Scripture: Mark 1:40-45
World Leprosy Day was held on January 29th. When I first became aware of World Leprosy Day several years ago, I was astounded that leprosy was still so rampant in our world. Leprosy, also known as Hansen's disease today after the Norwegian doctor who first saw the bacillus under a microscope, was a catch-all for skin diseases in the time of Jesus. What is now known as leprosy is caused by a bacteria. The bacterium attacks nerve endings and destroys the body's ability to feel pain and injury. Without pain, people easily become injured and the injuries become infected, tissue is lost and the bone destroyed. Leprosy is air-borne and is transmitted through sneezing and coughing although apparently only 5% of the population have no natural immunity to the bacteria.
In Canada there are about 500 people who have been diagnosed with leprosy. Every 22 minutes a child, woman or man will be diagnosed with leprosy. The cure is very much available, but the problem is that this disease, like many in our world, is wrapped up in the problem of poverty. And it is still wrapped up in stigma and alienation; leprosy patients, many of them undiagnosed, continue to be alienated by their families and their community and ostracized. It would seem that we haven't progressed very far since the time of Jesus. Amazingly, the cost to care for and cure a leprosy patient is a mere $350!
Just a few weeks ago, health leaders of the USA, the United Kingdom and the United Arab Emirates, pharmaceutical executives, and leaders of Non-Governmental Organizations held a conference in London, England, and endorsed what is called The London Declaration on Neglected Tropical Diseases. A commitment has been given to end the travesty of ignoring 10 tropical diseases, which can be cured. The goal is to eradicate these diseases by 2020. Leprosy is one of these diseases. I hope that our Canadian government is involved in this world wide mission.
On one of the websites where I was doing some research into leprosy, someone said that we fear what we perceive to be ugly. One of the effects of many of the diseases listed by the London Declaration is that they leave disfigurement. The Rev. Dr. Sharon Betcher, a Vancouver School of Theology professor, in a recent Observer article and in her lectures at Ascension Lutheran Church a couple of years ago, talked about her own disfigurement, or at least how she has been perceived by others. Sharon lost a leg in a farming accident when she was young. I've heard stories of how people who have lost limbs are treated as simple-minded by others; people with physical challenges are often ostracized by others. They are ignored by children on the playground at best and at worst, driven away. Do some of you remember the book, A Prayer for Owen Meany, written some years ago by John Irving, the American writer? Owen was a boy who had physical challenges and while he was befriended by one of the main characters of the book, he was ostracized by most of the other children and even by his own family. It is a generalization, I know, but we often fear what we perceive to be less than perfect and whole and we marginalize people who do not fit into our narrowly defined concept of what is perfect!
Some years ago we read a book in our Thursday morning book group called Beauty: Rediscovering the True Sources of Compassion, Serenity and Hope. It was by John O'Donohue, a Celtic writer from Ireland who died 4 years ago at the end of 52. O'Donohue challenged those who would define beauty based on skin-deep definitions; he challenged the Hollywood concept of beauty. It was a book that helped us all delve underneath our skin-deep definitions to truly discover what beauty is. Beauty is compassion, beauty is love, beauty knows that we are all created by God; beauty is gentleness and somehow opens us to an experience of the sacred. Singers like Cyndi Lauper and Edie Brickell, among others have asked questions about who we define as beautiful? I think that O'Donohue followed in Jesus' footsteps in terms of helping us re-define what is beautiful, and both challenge us to see that beauty comes from the inside.
Notice in the story from Mark's Gospel that Jesus didn't fear what others feared. Jesus reached out and touched the leper, a huge taboo. Jesus himself would have been made unclean. But that was Jesus' genius; he transcended these human taboos, exposing the fear and manipulation that are part of these so-called cleanliness taboos. As has been true for thousands of years, it was usually the poor and the powerless who time and again were found to be unclean. The rich and powerful had the means to place themselves in positions where they would not be declared unclean, the story of Naaman in 1Kings, being the exception rather than the rule. Jesus restored the balance, advocating for the poor and the ostracized, giving power to those deemed on the outside and without power. In short, Jesus practiced salvation.
As Marcus Borg and Richard Rohrbaugh recently pointed out at Epiphany Explorations, and has been known for some time, the understanding of salvation isn't about being saved from this world into a heavenly world; salvation is much more broadly defined than our more fundamentalist leaning brothers and sisters would insist. Salvation is about being healed, about being restored to one's community, about being restored to the people of God and about being counted as one who is loved by God, a child of God and with honour.
Salvation literally means saving someone from peril, as in saving someone from drowning or saving a city from destruction by a foreign army. It also means keeping, as in keeping alive or like keeping a fire going for warmth and life. It means benefitting another, as in preserving the well-being of another or a group. It also means preserving the inner being, as in preserving one's humanity and basic dignity. All of these things are at play when we use the word salvation; notice, though, that these are present things. Salvation isn't about going to heaven and being preserved for some future benefit; the benefit is now. With a particular ending in Greek, salvation takes on the meaning of widening or making roomy. I like that idea.
Jesus broadened the world in which he lived. He made the room big—God's room or God's house—and then invited people inside. Or he reminded the world that God's place is a big place for it is this place and all are welcome in this place, this large, roomy place. There is room for lepers and those who are sick. There is room for the broken and poor. There is a large room where there are no categories, where we can just simply be... be together in love... be together in hope... be together in peace... be together for we are all beautiful.
Jesus broadens our world today and invites us into this roomy place where we already are. There is no narrowness in this place. We are like the doorkeepers who throw open the door and welcome everyone inside. Sometimes we have to step out onto the streets and demand that healing drugs be made available to all people as a human right. Sometimes we need to stand in the street and shout peace or stand together as human beings advocating peace. Salvation is a participatory concept; it is given by God to all, but it is not static. It invites response and action.
"Today," said Jesus a number of times in the Gospels, "Salvation has come to this house." Salvation has come so let us fling wide the doors and go out to the highways and the byways and share our lives in making wide this world so that all will know the benefit of love and hope.
May it be so, not just for those who live with leprosy today, but for us all!
Amen.
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