't even need to be in the same physical location as the one who needed healing, Jesus reached out and touched this untouchable one and in so doing restored his dignity, his life and his relationship with God, himself and his community. Then after the touch, after the wall was down, after the relationships were healed, the disease was also cured.
If we are honest with ourselves we know that we live with all kinds of walls and barriers too. Perhaps they don't have the force of written code behind them but they are real. We shut out those we fear. We exclude those who are different. There are people we look at with fear and suspicion just because of the clothes they wear, the body parts they have pierced or the religion they practice. A long, long time ago I read a quote in a magazine article. I don't remember who said it or what the article was about, but that quote has deeply impacted my life. It said, "What we don't understand we fear; what we fear we hate; and what we hate eventually destroys us."
Now as then, Christ the Healer wants to break down our walls, dismantle the barriers we erect and invite us into the healing of understanding. Beginning with our relationship with God, moving to our relationship with our own truest self, extending to the relationships we have with others Christ desires to bring healing and restoration.
From about 1986 until 1996 I was actively involved with The Ulster Project. Conceived by Rev. Kerry Waterstone, The Project brings Catholic and Protestant teens from Northern Ireland together on the neutral ground of American soil "to promote reconciliation ... by fostering tolerance, understanding, and friendship among teenage future leaders" When The Project began in 1974 and even in 1986 the separation between Catholics and Protestants in Northern Ireland was almost total; different neighborhoods, different schools; different places of employment. And the bombing, the killing and the violence were an every day event on the streets of Belfast and other cities in the North of Ireland. In fact there were literal walls, called peace walls, that separated the neighborhoods and kept people in their place.
Every summer during the month of July our project greeted between 16-18 anxious, hesitant, cautious 14-15 year olds from Belfast. Each teen from Belfast stayed with an American teen and his or her family. All the teens, both Northern Irish and American, participated in all the activities. We did fun stuff like canoeing and going to Great American. We did more serious stuff like attending worship together in both Catholic and Protestant churches. It's hard for you to imagine, but from time to time we had youth that literally shook with terror as the approached the door of a church from "the other side." But the heart of the project was what we called the Discovery Time. Each week a Catholic Priest and I and a team of young adult volunteers from both the U.S. and Northern Ireland led all kinds of activities designed to help the teens build relationships, foster understanding and break down the walls of fear and hatred.
It was an awesome experience for all of us. I especially remember one discovery session about three weeks into the program when we were dealing head on with what the Northern Irish call "the troubles." There were two girls -one Catholic and one Protestant- sitting together on a couch. One started talking about the way her family had been affected by the troubles. Tears streaked down her checks as she talked about the police breaking into their home in the middle of the night; about the damage they did to her home; about the pain of having her brother arrested as a suspected terrorist. As she talked her new Protestant friend reached out and gently touched her. Then when she was finished talking, her friend began to talk about
how the troubles had affected her and her family. As she began relating how her brother had been shot by the IRA (the Catholic terrorist organization) and the fear she lived in because her father had to go near a Catholic neighborhood on his way to work, she too began to cry and her new Catholic friend gently laid an arm around her shoulder. By the time both of them were finished talking, they were literally wrapped in each others arms; the shared understanding and the shared love had broken down a wall of hatred and pain and fear. It was a powerful God moment!
Whatever the walls might be, in your life and mine, in this country and around the world Christ the Healer seeks to renew our lives and restore our relationships that we might live fully alive in God's love. Amen.
Mark 1:40-45
February 12, 2006
Rev. Nancy Pfaltzgraf
During the height of the segregation storm, there was a little girl who went on her first day of first grade to a newly integrated school. At the end of the day her anxious mother met her at the door and asked, "How did everything go, honey?"
"Oh mother! You know what? A little black girl sat next to me!"
With a fearful heart -expecting that this might be a traumatic event for her daughter, but wanting to remain calm- the mother asked simply, "And what happened?"
Smiling, the little girl replied, "We were both so scared we held hands all day."
This week witnessed the funeral of Coretta Scott King, whose life was devoted to fulfilling a dream she shared with her husband: the creation of a society where those little girls could hold hands without fear. At her funeral, Coretta's youngest child, Bernice said that her mother's purpose in life was to spread her father's message of peace and unconditional love. "Thank you, mother, for your incredible example of Christ-like love and obedience," she said.
With a deep belief in the value and dignity of all people and the dream of a world where people lived together in harmony and peace, Coretta Scott King labored unceasingly to heal brokenness, hatred, alienation and fear. She was indeed an example of Christ-like love and obedience, for Christ the Healer was and is in the business of restoring relationships.
As we pick up Mark's story, Jesus is traveling throughout Galilee. During his travels "a leper came to him, begging on his knees, 'If you want to, you can cleanse me.'"[Mark 1:40] It is an odd scene, a strange request; not a plea exactly, but rather part statement of extreme faith and part challenge. If you want to... If you choose to... you can heal me, cleanse me, restore my relationships and my life. This leper had absolute confidence that Jesus could heal him; what he didn't know was whether Jesus wanted to heal him. After all, in approaching Jesus, in coming close enough to touch him this leper was breaking the law and crossing an uncrossable barrier. The code in Leviticus is quite clear:
45"Any person with a serious skin disease must wear torn clothes, leave his hair loose and unbrushed, cover his upper lip, and cry out, "Unclean! Unclean!' 46As long as anyone has the sores, that one continues to be ritually unclean. That person must live alone; he or she must live outside the camp. [Leviticus 13:45-6]
Can you imagine what it would have been like? Forcibly exiled from family and friends; blocked from any form of work; forced to scavenge the garbage dumps for food; viewed with fear, suspicion, hatred and disdain; not even allowed to enter the synagogue to seek the solace and comfort of God. And if someone did happen to touch one so diseased, that person also became unclean, an outcast until the proper rituals were performed and the proper penalties paid. No wonder this seeker was uncertain how Jesus would react to his approach. Perhaps he had gone to other healers; perhaps he had sought other cures, only to be turned away.
Seeing this leper, knowing full well the brokenness, the hatred, the ignorance and the fear that demeaned this child of God and reduced him to something less than a fully alive human being, our text says Jesus was "deeply moved." The actual literal meaning of the word Mark uses here is "his guts turned within him." Some translations capture this deeper sense by saying Jesus was "angry" -not at the leper, but at the alienation, not at the physical condition but at
the barrier that had been erected between this man and God. "Jesus put out his hand, touched him, and said, 'I want to. Be clean.'"[Mark 1:41] In one swift move Jesus crossed the line, tore down the barrier, dismantled the wall, identified himself with this outcast. Jesus who many times healed simply with a word; Jesus who didn't even need to be in the same physical location as the one who needed healing, Jesus reached out and touched this untouchable one and in so doing restored his dignity, his life and his relationship with God, himself and his community. Then after the touch, after the wall was down, after the relationships were healed, the disease was also cured.
If we are honest with ourselves we know that we live with all kinds of walls and barriers too. Perhaps they don't have the force of written code behind them but they are real. We shut out those we fear. We exclude those who are different. There are people we look at with fear and suspicion just because of the clothes they wear, the body parts they have pierced or the religion they practice. A long, long time ago I read a quote in a magazine article. I don't remember who said it or what the article was about, but that quote has deeply impacted my life. It said, "What we don't understand we fear; what we fear we hate; and what we hate eventually destroys us."
Now as then, Christ the Healer wants to break down our walls, dismantle the barriers we erect and invite us into the healing of understanding. Beginning with our relationship with God, moving to our relationship with our own truest self, extending to the relationships we have with others Christ desires to bring healing and restoration.
From about 1986 until 1996 I was actively involved with The Ulster Project. Conceived by Rev. Kerry Waterstone, The Project brings Catholic and Protestant teens from Northern Ireland together on the neutral ground of American soil "to promote reconciliation ... by fostering tolerance, understanding, and friendship among teenage future leaders" When The Project began in 1974 and even in 1986 the separation between Catholics and Protestants in Northern Ireland was almost total; different neighborhoods, different schools; different places of employment. And the bombing, the killing and the violence were an every day event on the streets of Belfast and other cities in the North of Ireland. In fact there were literal walls, called peace walls, that separated the neighborhoods and kept people in their place.
Every summer during the month of July our project greeted between 16-18 anxious, hesitant, cautious 14-15 year olds from Belfast. Each teen from Belfast stayed with an American teen and his or her family. All the teens, both Northern Irish and American, participated in all the activities. We did fun stuff like canoeing and going to Great American. We did more serious stuff like attending worship together in both Catholic and Protestant churches. It's hard for you to imagine, but from time to time we had youth that literally shook with terror as the approached the door of a church from "the other side." But the heart of the project was what we called the Discovery Time. Each week a Catholic Priest and I and a team of young adult volunteers from both the U.S. and Northern Ireland led all kinds of activities designed to help the teens build relationships, foster understanding and break down the walls of fear and hatred.
It was an awesome experience for all of us. I especially remember one discovery session about three weeks into the program when we were dealing head on with what the Northern Irish call "the troubles." There were two girls -one Catholic and one Protestant- sitting together on a couch. One started talking about the way her family had been affected by the troubles. Tears streaked down her checks as she talked about the police breaking into their home in the middle of the night; about the damage they did to her home; about the pain of having her brother arrested as a suspected terrorist. As she talked her new Protestant friend reached out and gently touched her. Then when she was finished talking, her friend began to talk about
how the troubles had affected her and her family. As she began relating how her brother had been shot by the IRA (the Catholic terrorist organization) and the fear she lived in because her father had to go near a Catholic neighborhood on his way to work, she too began to cry and her new Catholic friend gently laid an arm around her shoulder. By the time both of them were finished talking, they were literally wrapped in each others arms; the shared understanding and the shared love had broken down a wall of hatred and pain and fear. It was a powerful God moment!
Whatever the walls might be, in your life and mine, in this country and around the world Christ the Healer seeks to renew our lives and restore our relationships that we might live fully alive in God's love. Amen.
