“Seeing Humanity Through Jesus’ Eyes”
Mark 1:40-45
2 Kings 5:1-14
By: Rev. Kenneth E. Sauer,
Pastor of Parkview United Methodist Church,
Newport News, VA
www.parkview-umc.org
Both in our Old Testament Lesson and in our Gospel Lesson for this morning we come face to face with the disease of Leprosy, and in the Bible there is no disease regarded with more terror and no persons more ostracized by society than lepers.
Leprosy rendered the sufferers unclean.
They were banished from being able to interact with others; they had to live outside the city, and as they moved around they were required to warn others of their polluted presence with the cry: “Unclean, unclean!”
What a horrifying existence!
Lepers not only had to bear the physical pain of their disease, they also had to bear the mental anguish and the heartbreak of being completely cut-off from human society and being totally shunned.
This was according to the Jewish Law.
But as we see in our Gospel Lesson for this morning, a man with leprosy broke the Law by running up to Jesus and begging Him to make him clean or cure him.
And here we have a very revealing picture of how Jesus sees humanity.
He didn’t drive the man away who had broken the law.
Instead, Jesus was “Filled with compassion” for the man.
“Jesus reached out his hand and touched the man.”
And with the touch of Jesus’ hand, the man was made clean and the leprosy left him!
This past week in our Disciple I class that Virginia is teaching, we did an overview of the Book of Matthew and found that Jesus was much more concerned with mercy or the moral law of love than the Ceremonial Law.
For Jesus, people and relationships are more important than rituals and legalism.
And holiness, for our Lord, is a holiness that breaks down barriers between people.
Jesus would not allow the Law of the land to crush compassion, and when it came to choosing one over the other…
…Jesus chose compassion!
And it was the compassion of Christ that caused Him to stretch out His hand and touch and cure the leper!
We can’t think very long about Jesus Christ without marveling over all the people He stretched out His hand to touch and thus make clean or whole!
He took children into His arms; He laid hands on them and blessed them.
He grasped the hand of the panicking Peter, who was sinking into the Sea of Galilee…
…and He gently cleansed the feet of His disciples…
…and instructed us to do the same for one another.
Beyond a doubt, one of the reasons Jesus was eventually put to death was because He touched all the wrong people.
Jesus could have healed the man with leprosy at a distance, but instead, Jesus overcame this man’s isolation and touched Him!
And this touching of suffering humanity is an action that we are confronted with again and again in the gospels.
Nothing less than a personal touch with the person in need will satisfy Jesus.
We have one or two cases on record that show Christ’s power to heal at a distance, but in the great majority of cases Jesus healed with a personal touch.
Do we have a personal touch?
This is what we are called to have.
Jesus says: “As you go proclaim the good news, ‘The kingdom of heaven has come near.’ Cure the sick, raise the dead, cleanse the lepers, cast out demons.”
A wealthy Western woman visited Mother Teresa in Calcutta and offered to write a check to support the work of the Sisters of Charity.
But Mother Teresa declined: “I won’t take your money.”
The woman insisted, reminding Mother Teresa that she had great resources to donate.
But Mother Teresa still said, “No money.”
Exasperated, the woman stammered, “Well, what can I do?”
Mother Teresa said, “Come and see.”
She led the woman by the hand down into a dreadful shelter…
…found a desperately dirty, hungry child, and asked the woman to take care of him.
The woman took a cloth and a water basin and bathed the child.
Then she spooned cereal into the child’s mouth.
The woman reported later that her life was changed!
She became part of something that money could not buy or fix or replace.
She took care of the child on a human, personal and tangible level.
Have we become part of something that money cannot buy, fix or replace?
Sometimes our hands must become dirty in order to represent Christ to the world!…
…in order to see our fellow human beings through the eyes of Christ!
In his book: Caring, Feeling, Touching, Sidney Simon, a teacher at the University of Massachusetts, speaks of a “skin hunger” that is felt by all of us.
It is a deep-seated need for the touch, the feel, the concrete reality of human contact.
He points out that every human being comes into this world needing to be touched…
…and this is a need that continues until death.
Father Damien gave himself unselfishly to serve those with leprosy.
One day when he stood to speak to his flock, he began his remarks by addressing them as “We lepers.”
He had touched them so intimately as he bound their wounds, that he himself contracted the dreaded disease.
If we seek to touch the hurting places of the world, we need to be prepared for the fact that there are costs involved.
And yet, this is the way the power of Christ continues to get out to a hurting world.
I read somewhere that Mother Teresa once said that if at the end of the day you want to examine your conscience, just look at your hands.
What have your hands done today?
Whom have they served?
Has the imprint of Christ’s image been left on anything your hands have touched?
There are so many “lepers” living in our world today.
They might not have the same dreaded disease that Naaman had in our Old Testament Lesson or what the man was suffering from in our Gospel Lesson from Mark…
…but the situation is somewhat similar.
And these persons are our neighbors, our colleagues, our classmates, our teachers, our friends.
They are crippled by some hurt, some pain, a memory from their past, or a lingering illness…
…and they too need someone who will reach out and touch them, who will love them, who will see their pain through the eyes of Jesus and have compassion on them.
We are to see humanity through the compassionate eyes of Christ if we are going to be true followers of Christ.
We are to touch others with the holy touch of Christ.
Jesus made a speech during the last week of His earthly life about the great judgment at the end of time.
The speech is recorded in Matthew Chapter 25.
The sheep will be separated from the goats.
The sheep are the followers of Christ, the goats are not.
The sheep are the ones who fed the hungry, gave a drink to the thirsty, welcomed the stranger, clothed the naked, and visited those in prison.
Jesus tells us that when we do these things for other people…
…we are actually doing them for Jesus!
Jesus is in such solidarity with suffering humanity that He and they are literally one!
The real test in Jesus’ story about the sheep and the goats is: “Do we really love Jesus?”
Because in loving others, we show just how much or how little we love our Lord!
When we come to see humanity through the eyes of Christ there becomes a certain absentmindedness about it…
…there is a spontaneity about it…
…a lack of self-consciousness or calculation.
Through Jesus’ teachings and example God has opened up for us an elusive but crucial paradox at the heart of our lives.
The ultimate good in life is when we are liberated, let loose to become such lovers of God that we virtually surprise ourselves by loving those whom God loves…
…but freely, without expecting a payoff.
God became flesh and dwelt among us…and He touched us.
He lived with us.
He had compassion on us…and so He touched us.
This is the heart of the love of God for you and for me.
He even died so that we don’t have to…
…and He rose from the dead, and through His Resurrection, we too have the hope of eternal life.
One day, while Jesus was here on earth, “A man with leprosy came to him and begged him on his knees, ‘If you are willing, you can make me clean.’
Filled with compassion, Jesus reached out his hand and touched the man.
‘I am willing,” he said.
‘Be clean!’
Immediately the leprosy left him and he was cured.”
We all have some sort of leprosy.
We all have something about us that makes us ‘unclean.’
Jesus has compassion on all of us.
He is stretching out His hands in order to touch us and make us clean.
And once we receive His touch, we are to pass His love, His compassion on to others.
On this earth, at this crucial time in history, Christ yearns to see hurting humanity through the eyes of Christians such as you and me.
We are to be the eyes of Christ, and we are to touch the so-called untouchables with Christ’s loving, compassionate, and healing hands.
There is no other way to make this dirty world, clean!
Let us pray: O Christ, our only Savior, come to dwell in us so that we may go forth seeing all humanity with through Your eyes, and so with Your faith and love in our hearts, heal the sick and touch the unclean. Amen.
