of leprosy, pain, and healing

6 Epiphany B 2009
(2 Kings 5: 1-14; Ps 30; 1 Cor 9: 24-27; Mark 1: 40-45)


Do we want to be healed?

Scott Peck said that most people really did not want to be healed. Many people came to see Scott for psychotherapy. All said they wanted to be healed. But soon it became obvious that what they wanted was for the pain to go away, for the symptoms to vanish. To be healed, said Scott, is different. Healing costs something. To be healed means to learn something new about the world, about ourselves, and about God. To be healed means to get up and go on a journey. To be healed means to change. And that can be hard.

Pain is a terrible thing. But pain can be a good angel. Pain tells us that something is wrong and that we need to be healed. We need to get up and do something, go on a journey, and change. Lepers feel no pain, and that’s not good. Lepers do not know when they are bleeding and when their wounds are infected and need to be cleansed.

Naaman the Aramean in today’s tale was a leper. As a leper he felt no pain in his body. But I think he felt a leper’s pain, the pain of shame and isolation and fear. He must have been at the end of his rope, because on the word of a slave he got up and took a long and dangerous journey to the land of his enemies, to Israel. The Israelite King thought his search was a cruel joke. But Naaman pushed past the king’s cynicism and fear and found the prophet. Even at the end Namaan almost turned away from the way of healing. He let pride and his own expectations and even his racism get the better of him. What, no hocus pocus? No magic wand? Just wash in this puny little Jewish river? Again it was his servants who called him to his senses. Namaan listened humbly to his own servants. Hope, a journey, seeking the divine word, overcoming his own expectations, and finally humility all had their way. And the painless leper with a pain-filled soul was healed.

Do we want to be healed? Are we called to go on a journey? As individuals? As a church? What expectations must we lay aside, what prejudices, what fears? Who calls us to humility and to accept the healing that only God can give?

And who are we when we’re called to heal?

The healing in the Gospel, again with a leper, is one of Jesus’ first healings. It’s easy to miss what happens to Jesus while we watch the leper. Our version says Jesus was “moved with pity”, but the word actually means “his guts were moved.” Some translate this “pity”, “compassion”, or even “anger.” All these reactions were present, I think, as Jesus faced this ravaged, hideous, unclean man. And yet, out of that, Jesus heals. “I want it, I will it, be clean!”

By being fully in the world, by being completely himself, fully human, with all his human complexity, Jesus heals. So we can be healed and healers too.

So much goes unhealed in ourselves and in our world when we lack this authenticity, when we are not fully present to our own lives, when we are not authentic and present to our own world. We keep things safe when we do not name and face our own pain and the pain of others and the world. But then, no one is healed, no wounds are exposed, and God who is Truth cannot make truth and set healing loose in the world.

To follow Christ is to follow the one who is truth and who is fully present to the world as it is. To be healed is to arise and follow the One who asks us to seek, to name, and to listen humbly as to how we are to change.