IT'S ABOUT WE, NOT ME
Author: Fr. Michael Byron
February 13, 2021
The images last weekend from Tampa, after the Super Bowl
game had ended, were alarming to me. Crowds of people gathered together in close proximity in order to
party-very few of them wearing masks.
It was worse than dangerous. It was the height of selfishness-and therefore sin. It was a very visible expression of people
who were feeling well, and even elated, which apparently excused them from
having to care about everybody else. No
social distancing, no masks, because it’s the Super Bowl.
So many of us have been bearing the responsibility of doing
the right thing, day by day, for so long now, in large ways and small. But not those folks on that night. Of course
we’d all love to be a part of that party, but when there is risk of deadly
illness out there, we can’t and we mustn’t, for the sake of the common good.
The journey of following Christ does not begin with the
phrase, “Here is what I want”.” Rather
it begins with, “Here is what we need-together.”
That’s quite a difference, and never more timely for us to
hear than on this last weekend before the beginning of the season of Lent.
The stories that we hear today in our scriptures with regard
to those infected with the disease of leprosy are perfect examples. The book of Leviticus tells us that people
with those incurable and highly infectious skin diseases wee to be kept away
from the holy temple and the holy community, making their dwellings “outside
the camp.”
That law was not intended to shame or humiliate the sick
persons. It was to protect everybody
else, including the imagined honor of God himself; who they believed would
never willingly be close to unclean human beings.
So it wasn’t so much that people with leprosy were kicked
out because of scorn. It was the nature
of the disease that made them required to live far away. And they knew that, and so they did. For the sake of the common good, and surely
at the cost of enormous suffering and isolation. It’s not unlike many of our seniors this year
who have had to be shut up in their homes where the virus threatens to
invade. What a terrible but necessary
sadness to do the right thing for the sake of all others. But then along comes Jesus in today’s Gospel
of Mark, and suddenly the story changes dramatically.
For one thing, the man with leprosy is possessed of so much
faith that he dares to do the unthinkable-to approach Jesus personally, knowing
that Jesus’s power to heal is greater than the diseases power to destroy. And as it turns out, he’s right! Jesus’s response was not to say “stand way
over there and I’ll wave my hands in blessing over you”. Instead, Jesus willingly touched this
infectious person, and made him well. He touched him!
In that bold gesture, Jesus showed that God does not wish to
be far away and aloof from those who suffer the most. Just the opposite; God wishes to be closest
to those who think of themselves as unclean, impure, sinful, outcasts—or those
who are told by others that they are.
Whatever it is that we imagine to be un-fixable about our
lives and communities, that’s where God wishes to show up with the compassion
of Jesus, and to heal.
And really, the most endangered souls among us are the ones
who imagine ourselves to be pure and holy, as distinct from all of those
sinners around us.
The upcoming season of Lent doesn’t have much to offer for
such people as those of us who do not believe that we have some repenting and
reconciling to do.
Whatever our particular vices and temptations into sin may
be, in every case the bottom line is an indulgence in selfishness—a
prioritizing of me before us to God. In it we have been shown that we are not
despised for that. In fact, we have only
to ask, on our knees if need be, where and how we need to be healed.
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