I remember the day when my mom informed me that my sister Emily had the chicken pox. Yes, I am old enough to have had the chicken pox! At first, I thought my mother was going to tell me and my sister Katy to stay away from Emily – that she was in quarantine.
However, my mom suggested
that we go hug on our sister. This was a
crazy idea I thought. And not because she had the chicken pox but because
eight-year-old brothers don’t hug on their seven-year-old sister.
But Mom explained that we
needed to go ahead and get the disease at a young age as our immune systems
would fight it off better. She also said
it wouldn’t be that bad.
So I reluctantly gave my
sister a hug and drank from the same cup as her. My sister Emily maybe had 10 chicken
pox. Within days I had too many chicken
pox to count! They were in my ears and
my mouth. They were everywhere!
After about five days I
felt good enough to get back out into the world. It isn’t fun to be in quarantine. Even kids get tired of watching television
all day. So I convinced my mom that I
was well enough to go to baseball practice.
Our team had to forfeit the next game because of the chicken pox
epidemic.
In today’s scripture readings, we are confronted with two stories that include people with leprosy –
a terrible skin disease that requires one to go into quarantine. While Elisha and Jesus don’t go hug on these
lepers, they do hear their cry for mercy and grant them healing. And these lepers are restored to life in the
community without spreading the epidemic.
Obviously, both stories
reveal God’s power to heal physical diseases.
But if we take a closer look at the lessons, we will notice that the
stories aren’t really about God the dermatologist. It’s not really even a lesson about God the
social worker.
Yes, both lessons reveal
that God’s character is interested in reaching out to those on the fringes and
margins of society – the lame, the last, the outcast and even the enemy. But there is something more going on here.
It is a point that all of
us liberal and conservative Christians alike are prone to miss. In fact, it is a point that anyone with
religion is likely to miss. To be
honest, it is a point that I often miss especially when I think I am
responsible for saving the world. And if
you want to get right down to it, it is a point that exists underneath every
story in scripture.
The whole story of
scripture, the whole story of God, the entire story of our life is summed up
through the story of death and resurrection. The story can’t just be about physical healing
because eventually there will be death.
The story can’t just be about establishing working communities who lift
up the poor and lowly because every earthly community will eventually unravel –
look at history, look at the Bible.
Now, I am not saying that
physical healing and working toward building healthy communities isn’t a part
of our Christian witness. But these
things in and of themselves do not grant salvation. No, the story of salvation can only be fully
known and experienced through death and resurrection.
Notice, for example, that only the Samaritan
leper who returned to Jesus to give thanks heard the words, “your faith has
made you well.” Other translations will
say, “your faith has saved you.” While
all ten lepers come to experience physical healing and restoration to communal
life, only one leper hears a word on salvation.
At this point you might
be thinking, so salvation happens when I say, “thank you, Jesus.” Not exactly but that’s a good start. True gratitude isn’t simply a learned
response that we all learned to do as children when someone does something nice
for us. True gratitude is born out of a
place of profound humility. True
gratitude is found when we are brought from death into life, when we are given
something that we thought was lost forever.
Again, we are starting to
see that salvation is not something that can be taught but something that is to
be experienced. This is one of the
reasons I love the new children’s formation program – Catechesis of the Good
Shepherd.
As the material for the class
states, the atrium is not a classroom for instruction but a place to experience
the fullness of God. Even more, that is
why I love Episcopal worship – even more than a place where we learn about God
this is a place where we can experience God.
As you may have gathered
by now, my mom and I had a difficult relationship especially in these last
years. While we were always bound
together by the unbreakable bond of love, we were distanced from one another
over the course of a lifetime of pain and struggle.
By the grace of God, I
was there when she first received the diagnosis of lung cancer. Our reunion was not hindered by explanations
or excuses or even formal apologies.
There were only tears and a loving embrace. I remembered one of my favorite prayers from
the New Zealand Prayer Book, “what has been done has been done; let it be.”
My mom and even I
experienced death that day. Her death
was more pronounced than mine. She was
given very little hope that she would live longer than a year. All the hopes and dreams she had for the last
quarter of her life faded away. I
finally died to a lot of anger and frustration.
Over the last two weeks
of her life, my mom beamed with gratitude.
There was healing and restoration and even transformation – even though
there was no physical healing. In a way,
she was given something she thought she lost forever – a feeling of belovedness.
A week before she died,
Mom told her cousin Kitti that she knew herself to be loved. Mom was surrounded by prayer and cards and
flowers and best of all her family. In
those last days, I could see in my mom a new creation. She told her cousin Kitti that this
experience of belovedness did not allow room for pain and anguish anymore only
healing and wholeness.
Again, the idea of your
belovedness is not something that can be learned through even the best teachers
or orators. Our belovedness can only be
experienced through an encounter with God.
Our experience with God is not something that can be manufactured
through religion. It can only be truly
claimed through an acceptance of death.
I do believe, however,
our religion and our worship and study of God softens our hearts to the point
where we can be more open to God’s constant pursuit of us in love. Our growth
in the knowledge and love of God gives us the grace to accept that death is the
gateway to abundant life, only death can reveal to us a life that we thought
was lost forever.
Even more importantly,
the story of salvation, the story of death and resurrection is not a return to
the old life like we see happening with the nine lepers who went back to life
as usual. The story of salvation is
about our claiming that we are a new creation in Christ.
Such was true for my
mother. She did not experience this
healing only to fall back into her old way of living. Instead, my mom claimed this new creation in
Christ in only a way that death could allow.
Finally, life was no longer about hanging on by tooth and nail for my
mother but about plummeting to death in order claim the life hidden for her in
Christ all along. Thank you, Jesus.
As Robert Capon says,
resurrection life is not about getting on with our life – it isn’t about
getting over our pain and struggle.
Neither is resurrection life about ascending into the clouds where we
leave the bad parts behind and remember only the good parts.
No, Capon says,
“everything about us goes home, because everything about us, good or evil, dies
in our death and rises in his life.
Capon says, the Samaritan’s leprosy goes home, and so does your lying,
my adultery, and Uncle Harry’s embezzling.
We never have to leave behind a scrap.
Nothing, not even the worse thing we ever did, will ever be anything but
a glorious scar.” Thank you, Jesus!!
May our prayer be,
“Jesus, help us to die to a life that we can never get back so we can rise with
you to the life that you meant for us all along, a life where we spend our days
saying, ‘thank you, Jesus’ with every breath.”
Amen.
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