Sixth Sunday after the Epiphany

Sunday, February 15, 2009

St. David’s Episcopal Church, DeWitt NY

The Rev. James C. Bresnahan, Interim Rector

“Compassion”

Mark 1:40-45

1:40 A leper came to him begging him, and kneeling he said to him, "If you choose, you can make me clean." Moved with pity, Jesus stretched out his hand and touched him, and said to him, "I do choose. Be made clean!"  Immediately the leprosy left him, and he was made clean. After sternly warning him he sent him away at once, saying to him, "See that you say nothing to anyone; but go, show yourself to the priest, and offer for your cleansing what Moses commanded, as a testimony to them." But he went out and began to proclaim it freely, and to spread the word, so that Jesus could no longer go into a town openly, but stayed out in the country; and people came to him from every quarter.

For the first sixty years of my life, I was in perfect physical health.  The only surgery behind me was for childhood tonsillitis.  I had no diseases and not even a broken bone of any account. It was other people who got sick, other people who had diseases, and injuries from accidents. I had turned a car upside down without a bruise and went headlong down a flight of stairs without a lump. I felt invulnerable. 

Then, past my sixtieth birthday, I had some tests done.  My wife went with me to hear my doctor give me the test results.  He said, “I'll be scheduling you for surgery.”  We left his office.  I said to my wife, “Well, looks like everything's fine.”  “What,” she gulped.  “He told you that you were going to have surgery.”  “He did,” I said. “I didn't hear that.”

Yes, I did hear that, in one ear and out the other. Such is the power of anxiety and denial, that our mind can hear the very reverse of what our ears do.

I did go on to have surgery. I was not invulnerable.

And what a humbling experience that was as many of you well know- this out-of-control- experience of being flat on one's back, transported on a gurney pushed by others, staring at the moving ceiling, and having no control over anything.

And not just humbling, but isolating as well! No one lies on the surgical table with you.  Only you go under the gas.  Only you are cut open. It's you there alone, and God. And any one who cares about you, loves you, sits there waiting.

They wait anxiously in a nearby room, themselves without any control or influence over what is going on yards away.

Hundreds of times over the years of my ministry I've sat alongside family members anxiously waiting for news about a child, a spouse, a parent they loved dearly but were powerless to do anything for.  If you've ever sat there like that, you know what I mean, and how however hard you try to repress worry and keep your mind busy with magazines, or chatter, anxieties well up anyway and make you tremble.

From most surgeries, fortunately, people do recover.  But sadly, from some illnesses, some surgeries, some conditions, there is no recovery. How painful in those circumstances to watch your own health or that of someone you love deteriorate from year to year, or month to month, or day to day!

Such circumstances often bring about a spiritual crisis.

Why me, God?  How could you let this happen?  What did I do wrong?

We look for answers to questions science can't answer. We may pray, but still we wonder where God is now, and how, if there is a loving God, God lets such things happen.

What person of faith has not gone through such a crisis of the spirit?

The Hellenistic-Roman world of Jesus time was filled with people in spiritual crisis over life's illnesses and other miseries.

Most everywhere Jesus went, there were sick people - crazed people, diseased people, paralyzed and lame people, and people like the leper we meet in today's Gospel reading.

Not only is this leper ill, he is also ostracized for being defiled and he is forbidden to enter into holy places where God is said to be.  People shun him for fear. He lives with the belief that he is forsaken by God and punished. 

His soul is as troubled as his body. Guilt, shame, and despair are piled atop disease and suffering.

Worse still were circumstances beyond the Galilee of Jesus in cities where the early Christian Church was spreading.

The author Rodney Stark described it this way:

“Greco-Roman cities were terribly overpopulated. Antioch, for example, had a population density of about 117 inhabitants per acre—more than three times that of New York City today.

“Tenement cubicles were smoky, dark, often damp, and always dirty. The smell of sweat, urine, feces, and decay permeated everything. Outside on the street, mud, open sewers, and manure lay everywhere, and even human corpses were found in the gutters. Newcomers and strangers, divided into many ethnic groups, harbored bitter antagonism that often erupted into violent riots.”

Desperate conditions of body, mind, and spirit!

Now what is interesting about the response of Jesus and of early churches is that they did try to explain how a loving God could let life sink into such misery and people to fall into despair.  And they certainly did not blame the victims of ill fortune. They forswore explanations.

Instead, Jesus and his followers responded with compassion, first with touch to overcome feelings of rejection, and then with whatever healing they could bring along with resources for life to be better: Food for the hungry, wine for the thirsty, and physical care for those ailing. The early Christian church grew as it did precisely because Christians took care of the sick and did not abandon people to fend for themselves.

Stark goes on to write:

“The willingness of Christians to care for others was put on dramatic public display when two great plagues swept the empire, one beginning in 165 and the second in 251. Mortality rates climbed higher than 30 percent. Pagans tried to avoid all contact with the afflicted, often casting the still living into the gutters. Christians, on the other hand, nursed the sick even though some believers died doing so.”

How different the attitude of Jesus and early Christians from the attitude and words of a minister who decades ago in a hospital in Cortland visited a parishioner right after her new-born infant had died.

He told her that God would not have let that happen if she had been true to his will. He blamed her for her child's death. The poor mother suffered an immediate mental breakdown and was kept in the hospital for days more.  Just as she was recovering, the minister came in a second time, repeated the same words, telling her again there had to be an explanation. And since God does not let innocent people suffer, the only explanation is that she was guilty of some great sin. The woman suffered a second breakdown.

We have learned from Jesus not tot speak that way – to others or to ourselves. We have learned from Jesus to let go of explaining mysteries and focus instead on works of compassion. We have learned to find God not in strained reasoning but in love. 

And we have learned in our own spiritual crises, as well, to our hearts to the words of St. Paul – “Nothing in life and nothing in death shall be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

Quotations from:

Rodney Stark, “The Rise of Christianity: How the Obscure, Marginal, Jesus Movement Became the Dominant Religious Force,” HarperOne, 1997