Jesus Does Not Define Us By Our Diseases
Epiphany + 6, February 12, 2012
It's interesting how sometimes we define someone by their disease or disability or diagnosis. I used to work in a group home, with teenage boys and girls, and while we mostly knew better, there were times when we would catch ourselves saying, “He's ADHD,” or “She's bi-polar,” or “He's OCD.” Not “He has ADHD or bi-polar disorder or OCD.” “He or she is those things.” As if that's all they were, as if everything you needed to know was summed up in those few words, as though there was no more to them than the diagnosis they had been assigned from the DSM-IV. Usually, I think we did this with people we had only met on paper or hadn't gotten to know real well yet. It was a great short-hand way to help us know what to expect – it gave us some insight into who we would be dealing with.
The problem with this, of course, is that people are more than the labels we give them. All of the kids I worked with had at least one identified issue that had landed them in custody of the state, and yet that issue was not all there was to them. Underneath the clinical diagnosis was a whole person, with hopes and dreams, failings and fears, memories and stories to share. There was much more to them than what met the eye. If we only let ourselves see their diagnosis, we missed everything else that made them who they were.
I was thinking of this when I was reading this morning's gospel during the week, and how the leper in the story is defined by his disease too. Just think about it. This man in the story is not given a name, and I guess that isn't so unusual in the biblical narrative. But he is called a leper, not a man who happens to have leprosy. It's as though everything you need to know about him is wrapped up in that little word: leper. And because of that label, the man is made an outsider, pushed beyond the boundaries of normal society. Literally. This man has to live outside the city limits, separated from his family and friends, not able to work, not able to go to synagogue, cut off from most if not all of the things that make life meaningful and worthwhile. His whole life is defined by his skin condition, which may have been eczema or psoriasis or lots of things besides what we now know as leprosy. In the eyes of the world, this man, whoever he may have been, ceased to exist. All everyone saw when they looked at him was his disease.
I wonder how often this happens in our world today, how often we encounter this same kind of thing going on in our own lives. We may be the ones defining someone else based on very little knowledge about what their circumstances may be. So often, it's simply easier to see just a label: addict; homeless; mentally ill; divorced; unemployed; hypocrite. Or perhaps we look in the mirror and only see past failures, bad decisions, regrets – the things that we fear have come to define us – in our own eyes, or in the eyes of people around us. Or maybe we have let an actual disease or role come to characterize us as though that's all there is for anyone to know about us: “I have cancer.” “I am a caregiver for my chronically ill spouse or parent.” There are so many ways that we can let our diseases and our dis-eases come to tell us or others who we are, ways that we let others define us without going beyond the surface. And it's stifling when that happens. It makes us, like the leper, feel like outsiders, like there's nothing more to us than the labels we have received. We get weighed down, unable to live the lives God desires for us to have, lives that are connected and engaged with each other, that are hopeful and whole and holy.
Which makes what Jesus does in this story even more amazing, because Jesus does not operate the way the rest of the world does. Jesus is not confined by the same boundaries that we tend to be confined by. Jesus does not define the leper by his leprosy. He could have. Lord knows, he had other things to do, a whole mission laid out before him, starting with proclaiming the good news of God's reign coming near to all the towns and villages. Stopping to interact with this man is a definite detour, not to mention that lepers are considered contagious and ritually unclean. Being too close to him was a real risk to Jesus' own status. And yet, when the man comes to him, begging him and kneeling before him, saying, “If you choose, you can make me clean,” Jesus sees the man beyond the medical condition, and he is moved with pity. He is moved with compassion, and he does the unthinkable: he stretches out his hand, and touches him, saying, “I do choose. Be made clean.” And just like that, the leprosy is gone, and the doorway to a restored life is opened. Hope. Wholeness. Relationships. All made possible again because Jesus chose to look beneath the label, and see in the man who had leprosy a beloved Child of God. Jesus risked touching him and taking on his uncleanness on himself.
This is what Jesus chooses to do with each of us. The world may define us by our diseases or our deficiencies or our decisions, but Jesus does not. Jesus looks beyond all of those things and sees in us beloved children of God, created to live in relationship with God and with each other, to experience love and life in all of God's fullness, to be set free from the labels that tie us to our old selves and old ways, set free so that we can start over, begin again. Because we are more than what we appear to be on the surface, more than what others see in us, more sometimes than we can even see in ourselves. Jesus sees us in all of our flaws and frailties, sees us in our need and our desire to be made whole, and reaches out his hand to touch us, choosing to make us clean. Thanks be to God!
Amen.
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