Who is the one actually “sick!”

 I want to share with you a sobering thought today, not to bring you down on a Monday but to get you to think all week long…

 In Mark chapter one beginning in verse 40 – Mark writes…

“And a leper came to Him, beseeching Him and falling on his knees before Him, and saying to Him, "If You are willing, You can make me clean."  And moved with compassion, He stretched out His hand, and touched him, and said to him, "I am willing; be cleansed." And immediately the leprosy left him and he was cleansed.”

 It is a great event in the life of Jesus because it shows us His tremendous compassion and willingness to help anyone, even those that society had deemed the absolute lost, the “untouchables” who weren’t worth anyone’s time.

Leprosy is a strange and sad disease. The leper does not feel physical pain. The disease renders the nerve endings dead and they are no longer alert to the damage they may be doing to their own bodies. The odd thing is that at no point does the leprosy patient “hurt”.

In a book by author Philip Yancey called “The Jesus I Never Knew.” He writes a story of a doctor in India…

“Dr. Brand told me of one bright young man he was treating in India. In the course of the examination Brand laid his hand on the patient’s shoulder and informed him through a translator of the treatment that lay ahead. To his surprise the man began to shake with muffled sobs. “Have I said something wrong?” Brand asked his translator. She quizzed the patient in a spurt of Tamil and reported, “No, doctor. He says he is crying because you put your hand around his shoulder. Until he came here no one had touched him for many years.”

 That is what Jesus had done 2000 years earlier to a man no one would touch. And while lepers don’t “hurt” don’t think that they don’t “suffer”. Almost all the pain that they endure, all the pain that they go through doesn’t come from the inside; it comes from the outside – the pain of rejection that people impose upon them. While they don’t hurt – they do “feel.” If you are like me that saddens you.

And it should… because it still happens today.

Mother Teresa in Calcutta ran a hospice and clinic for lepers. She said once,

“We have drugs for people with diseases like leprosy. But these drugs don’t treat the main problem, the disease of being unwanted.”

No we don’t see too many diseased lepers walking around the U.S. – but the human condition is an odd one.

A person will always, yes ALWAYS, find their own “leper.” That person that is “not like them” so they must be “diseased” (maybe so they can feel better about their own sickness).  Come on you know I am right – think of the modern day “lepers”…

Social status – someone being different (in any way) from you – those of “unlike feathers” – those who have been divorced – those with AIDS – someone with a drug or alcohol addiction – illegitimate babies (and God forbid, their mothers) – poverty – the homeless or jobless – the childless – the single – the “under dressed for church” – the list goes on and on…

If you talk to any of them you will find how they have been “untouched” – especially by modern Christians.  Think about it – you have your own personal “leper” don’t you; someone you have shunned, steered away from, gossiped about, pointed a finger at, ignored, felt disdain for, didn’t want to get near and God forbid you have to “touch” them.

Yet that is not what Jesus did – He didn’t see the disease He saw the need, He didn’t see the illness He saw the hurt, He didn’t see the sickness He saw the pain. And yet we say we are “followers of Christ”, that we are supposed to live to HIS example.

You know – the more I think about this – they may be “diseased” – but are we the ones who are sick?

See you “in the trenches” – Doug

John 10:10 “…I came that they might have life, and might have it abundantly.”