February 11, 2018 - Last Epiphany B

Lectionary Readings

In the name of God ☩ Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.

            Do you remember the first time you looked through a microscope? You put something, like a butterfly wing or a flower petal, onto a slide, adjusted the light, and then peered through the lens and a whole new world was opened to you. What you saw was something that is normally hidden from us, but undergirds everything about our world. And though it’s the opposite scale, the first time you looked through a telescope lens you could see things that are much bigger than ourselves. I remember the spine-tingling sense of wonder that I was overcome with when I looked through a telescope and saw the awe-inducing rings of Saturn. Whether it’s a microscope or a telescope, these tools reveal to us beauty, wonder, and truths of which we are typically unaware. The event known as the Transfiguration, which we heard about in Mark this morning, is a Biblical story that is equivalent to looking through a microscope to see the deepest truths of our world and a telescope to be overwhelmed by the glory of it all.

October 11, 2015 - Proper 23B

Lectionary Readings

In the name of God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.

            As I mentioned last Sunday as we began our exploration of the book of Job, this Biblical book forces us to rethink our assumptions. We’ve skipped over 21 chapters since last week and today we have a speech by Job as our entry into the unfolding story. The premise of the book is that Job is being tested to see whether or not he will ever curse God for all the calamities that have befallen him. Job doesn’t quite curse God, but he does curse the day he was born. And then some of his friends come by to offer him encouragement and advice. Today’s reading is part of Job’s response to one of his friends. The book of Job invites us to go deeper into our faith, but doing so will require rethinking some of the most foundational aspects of our faith.

October 4, 2015 - Proper 22B

Lectionary Readings

In the name of God- Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.

            Imagine that you lost everything. You get into an accident on the way to work and your car is totaled. When you get to the office, you find out that you’ve been fired. So you go home, only to see several fire trucks in front of the place where your house used to stand. Tragically, all of your children also died in that fire. Your phone then rings and it’s your doctor calling you with the test results, and it isn’t good news. Then your neighbor comes over to you and says “What did you do to make God so angry at you?” You insist that your actions didn’t warrant such calamities, but everyone around you insists that this is all your fault. The question that haunts you is “Why did this all happen to me?”

January 6, 2015 - Epiphany

Lectionary Readings

May Almighty God, who led the Wise Men by the shining of a star to find the Christ, the Light from Light, lead us also, in our pilgrimage, to find the Lord. Amen.

            On Epiphany, we celebrate the manifestation of Jesus to the world, as the Holy Family was visited by visitors from the East. And in their encounter, there are several things for us to take note of and build upon in our own faith journeys. The first thing we see about the magi’s encounter with God is that it did not go according to the plan. It’s often the same for us too, isn’t it? These wise men were astrologers, journeying from a far away land because of a sign that they saw in the night sky. But notice that they don’t follow the star all the way to Bethlehem. No, instead they show up Herod’s palace in Jerusalem. Bethlehem and Jerusalem are about 6 miles apart, roughly the distance from here to the Rowan County portion of the Yadkin River. Not bad by car, but by camel that’s a least a an hour off. What we see in the magi is that they missed finding God on their first attempt. They thought they were following the signs, they thought they were on the right path,  they even had a divine sign in the star, and they still managed to miss Bethlehem by a decent margin.

June 9, 2013 - Proper 5C

In the name of God- Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.

            Well today is a busy day- we have two young children to welcome and initiate into the household of God through the Sacrament of Baptism, and during the announcements we’ll be recognizing Mike Taylor for his exceptional and dedicated ministry at St. Francis as our facilities manager as he departs to work for Habitat for Humanity in Wilmington.

            The lectionary this morning presents us with two very similar stories about widows who lose their only sons and God’s power to redeem those broken situations. Both women found themselves in very desperate situations. The widow of Zarephath, from 1 Kings, is living in a time of extreme drought and famine. There is little food for anyone, and so the charity that a widow would depend on has dried up as well. And in that culture, a widow was in very dire straits, as without a husband or son, she would be unable to negotiate deals, earn a living, or have many civil rights. And so when her only son dies, she is losing much more than her beloved child, which would be a painful enough loss, but she is losing her lifeline to many social structures.

            And the widow of Nain, in Luke, is likewise in a tough situation being a widow losing her only son. She too was not only mourning the loss of her only son, but had lost her male protector and provider. And though it sounds rather sexist and misogynistic to our modern ears, it is the simple fact of that culture- without a man to provide for them, these widows were thrown down several steps on the social ladder.

            And so as the text provides these two stories of funeral processions, we can ask ourselves the same questions that they asked. Where is God? Does God even care about me? Is God around? Why am I being made to suffer? Where is God’s justice? No matter how strong our faith, there are those times when it is only natural to wonder how it is that such a loving and powerful God seems to standby while so much evil and sadness happens. These widows were likely pondering similar questions in their tears.

            Often we think of Elijah and Jesus as very holy men, mouthpieces for God, or in the case of Jesus, God incarnate. But Elijah and Jesus must have decided to skip class the day that pastoral care came up, as they both would receive an “F” for their intrusions in the lives of these widows. First, Elijah comes to a widow in a land of famine and asks for food. Rather rude isn’t it? Imagine going up to the homeless person and asking them for dinner. But he does it anyway. She protests that only has a few morsels left for her and her son, and if they don’t have that, they will die of starvation. But Elijah insists, just do the best you can.

            I wonder what was going through this widow’s mind. She probably wanted to throw him out for being such a demanding guest, not to mention for being the prophet of the God who was causing the famine. But she responded instead with hospitality and trust. We are reminded of the disciple on the shores of the Sea of Galilee that asked, “how will feed all of these people with only five loaves and two fish?” And we recall that in our generosity, in our ability to loosen our grip on our possessions and fears of scarcity, that God’s abundance is made more visible. In her generosity, she opens herself to the miracle of there being food enough. So let us remember, there is always enough to be generous.

            Jesus, likewise, intrudes rather poorly into the funeral procession. Imagine the scene. A solemn procession heading towards the cemetery, people crying, and a complete stranger approaches the mother of the dead son and says “stop crying.” That’s certainly not what they teach in seminary. And this woman, instead of slapping Jesus, or asking a relative to remove this rude intruder, watches as he approaches the bier and touches the casket. Perhaps she wanted a reason to stop crying and wanted to see what this holy man might do.

            Isn’t that the way that God often enters the picture? How often does God come to ask us to take on one more task, to write one more check, to shed one more tear when we’ve already done all we thought possible. God’s intrusions into our lives are not always welcome, sometimes they seem rather crazy. Now to be sure, the widow doesn’t know what Jesus will do. She doesn’t know that her son will be brought back to life, at this point in the gospel, Jesus hasn’t done anything on that level yet. But like the widow at Zarephath, the widow at Nain was open to receiving what God was offering. I’ve shared it before, and I’ll share it again, as St. Augustine said- “without God, we cannot; without us, God will not.” We can either be open to what God might be doing in our world and lives, or we can stay closed off from these holy intrusions.

            And in being open, both of these widows find hope. Elijah asks God to send life back into the son, and Jesus tells the dead son to “rise.” And in both instances, the miracle of God’s redemption is seen. In Luke, the author is trying to portray Jesus as the new Elijah, so this link shouldn’t be overlooked. In the Greek text of both readings, the exact same phrase is found, “he gave her back to his mother.” In both instances, the hopeless widow is recast as the joyful mother.

            What is fascinating is that these stories differ from other miracle stories in the gospels. These healings are not based on the faith of the people involved. The widow at Zarephath isn’t even Jewish, she doesn’t follow the God for whom Elijah is a prophet. She certainly didn’t expect the God of Israel to do anything for her. She lived in the land of the Baals, another deity in the region. And the widow at Nain didn’t ask Jesus for a miracle as the Roman centurion did in the reading last week. She wasn’t seeking Jesus out, she wasn’t expecting a miracle from Jesus, she wasn’t even expecting a card in the mail from him. These stories demonstrate, not the faithfulness of the widows, but the faithfulness of God.

            These two women were open to God, they responded to the intrusions not with anger or hostility, but with hospitality and grace. And they became witnesses to God’s faithfulness. We often focus on our own faith. How we pray, how we give, how we share, how we read the Bible. And those are important things. But how often do we consider God’s faithfulness?

            When we find ourselves in tough situations, it’s very easy to go inward and look for solutions to our problems. We live in a culture that makes pulling ourselves up by our bootstraps a virtue. Our political commentary casts people in poverty as moochers that take government handouts, because somehow they can’t overcome the systems of oppression designed to keep the rich rich and the poor poor. When our President reminds us that we didn’t build the schools and the roads that lead to our individual success, we call him a socialist instead of acknowledging the truth that “no person is an island.” Our culture today would likely condemn both of these widows with terms such as “illegal,” “dependent on government welfare,” or “hopeless.” We take pride in our own success instead of God’s faithfulness.

            David Brooks recently wrote a great op-ed piece in the New York Times about individualism and amorality. He notes that Google has recently made available a database of words used in books published between 1500 and 2008. It’s just a list of how many times a word is used. And he notes that in the last 48 years, words such as “personalized,” “self,” “unique,” and “I can do it myself,” have risen is usage, while words such as “community,” “share,” “united,” and “common good,” have decreased. Over the same time period, words of humility have dropped by 52%, words of compassion have dropped 56%, words of virtue such as “bravery” or “fortitude” dropped by 74%, and words of gratitude and appreciation have dropped by 49%. And he concludes that these gradual shifts in language reflect tectonic shifts in culture. We write less about communal bonds, obligations, and reliance on others because they’re less central to our lives.

            What Brooks is saying is similar to what these widows are witnessing the faithfulness of God. These women receive grace, not through belief, not through their faith, not because they deserved it, or earned it, or even asked for it, but instead because they were open enough to receive God’s faithfulness.

            Consider today’s Psalm- Weeping may spend the night, but joy comes in the morning / You have turned my wailing into dancing; you have put off my sack-cloth and clothed me with joy.

            As these widows and the Psalmist show us, though we will experience pain, God’s faithfulness will also show us joy. But how you might ask?  I’ve never had any of my dead loved ones come back to life. It was rather easy for these widows to rejoice, their dead sons came back to life. But as far as miracles go, resuscitating a dead person back to life is just a cheap parlor trick. Now I’m sure many of us would like this to happen in our lives, but if we’re talking about the Creator of the universe, it’s not really all that spectacular.

            But what is worthy of our wonder and awe is God’s ability to raise those who merely live and breathe to living a true life. Simon Weil wrote “the extreme greatness of Christianity lies in the fact that it does not seek a supernatural cure for suffering, but a supernatural use of it.” What is amazing about these stories is not so much that these dead sons came back to life, but it is the transformation of their situation. Those sons both died again at some point, it wasn’t a lasting miracle. What was so powerful about these acts is the way these events changed the people that witnessed the miracles, the way it changed tears of sadness into tears of joy, the way it reminds us that God’s grace comes not because we deserve it, but because God is faithful.

            Theologian Karl Barth said “where [humans] fail, God’s faithfulness triumphs.” We need not obsess over all of our problems, we don’t need to see failing as the worst possible outcome. Because it is in our failings, in our deepest needs that God’s faithfulness will be there. Some pains, such as the loss of a child, will never go away; some scars will never fully heal, but just as those wounds remain, God’s faithfulness remains with us. Grace and healing come not through our individual accomplishments, but through God’s faithfulness.

            And isn’t this what Baptism is about? God being faithful to us, who can’t earn God’s grace. It’s why babies are the perfect sort of people to baptize, people that are completely dependent on others, who receive God’s grace instead of earning it through a confession or class. And we’re setting them on the path to live a life full of moments of God’s faithfulness. And we thank Mike Taylor for his witness to God’s faithfulness through his humility, his care, and his dedication to St. Francis.

            These widows remind us that sometimes when God enters the picture, it can be a rather rude and unwelcome intrusion. But if we can respond with hospitality and openness, we can be witnesses to God’s faithfulness, which will be the true miracle- the miracle of living a life that truly matters, the miracle of a legacy that will endure long after we are gone, the miracle of having God transform our sackcloth into joy. As the refrain of the great hymn proclaims- Great is thy faithfulness, great is thy faithfulness / Morning by morning new mercies I see / All I have need of thy hand hath provided / Great is thy faithfulness, Lord unto me.

May 26, 2012 - Trinity Sunday

In the name of the One God who creates, redeems, and sustains us- Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.

             Today is Trinity Sunday, and in pulpits around the country this morning, many preachers will ignore this fact because they assume that the Trinity is too obtuse to understand or preach on, or they’ll assume that their congregants have no interest in the Trinity. I won’t be making those assumptions today. Yes, the Trinity is rather difficult to wrap our head around, but as Christians, we claim that God is somehow the great Three-in-One; Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Not preaching the Trinity on Trinity Sunday is problematic.

            On Christmas, you expect a sermon on the Incarnation of God in Jesus. On Easter, you anticipate hearing a sermon about the Resurrection of Jesus. On Pentecost, you will hear sermons about the Holy Spirit. And I’m not convinced that the doctrines of the Incarnation or Salvation are any easier to understand than that of the Trinity, we’ve just fooled ourselves into thinking that we understand them. As theologian Rudolf Otto reminds us, God is “wholly (w-h-o-l-l-y) other.” Or as our forum speaker said in February, “God is really, really big; and we are very, very small.” We’re not supposed to understand the Trinity.

            And let us remember that doctrines are expressions of faith, not the basis for faith. Doctrines are not intended to be litmus tests to gauge how sincere or deep our faith is. The Trinity is not a reason to believe in God, but rather it is an expression of our belief in God. And we would do well not to get distracted by the details of the Trinity. Though it may be interesting to read and debate about modalism, subordinationism, Arianism, or tritheism, such discussions are mere distractions from the big picture to which the Trinity calls us. The aspect of the Trinity on which I’d like to focus this morning is relationship.

            Say what you want about how it is that we have a trinity of persons in a unity of being, but at the most basic level, the Trinity demonstrates that God is a god of relationship. Being in union with others is absolutely central to the very nature and being of God. And this morning I want to suggest that this emphasis on relationship is the bedrock on which our hope rests.

            We’re not really good at relationships though. Our national divorce rate hovers near 50%, and there’s no telling how high the infidelity rate might be. We are litigious society in which we constantly sue each other because our coffee is too hot, or we don’t like the decision you made. There are roughly an estimated 34,000 Christian denominations in the world, most of them coming around as the result of disagreements. We solve our problems through guns and attorneys, signs that we’re really not good at being in relationship. In his classic work I and Thou, Martin Buber wrote about this issue.

            He notes that in our world, we default to “I-It” relationships; treating others as an “it” instead of a “thou” or “you.” In “I-It” relationships, we have experiences, collect data, and develop theories. But there is no connection, as we treat each others in a very utilitarian way. What will you do for me? What can I get out of our relationship? How can you be a tool to advance my cause? We can see this happening everywhere we look, from our families, all the way up to our Congress. The saying is that we are supposed to use things and love people, but instead we love things and use people. You can even see it in our language, the way that we frame so many of our issues as “us vs them.” What I always wonder is, who are “they.” So one party blames all of our woes on the other.

Even in our debates around government, you hear people talk about being afraid of “big government.” But what we seem to have forgotten is that the government doesn’t exist, but people do. You want to talk about slashing the cost of government overhead or food stamps programs, and you’re not talking about lines in a budget, you’re talking about the jobs of countless Americans and the meals that will go missing from their tables. It’s a problem of “I-It” relationships. And so we use language that allows us to hide their humanity and forget that they are “yous” and not “its.” We have gotten so far off track, that our Supreme Court has gotten so confused that they have declared that corporations are people. We have taken “its” and made them “yous.”

What Buber suggests stands in opposition to these deficient relationships are those interactions which he calls “I-Thou.” This is about encounter, about meeting the whole essence of the other, about being transformed by relationship. The basis for these relationships is in the relationship of God to us. And though they are rarer, these sorts of relationships do still happen, but they take work. They take having more vulnerability and less judgment. Instead of quickly putting people into boxes such as “stupid,” “homeless,” “illegal,” “gay”, “straight,” “single,” “married,” “Muslim,” “lazy,” that we instead get to know their name and story. This takes time, something which our face-paced culture places a premium on. But as Buber suggest, it is only through this deep knowing that we can be transformed. And this is something that that Trinity shows us- that being in a relationship of “I-Thou” is foundational to being a person of faith.

These are the sorts of relationship which we were created to have. St. Augustine, in writing on the Trinity, reminds us that we are created in the image of God. And in being created by God, an imprint of God is left on us. He says that “we can find traces of the Trinity all around.” If relationship is central to the Triune God, then it only stands to reason that we, who bear this divine imprint, are also created to be in relationships. And consider the image of Hell which Dante describes in The Divine Comedy; it is a place of isolation from God. Dante’s vision of the worst punishment possible isn’t so much in the flames and tortures of hell, but is in the isolation from relationships that truly matter. Or think about our prison system, solitary confinement is often considered to be a place of extra punishment; because somehow, we innately know that relationship is essential to who we are.

We need each other. Being in relationship also holds us accountable and reminds us of who we are when we are dizzied by the changes and chances of this life.

One of the reasons why we have a reading about Wisdom from Proverbs on Trinity Sunday is that some theologians have suggested that this personified Wisdom is, perhaps, a metaphor for Jesus. And other scholars note that Wisdom is a feminine word, sophia in Greek. And so, much has been said about the idea that God has innately feminine qualities in the Trinity. As I said earlier, that’s a detail to get lost in. But the bigger picture is that at we’re not complete until our relationships involve everyone. We need everyone to be at the table for the meal to work. We need the rich and the poor, the young and the old. We need those in jail and those in nursing homes. We need everyone in order to be complete. Relationship isn’t just about those like us; it is about gathering all who are made in the image of God.

And in having these “I-Thou” relationships, we must open ourselves to truly authentic relationships, of the sort that St. Paul refers to in today’s reading. He wrote that “we also boast in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope.” Let’s focus on the first part of that sentence- boasting in our sufferings. I also have in mind other places where St. Paul writes about boasting in weakness. And if we’re bad at relationships, we’re even worse at boasting in our sufferings or weaknesses.

We sure do love boasting in what we’re good at though. And there’s nothing wrong with having pride in your work and accomplishments, so long as we keep in mind the Reformation phrase soli deo gloria, “glory to God alone.” And we like having excuses for why we’re not perfect. I sometimes play tennis with a guy who, you’d think, could be the top tennis player in the world if things would just go his way. I’ve never seen him miss a shot without saying something like “that must of have hit a pebble when it bounced,” or “the lights were in my eyes.”

But how often do we boast in our shortcomings? None of us are the complete package; none of us are perfect. But we don’t like to admit that, and we cover our deficiencies instead of owning and boasting in them. And as St. Paul suggests, if we could own our sufferings and weaknesses, then we would gain endurance, and character, and hope. And that hope, comes through the idea of relationship which we find in the Trinity. If we can see our sufferings and weaknesses not as things that disadvantage us, but as opportunities to grow closer to and rely on others, we will also see the hope of what it means to love the way that God does.

I wonder what sort of church and society we’d be if everyone was given the chance to use their gifts? But too often we’re looking for messiah figures that seem too good to be true, and disappoint us when that turns out to be true. So people that aren’t good at management are put into management positions because they have the people skills to climb the corporate ladder. Or we elect people to Congress that are great at giving speeches, but are terrible at compromise. But what if we acknowledge our sufferings and weaknesses and then had the faith to trust in others to help us along?

If we continue to insist that we don’t need help from others, that we can handle it all on our own, we will fall out of relationships with others. What we see in the Trinity is that there is some wisdom in that idiom- “it takes a village.” We are stronger when we are together, when we can be open and honest about what we lack and need, and trusting enough to allow others to make us whole.

And there are instances where we still remember this foundational lesson from the Trinity. This connection between suffering and hope actually is what tomorrow’s secular holiday is all about. Memorial Day is a day in which we recount the stories of brave men and women who have heeded the call to liberate people from dictators and protect the American idea of freedom. And as we go to events which remember them and fly our flags, we are given a sense of hope.

I wish it could be different, that somehow this connection was more evident in our daily lives between owning our sufferings and weaknesses could remind us that deeply need to be in relationship with others, and that those relationships give us a peace which passes all understanding and a hope upon which to build our lives. But like most things that are truly important to us, it is easy to take it for granted. But for the people of Oklahoma, they are recalling this truth today- that homes and cars don’t matter nearly as much as relationships. And their hope isn’t found in knowing that their insurance policy will pay new stuff, but hope comes through the prayers of the nation, the courageous acts of the first responders, and the hoards of volunteers from around the country who will come to their town to help them rebuild. When we have funerals at this parish, there, of course, is suffering. But there is also great hope that comes through relationships- through cards sent, dinners made, and prayers. Whenever we experience a national tragedy, whether it be 9/11, bombs in Boston, or hurricanes in New Orleans or New York, we are reminded of this great truth expressed in the Trinity- our greatest hope comes through relationship with others and with God.

In being in “I-Thou” relationship with others, when we carry each others’ burdens, acknowledging our own suffering and weakness, we are doing the work of the Trinity. We are coming together as the image of God would have us do. We are being true to our created nature. And so it should come as no surprise that we find great comfort and hope when we are able to live in a way that accords with the divine plan of Creation.

The Trinity is a mystery, not to solve, but to thrive in. When we look at the big picture of the Trinity, we recall that God is relationship. Being made in the image of God, we are created to be in relationship. We only punish ourselves and those around us when we focus on “I-It” relationships which objectify others and further pushes us all towards islands of isolation. Instead, if we have more “I-Thou” relationships in which we can acknowledge our failings, weaknesses, and sufferings, we can be made whole through genuine relationships with God and others. We remember this well in our times of great need and tragedy. But for us to more fully live into the Kingdom of God, to be a more robust Church, to have more meaningful relationships in our personal lives, we need only to remember this lesson from the Trinity- that our greatest hope comes through having the deepest relationships. Amen.

February 12 - Epiphany 6B

In the name of God- Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.

            Today we are presented with readings that deal with issues of healing and compassion. So that we’re all on the same page, healing in both our reading from 2 Kings and Mark means “to make clean or pure.” Note that the language here is about ritual purity, not medical healing, nor is it the language of salvation. The other word which we run into is compassion. The word itself doesn’t actually show up in either reading, but it is implied throughout. Compassion is a compound word in Latin, with the com meaning “together” or “with;” and the passio means suffering- so “suffering with.”

            Here at St. Francis Episcopal Church in Greensboro, we have as our core values- simplicity, compassion, and hope. So today it is good for us to consider the value of compassion, reflecting on the way that we can take compassion from a slogan to being a way of life.

            The way I’ve structured this sermon is to take a look at the three people involved with these healings in 2 Kings and Mark. First we’ll consider the healed person, then the agent of the healing, and finally the healer.

            In both of our readings, the presenting issue is leprosy. The deeper issue really isn’t the actual medical diagnosis, perhaps they had Hansen’s Disease, perhaps it was some other skin condition. What mattered is that they were both unclean, they were contaminated. Society viewed them in the same way that we viewed the first HIV/AIDS patients in the 80s. These are people that were kept away from others, they were quarantined, lest they infect others.

We have the benefit of modern science and we now know that leprosy is not very contagious and is transmitted not through touch, but by breathing in the cough or sneeze of an infected person. Furthermore, about 95% of the population is naturally immune to this disease. What plagued Naaman and this man was not leprosy, but it was a cultural stigma. They were deemed to be unacceptable- not for who they were, nor for what they said or did, but they were cast out because of fear. The fear of compassion. People were afraid that if they spent time with these people, that they would literally be suffering with them. And as I mentioned, this fear was misplaced. Had people taken the time to minister to these lepers, they would have seen that they themselves would not have been infected.

And the same is true of those people whom we avoid like the plague. If you minister to the homeless, you don’t lose your house. If you have same-sex marriages in your church, you don’t erode the sanctity of marriage or family values. If you visit someone in prison, you don’t become a felon. If you pray with a Muslim, you don’t become a terrorist. If you’re a Republican, by talking to a Democrat you don’t become a socialist. If you’re a Democrat and you converse with a Republican, you don’t become a ruthless capitalist. If you drive your car through a Hispanic or African-American neighborhood, you don’t have your windows shot out. Maybe we don’t run into lepers on a daily basis, but we sure do treat a lot of people like they have leprosy.

The reason why I’m making this point so that we don’t do what many people do when they read the Bible. They say “I’m so glad that we now understand leprosy and don’t treat people like that” or “this story is 2,000 years old and has nothing to do with me.” Modern day leprosies exist because of prejudice, our own actions of pre-judging people, our insistence that we know what the other side will respond with before we even say anything.

We do treat people like lepers, but sometimes we need to be healed too, and these readings have something important to say to us, who needing healing, as well. The first thing to notice is that healing takes a while. Naaman has to bathe seven times in the river. He even had to go through a process. A modern translation of the story would read a bit differently. Naaman would have started by seeing his primary care physician, and then he went to the local specialists, but they didn’t have an answer. So he had to call his insurance company and go back and forth with them for a while about being allowed to see an out of network specialist at a large university hospital the next state over. But the dean of medicine there decides that he doesn’t have a clue what’s wrong and doesn’t want to deal with it. And eventually he gets healed by some faith healer on the outskirts of town. I know many of you are facing health struggles, and if you aren’t, I’m sure you know someone who is, a parent, a sibling, a friend, a neighbor. As a priest, I’ve gotten to know my way around Greensboro nursing homes, Cone and Long hospitals, even Baptist in Winston; there is a lot of hurt in our lives Don’t we all wish it was as simple as a quick healing? But as we see in Naaman’s case, sometimes it takes a while.

And for the man in Mark, it wasn’t any easier. He had likely had leprosy for years, he had likely give up hope. But he heard of a new drug trial, he heard that this man was going throughout the region healing people. Now Jesus wasn’t the first messiah figure to be running around Israel, he had probably heard of other such “faith healers” and had been disappointed by their robust promises. But this man had a lot of trust in God. He didn’t come up to Jesus and greet him the way that most sick people in the Bible did. He didn’t say “have mercy on me, Son of David,” he didn’t even call him Lord. He just said, if you choose, you can make me clean. What faith!

What if Jesus though didn’t cure him? A lot of people have hope and faith that rivals this mans, and yet they die of cancer or other diseases. Mark wasn’t exactly a doctor, he really didn’t know if this man had leprosy or not. Maybe he did, maybe he had some other, more serious skin disease. Again, remember that in the text of these readings, Jesus didn’t technically heal anyone, he just made them clean. And in being made clean, these people were allowed to rejoin society. Maybe this man died 2 weeks later of a more serious ailment. But what Jesus did for him allowed him to live those two weeks fully. Jesus took away the stigma, Jesus made it so that he could rejoin society, so that he could again see his family and friends. And the same is true for us in our dealings with disease and death. Sometimes people recover, sometimes they don’t. But what God offers us is the opportunity to have a good life, and a good death.

We don’t have to be alone in our diseases, we don’t have to face our fears alone. And now I’m talking about more than medical diseases, I’m back to modern day leprosies. If we follow Jesus in showing compassion, in standing up for justice, in seeing the dignity in every human being, then we too can help to make sure that everyone has a good life that ends with a good death.

And one final point on those who are healed. They took part in their healings. The man in Mark answered Jesus by saying “I do choose to be made clean.” Naaman sought the help of others and went through the ritual washing, which seemed ridiculous to him. Isn’t that how healing is? Sometimes we do have to go to strange places and take part in strange rituals. But what is important is that we take the step in doing so. Healing would not have come to either of these people if they had not been resilient.

Next, I’d like to turn to the agent of the healing. Sometimes translators of the Bible get things wrong, and they completely struck out in this Mark reading. Our translation this morning says that Jesus was moved with pity, which really is a nice sentiment and makes for a nice story. But the problem is that scholars agree that the more accurate and historical translation is that Jesus was angered or annoyed. Sure does change the story, doesn’t it?

Why would Jesus be angry with someone asking for help? Have you ever had someone come up to you and ask “I hope I’m not bothering you, but I just need…”  Or about the letters that you get from various charities asking for money? Or how about the church, do you get angry when you hear a stewardship sermon or get that pledge card in the mail?

If you’ll think back to our reading from last Sunday- Jesus did a healing, then went to pray and said “let us go on to the neighboring towns, so that I may proclaim the message there also; for that is what I came out to do.” So here’s Jesus, all excited about his mission, energized to go out and preach about the Kingdom of God, and he can’t even take a step towards the next down without being held back. Does that ever happen to you? You get set to do something, and then life happens? If I had a dollar for every daily schedule that I’ve had to readjust because of funerals and hospital visits, well, I couldn’t quite retire, but I’d have a nice stack of cash. Now don’t get me wrong, it’s not that I don’t want to minister to people, it’s just sometimes I have, in my mind, things that I need to do. It’s when you have dinner reservations to a nice restaurant and a friend calls to say that they really need you to come help with a bout of depression, a lost dog, a sick child. Getting sidetracked isn’t something that most of us enjoy.

This is really where the etymology of compassion really comes into play. Showing compassion is hard because it means to suffer with. When you are interrupted to do the work of compassion, it does drain you. Being compassionate with your time makes you busier and might add to your stress level. Being compassionate with your money means you have less of it. I know it’s basic math, but if you give 5% of your income to charity, then that’s 5% less to go on vacation with or put towards debt. Everyone thinks homeless shelters are good things, but who wants one built next door to their house? Jesus told this man not to tell anyone about the healing. Why? Perhaps because Jesus knew that compassion would cost him some freedom. As his reputation grew and grew, more and more people would sidetrack him. Or maybe he was worried that word would get out that he had touched a leper, and he himself would now been seen as unclean and he’d be unable to do his ministry of preaching. Compassion does cost us- it will cost us time, money, freedom, emotions, and energy.

So why do we bother with showing compassion? Why should be concerned with healing others? After all, shouldn’t we take care of ourselves? Frederick Buechner once said “compassion is the fatal capacity for feeling what it is like to live inside somebody else’s shoes. It is the knowledge that there can never really be any peace and joy for me until there is peace and joy finally for you too.” Compassion is one of those God given gifts that we have. You know that queasy feeling you get in your gut with you refuse to look at the homeless person on the street, when you refuse to fill out your pledge card, when you don’t make the time to call a friend in need? Some of it stems from guilt, but it’s a part of feeling compassion. It’s you suffering along with them. As long as there is suffering in our world, you too will suffer. It is our task to build the Kingdom of God so that there won’t be any more suffering to suffer with.

And finally, let’s take a look at the healer, that is the source of the healing. I hope that we can all recognize this as God. One of the things we see in these readings is that God’s focus and care isn’t too global to care about our local problems. A lot of people think things such as “God doesn’t care about my problem, my illness, my fear because there are genocides, famines, wars, earthquakes, and dictators in the world. Those are real problems, and God should focus on them.” And that’s half right. God is working in the hearts and minds of people around the world on the “big” issues like war and hunger. But God too cares about your being out of work or your nagging pain in your back. After all, Naaman was a rich and powerful leader, his disease wasn’t a huge hardship for him, Naaman wasn’t even a believer in God until after he was healed. But yet, God has compassion for him, just as God has compassion for all of us.

God is the source of our healing, the strength that allows us to embrace our brokenness and hope for rebirth. But it’s important to remember that healing doesn’t always mean a cure. Good things happen and bad things happen. That’s simply the nature of the world that God created. We have free will, so does nature, so does cancer. It is not that God chooses to heal some people and ignore others, but rather that God loves us and trusts us enough to give us that free will. But when that free will leads to suffering, when it leads to death, when it leads to evil, God is a God of compassion, a God who will suffer with us. As I’ve said before, what God gives us is maximum support, with minimum protection. The glory of the Resurrection only comes after the suffering of the Crucifixion.

We’ve covered a lot today in examining healing and compassion. Healing is a process that requires us to take a part. Healing isn’t always about the cure, sometimes is about being given the grace to live. Those who act as agents of God’s healing find it to be a challenging task, as they are called to suffer with people in showing compassion, but we do this work to make our world whole. We do all of this knowing that true healing comes from our compassionate God, who deeply loves and cares for each and every one of us.

It has been said that if we don’t make a difference by trying, we’ll make a difference by not trying, and the same is true in showing compassion. The way to healing our own hurts, the way to healing our world, is in showing compassion; in taking the time to be with others, to hear about their suffering, and to suffer with them. Remember, our task is not to be healer, that is God’s role in this process. But let us constantly seek ways to bring the grace and compassion of God to those in need of healing.

Let our prayer today be in the words of our Psalm today, verses 11-12, if you’ll allow me this paraphrase- “be with me, O Lord, and show me your compassion. O Lord, be my healer. You can turn my crying into dancing; you can relieve my suffering and clothe me with the joy of redemption.” Amen.