A Touch. This morning s scripture is a story that caught my attention it is brief and almost

Transcription

1 23 July 2017 Psalm 121 Matthew 8:1-4 A Touch This morning s scripture is a story that caught my attention it is brief and almost unnoteworthy unless you stop for a minute and really consider it. Today I am going to invite you to bring your imagination into this depiction of Jesus healing a leper and let it even in its unassuming brevity tell you something powerful. In the first century, lepers were driven out from society and forced to lived on its edges. They were restricted in what they could do, where they could go. In scripture they represent the worst situation possible for someone rejected, avoided, and condemned by others on the outside and within, lonely, hurting, and without hope. The banishing of a leper seems harsh but the ancient near east is not the only time and culture to isolate its wounded. We may not have colonies or cover our mouths in their presence, but a person doesn t have to have leprosy to be exiled. Some have shunned those who were divorced or handicapped or terminally ill. I suppose why this story caught my attention was because it reminded me so much of someone I had met once who lived very much the life of a leper, an outcast. It was in the early 90 s and AIDS had been around for little more than a decade and while we knew much about the disease by then, people still acted with ignorance. I was in college and was doing an internship in a social agency called the Lancaster AIDS Project when I met Barney. He had full blown AIDS and died from it in the time I knew him. He took 30 pills a day, his Kaposi s sarcoma lesions were visible on his head and arms, and he was wasting away to skin and bones, as frail and meager looking

2 as the skinny whippets he and his partner bred for a living his kitchen and a corner of his living room their kennel. He reluctantly agreed to let me and another intern visit. Our first few appointments were brief and perfunctory as I would ask him what help the Project could offer by way of assistance, usually to bring things like Ensure or lotion for his wounded skin. One visit, I don t remember how or why, the flood gates finally opened and he told me his story. He had been married once and had 3 children whom he had not been allowed to see for 8 years, shortly after he was diagnosed with AIDS. He had tried to stay in his community to see them, but his church, his family, and his friends shunned him, just like a leper. He was clearly angry and bitter and even as he was counting his final days, he was still outraged and unforgiving toward them and toward God. I had never met anyone so enraged and so sad at the same time. We talked about the betrayal he felt and eventually it was like he melted and we got to the core of the hurt it was the loneliness, the lack of intimacy, the absence of a significant human connection that fueled his emotion. All I could do was listen and hand him tissues until his tears were spent. Before we left, we hugged him, and it was like embracing a skeleton. That was the last time we saw him. He died soon after, still cut off from his family and church family who could not accept and love him as he was. So it is Barney that haunted me as I read this story about the leper and I am left wishing I could have done more to heal his rage, to offer him some peace before his death. Perhaps, though, you will indulge me this moment of imagination about a story in scripture where Jesus was able to heal a man with a touch and think that maybe he and Barney have found kindred spirits whole and restored together in God s eternal care

3 My story is about a touch. You don t realize how important it is until you go without it for a long, long time. For me it was 5 terrible years. For 5 years no one touched me. Not my wife. Not my children. Not a friendly handshake or even a bump on the street. Not a tap on the shoulder to get my attention. Not a clap on the back in congratulations. Not a kiss on the lips to steal the heart. I was untouchable. A leper. Unclean and outcast. You don t notice it at first, but the absence of touch slowly eats away at you as surely as the disease ate at my flesh, and in its absence all I had was bitterness. I remember the moment I first knew or at least when I first admitted it was happening to me. I had come in after a long day in the field where my grip had been slowly getting weaker on my tools, my fingers tingling now and again throughout the day. I had been trying to hide it for awhile, this weakening of my hand, the loss of sensation in my fingertips. I went to the basin to wash up for supper and when I cupped my hand in the water, the liquid reddened. When did I cut myself? In the field along a metal edge? On a knife? I couldn t remember because I couldn t feel it. In the mirror I saw my wife s face as she glanced at my shirt where my hand must have brushed the blood. The sadness in her eyes told me not just that she knew but that she had known and this was as much a moment of truth and tragedy for her as it was for me. Shall I go with you to the priest? she asked. No I ll go alone. I turned and touched her cheek for the last time, and I bent and embraced our young daughter, and silently I slipped away. What could I say? Five years and no one has touched me, until today.

4 The priest didn t touch me. He looked at my hand, bandaged in a rag. He looked at my face, already scarred with sorrow. I ve never blamed him for what he said. He was only following the law. He covered his mouth and extended his hand, palm outward. You are unclean, he told me. With that stark pronouncement I lost my family, my farm, my future, my friends. At the city gates, my wife brought me a sack of bread and some coins. In the crowd that was beginning to gather, it is her sad eyes and silence that still stabs my heart. As I stepped out, the others stepped back, and in their faces I saw what I have always seen since. Fear. And pity. To my closest friends, once confidantes and colleagues, I was now a monster. I turned to make my way to the colony and the new pitiful community waiting for me there. Five years of leprosy had left me a shell of a man. My hands were gnarled, the tip of my nose an open wound, parts of my ears and fingers and toes were gone. How they looked at me. A glance of horror would flash across faces as mothers drew their children close and frenzied voices spat at me, Unclean! Unclean! I couldn t hide it any more than I could silence the bell I was forced to wear around my neck to announce my presence. As if I needed it. The rags and the sorrow in my eyes proclaimed my state clear enough. Not too long ago, I decided I had had it. I was sick of the sleeping in the colony, sick of the stench, sick of the loneliness within me and the despair around me. I snuck out in the night and went to the edge of the village where I used to live and sat under a tree. I shook my fist at the sky and cried, Why? Why? and got no reply. I moaned and wept until I fainted with grief under a tree. When morning broke, I decided it had to end. Somehow. Desperate still, I figured I would walk and walk until I dropped dead in the heat or provoke

5 a fight with someone on the road and hope it killed me. As I came near a field, I heard the sound of children playing. In my state, it jarred me to hear the joy-filled sounds of their squeals of laughter. Hiding behind a tree, I thought to myself, this is where I lived one of those children could be my daughter and not thinking I stepped out from behind the tree drawn in by their energy and freedom. They saw me and scattered as their voices went from laughing to screaming. But one girl stayed behind and stared. I can t say it was my daughter, but I thought or maybe I imagined a look of recognition cross her face. She didn t scream but she did run after her friends. That encounter was enough to awaken life in a man full of death. I was no longer just a leper, an outcast, unclean. I was a man. A father. A husband. I think it was that moment that gave me the strength and the courage to do what I did today, a thread of hope slowly stitching up my dreams. If too much time had passed between that incident and the day I heard of this healing man, I m not sure I would have ever left the colony again. But something in me knew I had to try. I went out in search of him. It was reckless, of course. Risky. But what did I have left to lose? He is called the son of God. Either he will hear my complaint and kill me or accept my demands and heal me. That was what I was thinking brazen and defiant I knew that divine silence I received under the tree that night was insufficient, and I shook with frustration enough to confront God with my reality and see what sort of a son of God he was. It was not so much an act of faith as an act of defiance. I couldn t help it. As I stepped from the crowd, the jeers caught me, Unclean! Unclean! The crowd was getting anxious and it was now or never. The God that gave me life would either heal it or end it.

6 In all the commotion, I could not hold back the years of anger, frustration, loss and loneliness. It crept into my voice with a fury as I challenged this man, You can heal me if you want. Daring him to show himself true, as true and as cruel as everyone who had ever called me unclean and worse. I dared him to reject me and to confirm every bad thing I had heard about myself and eventually claimed into my being, into this broken man I had become. When you are at the bottom, bitter and afraid as I, you look for confirmation of the worst of it as if it somehow justifies your predicament. Heal me, if you want. As I glared into his eyes, that s when I saw it, and immediately I softened. In response to my anger, my defiance, I saw the embodiment of compassion. I have learned since the full meaning of that word. It is not pity pity looks down on you from a righteous perch and ends up making you feel smaller inside than you already did. Friends had shown me pity. It is not feeling sorry or even an empathy that pretends to know where I had been. Compassion is a touch. (lift arm and hand out) I had not felt it in 5 years, but there it was one person reaching out to another, one soul responding to the deepest needs of another. You can heal me, if you want. Had he healed me with a word, I would have been thrilled. Had he cured me with a prayer, I would have rejoiced. But it was a touch. I do choose, he said, be healed! An electricity shivered down my spine and a warmth crept into my hands and face and feet and my flesh was restored. My back straightened and my spirit lifted until my face was up in front of his. He cupped my cheeks in his hands and looked intently into my eyes, and said, Don t tell anyone about this. But go and show yourself to the priest, and offer the

7 gift that Moses commanded for people who are made well. Your gratitude will be your testimony. He could have asked me to do anything, and I would have done it but so peculiar was his request I couldn t have imagined it myself. Give thanks and that is it. Nothing more simple and in his eyes more profound than gratitude. So that is where I am going. Back to the priest. Then I will go and embrace my wife and pick up my daughter. And I will never forget the one who dared to touch me. He could have healed me with a word. But he wanted to do more than heal me. He wanted to honor me, to validate me, to anoint me. It was a touch that carried all that power. A touch. Have you ever known such a touch? The doctor who treated you, or the friend who dried your tears? Was there a hand holding yours at a funeral? Another on your shoulder at a trial? A handshake of welcome at the door? To know such a touch is to know the touch of God. We offer it as surely as Jesus did when we pray for the sick or write letters or bake a pie as we minister to others. Sometimes we are afraid of saying or doing the wrong thing or acting the wrong way. But if your fear of doing the wrong thing keeps you from doing anything it all, listen to one who knows, and just imagine the perspective of the lepers of this world. The ones cast aside for one reason or another. They aren t picky. They aren t finicky. They re just lonely. And they ache for a touch. In the name of God, then, go and do.