1. Prayer:
Good Morning. Let’s
pray. O Lord, may the words of my mouth
and the meditations of our hearts be pleasing to You O Lord, our Rock and our
Redeemer. Amen.
2. Opening Comments: The title of this morning’s reflection is
“Who Is the Leper in your Life?” I
believe that God is challenging us to a deeper level of closeness or intimacy
with Him and those about us. It will
have to look beyond the corruption in our lives. But more of that soon. Before we dig down for these deeper meanings
let’s briefly review what our Lord has told us in this morning’s readings.
In our Old
Testament Reading the author of Leviticus proscribes how the Children of Israel
are to avoid the contamination of Leprosy or any persistent skin disease by the
isolation of all such afflicted people.
They are to publically proclaim their uncleanness and dwell apart from
the rest of the population. So the life
of the leper was one of public humiliation and isolation. This is not a very pretty picture is it? Not at all.
In more symbolic
terms it depicts the state of isolation of someone dangerous to the community. Let me say that a different way – The Old
Testament reading this morning depicts in rather stark terms the state of
isolation of anyone who is dangerous to the family of God. In very general terms this is a picture of
the sinner whom God is isolating to protect the uninfected.
Our Gospel
Reading also focused on the Leper and in this reading we see a Leper who is
never supposed to draw near to the uninfected fall down on his knees and beg of
Jesus:
Mark 1:40
. . . “If you are willing, you
can make me clean.” And Jesus . . .
Mark 1:41 filled with compassion, reached
out his hand and touched the man and said, “I am willing, Be
clean!” Incidentally, the Greek word used
here, kaqari÷zw has the dual meaning of healing both physically and spiritually. In other words, Jesus was offering not only
to heal the man’s physical malady but he was also agreeing to heal him
spiritually.
Reading on:
Mark 1:42 Immediately the leprosy left him
and he was cured. 43 Jesus sent him away at once . .
The word translated as “filled with compassion” actually means, (splagcni÷zomai) to experience great affection and compassion
for someone — ‘to feel compassion for, to have great affection for, love,
compassion.’
So clearly Jesus was profoundly moved by
this man’s predicament and he did what no Jew would ever think of doing and
that was to reach out and touch the ritually unclean man.
In doing so he, himself, became unclean and
the only remedy for this was ritual cleansing so in a very real sense Jesus
swapped places with the unclean man in that by touching Him He became unclean
and had to isolate himself from the rest of the community.
Jesus took on the sin of the other – does this sound familiar. St. Paul put it this way:
2Cor. 5:21 God made Jesus who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might
become the righteousness of God.
So let me
review what we’ve discovered so far: In
the Old Testament we’ve discovered that infection was isolated while in the New
Testament we’ve witnessed the restoration of the infected both physically and
ritually represented by his restoration into the Jewish community.
But now we
must look into what it takes to be restored into the community.
In the case of
the Gospel leper all that was needed was his request . . . or was it?
Notice his
posture as he made his request: Our
reading said:
Mark 1:40
A man with leprosy came to him and begged him on his knees, “If you are
willing, you can make me clean.”
The
New Jerusalem Bible put it this way:
Mark 1:40 A man suffering from a virulent
skin-disease came to him and pleaded on his knees saying, ‘If you are willing,
you can cleanse me.’
Can
you see it? The Leper’s posture was that
of humility!
I want us to delve a little more deeply into the
Leper’s posture of humility. See if you can
discover what it was in the Leper’s request that prompted Jesus immediate
response.
So please
turn with me to Psalm 32:
Psa. 32:1
Blessed is he whose transgressions are forgiven, whose sins are covered.
2 Blessed is the man whose sin the LORD doesn’t count against him and in
whose spirit there is no deceit.
This is the person who is blessed but
what about the person who isn’t blessed?
We see this in the next verse:
Psa. 32:3
But when I kept silent, When I refused to acknowledge my sin – my need for cleansing . . . my bones wasted away through
my groaning all day long. 4 For day and night your hand was heavy upon
me; to bring conviction and contrition to my heart, my strength was sapped as
in the heat of summer. Selah
5
Then finally I acknowledged my sin to you I become utterly transparent before you – nothing held back - I didn’t cover up my iniquity. I
said, “I will confess my transgressions to the LORD nothing held back – no justifications, no
rationalization,”— and you forgave the guilt of my sin. Selah
Psa. 32:9 Don’t be like the stubborn horse or the mule, which have no understanding but
must be controlled by bit and bridle or they will not come to you. This is a picture of the person who
stubbornly justifies their sins; rationalizes their position. Reading on: 10 Many are the woes of the wicked, but the LORD’S
unfailing love surrounds the man who trusts in him and comes to him with a humble and
contrite heart. Who confesses his sin
and asks humbly for help.
Psa. 32:11 Such a person can then most certainly Rejoice in the LORD and be glad, you righteous;
sing, all you who are upright in heart!
In these verses we’re
clearly being told what it takes to become clean before God so that He is
willing to heal us.
And what is that?
Verse 5 tells
us. Let me read it once again:
5
Then I acknowledged my sin to you, my God, and didn’t cover up my
iniquity. I said, “I will confess my transgressions to the LORD”— and you
forgave the guilt of my sin. Selah
Have you ever heard
the saying, “Get a healing.” “I’m going
to the Revival to ‘get a healing.’”
We don’t get a
healing! We’re healed simply by being in
God’s presence!
But what does “being
in His Presence” really mean.
I can be in Randi’s
presence physically but in reality be a million miles away from her psychologically
and spiritually.
To draw close to God
and each other requires two fundamental actions that our Leper and our Psalmist
have just told us about. These two
actions are: humility and honesty – or transparency.
In other words, pride
and lies won’t get us close to God!
Pride and lies keep
us isolated from God.
Pride and lies keep
us isolated from each other.
Our pride and
lies have now made US the real Leper!
We can lie to one
another and in so doing limit any real intimacy or closeness between us.
We can lie to God and
eliminate any chance at closeness or intimacy with Him.
We may not know that
someone is lying to us but if there is limited or no closeness between us then
it’s fair to assume that there are lies or unstated truths somewhere in the
picture.
You see we were made
in the image of God (Gen 1:26) and are thereby “Capex Dei” – capable of God –
capable of relationship with God but when we try to play God in our lives or in
the lives of others our lies and pride make us “incapable of God” – unable to
relate or commune or be in relationship with Him! And so we become less and less human. More and more inhuman and ultimately dead –
dead to life – dead to intimacy!
Application: Now let’s get personal.
If you struggle with
being close to others or close to God my guess is that you’re prideful and
struggle with real honesty both with yourself with others and certainly with
God.
Every human being
whether we know it or not is insecure.
Why can I be certain of that?
Because we’re not God and that reality stares us in the face ever
day. To deny that reality takes a great
deal of obfuscation, rationalization, justification and just plain old
lying.
Some of us do this by
keeping up a constant self-chatter going which crowds out any real “Selah –
silence and reflection.
Some of us do it with
language. Instead of calling a spade a
spade we rationalize and justify our actions and sometimes even use euphuisms
to accomplish this.
A
euphemism
is the substitution of a mild, inoffensive, relatively uncontroversial phrase,
for a frank expression that might offend or otherwise suggest something
unpleasant to the audience.
Here
are some examples:
Partner
instead of lover
Fetus
instead of baby
Serial
Monogamy instead of promiscuity
Tolerant
instead of ungrounded
Adult
entertainment instead of pornography
Ample
proportions instead of obese or fat
Disinformation
instead of lie
What we’re doing here is not facing the facts. We’re avoiding facing the truth about ourselves. We’re avoiding facing our leprosy!
Some of you may have
heard me say “I’m an Australian – we’re a bit blunt and straight to the
point.” That’s a rationalization for
unthinking and insensitive rudeness.
C.S. Lewis wrote a short
book entitled “Till We Have
Faces” and in this book he made the point that we put on masks to cover
our ugliness; our vulnerabilities but in doing this we condemn ourselves never to
really see others or ever see God face to face.
It’s only when we
take off our masks that we’re able to truly see each other and God.
The fact is that we
human beings are terribly vulnerable in this wholly contingent world. We’re so vulnerable to the sarcasm and
disdain of our parents and those whom we love.
Suffering comes as we
expose ourselves to other’s criticisms, sarcasms and disdainful attitudes so
most of us put on masks and live a life of hiding and wall-building.
This morning God is
calling every one of us to take off our masks before Him for He will never
disdain us. He will never leave nor
forsake us and as we become secure in our relationship with Him we can take off
our masks.
God is calling you and me this
morning to reveal ourselves to Him; to no longer hide our leprosy.
Why? So that He can do what He so wants to do to
us – to reach out and touch us and heal us.
It is then and only
then, secure in His love, that we can face others face to face and be to them
what He has become for us – our beloved friend.
Get real with
God! And then you and I will be able to
get real with one another!
Let’s pray!
