This sermon was one of several I preached in my Homiletics class at the University of Dubuque Theological Seminary in January of 2016.
The story is real, though the names of both the individual and the camp in which he resides have been changed as I have no way to ask permission that they be used. The story is many years old now, and things have changed significantly in the camp since I experienced this.I have been back 5 times since, and I never saw the van of "believers" again.
A note about speaking in tongues: I do realize that "tongues" is a gift of the spirit, and I affirm that gift. However, I also believe, like the occurrence in the book of Acts, that when an individual speaks in tongues part of the miracle is that those in attendance are able to understand that person. That is NOT what I experienced this day, and as such I left my comment in the sermon. If you get hung up on my clear attitude against the way these ladies "speak in tongues", then you are missing the point of the sermon.
If you would like to use this sermon, I invite you to do so, but please link back to this blog if you share it on the web and use my name if you preach it, or a part of it in church. My sermons are for the Glory of God and not my own, but because this is my work, it can get sticky if someone posts or preaches it as their own and then my is read afterward, making it look like I plagiarized.
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| One of the resident children at the camp enjoys strumming my ukulele as I create chords with my left hand. Music is a powerful healer of the soul. |
"I Do Want To"
I sat under the shade of the mango
tree and ate my lunch. After a morning of mixing concrete by hand in the 100
degree heat, I could eat just about anything. Why I had thought a mission trip
to the Bahamas at the end of July was a good idea was something I’ll never
understand, but we went, and there I was.
The smell of rotten food and other
refuse occasionally drifted over from the dumpster in the center of the camp,
and there was the undeniable smell of human waste that would waft up from a
nearby trench that ran behind the shacks that the residents of Benedict's Camp
called home. The heat only served to exacerbate the problem. I don’t care what
anyone says – you don’t get used to it. Not THAT smell. At least I didn’t have
to live here.
A large, burgundy van pulled up the
one lane road into the camp, up over the hill and through the massive, but now
inoperable gates that sat next to the road.
The van was big. When the van
reached the top of the hill it came to a stop and the side doors swung open and
cool air rushed out. A group of six Bahamian, heavy set women climbed out,
adorned in expensive shoes and skirts, their Bible in one hand and a fan in the
other. Their makeup was so thick I wondered if it could be removed in one
piece. I sat there on the ground in my sweat soaked shirt and shorts, still
looking better than those who called this place home, because I had a change of
clothes. They walked down the newly constructed path between the resident’s
homes. They were headed to see Thomas, a 30 year resident of the camp.
Thomas had been at the camp since he
was a child. Even though the camp was created decades earlier as a leper colony
on the island, it now housed mostly those with HIV or AIDS. Sprinkled between
those with the terrible disease were others with varying degrees of other
things, from addiction issues to undiagnosed metal illness. In a way, I guess
it was still a leper colony -The camp had become a housing area for the social
fodder of the island. It was in the center of the island because, like most of
the larger islands, the outer ring was lined with resorts and high paying
tourists, most of them white Americans or Europeans. Just outside the camp lay
a Haitian community ripe with violence. We heard stories of murder and rape by these residents who would sneak into the un-fenced camp at night to prey on the
weak, but we did not know how much of that was to scare us. Huge rats and feral
dogs would enter the rickety and mold infested shacks looking for food,
crawling over the bedridden who often became the victim of a bite.
Most residents didn’t make it out of
the camp alive. This camp had become a dumping ground for people no one wanted
anymore.
Thomas doesn’t have AIDS. Thomas has
Cerebral Palsy. He cannot take care of himself and no one else wants to. He is
confined to a wheelchair or his bed. He has great difficulty speaking, but he
can smile and he does so often. Over the past week I had bonded quite a bit
with him, as we both shared a love for God and music, and what had started as a
relationship born out of some spiritual obligation had blossomed into genuine
kinship. I would strum on my ukulele and sing and his eyes would light up and
he would smile and ask me to play another. Then it would be time to help him
eat or change his linens, as there was no bathroom in his home, the only
bathroom was quite a distance down a broken pathway so he would just go and
then wait to be changed.
The women walked up to Thomas, who
sat outside in his wheelchair. All the women placed their hands on him and one
began to pray, eyes closed with one arm held high. They were too far away to
hear, but I could see that one was speaking in “tongues”, a behavior common to
this area. Whatever, at least they were praying.
The summer staff intern walked up to
me, noticing that I was watching. She was an American, like me, but in her
early 20’s, though the summer had added years of wear to the lines on her face.
“I hate this. I just hate this”
“Why? No harm no foul I suppose!” I
said with a smile.
She looked at me through her
mirrored sunglasses that doubled as safety glasses.
“I hate this because when they
leave, he’s devastated. He thinks that if he has enough faith, God will heal
him – that he will get up and just walk. I hate this, and I hate them for
telling him that. They go home and he will shut himself in his room and refuse
visitors for days because he says that he is worthless and God has forgotten
him and that we should too."
I look on in awe, helpless to make a move.
In Jesus’
time, Lepers were unclean. They were physically unclean, as in “sick” and they
were ritually unclean, as in “can’t be near anyone else”.[i]
This was a legal issue – they were literally separated from society. So if a
Leper came up to Jesus we know that Jesus wasn’t in a city.[ii]
Jesus was there on purpose.
Before
Christ, no one sick ever got well. The curing of Leprosy, as one theologian put
it, was “akin to raising the dead”.[iii]
When this
man with leprosy says “You can make me clean, if you want to” he actually
suggests that Jesus, through not wanting to be unclean, or because he was busy,
or whatever…. That Jesus maybe wouldn’t want to make him clean.
As though he
were not worth curing.
This is so telling
because it shows that even then, this man who has been marginalized by society
has already beat himself up. He already has such low self-esteem and such a low
value on his own life that he thinks that the very man who is known for curing
this kind of thing won’t want to bother.
This is what
being marginalized does to people. It beats them up. The Bible hates it. God
hates it. Things like widows and orphans and immigrants were shunned. The sick
were, too.
But Jesus
went to them. Always moving to the outside. He was about the outskirts, the
outsiders, the marginalized.
He called
the forgotten his “brothers and sisters”
Because of
the way people worshiped in Jesus’ time, having leprosy also meant that you
could not worship your God. You could not enter the temple.
The man with
Leprosy says Jesus could make him clean if he wanted to.
I missed
this the first time and I bet you did too. The leper did not ask Jesus to heal
him, as though that was simply too much. He wanted to be made clean.
What the man
really wanted was permission to worship his God, to go to the temple and know
this God that he was not allowed to know.
All he
wanted was to be a part of that love.
And Jesus
“Moved with compassion”….some translations say that Jesus was “Incensed”, some
say that he was “Angered”,
he says “I do want to”
There it is.
Jesus isn’t
angry at the man. Jesus doesn’t like this. Jesus doesn’t want this man to
suffer anymore. Jesus is sick of the shunning. Jesus is sick of the
marginalization and so he reaches out and touches the guy. [iv]
Jesus does
what the Levitical laws say not to do – Jesus touches the unclean.
The guy was immediately
clean AND healed. Right there is an extreme turn of events. From the Jewish
perspective, the very opposite of normalcy happened.[v]
Jesus’
cleanliness, his holiness, his love, is contagious.
Jesus
affirms the man as a human being and a legitimate part of God’s creation. Jesus
shatters the wall that stood between this marginalized man and God and
tells him to go to the Temple
in one
touch.
The sadness
here is that this man thought his life was worthless and that it was,
essentially, over.
Millions of
people feel this way. Not just the sick, but the poor.
The sinners.
The marginalized, pushed to the outside of society.
They are
trapped. Trapped in the idea that their flaw has created a wall between God and
them.
Like Thomas,
the long days continue for them, they hear church bells in the distance and
hear the whispers of the Good News that promises that they are loved and they
believe that it is another lie, like so many they are told.
Jesus healed
the broken and the sick. He saw those with mental illness as genuine people,
and he went to them.
He healed and
cleansed them when healing and cleansing required touching and touching was simply
not allowed.
And it was
Jesus’ compassion, God’s love, that demanded this touch.
The leper
did not do anything to deserve to be separated from God, and so God found him,
and he made him clean.
He does the
same for us. God searches desperately in the margins for us, when we had
thought that for some reason we are not worthy, not perfect enough, with enough
talent. Maybe because of addiction, or abuse, or our mistakes and decisions.
Perhaps it
was nothing we did. Consider the homeless desperately seeking shelter. Think of
the orphan who wonders why she has no one to call mom or dad. Think of the
refugee, fleeing the only home they know and not knowing if they will survive
long enough to call another place home.
Think of the
child stuck in the cycle of abuse, or human trafficking.
Where is
God?
God is
there. He is in the eyes of the kind stranger, in the gentle, honest touch of
the missionary motivated by love. God is in the police officer who takes a
moment to put a blanket around the shoulders of the victim of the tragedy,
looking in their eye and saying “you are now safe”
God’s just,
powerful, unyielding love, ripe with mercy and grace is there, “Incensed”, “Moved
with compassion” telling us that “I do want to”
Though we
may not be healed, we will be made clean in God’s touch.
Dare I say
that at some point we may all be in their place and I pray that at that time we
remember that God is also there, on the outside with us, God’s love and mercy Through
Jesus’ sacrifice on the cross ready to make us clean again, but we need
to eliminate the idea that anything we do or we are can stop God from being
with us.
As the women
walked away from Thomas I wanted to scream at them. I wanted to ask them if
they knew what they were doing to him, but I said nothing. Instead, I placed my
lunch back in the cooler and picked up my ukulele. I waited for the women to
get back into the van and for the driver to pull the massive beast away and
then I walked over to Thomas, who was sitting silently in the same spot, now
watching the pigeons roost in the massive branches of the trees. When I got to
his chair I said his name.
“Thomas?”
He did not
look up at me.
“You okay,
Buddy?”
He didn’t
look, preferring the safety of the birds who would not judge his tears. “Yes”
He said
I didn’t
know what to say, so I reach for the only thing my mind can think of “God loves
you, buddy”
“I know.” He
replied quietly. “Want to sing?” he asked, knowing I had the tiny guitar in my
hand.
“Yes.” I
said aloud, “I do want to” is what I meant.
Amen.
[i] Leviticus
13:1–14:57
[ii] Edwards,
James R. The Gospel According to Mark.
The Pillar New Testament Commentary. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2002.
[iii] Kelber,
Werner H. Mark’s Story of Jesus. Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1979.
[v] France,
R. T. The Gospel of Mark: A Commentary on the Greek Text. New
International Greek Testament Commentary. Grand Rapids, MI; Carlisle: W.B.
Eerdmans; Paternoster Press, 2002.
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