Love Beyond Reason
1 Corinthians 1:10-18; Matthew 4:12-23

January 23, 2005

In teaching Shakespeare’s Macbeth, I’ve recently learned of a gruesome sport I had not heard of before. During the Elizabethan age, bear-baiting was common. A bear would be chained to a pole and dogs would be let loose. Macduff makes a reference to the sport in telling Macbeth of his doom. In a human form of bear-baiting, Macbeth’s fate would see him enduring isolation, humiliation, and torment. Macbeth states that he will not surrender to be “baited with the rabble’s curse”; in other words, tormented by the common people. He fights courageously to the end.

In the first century, lepers endured a life-long form of social bear-baiting. They were isolated, humiliated and tormented by the common people. We know the leprosy talked about in the bible started with pain in the joints and overall weakness. Discoloured sores often left the leper’s face unrecognizable and, when the sores ulcerated, the stench was unbearable. It has since been recorded that one great danger of leprosy was the absence of sensation. When lepers lost fingers and toes, people used to think that it was just part of the disease; however, it is now known that, because lepers lost the sensation in their extremities, rats would gnaw at them while they slept. Leprosy carried a moral stigma: while other diseases could be healed, leprosy had to be cleansed. The law regarding lepers was very clear: don’t touch! Lepers, if seen on a public street, were to be pelted with stones or eggs. If a leper came into your house, it would have to be destroyed. If you yourself touched a leper, you were defiled. These were the laws.

A rabbi’s job was to uphold the law. Jesus was a rabbi. The Gospel of Mark tells us that the leper appears begging and kneeling before Jesus. The leper says to Jesus, “If you choose, you can make me clean.” The leper does not doubt that Jesus could heal him; he doubts if Jesus would want to heal him. Now recall for a moment the Gospel stories of people who reached out to touch Jesus. Little children, the woman with the hemorrhage who grasped the hem of his garment, the prostitute who anointed Jesus’ feet with her tears, and Thomas, who demanded to feel Jesus’ wounds, are all examples of those who touched Jesus. The leper, however, did not touch Jesus. The leper knew the consequences of touching others. He knew the law.

In this story of the leper, we all know what Jesus did next: “Jesus stretched out his hand and touched him, and said to him, ‘I do choose. Be made clean!’” Jesus touched the leper before he healed him. He touched the man while he was still unclean. There were other miracles Jesus performed at a distance, why could he not have performed this one at a distance, too? After all, he just had to “say the word” and someone would be healed. Yes, Jesus knew, the word would heal the body, but the touch would heal the soul. Jesus was teaching us something here.

We can think of diseases today out of our own headlines which are just as feared as leprosy once was, diseases which may also carry a moral stigma. We can all think of situations which make people feel isolated and embarrassed. Sometimes, perhaps because we’re a downtown Church, these ones even come into our midst. Do we see what Jesus would have seen?

Today’s lesson in Corinthians is about unity in the Church. It’s easy to confuse unity with conformity because it’s easy to think that unity requires us all to be the same. But Paul says the danger in this is that we can become an exclusive Church. If we define unity as not welcoming differences, there is danger of us exhibiting a type of “spiritual quarantine” in which some may feel isolated and unwelcome. Those who are different might feel untouched by us. Untouched and unloved. And, worse, unseen.

In 1991, an article in The New York Times magazine spoke about a group of more than 100 women living in Long Beach, California, who were all certifiably blind. These women were Cambodian refugees who had seen the horror of the Pol Pot regime. The curious thing was that the doctors reported that their eyes functioned normally. It was therefore reported that these sightless women suffered from psychosomatic blindness. Their blindness came not from the damage to their eyes but from the damage to their minds by what they had seen.

People in bible times did not know about psychosomatic illnesses. Their explanation for any form of suffering was that someone must have sinned. It was even believed that children might suffer because of the sins of their parents.

There is another story in Jesus’ time, that of a blind man, who spent his life being ignored and tormented by the apathy of others. To exist, he begged. He was a weary sight to those who passed by him day after day. One day, on a Sabbath day, Jesus and his disciples walked by the blind man. Because Jesus noticed the blind man, the disciples paid attention to him as well. The Gospel of John, chapter 9, tells us the disciples see the blind man as simply an opportunity for a good theological discussion. “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?”

What did Jesus do, on this, the Sabbath day? Thirty-nine works, most with sub-categories, were forbidden on the Sabbath. One such forbidden act was that of making clay. What did Jesus do when he saw the blind man? The first thing he did was see him, really see him, not as a good teaching topic for his disciples, but as a brother in distress. So, on the Sabbath, Jesus spit on the ground, made mud clay, and put it on the man’s eyes. The man washed and then he could see. The Pharisees, of course, were enraged. How could anyone who followed the law do such a thing on the Sabbath? They questioned the man repeatedly, and told the formerly blind man that Jesus was a sinner. “Whether he is a sinner or not, I do not know,” the man said. “One thing I do know. I was blind but now I see!”

"Who sinned," the disciples asked Jesus, "that this man was born blind?"

"Neither this man nor his parents sinned,” said Jesus. Perhaps there is a more subtle type of “spiritual quarantine” that exists among fellow believers, that of the petty differences that may arise from time to time. In his first letter to the church in Corinth, Paul goes into detail about the arguments that disrupt unity: the confusion over speaking in tongues, sexual ethics, eating habits, even doubt about resurrection, just to name a few. “I follow Paul,” says one. “I follow Apollos,” says another. “Is Christ divided?” asks Paul. “Was Paul crucified for you? Were you baptized into the name of Paul?”

“The cross of Christ is emptied of its power,” Paul says, when we are divided because of our differences.

We are all here, in the shadow of the cross, to do God’s work. As we listen to one another’s story, no matter how different it is, we hear God’s voice. As we prepare a table for our friends and our guests, we eat the same meal. As we extend our hand to visitors, we have the glorious opportunity to see as Jesus would have seen: brothers and sisters all.

This is, for us, a love beyond reason.

Preached by Sharlene McGowan
Knox-Metropolitan United Church
Regina, Saskatchewan