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The reading for today is from the book of Mark the first chapter.
"And a *** came to him, imploring him and kneeling said to him,
'if you will
you can make me clean.'
Moved with pity he stretched out his hand
and touched him.
Jesus to him,
'I will, be clean'
and immediately the leprosy left him
and he was made clean."
Here ends the reading.
Four things I'd like to draw your attention to here very quickly.
Jesus gave hope,
he was moved with pity
he touched
the man
and healed the man.
I want to focus
on the third part today.
When I was a student here at concordia,
I think it was my junior year
there was an invitation, they were pulling together a group of people to go on a
mission trip to Haiti.
I was really interested in
in world missions
and that I'd had some great teachers over the years who have been
active in
overseas missions
and they had planted some seeds.
So I signed up
and I headed off
with the team here
to.. actually coordinated by the Lutheran Bible Translators.
We spent a couple of weeks
in Haiti outside of Port au prince.
We did a lot of different things while we were there. We were involved
with some kind of street ministries, we went door-to-door canvassing with members of
an area church and had the chance to talk with people about their faith,
share about Jesus,
learn about their lives.
We had a chance to work on some construction projects, to work on the
school
We got a chance to do a variety of things in creative
ministries.
But the most vivid memories I have
was a day that we visited
an orphanage.
This was a an orphanage where a large number of the kids
had aids
and they were there for a variety of reasons, some have been abandoned by
their parents
some
their parents had died
and they didn't have anyone else to care for them.
The kids ranged from infants
to toddlers,
a few a bit older.
And I'll be honest
I tell people this: I have two kids- four and seven.
I'm not a baby dad.
I'm not good with like
cradling babies I'm afraid I'm going to
break them or drop them or something like that.
And so this was the really uncomfortable experience for me
to go into an orphanage of
little people.
Yes, I was a teacher but i stayed with the older ones you know?
So I guess I'm still a teacher.
So I'm there but I'm kinda staying in the corners and I find every reason possible
to not hangout directly with the kids. 'Oh you need something from the truck?
I'll go get it.'
So you know I put my servant leadership hat on and made it look like I was doing
something.
But I was really avoiding
the contact with the kids. And I'd run and get things
and I talked to the people in the orphanage. 'So tell me what it's like
being here.' And I'd try to be really interested and concerned. So again
this was really driven by the fact that
I didn't want to
be around those scary kids.
I didn't know what to say or what to do.
So we had a puppet show and that seemed to go well. A lot of the kids were
laughing and moving and jumping and dancing and
doing things that
fun kids do.
And as we were doing the puppet show, I'm not sure if I actually had a puppet on my
hand or if I was
helping set up for something
but I noticed one young man.
There were a series of cribes and he didn't leave his crib
and he didn't move, he stayed. His head was on the
mattress looking toward the puppet show,
motionless,
seemingly emotionless.
And I'd finally conjured up a little bit of courage.
The puppet show ended
and I walked over to the cribe.
It turns out he was about three or four years old, but the weight of a newborn or
a one-year-old maybe.
Found out later that
he did indeed have
AIDS.
And I reached down and I picked him up and I put him in my arms.
I didn't know what to say or what to do and I just kinda
bounced around and stuff.
He moved very slowly
if at all
most of the time.
And I'm embarrased to say that I had a camera around my neck.
You know it's not like I'm in a tourist spot,
I'm in an orphanage
but I did have a camera around my neck.
And he slowly reached up
and he touched
on the camera
and the flash went off six inches from his face
and he didn't react.
Just motionless
seemingly emotionless.
And
I held him a little longer and I didn't know what to do but by new about twenty words
in Creol
so I'd said "bon ju"
if that's how you say it
and I'd learned a song
so I sang:
(singing in Creol)
which means
the joy of the Lord is my strength.
And I decided I didn't know his name so I decided I'm gonna call you "little juah".
combined it's creole so I added the english to it and
now I had my
"little juah"
And I called him that and he didn't really really respond a whole lot. I held him, I don't know
how long, it was quite a while.
And then I was told that we had to leave.
So I went to put him back into the crib
And all of a sudden
this
motionless
seemingly motionless
young man
came to life in a way that I'd never expected.
His arms outstretched screaming
at the top of his lungs reaching out
for me. Man was that hard.
One of the ladies who worked there helped me out and came and
comforted him.
I set him down and I
headed off.
You know as I think about that experience
one thing
that comes to mind
is that touch
matters.
I don't know how often this young man had people holding him or touching him and the
people who worked there seemed very caring and all
but all I know
is that we didn't say anything really. I sang a little song poorly to him.
I called him little joy.
But there was something about holding him
that he craved.
And I noticed that when I let go of him.
When we look at our text for today
you'll notice a series of events.
There's this man with leprosy and if you know anything about the
culture in the first century and leprosy
there were a few things that were pretty evident:
One, life with my person was not very easy.
I'm not sure if every type of leprosy was incurable but I know that some types
were. I'm not sure which take this man had.
I'm not sure about all the situations. I know from the commentaries you can
gather some things like the fact that
people with leprosy sometimes had to shout 'unclean' as they walk to the streets
and people would part ways
and stay away from you.
I get the idea that life with leprosy
could be lonely
and it wasn't just having a physical and a painful physical ailment
but it impacted you socially and spiritually as well.
Can you imagine going years without being touched or hugged
or a handshake?
That has to wear on a person.
And so it's amazing to me that when we look at this text
the man has this hope
that there is healing
in Jesus.
And he comes up to him and you notice what Jesus says, it says he has
compassion, what the text says that he has compassion on him
and then Jesus
touches him.
Again I'm not an expert in the languages so I don't know if the order is certain
there are not but it seems like
he touches him and then he speaks
and he heals them.
But I'm pretty confident that the healing of that man
began with the touch.
That Jesus was willing to get up close
with this man
and he was willing to
touch him
and heal him
to have compassion on him.
So I want to share two things with you today to think about.
One, if you feel like a ***
in any way figuratively whatever.
If you feel
like an outcast left out
like people part ways and turn the other way when they see you because
they want to avoid you.
If you're going through time of difficulty and people know about it and
so they avoided because they don't know what to say.
I hope that as you think about this text today you
find encouragement
that God is not running away
that Jesus is up close and personal.
You know God comes to us, the idea that touch is important and
physical is important is even evidenced in the way that God set things up.
The waters of baptism
you can taste and drink
in the Lord's supper.
And even in the early church traditions greeting one another with the holy kiss,
embracing one another.
They weren't afraid to touch
one another
gathering together often.
So if you're
feeling like that lepper right now I hope you know that you're not alone.
And that God loves you
and is there and close and that makes a huge difference.
God gave us one another for a reason.
Remember God said it's not good for man to be alone before sin entered the world.
We are created as creatures of community and relationship.
So the second thing I want to share with you is this,
maybe you don't feel like a lepper right now
but there are people around who do
and so my invitation to you
is to consider touching someone.
Figuratively, literally.
You may be afraid because they're going through something and you don't know
what to say and you're afraid to say the wrong thing and it'll be worse.
You're just afraid because you went through something similar and you're afraid
you'll lose it.
You can't stay together, you know you can't hold it together when you talk to them.
Maybe its just awkward or uncomfortable or it feels messy and you're just not that kind of
person, whatever it might be
I'd just like to invite you to consider the possibility
of going and getting a little closer to that person.
And literally, figuratively touching, praying with them, speaking a word, not
speaking a word, just sitting with them.
Whatever it might be.
Because touch
matters. Amen.
