Let me tell something about Jesus: There are some things that just...[nasty face] make him sick.
Have you ever heard someone say that? "It just makes…me…sick."
What makes…you…sick?
-gay people? (back in the headlines with Prop 8 ruled unconstitutional)
-Republicans?
-beaches covered with oil? (my memory of Galveston)
-Barack Obama?
-Fred Phelps?
-people who hit their children? -- violence begetting more violence
-anyone who would burn the US flag?
-Muslims, all of them?
-human trafficking on Jamacha Blvd.? 14 yrs old girls and a market that keeps their pimps in business?
-"that person"?
Why am I doing this to you? Why am I trying to conjure up this absolutely disgusted feeling? Are you feeling it? Can you get there? I must talk to at least 3 people every week who are there. Just sssssick. Down to their guts?
The feeling is definitely enough to make you cry, but you’re not there right now…it’s mostly anger and absolute disgust.
Well, that’s splaghitzomai! Spla-what?
It's the Greek word for what happens to Jesus when he sees the leper. It makes him ssssick.
Our translation says it like this: that he’s “moved with compassion”. But that’s a bad translation. Well, it’s not all wrong, it’s just totally inadequate. Some Bibles really get their Greek wrong because they write, Jesus “felt sorry for” the man with leprosy. This isn’t just “Awww. Poor guy. Poor little leper...” like he’s a puppy with a broken leg. NO, this is splaghitzomai!
He certainly is concerned about the man’s condition physically, and wants to do something about that, and he does. But even more, he is enraged by a system that separates people so cruelly. This healing is really a justice issue…the more I study this text and this strange activity that follows the healing. Sending him off to the priest. Ordering him not to tell. He is publically – once again, still in Chapter 1 – he is publically breaking with Levitical law on multiple levels, starting with the fact that he’s touching an unclean man. Lepers were next to dead, in the order of cleanliness, in a society that divided itself on the basis of clean and unclean. Here’s the order of uncleanliness spelled out in Levitical law: women, menstruating women, any with a deformity, any with an illness, the demon possessed, the leper, the dead. Are you catching Jesus’ splaghitzomai at this system? This kind of division, this kind of injustice makes him ssssick.
And while it’s obviously much different now than it was then, in our world in 2012 lurks still such inhumane divisions: divisions among class, ethnicity, religious belief, gender, sexual orientation, immigration status, diet, people with disabilities…just to name a few. And in the bold spirit of Jesus according to the Gospel of Mark, it must be said that the divisions we humans can make are just wrong!
I'm afraid we take some kind of pill…to cope with all the injustices around us…a pill that numbs us. What’s your pill? What are you taking?
(I was at restaurant working on the first part of this sermon. And I had the impulse to scream as I was studying and writing and uncovering what Jesus was up to in this text, [could you imagine?] but instead I just took another bite of my food. Even though my stomach was kind of sick and full.)
What’s your pill? Or maybe our pill doesn’t numb us, maybe it distracts us. The pain all around gets in our head for a minute. But then I turn on the game, I take another bite. Some of us drink. Some of us collect stuff. Some of us sleep. We cozy up and protect our own. But there is suffering out there. There are hungry children; people with no place to sleep; there are so many who are being rejected like lepers; there are oceans being polluted; jobs being cut; little girls being exploited! And we turn on the game, we balance our check books, we hug our little ones…our cute little ones, not those pitiful little ones. Something to blind us, confuse us. Maybe we even find a way to justify the suffering of this world: “Like, maybe they deserve it. Maybe God’s punishing them. We can’t understand, but God must be punishing them. Could you pass the potatoes?” We’re almost on the verge of screaming, but instead I just take another bite.
Somehow we figure out how it’s ok that the leper is treated the way he is. “That’s just the way it is.” We swallow that pill.
But not Jesus!!! Jesus doesn’t take any kind of pill. He feels it. All of it. He has splaghitzomai. He could cry, but right now he’s just disgusted…and he feels all of it. He knows all of it, all the pain. And it makes him sick.
Amazing, isn’t it? It makes him sick, so he reaches out and touches the sick. Doesn’t make any sense.
Today following this time, something a little different.
We’re going to have a brief service of healing as we sing. This is not magical, TV evangelism healing that I’m about to do, or you’re about to do, actually. This is a simple and yet powerful ritual of feeling and hearing and smelling (healing oil) Christ’s words for us today: “Be made clean.”
Be made clean from all that hurts us, and all that might even be causing us to hurt others around us. Be made clean. Be made clean from all that enslaves you, all that pains you, all that grieves you, all that burdens you. Be made clean. Be made clean from all that separates and divides you from the community around you. Be restored. Come back. Come back to life. Come back to me, Jesus says as he heals us. Come back to me…by going out…clean and new and forgiven and freed…
Be made clean, he says, this day and forever more. AMEN.
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