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NRS
Matthew 8:1 When Jesus had come down
from the mountain, great crowds followed him; 2 and there was a
leper who came to him and knelt before him, saying, "Lord, if you choose,
you can make me clean." 3 He stretched out his hand and touched
him, saying, "I do choose. Be made clean!" Immediately his leprosy
was cleansed. 4 Then Jesus said to him, "See that you say
nothing to anyone; but go, show yourself to the priest, and offer the gift that
Moses commanded, as a testimony to them."
Billy
Graham sayings
“Take one
day at a time. Today, after all, is the tomorrow you worried about yesterday.”
“It is
the Holy Spirit's job to convict, God's job to judge and my job to love.”
“A real
Christian is the one who can give his pet parrot to the town gossip.”
“We are
the Bibles the world is reading; we are the creeds the world is needing; we are
the sermons the world is heeding.”
“ I have
read the last chapter of the Bible and I know how it all turns out”
Max Lucado in his
book, Just like Jesus, talks about the hands. If you look at your hands and
then the hands of the person sitting next to you, you will see that they are
unique. No two hands are the same, especially as age and experience shape them.
You might be sitting next to a surgeon whose hands constantly receive cleaning
and work to heal or maybe a classical pianist whose fingers can flow over the
keys creating great music. On the other hand, you may be sitting next to a
carpenter whose hands are gnarled from working with wood, nails and in all
kinds of weather. As you look at those hands you can tell a little something
about someone maybe, but in order to know the whole story you must learn the
person first. Hands are part of the creation of God to allow us to do so much
in our world. We start by squeezing fingers or anything that comes within our
grasp, quickly growing to holding things like a bottle that brings us
nourishment. Having observed your own hands, do you see the good in them? How
about the bad? If you are like me these hands have prayed with many but they
also have fought with many especially in my younger years. They have been
bloodied and healed, bloodied again and healed and yet they have cared for the
sick and the dying. But if you observed them you would not know that about them
unless you got to know me in relationship.
We come to this
story today about the Leper. Some refer to it as the miracle of the unknown
leper because we know nothing about him and about who he becomes after this
story. We don’t know if he followed Jesus after being healed or returned to his
home and family. What we do know is that Jesus healed him by stretching out his
hand and healing him. In Jesus day, to be a Leper meant that you were excluded
from the world around you. You could no longer be part of the family or even
come into the community in which you lived without some way of announcing your
arrival so that everyone could get out of your way. Any kind of skin disease
where blood we visible was a form of leprosy in Jesus day. True leprosy is a
debilitating disease that leads to a horrible painful death. We can only
imagine that a leper was a lonely person who felt the sting of being shunned by
society. Whether rich or poor, all lepers found themselves excluded often to
camps of others who were also excluded. The shame and agony of the disease compounded
by not being able to be cared for or loved by the very ones who were needed the
most. But Jesus reaches out His hand and heals him.
You may ponder what
the gift that Moses commanded is. It comes from Leviticus, chapter 14 that says
that a leper who is healed must go to the priest where he or she will be
examined. If the disease is healed then two living birds are sacrificed in a
ritual where cedar wood, crimson yarn and hyssop are used. These things are the
gifts the healed leper would have had to take to the temple to the priest to be
allowed back into relationship with community and family. Hyssop and vinegar
would play a role in the crucifixion story of Jesus.
Jesus has a
compassionate heart. I think of the story of the Samaritan woman at the well.
For Jesus a man, to talk with a woman and for Him to be a Jew and talk with a
Samaritan would have been unthinkable and yet He did. Not only did He talk with
her, but He offered her salvation in the form of living water. Jesus had compassion for the people who
surrounded Him on the Mountainside when He preached His sermon on the mount. He
had such compassion for them that we get the miracle story of the feeding of
the five thousand. There are numerous healings throughout the Gospels as we
hear over and over again that Jesus had compassion for them, many of them
healed as He reached out His hands to them. Jesus touched the untouchables of
His day. Jesus spent time in relationship with those who were more often
shunned and excluded in His day.
As we come to this
place in this moment of time, I wonder if the real question for us in who in
need of a compassionate heart today? Maybe you and I are in need of a
compassionate heart, that our hearts would be transformed into the kind of
compassionate heart that Jesus had for those who are untouchable in our world.
Who is it that is shunned by society in our world today? Maybe it is the
homeless person lying in the street as people pass him or her by, on their way
to someplace else, without even noticing him or her lying there. Maybe it is
the person who is terminally ill or has a chronic illness that we refuse to go
see because, well; it just gets us down when we go there. Maybe it is the
recently divorced person who found him or herself on the losing side of choosing
sides amongst his or her friends and now finds themselves alone in the moment
when they need friends the most. Maybe it is your closets friend who did
something wrong and now you feel ashamed to be associated with them so you
don’t. Would Jesus have excluded any of these? I think that is a question we
need to ask ourselves daily. If Jesus did not then should we?
So there should no
big surprise when I say to you that the compassionate heart of Jesus is the
kind of heart you and I need to strive to have. What does it mean to have a
compassionate heart? It means that we place ourselves second in the world to
those who cannot and have not. It means that we learn to take care of those who
the world considers untouchable or undesirable. Like the homeless, the sick,
the ill and those in prison or who find themselves without shoes or coats. But
it goes even deeper than that if we really want a heart like Jesus. We need to
find ways to share love with those we all too often hate. Those who ridicule
our Christian values and ethics. Those who don’t agree with our view of certain
issues. We need to find ways to share God’s love with people who we as of yet
do not even know or those we do know and have nothing to do with. How do I know
that is what we are supposed to do? Jesus tells us in Matthew chapter 25. NRS Matthew 25:34 Then the
king will say to those at his right hand, 'Come, you that are blessed by my
Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world; 35
for I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me something
to drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, 36 I was naked and
you gave me clothing, I was sick and you took care of me, I was in prison and
you visited me.' 37 Then the righteous will answer him, 'Lord, when
was it that we saw you hungry and gave you food, or thirsty and gave you
something to drink? 38 And when was it that we saw you a stranger
and welcomed you, or naked and gave you clothing? 39 And when was it
that we saw you sick or in prison and visited you?' 40 And the king
will answer them, 'Truly I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of
these who are members of my family, you did it to me.'
Today we share in
the knowledge that Jesus has a compassionate heart. He shares that compassion
with us in our joys, our concerns, our struggles and our successes. So can’t we
learn to do the same for our neighbors?
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