Accompanying lectionary readings: http://www.ecsssj.org/member/show_lit.php?myid=27

If you choose, you can make me clean. 

The other day, I had to do a little grocery shopping.  I didn't need very much – just some milk, eggs, cereal and a bottle of shampoo.  I also needed to fill up the car with gas, so I stopped at Walmart on my way home.  Now by any measure, Walmart is a huge store; it goes on for acres and acres.  And it's filled with thousands of different products, so many products that it's daunting.  Anyway, I grabbed my cart and started at the back where they had the milk and eggs, then worked my up to the aisle with the cereals – and BAM!   I was completely unprepared for the cereal aisle.  The cereal aisle at Walmart is about 100 feet long, and 4 shelves high.  And it's filled with every type of cereal you can imagine: corn cereal, wheat cereal, rice cereal; hot cereal, cold cereal, instant cereal, sweetened cereal, unsweetened cereal; cereal for kids, cereal for adults, cereal for old people; flakes, puffs, waffle shaped; cereal with fruit, with nuts, with fruit and nuts, different brands, different sizes.  There are so many different kinds and flavors and textures of cereal, it's embarrassing.  And it took me about 10 minutes to choose my cereal, because I really wanted to make sure that I got it right.  Then I went over to find my shampoo, and guess what?

As Americans, we place a really high value on being able to make choices, even for something as insignificant as cereal.  It might be one of the things that makes us most American – the freedom to choose.  We don't like people making choices for us.  We want to make them all on our own, thank you very much.  Think about it: what good is having freedom if we don't have choices?  Part of how we define ourselves as a nation is through our abundance of choices.    

In today's Gospel, Jesus meets a man who doesn't have many choices.  The man has leprosy, and according to ancient Jewish law he lived as a total outcast.  He was required to live outside the borders of the town.  He was required to wear torn clothes and leave his hair disheveled.  And he could not approach people who passed by.  As a matter of fact, whenever anybody did come by, he was required to warn them away by calling out “unclean, unclean.”  In other words, he had no dignity and he had no choices.  He was required to live in self-imposed exile, completely devoid of human contact until he was declared clean by one of the chief priests.  But because he couldn't go into the town or approach anybody along the way, he was really condemned to live the rest of his life in isolation.  

One day, the man sees Jesus.  He knows that as a holy man, Jesus has the authority to declare him clean.  Jesus has the power to choose; he can choose to leave the man in isolation, or he can choose to make him clean and restore him to society.  And so he approaches Jesus and says, “if you choose, you can make me clean.”  If you choose, you can make me clean.  Actually, I like another translation of this line a little better, “if you are willing, you have the power to make me clean.”  But the point is that the man knows that Jesus has the choice.  Whether or not he is restored to human community is for Jesus to decide.  

Now the stakes here are enormous – Jesus knows that if he touches the man, he too will become unclean; he too could become an outcast.  At the same time, how can he leave him there in isolation?  Filled with compassion, Jesus makes his choice.  He chooses to reach out to touch the man and break his isolation.  Jesus restores the man to human community.

It is tempting to read this passage as a miracle story, where Jesus uses his divine powers to do something no mere mortal could do.  But the Bible doesn't say that; all the Bible says is that Jesus made a choice.  How many times do we see that Jesus looks at ordinary situations in extraordinary ways.  In this case, he was presented with the same choice any of the others who passed by on that road had the opportunity to make.  The difference was, Jesus chose to heal.

It is a choice that we, too, can make.  We can choose to reach out and touch someone who is alone.  If we are willing, we have the power to make someone whole.  By the choices we make, we have the power to restore other people to community.  We all have the power to make someone whole.  Whether it is by giving them the necessities of life – food, clothing, and shelter – or by simply visiting with someone who needs a friend to listen to them, or by helping a person find a job, or by helping them find a way out of a dangerous relationship with drugs or alcohol.  If we choose, each of us can make a person whole.  

As important as our individual choices are, our collective choices are even more important.  According to the World Trade Organization, we could accomplish every one of the Millennium Development Goals in seven years, if we spent just $75 billion a year.  That comes to $525 billion dollars, or less than 2/3 the cost of the stimulus package just passed in congress.  That sounds like a lot of money until we think about the choices we make as consumers.  As a nation, we spend $10 billion dollars a year on bottled water .... and we have the cleanest tap water in the world.  We spend $9 billion on going to the movies, and then another $22 billion on DVDs.  We spend $16 billion on candy, $30 billion on pizza, and then $46 billion on dieting.  We have the money, we have the education, we have the technology.  As members of the industrialized world, we have everything we need right here and now on earth to heal so much of the world.  

How can we do this?  Through the one who touches and draws us to himself, Jesus Christ.  Through our baptisms, Christ has brought us into his community.  Christ touches us, and like the leper he restores us to wholeness.  We are each “little christs,” called to live out our lives in service to our neighbors, whether they live across the street, or around the world.  

In two weeks, we'll begin the season of Lent, the traditional season of fasting and reflection for Christians.  It's a common practice in the Episcopal, Lutheran, and Catholic churches that people give up something they enjoy during Lent as a kind of spiritual practice.  If you're thinking about what you might give up this year, consider all the choices we make for things that aren't very important.  Then consider what small choices we might make that can make a big difference in healing the outcasts in the world.  

Thanks be to God.

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