Epiphany Sermon 2006

Mark 1:40-45
They really didn’t understand it. But, of course, they really had no means to. We’re not talking about a well educated, medical science-aware culture. How could they possibly know that it was contagious only in specific circumstances and after long periods of very close contact? How could they have known that?

The only thing the people of the 1st Century Palestine knew about it was sort of what it looked like, and what it did to a person in the advanced stages. That they knew well. They understood how it maimed and disfigured. And that was enough for fear to take over.I’m talking about the disease of leprosy.

And it also should be noted that the illness of leprosy referenced in the Bible is NOT the same disease so called by science today. The leprosy WE are familiar is a different disease altogether, and is much worse. In the ancient world, a variety of skin diseases were all grouped together and called leprosy. This includes psoriasis, eczema, or any fungus infection of the skin.

Today, in a world and a time in which such diseases are all dealt with easily, or have all but been eradicated except in small pockets, we perhaps cannot appreciate the fear that accompanied this word in the ancient world of Jesus.

But leprosy was a red flag word. It brought about the same responses as theword Plague did in the 1200s, or Small Pox in the 1700s, or Aids in the1980s. It frightened whole populations. The people of the ancient world felt largely helpless against it, as indeed they were, living in a pre-medical-science time.What happens to people when fear takes over and people do not act, but they react?

Reactions to leprosy were both swift and cruel.
In times not far removed form our own people would be put to death by heir own family.

It seems incredible to us today, but on the edge of every large city in the ancient world huge pits were dug, and in those pits lived the lepers of the community.And if, by some remote possibility, they did escape this hovel and ventureout into the streets, they would be quickly greeted with shouts of “leper,”accompanied by stones to make them keep their distance.

In Jesus' day a leper by law could not get within fifty yards of a clean person. So this was the heart of the matter. These people, these lepers, were shunned and cast out. Even if their skin condition was, by our modern standards, minor, they were isolated from society and kept from the community of faith.

The fear of disease, a life lived under a stigma, a lifestyle of loneliness, isolation and hopelessness--where could they find hope?. In this life they were doomed. They were considered walking death.

But not only that; even more important than that… In the ancient culture of the 1st Century, it was the theological assumption of EVERYONE, including the lepers, that their skin disease was a curse from God; and that God was punishing them for their sin by making them a leper. This, then, is the background of the leper we meet this morning. What can we learn from this tragic story?1. Outcasts: We are trained well in how to cast people out; but we do not want to know or understand them.

In the ancient world, the people were brought up well in how to quickly cast out the leper. It was done quickly, with the full affirmation of the entire culture. It was the way things were always done. “They” were considered a threat to the society. “They” would infect and corrupt your children. “They” it was taught, must be cast out.

Who are the lepers in today’s society? Who has been designated as “unclean” by the religious leaders of the pious and upright?
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50 years ago, in this city, the African-American was the outcast. The black man or woman was treated like a leper.

They were put in a segregated neighborhood, they had their own schools, they had their own bathrooms, they had their own water fountains, they could not eat at the same table as the white man or woman, least they contaminate them with their uncleanliness.

And most White folks didn’t take the time to get to know who these black lepers were. They had been very carefully taught all those years that the people of African decent were to be seen very little, and not listened to at all. And so not much was known or encouraged to be known about their culture, let alone their experience.

And most people thought this was the way that God had ordered creation. Most people used the bible to justify this ordering of creation, sighting references in the Old and New Testaments, and spinning their theologies about slaves obeying their masters, and curse of God on Ham in the book of Genesis… using the bible to justify the uncleanliness of Black people.

And even though this was of thinking and living was the norm 50 years ago, there are still people who act like this today. Have you ever been treated like a leper?
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Who are the lepers in today’s society? Who is treated like they are diseased, and should be cast out?

Homeless men and women are treated like lepers.
Look at how people treated Joe Farmer. Joe Farmer was a homeless man living on the street in downtown Birmingham. He was mentally ill. He was physically ill. Every attempt was made by the staff of this church to find a hospital bed for Joe Farmer.

But Joe Farmer was one of the “untouchables.” He was treated like he was “unclean.” In every hospital, he was an outcast… to be literally cast back out on the street. He was to be shunned. And he died on the street.

And our society, our city has been carefully taught that this is the way that homeless people should be treated.

Yes… after people discovered that Joe Farmer was a veteran, that he had served in Vietnam, suddenly after his death, there was a well-spring of shame and guilt over how he had been treated. And after this he received a decent burial.

But I know that people like Joe Farmer die every day on the streets of cities all over this country. And they are the untouchables… the unclean… the lepers of our society.

And regular, clean people don’t want to deal with the homeless situation. It’s easy to blame in on the homeless. It’s convenient to not know them; to avoid them; to not be concerned with the how, the why, and the why not of the homeless population. It’s easy to stand by and let the authorities handle and punish the homeless for being unclean. Most politicians want to CAST Them Out of the city; and find some hole to put them in where they would not be in sight.

Have you ever been treated this way? An out cast? Unclean?
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Homosexual people are lepers in our society.

The American Medical Association, The American Pediatric Association, The American Psychiatric Association, The American Psychological Association, EVERY medical and scientific association that speaks for their profession is officially on record as stating that there is no reason scientifically, medically, or psychologically to consider homosexual persons as a group deficient or disordered or a danger any more than heterosexual persons.

Yet, homosexual persons are treated as outcasts in our society, like lepers.

They are treated as “unclean” by the religious elite of our society.
People react to homosexual persons irrationally, out of fear, because of how they have been taught.
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I know a man who was studying to become a clergy in the United Methodist Church. And at the age of 25 he could no longer keep secret that he was and had always been a homosexual. He had lived a moral, godly life, seeking to serve God in our church; but he was gay.

And so, as an honest man, he went home to tell his parents. First, he told his father. He sat his father down at the kitchen table and told him. His father began to weep. After this is father went into the bedroom, came out with a revolver, loaded the gun in front of him and said, “Do not tell your mother this horrible thing. Here is a gun. You know what you should do with it.”

His father would rather he shot himself and commit suicide than be honest with his family that he was gay.
Lord have mercy. Christ have mercy. Lord have mercy.

The behavior of this man’s father is what happens when the church teaches people it’s OK to treat people like lepers.

This is what happens when churches and religious people use a few obscure verses in the bible to label some people as “unclean” and outcasts… it justifies a terrible way of treating our brothers and sisters.
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But hear the Good News. Hear the Good News….

This is not the way Jesus treated the unclean. That’s not the way Jesus treated the outcast.

Jesus treated the outcast, the stranger, the leper, the unclean, the gentile, the Samaritan, and all the other people that the bible said were to be avoided as BELOVED IN GOD.

Jesus loved them, just like Jesus loves you.

Jesus made certain that THEY KNEW the situation that they were in was not the curse of God… instead, Jesus was here to show them that they were fully loved by God.

How did Jesus heal them? For those who were “lepers” in the truest sense, who had a terrible, contagious skin disease, I believe Jesus healed them of their illness.

However, let your imagination run free with how Jesus did this healing.

Maybe, Jesus knew that most of the people called “leper” were not contagious, but had been wrongly labeled because of less serious skin diseases, and had been cast out by the ignorant assumptions of how everyone had been wrongly taught. Maybe Jesus knew that people were reacting irrationally, out of fear, because they had been wrongly taught.

Maybe Jesus healed them by convincing them of God’s love and grace for them; that they should not accept the shame and condemnation of others for their condition; and that they should get up, stand up, and live knowing they were loved by God.

Maybe there was also the healing that took place among the followers of Jesus: Maybe they saw how Jesus treated these “so called unclean” people, and realized what a bogus load of self-righteous religiosity they had been taught.

Maybe they began treating EVERYONE as Beloved of God, with NO PARTIALITY, welcoming the stranger, the Gentile, the Samaritan, and the unclean into their fellowship and family with the joy of the kingdom of God.

That’s the kind of healing that Jesus did: Complete healing… healing the individual of the illness of disease, healing the community of faith of the illness of bigotry, beginning a healing community that welcomed all people as Beloved in God.

That’s what I call “Full Gospel Healing.” This is to have, in our own experience, a New Heaven, and a New Earth, where greet one another as New Creatures, in the kingdom of God.


In the life of our congregation, we are talking about Stewardship. Today, I am focusing on healing… healing as the act of Jesus, healing for the individual, and healing for the community of faith. This healing is the direct result of the presence of Jesus. When Jesus is present, ALL people are treated as Beloved in God, with no partiality.

Healing is the gift of God in Jesus Christ. It is what God has done for all of us… for we are all made clean by the grace of God in Jesus Christ.

Now, we are to be good Stewards of this gift. We are to go forth as healers, healing as Jesus did.

Who is the outcast in society? Who is the one called “unclean?” Who is the one labeled “leper” or sick, or stranger, or not welcome?

It is our task, our Stewardship as disciples, to go forth and heal; to make welcome, to show the hospitality of Christ.

Amen.