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Sermons

LOS ALAMOS 1ST UNITED METHODIST CHURCH
SUNDAY MORNING, NOVEMBER 25, 2007
DAVE RING, PASTOR

"THE LEPER...AND THE LORD"--A STORY SERMON

SCRIPTURE LESSON: LUKE 5:12-13 -- (From the traditional King James Version of the Bible) "And it came to pass, when He was in a certain city, behold, a man full of leprosy; who seeing Jesus fell on his face, and besought Him, saying, `Lord, if thou wilt, thou canst make me clean.' And He put forth his hand and touched him, saying, `I will; be thou clean.' And immediately the leprosy departed from him."
PRAYER: (Let us pause to seek God's anointing of the words of our message with His Holy Spirit.) Lord Jesus, we know that You are the source of healing--for all our needs. Come now, O Lord--and make us truly clean. Amen.
MESSAGE: He arose early, well before the light of dawn. He dressed quickly and quietly, not wishing to awaken his wife and children. It was with a small sense of relief that he departed the house without anyone else stirring. Had they awakened, there would have been questions--questions for which, as yet, he had no answers. Only a deep fear; a sense of foreboding. By day's end, there would be answers. Silently, as he closed the door to his home, he entreated the Lord Jehovah. He prayed that this might not be the last time ever that he would exit his own home. But deep within, the fear gripped him ever more tightly.
It had all begun a month--or was it six weeks?--before. He had fallen among some sharp rocks, badly scraping his leg. It began to bleed. But strangely enough, there was no pain. When the bleeding stopped, he thought little more about it. But a week later, the wound had not yet begun to heal at all. If anything, it had grown larger, deeper, and was badly infected at the edges.
Still, it did not hurt. He put it out of his mind.
But then, just a few days later, one of his hands became caught in a loop of rope, just as his ox pulled the wrong way. His index finger was broken, hanging at an impossibly acute angle. But again, there was no pain. This time, he went to the village physician. He expertly splinted the finger. But the doctor's sharp eyes took on a questioning look as he failed to wince, even once, during the splinting procedure.
The physician's eyes fell on his leg, with its ugly, festering wound. How long had he allowed this to go untreated? The doctor moved to examine the wound more closely. Suddenly, he drew back. "You must show yourself to a priest in the temple. The priest you are to see is called the checker." He was confused. "Why?" No reply--only a repetition--"You must go and show yourself to the checker."
He waited a week, then two. The cut on his leg got no better--if anything, it was worse in appearance. And the finger was turning a terrible color inside its splint. Still, he felt no pain. But he went back to the physician. "Have you shown yourself to the checker?" he asked. "Not yet." "Then I can do no more for you until I have his approval."
For at least another week, possibly two, he had delayed. His injuries got no better. And it was becoming increasingly hard to hide his condition from his family. He began to brood--to suspect--to fear--the worst. He was dying.
Then he thought further. That was not the worst that might be happening to him. Death was far easier to contemplate than another possibility--a possibility too horrible for him even to think the word which described it. His mind reeled; he blanked his thoughts. He slept yet one more night in the comfort of his own bed, with his wife and family. But now he was up, walking steadily in the pre-dawn twilight, step-by-step covering the five miles which separated his village from the great city--and the temple of Jehovah-God. He had to know.
The priest might tell him he was really o.k.--that he was just healing a bit more slowly than normal. But somehow, he knew that would not be the answer.
By mid-morning, he stood in front of the temple. The temple of God. Again, he breathed a silent prayer--but it seemed to bounce back at him off the stone walls. He passed through the outer court, then the middle. As he came to the third entryway, a temple guard asked his business. "I am here to see the priest who is called the checker."
The guard shrank back. "Down the corridor to the right, then second door on your left," he directed hastily. As he paced the corridor, his footsteps echoed hollowly. He entered the door specified, and the old priest within looked up from his writing. "You are the checker?" he asked. Slowly, the priest rose--and moved to the far wall of the room. "I am," he replied. "Remove your robe, tunic, and undergarment."
The old priest was careful and thorough in his examination. He touched no part of his body, but his eyes went carefully over every inch of skin. Finally, the old priest again stepped away. In a voice that was barely a whisper, but which sounded to him like thunder from Heaven itself, the priest said, "There is no doubt. You are a leper!"
He staggered drunkenly at the words, as though he had been hit a sharp blow to the head. The walls of his sanity stretched paper thin at that moment. A pronouncement of imminent death would have been something he could, eventually, come to terms with. But--leprosy! How? Why? What? Distantly, he heard the priest telling him the restrictions upon his kind. He need not have bothered--he had studied the law well. He knew what lepers were required to do. They were the garbage of society; the recipients of God's worst rebuke on earth.
He picked up his robe and tore it in several places, so that he could hold a part of it in front of his mouth. He tossed his head wildly, to and fro, until his hair was a mass of disarray. He must return to the outer perimeter of his home village--and dwell there apart from any other human, save lepers like himself. He must feed himself from the trash thrown out at the village dump. And should a man, woman, or child approach him closer than 50 feet, he must cover his face and cry out,"Unclean! Unclean!"
Oh yes, he knew the law for lepers well enough--he knew all of the law thoroughly--for he had been a serious student of the word of God. But never had he imagined that he himself would be required to obey such laws. They were only for those horrible few cast out by God Himself--doomed to rot away, piece by piece, while still fully conscious, dwelling in their own bodies. Leprosy! Leprosy! It was unthinkable--but real. He was now a leper!
He ran from the presence of the checker-priest, down the corridors of the temple, through the middle and outer courts, madly shouting the word at the top of his lungs. "Leper! Leper! Unclean! Unclean!" People instantly shrank away; some even ran. Slowing momentarily as he reached the street, he caught, for the first time, the eyes of someone staring at him. There was fear--mixed with something else. Revulsion--loathing. Something struck him from behind--a stone; then another. A gourd was tossed from the crowd, missing his face by but half an inch.
He ran again, this time not slowing until he was well outside the city walls altogether--in open country. His heart was about to burst--and he prayed to God that it would. But such simple relief was not to be his.
He covered the distance back to his village--or rather, he thought, his former village, quite slowly. Along the way he tried to think--to get hold of himself. But every few minutes he was forced to throw himself off the roadway, into the ditch, and again cry those awful words--"Leper! Unclean!"--to allow normal humans to pass. Twice again he briefly met another's eyes--and there was the same fear, and the loathing. He lowered his eyes after the third such time, and resolved never again to meet another's gaze. Whether or not lepers were required to avert their eyes, he would not risk such a look again. It was far too painful; a deep, inner pain which more than made up for the loss of his outer nerve endings' sensitivities.
When he arrived at the gate of his village of birth--the place he had until now called "home," all the people were assembled. Word had already spread from the city about him--others had brought it ahead of his arrival. His neighbors, his kinsmen, his family were all present. The village elder spoke first, as was his right. "You are no longer welcome here. You are a leper!" Another man--a cousin--was next. "You have brought shame upon our entire village. It has been three generations since any from here were leprous." Other men added their curses. Last of all, his wife, holding tightly to their three children, spoke quietly but firmly, voicing the words of a grim and rarely-used ritual: "Today I have become a widow. My husband is dead. Before Jehovah and His people, I declare it so." And the entire village--his family, his friends of a lifetime--responded--"It is so. Your husband is dead."
At that moment his youngest, a daughter who was but five, cried out "Daddy!" and broke away from her mother. As she ran toward him, he did what he knew he must, although this was the deepest hurt of all. "No!" he screamed. "Your father is dead!" And with that, he ran--crying the awful words--"Leper! Unclean!"
From that day forward, there were no days--and no nights--no seasons, no years for him. He wandered about the fringes of his former village, eating scraps when he could; going hungry when such garbage was not to be found. His body gradually deteriorated; falls, scrapes, bruises, even a broken arm all took their toll. Once, for only a moment, he dared to gaze at his reflection in a puddle--and was appalled at what he saw.
Mentally, he remained remarkably alert, although there were periods of confusion from time to time, especially when he had not eaten for days on end. Like most men faced with the incomprehensible, he often entreated Jehovah with a string of "whys." Why had God singled him out for such total and complete humiliation? What had he done that was so awful as to place him under Jehovah's worst earthly curse?
Answers did not come. For a very long time, he was angry. Certainly, he was angered--and deeply hurt, by the absolute rejection of his fellow men. But in time he grew to accept, with only sadness, that their rejection was simply self-protection, lest he infect others with his awful disease. And so he turned his anger upon God. God was responsible for his disease. He railed at God--he cursed Jehovah with every curse he knew how to form. For months on end, the fire of his anger at God waxed white hot. Later, it ebbed--and for numberless days he was simply empty--devoid of all feeling--emotionally blocked, just as his body's nerve endings had been shut off by the leprosy.
And then, one day, a very odd thought entered his mind. What if God were not the author of his disease, as the popular wisdom of his people taught? What if God was just as hurt by his disease as he was? What if Jehovah, instead of rejecting lepers, actually loved them--just as he loved normal people--maybe even more? He must surely be losing his mind at last, he thought. And yet the foreign idea remained. Was it possible that God still cared for him--an outcast, one cursed, slowly dying of man's most dreaded illness? Could even God actually bring Himself to love such as he--an unclean, filthy leper? No, impossible. His anger at God returned, freshly kindled.
It was another day, another featureless day like so many before. The villagers were gathering just outside the walls in a crowd; something he had not ever seen them do before--except for the time when he had been exiled upon his return from the temple, so long before. He had long since ceased to concern himself with their affairs; they were virtually invisible to him, as he was to them. But what little curiosity remained to him was piqued. Had another from the village been found to be leprous? Though he wished none ill, it would be a small comfort, of sorts, to have a companion leper--one with which to commiserate.
But no, they were only gathering about a man, a stranger, who was speaking. The words floated his way. "Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of Heaven." His ears, involuntarily, opened wider. "Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted." What manner of speaking was this? "Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth." Dear God, if it could only be so! "Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied."
The man was talking directly to his heart! How he longed to plead his case before a righteous tribunal, be it one composed of men or even God! Without even thinking, he moved out of the brush in which he had concealed himself. He wanted to actually see this man who would say such things as to even stir the heart of an outcast, slowly dying leper.
The villagers shrank away from him in fear, murmuring and cursing so that he missed hearing the stranger's next words. "Back, leper! Unclean! Unclean!" He did not hear them, for he had looked up, just for an instant, to see the speaker. Though he had certainly not intended such to happen, the man looked directly at him in the same instant. Oh, no! He had forgotten the consequence of such. None could look upon him without both fear and revulsion--especially now that his condition had reduced him to truly monstrous appearance.
The stranger continued to fix his eyes directly upon him. But there was neither fear nor loathing in his gaze. And the words which came next were addressed directly to him. "Blessed are you when men revile you and persecute you and utter all kids of evil against you falsely on my account."
On my account. On whose account? He had never before seen this man in his life, of that he was sure. Certainly he had been reviled and persecuted for his leprosy. But that wasn't this man's fault--it wasn't any man's doing, really. If there were fault for his illness, it lay at the feet of God. Suddenly, he understood. He fell on his face before the One whom he had long held responsible for cursing and banishing him--the One whom he had cursed and banished in return.
"Lord, if thou wilt, thou canst make me clean." And he put forth his hand and touched him, saying, "I will; be thou clean." And immediately, the leprosy departed from him. Amen.
INVITATION: Two thousand years ago, Jesus healed men and women of the most dreaded disease then known--leprosy. Today, thank God, there are few actual lepers in our world. But billions still need cleansing--healing from sin, which eats away at the spirit while leaving the body unmarked.
If you'd like to meet the One who can cleanse and heal all your ills, be they physical or spiritual, I invite you to step forward during the hymn of dedication this morning and profess your faith, publicly, in the King of Kings and Lord of Lords--Jesus Christ. I also want to open the doors of this church to new membership. We invite any desiring to join to step forward and be received into this portion of Christ's Church, either by profession of faith in Christ or by transfer from other Christian bodies. Further, if you would like, during the next hymn, to come and kneel in prayer at the chancel rail for a need or special time with God, please feel free to do so at His leading. And finally, I remind you that you, knowing the wonderful Gospel of Christ, have a God-given obligation to share it with your neighbors and friends. Would you share Jesus with your world during the week ahead--please? Now let's all stand and sing a closing hymn of invitation and dedication to Christ our Lord.

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