Coronavirus Talk 7
Start with an Our Father
Last night, I said that this second series of talks would be about getting to know Jesus as a friend. But I think it would useful if we started by asking what we believe about God, with thinking a little bit about who is God?
A few years ago, Pope Francis led the Church through an entire year devoted to helping us reflect on that very question. That was The Year of Mercy. And during that year, the Holy Father published a book called The Name of God is Mercy. It seems clear to me that what Pope Francis was doing was, like all his predecessors since the Second Vatican Council, re-proposing God to the world, re-presenting the narrative about God that is both true to our scriptures and still applicable the real circumstances of many different cultures and our individual lives.
There are competing narratives about God in the world today. Consider this one from the atheist Richard Dawkins’ book: The God Delusion: “The God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all of fiction: jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, blood-thirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sado-masochistic, capriciously malevolent bully.”
I don’t think there are many narratives about God that are as defensive and aggressively hostile as Dawkins. Mostly, our American culture seems to simply put God at the margins of consciousness, seeing God as a kind of quaint elderly relative, dragged out of the attic for family occasions, but forgotten and prescinded from otherwise.
Even though there are kinder, gentler narratives about who God is, they are still inadequate. The God of our consciousness is most often the judge or the policeman or the executioner or the impersonal accountant, all of whom it would be difficult for us to love. The last thing we would expect from the judge or the policeman or the accountant is unconditional love. Right?
And then there’s this: I recently read an article which asked this question: “Is Jesus nicer than God? ”The article referenced a survey of ordinary people who identified the most lovable person in the Bible as Jesus and the most fearsome person in the Bible as God.
All these narratives about God, from the angry rantings of atheists like Dawkins to the ill-informed distinction between Jesus and God run counter to the identity of God we find in Scripture.
Pope Benedict expressed the authentic narrative about God very simply but most profoundly: “God has a human face and his name is Jesus Christ.” Whatever we see and hear from Jesus, we see and hear from God.
Because we see God’s human face, Jesus, we can know everything we need to know about who God is. We get to know a God who leaves 99 sheep in order to search intently for the one who is lost. Because of Jesus, we get to know a father who can’t stop thinking about his ungrateful, selfish son and waits patiently for the kid to come to his senses and realize there’s no place like home. Because of Jesus, we get to know a God whose banquet-hall is filled, not with celebrities or other A-listers, but with the homeless, the refugees, the bums and the despised. Because of Jesus, we get to know a God who loves people, not just as a race or a species, but as individuals. Because of Jesus, we know that God’s name is mercy.
On now to Jesus.
All four of the gospels report that Jesus healed people. First, let’s note that the healings in the gospels don’t seem to be planned, like media events. There were no posters advertising that “Jesus of Nazareth will hold a healing service tonight at the local synagogue.” In each situation, the healing arose spontaneously, out of Jesus’ love and compassion. Jesus simply saw that these people needed help and he provided it. It is that very spontaneity that reveals to us that God acting, working, NOW through Jesus, the Messiah, God’s human face.
But most importantly, it is crucial to notice in the healings of Jesus that the physical healing is often only the sign of a deeper healing, an inner healing, a spiritual healing from the wounds inflicted by sin. Phillip Yancey writes: “Jesus’ healings are not supernatural miracles in a natural world; they are the only truly natural things in a world that has become unnatural, demonized and wounded.” What Jesus was doing when he healed was restoring people to the wholeness they would have if sin had not entered their lives. In other words, Jesus did not just heal cells, he healed souls.
Jesus’ power to heal, then, is intricately connected to the forgiveness of sin, although they are not the same thing. Forgiveness involves the “what” of sin: what I have done or failed to do. Healing involves the “why” of sin: why did I do this, what is the underlying reason I have sinned or continue to sin.
When I was a young priest serving in San Francisco, I kept getting bursitis in the joints of my body because of the damp weather: elbow, shoulder, knee, ankle, and I would go to Dr. Bernstein for a cortisone shot. After a few of those, he told me: “We can keep doing giving you these injections, but we really need to find out why you’re getting bursitis, what’s going on in your body that keeps this happening.” It’s about healing the symptom or the disease.
An act of violence: meanness, cruelty, infidelity, or greed, for example, these need forgiveness. But why one is violent or mean or cruel or unfaithful or greedy – this needs healing. Put another way, forgiveness involves our choices, healing involves facing what we don’t seem to be able to control. There’s a beautiful scene toward the end of the movie “Good Will Hunting” when Will is about to connect the sociopathic behavior he’s been living with to the fact that he was physically abused as a child by his foster dad. Robin Williams, his psychologist, helps him at the moment of insight by repeating, softly and gently: “It’s not your fault. It’s not your fault.” That’s the moment when all the tumblers fall into place for Will and the needed healing can happen.
It is especially important for us as adults to learn to be able to distinguish between what behavior calls for forgiveness and what behavior calls for healing. But, for our purposes here, let’s just say that Jesus had the reputation to bring about both forgiveness and healing.
Like for this man, the first person Jesus heals in Mark’s gospel:
“A leper came to him begging him, and kneeling he said to him: “If you choose to, you can make me clean.” Moved with compassion, Jesus stretched out his hand and touched him, and said to him, “I do choose. Be made clean.”
Immediately the leprosy left him, and he was made clean. After sternly warning him, “See that you say nothing to anyone; but go, show yourself to the priest and offer for your cleansings what Moses commanded, as a testimony to them.” But 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 in the country; and people came to him from every quarter.” Mark 1: 40-45
Jesus knew all about the social stigma that comes from a disease like leprosy. The book of Leviticus mandated that a person with leprosy live outside the town, keep a six-foot distance from everyone else, and wear the clothes of a mourner going to a burial service. We can easily imagine absolute indignation rippling through the crowd as one such outcast walked through their midst, as they, no doubt with people hurried to get away, and throwing himself at Jesus’ feet saying: “If you are willing you can make me clean.” What a brave and desperate plea.
Matthew, Mark, and Luke give varying accounts of this scene but all three include the same explosive sentence: “Jesus stretched his hand and touched him.” The crowd must have gasped: the law of Moses expressly forbade touching a leper. The man himself must have flinched, not having been allowed to be touched by anyone for a long time. Just Jesus’ firm affirmation: “I do choose to heal you” and that one touch of compassion took away this man’s dis-ease and restored him to his place in the community.
Jesus instructs the man to go offer what was prescribed to the temple and tells him firmly not to tell anyone about what had just happened. But the man is unable to hold it in (who can blame him?) and tells everybody he meets. In 5 verses, this man goes from being one of the walking dead to a follower, even of disciple, of Jesus.
This is the power that comes from Jesus, from God’s human face, a power that continues through the mission of agencies that welcome the outcasts, healing them from alienation and fear. But this healing power can also release the outcast in ourselves when we are desperate and brave enough to pray the words that man said: “Jesus, if you want, you can make me clean.”
Tomorrow, we will continue looking into the face of Jesus the Healer.
Let us end tonight with a Hail Mary and a blessing.