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Sermon: Moments of Grace and Truth, Rev. Paul R. Seebeck

What is it that you are most afraid of? It’s certainly a relevant question for our time, isn’t it? The economic crisis only adds to the sense of fear that is so pervasive in our culture. I don’t even think I need to mention out loud all of the unspoken fears that are present with us in our sanctuary.

Before we read our gospel passage that speaks about what fear does to us, and how God responds, I want you to see what a 24-year old man with leprosy looks like, for this is what our story is about. A leper approaches Jesus. He has lost everything job, family, community, security, everything! Are you starting to get the picture? This man that came to Jesus certainly came to Jesus out of desperation, and with the fear that loss brings.

The Old Testament law, that Jesus fulfills, was quite clear that any person with leprosy was to wear torn clothing, keep their hair unkempt, cover their upper lip and cry, “Unclean, Unclean!” Even worse they were to live alone as outsiders, away from the camp of the Israelites.
It is into this context and tradition of deathly fear of both getting leprosy, and the person who leprosy, that Jesus speaks grace and truth too. As you stand now, if you’re able for the reading of God’s word, hear the desperate fear of this leper, for he is breaking the law, and could be stoned, if caught, by the religious zealots.

NEW TESTAMENT READING: MARK 1:40-45
40 A leper came to him begging him, and kneeling he said to him, ‘If you choose, you can make me clean.’ 41Moved with pity, Jesus stretched out his hand and touched him, and said to him, ‘I do choose. Be made clean!’ 42Immediately the leprosy left him, and he was made clean. 43After sternly warning him he sent him away at once, 44saying to him, ‘See that you say nothing to anyone; but go, show yourself to the priest, and offer for your cleansing what Moses commanded, as a testimony to them.’ 45But he went out and began to proclaim it freely, and to spread the word, so that Jesus could no longer go into a town openly, but stayed out in the country; and people came to him from every quarter.

Prayer: God please take all of our fear and have pity – compassion – on us. Stretch out your hands and touch us, so that we might be made whole. Amen.

Fear can make us desperate, can’t it? We can almost see it the face of this leper that approaches Jesus. At first glance it is the worst of what fear can do to us, paralyzing us, as we cling to what deadens us, even as beg. But then we see this man kneeling, and hear his words, “If you choose you – Jesus –can make me clean.” Now we are closer perhaps to what fear and loss expose in us, breaking down our illusion of control.

Jesus response to this kind of human pain is nothing short of miraculous. He is moved in the depth of his being. Love and pity meet in one of the great compassion statement: I do choose, to demonstrate to you that God is trustworthy, beyond all your loss and fear, be clean. Jesus moves in the depth of his being, and acts by choosing wholeness for another person.

I’m intentionally using that word whole now because of what happens next. Jesus makes a distinction between being healed from a disease and being made whole. God knows that people can be healed from sickness and go right back to their ways of living that contributed to their desperate condition. So Jesus, in his great compassion, tells this man to go to the priest for the prescribed ritual of cleansing. This cleansing would restore him back into the community of faith. According to the law even though he had been healed, he would be ceremonially unclean until it happened. Jesus didn’t want to just physically heal this man he wanted complete him with spiritual and social, or communal, wholeness. Isn’t it interesting to consider that often our fears distort this sense of wholeness that comes from belonging, driving us instead into destructive behavior that isolates us.

So how does the leper respond to this kind of love that Jesus for him? We’re not even sure that he ever went back to a priest for the “ritual of cleansing.” We do know that he didn’t listen to Jesus request to say nothing about his physical healing, for Jesus wanted to be known more for his mission, than just as a miracle worker.

Despite this there is something incredibly refreshing in seeing another human being experience the touch of God’s grace and truth in Jesus Christ. For as this leper is made clean, as he see Jesus choosing wholeness for him, he moves beyond the boundaries of his loss and fear. For now he is free. He no longer has to give into the despair of a worldview controlled by fear.

I was driving Sunnyside to see my Mom and Dad on Friday talking with person that knows me well – understands how I grew up and how difficult it can be to return home, although I am doing that, it helps me move from healing to wholeness. As we were talking this person suddenly said, “But we’re good people.” These were the exact words I needed to hear. They moved me away from the old patterns that fear and rejection bring.

How many of you have seen the movie “Gran Torino?” For those of you who haven’t seen it yet, it is quite a remarkable story of redemption for a 78-year old man.

Clint Eastwood plays Walt Kowalski, a Korean War veteran who lives in a changing Michigan neighborhood that increasingly is dominated by Asian immigrants. There’s a scene in the movie where one of Kowalski’s neighbor’s Sue, says to him, “You are a good man.” He blows it off with a gruff, “some people would say otherwise” or something to that effect (sounded just like my father). But these words of love and grace, rather than hatred and fear, for others and self for what one has done (Walt killed innocent Asians in the Korean War) deepens a relationship with his neighbors next door that he had prejudice and hatred for. It is an incredibly redemptive story and the end (I don’t want give the ending away) but in the end, it is possible through this movie to see how God is always choosing for us to be whole. As this story of compassion and love play out in the movie, Walt ends up – this how I saw it from a Christian perspective – in Christ’s his mission-al story of death and resurrection.

Richard Nixon once said, “People react to fear, not love. They don’t teach that in Sunday school, but it’s true.” It is also true that when people respond to God’s redemptive love that not only cleans but brings wholeness life happens.

I’ve been thinking a lot about our transition and your life together when I am not longer with you as your pastoral leader. I want to tell you something “You are a good church.” “You are a good people.” I see evidence everywhere that God is choosing to not only heal you but bring wholeness.

At our final session meeting together Monday night I got a glimpse again at how God’s spirit is at work in your midst through those that you chose for leadership in this church. They are a remarkable group. I encourage you to trust them. I saw how God’s spirit is at work in our midst for our future through the words of our COM representative Scott Kinder-Pyle. He is a good man. Trust him.

Most importantly, know that you are God’s church, it is not the church of Paul, but of the Jesus we know, that always chooses to bless us with grace and truth, no matter, in our dying and our living Christ’s mission of bringing the kingdom of God in our midst is un-folding. In Gran Torino Walt couldn’t reach his own children – and he felt terribly about that – but in the end because of who God is good reached out and saved an entire neighborhood.
May God bless us in the hearing of the Living Word.
Please pray with me.