"Touched -- Beyond Skin Deep"
First Congregational Church -- Wauwatosa, Wisconsin
Sixth Sunday after the Epiphany – February 15, 2009
Rev. Steven A. Peay, Ph.D.
[texts: 2 Kgs. 5:1-14/I Cor. 9:24-27/Mk. 1:40-45]

Our skin is remarkable stuff. My mother, when I used to opine on things medical, would tell me, I'm the "wrong kind of doctor," but I know enough about anatomy to know the wonder of this skin we inhabit. I also know, from experiences both literal and figurative, that we are all 'thin-skinned.' Thus, when we say that something is only 'skin deep' we're talking about something rather shallow. I think what we see in the Scripture lessons today calls us to look beyond something only skin deep. Indeed to understand that God’s will is to touch us beyond skin deep.

Leprosy, Hansen's Disease, attacks the skin and afflicts the human body with horrible disfigurement. The man who came to Jesus today in the Scripture, came at his peril. He was to stand a ways off, to ring a bell, he was to cover himself so people couldn’t see the disfigurement and to ward folks off, saying “Unclean, unclean.” So this was a disease that is more than skin deep. Lepers were the outcasts of society well into our modern age simply because this disease was so horrible. The leper was denied even the most basic comfort of being touched by another human being, since the fearsome disease was communicated by contact. Being ostracized wasn’t just the lot of lepers in Biblical times, it continued well into the 19th century.

The Hawaiian island of Molokai was a leper colony – in fact there are still a few people living there today. The boat would bring the lepers to the lagoon and they’d be tossed into the water and told to swim for it. They were simply left to die until a Belgian Roman Catholic priest, Damien De Veuster, came to their aid. He helped to improve the quality of their life. And after one Sunday when he began his homily, “We lepers . .” he died, himself a leper, among them. Molokai and the lepers are being brought back to our attention because the Roman Church is making Father Damien a saint. In him I see someone who touched and was touched – and beyond skin deep.

Maybe there was something that told the leper in Mark's gospel that he could be bold and come to Jesus and to beg a favor: "If you choose, you can make me clean." Jesus looked at him, this creature of his own making become his very brother in our skin, and he pitied him. In our age pity has taken on a meaning different from the Biblical understanding. Now pity is a feeling, as Webster's defines it of, "sympathy, with the grief or misery of another; compassion or fellow-suffering." There is a connotation of condescension in this understanding. The Biblical notion of pity or mercy is one of powerful feelings of gut-wrenching, heart-rending love that produces acts that relieve and heal those who inspire them. Jesus' pity is of this latter type. One author has commented:

Jesus' compassion is not skin-deep; it is an upheaval of the depths of his being. There is no true compassion without passion: those who are compassionate really suffer in their own persons. Compassion is a communion in suffering. It is impossible for the Father to remain impassive when the children suffer - and among them the eternal Son made a human being. The Father's suffering is a great mystery, and when we want to speak about it, we stammer miserably. However, it is urgent to reject from our mind the idea that the Father, because of the perfection of his nature, looks from afar on human suffering without himself being painfully involved and wounded. . . .

The cure of the leper orients my meditation in this direction. I cannot believe that Jesus does not suffer as much as the poor sick man and that the Father does not suffer as much as Jesus.

Identified with the leper Jesus says, "I do choose. Be made clean!" What is more, where a word would have sufficed, Jesus stretches forth his hand and touches him. Why? I think for several reasons. First, we know the importance of touch to humans. Touch is an indication of intimacy. In every high school psychology book there's material on the importance of touch and the result of a decades old study on its effects on infants and their development. Those infants, who were touched, cuddled, paid attention to, thrived. Those who received just the absolute minimum of contact were developmentally disabled. Jesus touches to draw the leper into the realm of divine/human intimacy. Second, he touches him to demonstrate a greater truth. Origen, the great fourth century spiritual writer, commented:

And why did he touch him, since the law forbade the touching of a leper? He touched him to show that "all things are clean to the clean." Because the filth that is in one person does not adhere to others, nor doe external uncleanness defile the clean of heart. So he touches him in his untouchability, that he might instruct us in humility; that he might teach us that we should despise no one, or abhor them, or regard them as pitiable, because of some wound of their body or some blemish for which they might be called to render an account. . . . So, stretching forth his hand to touch, the leprosy immediately departs. The hand of the Lord is found to have touched not a leper, but a body made clean! Let us consider here, beloved, if there be anyone here that has the taint of leprosy in his soul, or the contamination of guilt in his heart? If he has, instantly adoring God, let him say: "Lord, if you will, you can make me clean."

That touch of Jesus spoke volumes. The touch speaks to us of the need to be healed at a level that is more than skin deep. The touch has to go inside to heal and cleanse from the inside out. Jesus told the man to keep quiet about what had happened and to follow the precepts of the law. But he got caught up at the sight of his skin, at the healing on the surface, and did not allow the real, deep healing to take place within himself. What we're talking about here is a question of healing that leads us to change.

All of us talk a great deal about change, but we don't want to do anything about it. People go to their physicians looking for a miracle cure, a silver bullet that will take care of their problem without them having to do anything. I have to confess that I am one of those people when it comes to weight loss. I've been told that I can lose weight - if I watch what eat and.ugh..exercise. But that's not what I want. I want something that will magically "melt away the pounds while you eat as much as you like and do whatever you like." Unfortunately, those miracle cures are the stuff of bad 'infomercials' designed to lift the weight of your wallet and little else. What's true for me is true for so many who are simply unwilling to change their lifestyle, their pace in order to be healed. I am reminded of a priest in the community I was in, old Father Kenneth, who was told by the doctor, "Father you have to quit smoking and drinking for you to live longer." Kenneth's response, "Doctor it will only SEEM longer." He died not long after that. Change has to come from the inside and change will only come when one wills to discipline him/herself to change.

What I'm talking about with individuals and their health is also true of both government and of churches. We love to talk about change, God knows we heard the term used quite abundantly by those representing both parties….so change is an accepted bi-partisan concept, I suppose. In fact, we'll talk something to death given half a chance. We'll discuss every angle of the problem of church growth, or the need to increase giving, or reaching out to help those who are less fortunate, whatever problem or ill is confronting us. We'll chew on it, take reams of minutes, report on it, hear from the assembly, "Yes, something should be done about that," and go back and talk some more. We end up with excruciatingly precise analyses of the problems, but nothing has changed, nothing has been done.

When Naaman came to Elisha for healing he had a whole set of expectations of what would happen for him to be healed. Elisha met none of them, but told him instead to go and do something remarkably simple. Naaman balked, but his servants talked sense to him, "Father, if the prophet had commanded you to do something difficult, would you not have done it? How much more, when all he said to you was, 'Wash, and be clean'?" Jesus said to the leper not all sorts of ritual language but, "I do choose. Be made clean!" It's there for ALL of us, but we have to appropriate the healing at a level that is more than skin deep.

Thus, Paul writes of the discipline we must employ if we're going to grow as spiritual people. This discipline which does not lead us to "run aimlessly" or "box as though beating the air," calls us to become who we say we are, to do what we say we'll do. We do this for a prize that's much greater than the athlete's laurel wreath or even greater than multiple gold medals (which, from news reports, don’t necessarily guarantee we’ll act with good judgment because we’ve won). We do this for the prize of oneness with God; a prize that is already before us if we will to reach out, pick it up, and allow it to touch and heal us in our inmost selves.

Pun intended, the story of Jesus and the leper is touching; Jesus was moved deeply by the man's plight. Yet, the man was not changed, save on the surface. People still come looking for the surface touch of Christ in their lives, the easy way of expecting him to make them different without them ever having to do anything. That's simply not the way it is. If we are to change, to grow, to be the people God wants us to be, and to achieve the divine destiny which is ours, we have to cooperate with what God is doing. We have to do what the commercial say, “Just do it!” As we cooperate, it will show in our lives. We will begin to love people where they are, accepting those who are different from us - even celebrating their diversity, rather than placing expectations on them and holding them up to our agendas. We will begin to forgive people, deeply, not holding grudges. We will begin to be instruments of God's caring extending our hand, as did Jesus, to offer a healing, comforting touch, to offer companionship on the way.

We can talk about all of this, we can talk about spiritual growth, we can talk about the growth of this church and it will all remain the same if we're always looking for the "quick fix," no discipline way out. But, my dear sisters and brothers in faith, the growth, the wonder we so desire will come only when we're living the change at more than a skin deep level. Jesus wants to touch us deeper than skin deep, he wants to love us with measureless love. We can't look for that touch, experience that love, and remain unchanged. Damien De Veuster knew that touch and it changed him and he freely gave of himself for the good of others; action grows out of being touched by God. If we’ve been truly touched by God in Christ it will show and it will be beyond skin deep. Now then, if we’re touched beyond skin deep, the operative question then becomes, as it does every Sunday, is how then shall we live?