The Scripture readings were:
1st Reading: Leviticus 13:1-2, 44-46
2nd Reading: 1 Cor 10:31-11:1
Gospel: Mark 1:40-45
I was watching the Grammy’s last weekend, perhaps some of you were too, and one of the final performances of the night really touched me on a deeper level. It was John Legend and Common signing their song “Glory” from the movie Selma. It is a powerful song, written and sung from the perspective of black lives targeted by racism, reflecting on their history and present, and despite everything holding on to the hope that one day, the Glory of God will be theirs too.
Now the second reading today tells us to “Do everything for the Glory of God.” What does the Glory of God look like? Ireneus, a church father of the 2nd century, said that the glory of God is the human being fully alive. So we should do everything such that we and all human beings are able to be fully alive if we truly want to give glory to God. When black lives are devalued, God’s glory can’t be realized. When lepers are segregated from society, God’s glory can’t be realized.
God creates diversity, but not division. It is we humans who segregate ourselves and place value on certain physical or genetic characteristics. The readings highlight tonight one way that impacted the Jewish community of Jesus’ time, in the segregation of lepers from the rest of society. I invite you for a minute to place yourself in the position of the leper. Imagine, here you are, a person with hopes and dreams, with a family, maybe with a job. And then you get sick, and are brought to the temple and declared to have leprosy. You are removed from your family and community. It no longer matters what your hopes and dreams are. No one wants what you have to offer simply because of these sores on your skin. Not only are you isolated, but when you come into contact with society you have to verbalize how others see you, crying out, “Unclean! Unclean!” But you are not unclean. You are still the same person who loves and cries and has hopes and dreams. You are still a person, although you are not treated as such.
I put myself in this story and I hear the words of Sojourner Truth crying out “Ain't I a Woman?” Her famous speech called both men and white women, working to advance women's rights, to recognize that she too was a woman, to see beyond her skin in a time when the word woman didn't mean all women. She woke them up to the pain of a mother who worked as hard as any man, bore 13 children and saw most of them sold off in slavery, and cried out with no one but Jesus hearing her pain. And demanded that they see, ain't I a woman too?
Holding onto this image, enter into the Gospel story tonight and imagine that you have heard about this person Jesus who can heal and perform miracles. This might finally be your chance to get your life back, to be seen as a human being again. And so you seek him out, and you make it happen. You leave your community, and all that is known and familiar, and ask for help. Jesus didn't go to the leper colony and heal all the lepers, but you who took the initiative to go to him, who so desired to be returned to community and did the hard work of journeying to Jesus, were healed. The Scripture tonight says that Jesus was moved with ‘pity,’ but that really isn’t the best translation of the original word, ‘splanchnizomai,’which is more of an instinctual gut reaction. Jesus knows and feels in his very being that it was wrong for you to be separated from the community, and he wants to correct that, he reaches out and touches the un-touchable because he knows that we are created for community, we need one another.
Now, according to the Beatles, All We Need is Love, Love, Love is all you need. Today is a day, possibly more than any other day of the year, when we are inundated with images and messages about love, and how to show your love. If we look around us in stores, newspapers, magazines, we might think that all you need is flowers, or chocolate, or diamonds.
But thankfully we have a different image of love presented in our Scriptures. What we know of our God and are reminded of tonight in our Gospel reading, is that the work of Love is the work of restoring community, it is going to the margins, being moved in the deepest part of our being, and reaching out and touching the untouchable. Love in action looks like justice. Martin Luther King Jr. said “Power at its best is love implementing the demands of justice. Justice at its best is love correcting everything that stands against love.”
So what stands against love? Separation, fear, false judgment, pride, ego? We are half way through the one month of the year that in the U.S. is designated as “black history month.” What does it say about us as a nation that we even have a designated black history month? What if anything do I do differently this month? Do I challenge myself to seek out the stories and perspectives of those we are called to remember? Or do I just go on with my regular routine? Because my history is celebrated every day, of every month, of every year. White history permeates our lives and our reality. It might be more honest to say that in tonight’s Gospel, we can relate more to society than to the leper. There are ways in which we choose, consciously or unconsciously, to group ourselves together with those we perceive to be more like us, and separate ourselves from those who we name different, unclean, in today's society categories like 'foreign,' or 'criminal.' We wait until the “other” has changed, has become more like us, less threatening, or less different until we are willing to welcome them back into community.
But is that who we want to be? Because we can change. The gospel tonight offers us the hope that we too can be healed, if we really desire it, if we do the hard work of leaving behind what is comfortable, what is familiar, and journeying to our God who is found in the margins, on the outskirts, ask for help, and ultimately accept the grace of compassionate love, a love that reaches out and touches the untouchables, and has the power to restore community.
Every week when we get together and we gather around the altar to celebrate our faith and our connection in the Eucharist, we recite these words that remind us that “we though many, are one body, for we all share in the one bread and the one cup.” The challenge is, can we carry this message with us when we leave this space, throughout the week, throughout the upcoming Lentan season, in order to help us recognize the parts of ourselves that want to judge, want to separate and divide? And instead invite Christ to show us how to follow our heart, how to listen to that gut reaction that alerts us to injustice, and use this message of unity to reach out in true love and compassion to restore the beloved community that we were created for? Let us hold on to that truth that we, though many, though women and men, black and brown and white, gay and straight, republican and democrat, married, single or divorced, we though many are one body. And when this body, in all of its diversity, is able to be fully alive, there too will God’s glory be found, and it will be for everyone.
Amen
I was watching the Grammy’s last weekend, perhaps some of you were too, and one of the final performances of the night really touched me on a deeper level. It was John Legend and Common signing their song “Glory” from the movie Selma. It is a powerful song, written and sung from the perspective of black lives targeted by racism, reflecting on their history and present, and despite everything holding on to the hope that one day, the Glory of God will be theirs too.
Now the second reading today tells us to “Do everything for the Glory of God.” What does the Glory of God look like? Ireneus, a church father of the 2nd century, said that the glory of God is the human being fully alive. So we should do everything such that we and all human beings are able to be fully alive if we truly want to give glory to God. When black lives are devalued, God’s glory can’t be realized. When lepers are segregated from society, God’s glory can’t be realized.
God creates diversity, but not division. It is we humans who segregate ourselves and place value on certain physical or genetic characteristics. The readings highlight tonight one way that impacted the Jewish community of Jesus’ time, in the segregation of lepers from the rest of society. I invite you for a minute to place yourself in the position of the leper. Imagine, here you are, a person with hopes and dreams, with a family, maybe with a job. And then you get sick, and are brought to the temple and declared to have leprosy. You are removed from your family and community. It no longer matters what your hopes and dreams are. No one wants what you have to offer simply because of these sores on your skin. Not only are you isolated, but when you come into contact with society you have to verbalize how others see you, crying out, “Unclean! Unclean!” But you are not unclean. You are still the same person who loves and cries and has hopes and dreams. You are still a person, although you are not treated as such.
I put myself in this story and I hear the words of Sojourner Truth crying out “Ain't I a Woman?” Her famous speech called both men and white women, working to advance women's rights, to recognize that she too was a woman, to see beyond her skin in a time when the word woman didn't mean all women. She woke them up to the pain of a mother who worked as hard as any man, bore 13 children and saw most of them sold off in slavery, and cried out with no one but Jesus hearing her pain. And demanded that they see, ain't I a woman too?
Holding onto this image, enter into the Gospel story tonight and imagine that you have heard about this person Jesus who can heal and perform miracles. This might finally be your chance to get your life back, to be seen as a human being again. And so you seek him out, and you make it happen. You leave your community, and all that is known and familiar, and ask for help. Jesus didn't go to the leper colony and heal all the lepers, but you who took the initiative to go to him, who so desired to be returned to community and did the hard work of journeying to Jesus, were healed. The Scripture tonight says that Jesus was moved with ‘pity,’ but that really isn’t the best translation of the original word, ‘splanchnizomai,’which is more of an instinctual gut reaction. Jesus knows and feels in his very being that it was wrong for you to be separated from the community, and he wants to correct that, he reaches out and touches the un-touchable because he knows that we are created for community, we need one another.
Now, according to the Beatles, All We Need is Love, Love, Love is all you need. Today is a day, possibly more than any other day of the year, when we are inundated with images and messages about love, and how to show your love. If we look around us in stores, newspapers, magazines, we might think that all you need is flowers, or chocolate, or diamonds.
But thankfully we have a different image of love presented in our Scriptures. What we know of our God and are reminded of tonight in our Gospel reading, is that the work of Love is the work of restoring community, it is going to the margins, being moved in the deepest part of our being, and reaching out and touching the untouchable. Love in action looks like justice. Martin Luther King Jr. said “Power at its best is love implementing the demands of justice. Justice at its best is love correcting everything that stands against love.”
So what stands against love? Separation, fear, false judgment, pride, ego? We are half way through the one month of the year that in the U.S. is designated as “black history month.” What does it say about us as a nation that we even have a designated black history month? What if anything do I do differently this month? Do I challenge myself to seek out the stories and perspectives of those we are called to remember? Or do I just go on with my regular routine? Because my history is celebrated every day, of every month, of every year. White history permeates our lives and our reality. It might be more honest to say that in tonight’s Gospel, we can relate more to society than to the leper. There are ways in which we choose, consciously or unconsciously, to group ourselves together with those we perceive to be more like us, and separate ourselves from those who we name different, unclean, in today's society categories like 'foreign,' or 'criminal.' We wait until the “other” has changed, has become more like us, less threatening, or less different until we are willing to welcome them back into community.
But is that who we want to be? Because we can change. The gospel tonight offers us the hope that we too can be healed, if we really desire it, if we do the hard work of leaving behind what is comfortable, what is familiar, and journeying to our God who is found in the margins, on the outskirts, ask for help, and ultimately accept the grace of compassionate love, a love that reaches out and touches the untouchables, and has the power to restore community.
Every week when we get together and we gather around the altar to celebrate our faith and our connection in the Eucharist, we recite these words that remind us that “we though many, are one body, for we all share in the one bread and the one cup.” The challenge is, can we carry this message with us when we leave this space, throughout the week, throughout the upcoming Lentan season, in order to help us recognize the parts of ourselves that want to judge, want to separate and divide? And instead invite Christ to show us how to follow our heart, how to listen to that gut reaction that alerts us to injustice, and use this message of unity to reach out in true love and compassion to restore the beloved community that we were created for? Let us hold on to that truth that we, though many, though women and men, black and brown and white, gay and straight, republican and democrat, married, single or divorced, we though many are one body. And when this body, in all of its diversity, is able to be fully alive, there too will God’s glory be found, and it will be for everyone.
Amen
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