(Re-)Defining the Sacred--November 14, 2017
"When Jesus had come down from the mountain, great crowds followed him; and there was a leper who came to him and knelt before him, saying, 'Lord, if you choose, you can make me clean.' He stretched out his hand and touched him, saying, 'I do choose. Be made clean!' Immediately his leprosy was cleansed. Then Jesus said to him, 'See that you say nothing to anyone; but go, show yourself to the priest, and offer the gift that Moses commanded, as a testimony to them'." [Matthew 8:1-4]
Whatever it means to be holy, it can't mean "separation from the mess."
At least, not for people who think Jesus gives us any sort of clue to what it means to be sacred or holy.
So often, religious folks get on a soapbox about what a "holy God" will allow, or what a "holy God" will not accept, or what a "holy God" can and cannot tolerate, usually suggesting that if a "holy God" were to touch or get too close to something "unholy," God would be... tainted. But at the heart of the Christian faith is the scandalous notion that whatever Jesus does, God does. And that means that whatever it can possibly mean for God to be "holy," it sure as heaven doesn't mean that God avoids contact with those deemed "dirty," "unclean," "unacceptable," or "sinful." Because, lest we miss it, Jesus deliberately touches the so-called "untouchable"... when he clearly doesn't have to.
At least, not for people who think Jesus gives us any sort of clue to what it means to be sacred or holy.
So often, religious folks get on a soapbox about what a "holy God" will allow, or what a "holy God" will not accept, or what a "holy God" can and cannot tolerate, usually suggesting that if a "holy God" were to touch or get too close to something "unholy," God would be... tainted. But at the heart of the Christian faith is the scandalous notion that whatever Jesus does, God does. And that means that whatever it can possibly mean for God to be "holy," it sure as heaven doesn't mean that God avoids contact with those deemed "dirty," "unclean," "unacceptable," or "sinful." Because, lest we miss it, Jesus deliberately touches the so-called "untouchable"... when he clearly doesn't have to.
Let's start just by looking at the details of this story here in Matthew's Gospel. And as a reminder, Matthew and the other gospel-writers have no problem whatsoever with the idea that Jesus can heal people just by the sheer authority of his words. That much is already implied by the first seven chapters of Matthew's Gospel, but in case we had any doubts, in the story that immediately follows the one in today's verses (that would be Matthew 8:5-13, just in case you want to check to make sure I'm not making this stuff up), Jesus heals a centurion's servant without even entering the house where the young man is. (It is, in fact, the well-known story with the line, "Lord, I am not worthy to have you come under my roof; but only speak the word and my servant will be healed.")
So as far as Matthew is concerned, Jesus doesn't need to be in the room, or even the same building, as the person he is healing. The person healed doesn't even have to be the one who trusts or prays or asks or has enough faith to believe that Jesus can do it--it has everything to do with Jesus, and next to nothing to do with what we bring to the table besides our need. And for Jesus' part, healing doesn't require a magic gesture, magic word, magic alignment of planets, or anything else. All claims to the contrary notwithstanding, actually, Jesus is not magic.
Are we clear on this so far? If someone is in need of healing, Jesus doesn't have to touch them. He doesn't to snap his fingers, nod his head, or cross his arms, a la I Dream of Jeannie, and he doesn't have to even get close.
So... what does it say that Jesus does choose, not simply to heal a man with a frighteningly contagious disease (one believed to be spread by touch in the ancient world), but to "stretch out his hand and touch him" in the act of healing? The sick man is correct, of course, "If you choose, you can make me clean!" As Matthew relates it to us, Jesus could have just said the word, or blinked, or silently willed a miracle. But Jesus goes further. He goes beyond what was necessary, and jumps into the mess--hand first. He touches the sick man to heal him. It is a conscious choice on Jesus' part, a hand placed on a shoulder or a forehead, to restore his full humanity to him.
That's just it--the sickness of leprosy was serious business, especially in an age before modern medicine. And sure, the rules that were there about not touching anyone with leprosy were basically a quarantine--a preventive measure designed with the community in mind to preserve the whole neighborhood from infection. But that also meant that people who were sick with the disease were now treated like non-persons--they were starved of touch, denied their belonging in the community, deprived of their families, and assumed to have done something wrong in order to acquire the disease in the first place. After all, so the reasoning went, if everyone followed the rules and didn't touch someone who had leprosy, nobody else would get it... so if you got leprosy, you must have done something, gone somewhere, or touched someone or something you weren't supposed to.
Well, now all of a sudden, you've got a whole moral/sin/holiness layer added onto the disease, too, don't you? If you've got leprosy, just about everyone else you used to know would find it all too easy to say, "He was asking for it--he did something he shouldn't have done, and now leprosy is the consequence of his bad choice." or "I always liked her, but look, she just should have known better--she brought this on herself somehow." How easily a skin disease became a proxy for moral failings--and from there, it was somehow justifiable to keep your distance from these people. You can imagine the respectable community leaders all saying, "I assume some of these lepers are very nice people, but look, if they got the disease, that in itself is proof that they did something worthy of being alienated from their old communities for. They have to be isolated and removed from the rest of us, for the common good! That's just how it is!" You can hear the keepers of order saying, "Look, this isn't really a leprosy issue--this is a rules-issue! If those people would just follow the rules and not touch anything associated with leprosy, they wouldn't get it themselves!" What a temptingly black-and-white way of seeing the world, isn't it? Bad thing happens? You must have brought it on yourself by breaking a rule.
And from there, well, you can see exactly how someone's picture of "holiness" comes to be defined in terms solely of "remaining untainted by bad stuff." You can see with terrible clarity how people would come to assume that being "holy" meant that you don't touch, you don't go near, you don't get "tainted by" the mess. And you come to assume that is both how your picture of "God" must act, and how "godly" people must act, too. Don't get too close to the mess, or you'll get mud on your soul. Don't touch the person who is sick, or you'll get tainted by it, too. Don't associate with the "unclean person," or else you'll be endorsing their rule-breaking (well... we assume they must have broken the rules) choices and actions. Don't make it seem like they are acceptable or touchable as they are, or else people will get the wrong impression, and it will be downright scandalous!
Jesus, well aware of all of that conventional wisdom, goes ahead anyway and chooses to heal the sick man here by touch. Jesus does it, not only knowing that it flusters the Respectable Religious Crowd to see him do it, but in a sense, precisely because it does! He has come, not only to heal the world's list of "identified patients"--the ones with leprosy, blindness, paralysis, and so on--but also to correct the eyes of ALL of our hearts, because we have all created a system that has mistakenly concluded that being "holy" means being "distant" and "untouched" by the mess. So Jesus willfully, deliberately, provocatively touches the man to heal him, knowing that this tender placing of the hand is at the same time a slap in the face to the Respectable Religious Crowd and their (our) whole way of seeing the world.
Here's the thing, friends. If Jesus matters at all to us, then we are going to have to redefine words like "holy" and "sacred" and even "God" in light of what Jesus is like. And Jesus just ain't the kind of Messiah who avoids being "tainted" by anything--not sickness, not soiling, not sin, not scandal, and not securing his status or his safety. Jesus chooses to touch the "untouchable" in order both to heal him and to say to him and all the world, "You are indeed touchable, acceptable, accepted, and beloved," because that is how Jesus is holy. That is what true sacredness is.
The old line of Eugene Peterson says that "Jesus is the dictionary in which we look up the meanings of words." On this point, that means that instead of taking our preconceived assumptions about what "a holy God" will not allow, or will not go near, or will not love, or will not touch, instead, we look at Jesus and let that redefine our picture of "the sacred."
It is Love that makes you Real, according to the Skin Horse.
And it is Love, even risk-taking, daring Love that crosses boundaries we all swore were impenetrable, that makes a thing, or a person, or an outstretched hand... holy.
May such a "holy" God grant us such holiness as will move us, like Jesus, to reach an outstretched hand to those called "untouchable," and to lead us with Jesus to bring the healing to someone else that arises from treating them like accepted human beings.
Lord Jesus, make us holy in all the ways that you are holy... and redefine us where we need it to be made in your image.
So as far as Matthew is concerned, Jesus doesn't need to be in the room, or even the same building, as the person he is healing. The person healed doesn't even have to be the one who trusts or prays or asks or has enough faith to believe that Jesus can do it--it has everything to do with Jesus, and next to nothing to do with what we bring to the table besides our need. And for Jesus' part, healing doesn't require a magic gesture, magic word, magic alignment of planets, or anything else. All claims to the contrary notwithstanding, actually, Jesus is not magic.
Are we clear on this so far? If someone is in need of healing, Jesus doesn't have to touch them. He doesn't to snap his fingers, nod his head, or cross his arms, a la I Dream of Jeannie, and he doesn't have to even get close.
So... what does it say that Jesus does choose, not simply to heal a man with a frighteningly contagious disease (one believed to be spread by touch in the ancient world), but to "stretch out his hand and touch him" in the act of healing? The sick man is correct, of course, "If you choose, you can make me clean!" As Matthew relates it to us, Jesus could have just said the word, or blinked, or silently willed a miracle. But Jesus goes further. He goes beyond what was necessary, and jumps into the mess--hand first. He touches the sick man to heal him. It is a conscious choice on Jesus' part, a hand placed on a shoulder or a forehead, to restore his full humanity to him.
That's just it--the sickness of leprosy was serious business, especially in an age before modern medicine. And sure, the rules that were there about not touching anyone with leprosy were basically a quarantine--a preventive measure designed with the community in mind to preserve the whole neighborhood from infection. But that also meant that people who were sick with the disease were now treated like non-persons--they were starved of touch, denied their belonging in the community, deprived of their families, and assumed to have done something wrong in order to acquire the disease in the first place. After all, so the reasoning went, if everyone followed the rules and didn't touch someone who had leprosy, nobody else would get it... so if you got leprosy, you must have done something, gone somewhere, or touched someone or something you weren't supposed to.
Well, now all of a sudden, you've got a whole moral/sin/holiness layer added onto the disease, too, don't you? If you've got leprosy, just about everyone else you used to know would find it all too easy to say, "He was asking for it--he did something he shouldn't have done, and now leprosy is the consequence of his bad choice." or "I always liked her, but look, she just should have known better--she brought this on herself somehow." How easily a skin disease became a proxy for moral failings--and from there, it was somehow justifiable to keep your distance from these people. You can imagine the respectable community leaders all saying, "I assume some of these lepers are very nice people, but look, if they got the disease, that in itself is proof that they did something worthy of being alienated from their old communities for. They have to be isolated and removed from the rest of us, for the common good! That's just how it is!" You can hear the keepers of order saying, "Look, this isn't really a leprosy issue--this is a rules-issue! If those people would just follow the rules and not touch anything associated with leprosy, they wouldn't get it themselves!" What a temptingly black-and-white way of seeing the world, isn't it? Bad thing happens? You must have brought it on yourself by breaking a rule.
And from there, well, you can see exactly how someone's picture of "holiness" comes to be defined in terms solely of "remaining untainted by bad stuff." You can see with terrible clarity how people would come to assume that being "holy" meant that you don't touch, you don't go near, you don't get "tainted by" the mess. And you come to assume that is both how your picture of "God" must act, and how "godly" people must act, too. Don't get too close to the mess, or you'll get mud on your soul. Don't touch the person who is sick, or you'll get tainted by it, too. Don't associate with the "unclean person," or else you'll be endorsing their rule-breaking (well... we assume they must have broken the rules) choices and actions. Don't make it seem like they are acceptable or touchable as they are, or else people will get the wrong impression, and it will be downright scandalous!
Jesus, well aware of all of that conventional wisdom, goes ahead anyway and chooses to heal the sick man here by touch. Jesus does it, not only knowing that it flusters the Respectable Religious Crowd to see him do it, but in a sense, precisely because it does! He has come, not only to heal the world's list of "identified patients"--the ones with leprosy, blindness, paralysis, and so on--but also to correct the eyes of ALL of our hearts, because we have all created a system that has mistakenly concluded that being "holy" means being "distant" and "untouched" by the mess. So Jesus willfully, deliberately, provocatively touches the man to heal him, knowing that this tender placing of the hand is at the same time a slap in the face to the Respectable Religious Crowd and their (our) whole way of seeing the world.
Here's the thing, friends. If Jesus matters at all to us, then we are going to have to redefine words like "holy" and "sacred" and even "God" in light of what Jesus is like. And Jesus just ain't the kind of Messiah who avoids being "tainted" by anything--not sickness, not soiling, not sin, not scandal, and not securing his status or his safety. Jesus chooses to touch the "untouchable" in order both to heal him and to say to him and all the world, "You are indeed touchable, acceptable, accepted, and beloved," because that is how Jesus is holy. That is what true sacredness is.
The old line of Eugene Peterson says that "Jesus is the dictionary in which we look up the meanings of words." On this point, that means that instead of taking our preconceived assumptions about what "a holy God" will not allow, or will not go near, or will not love, or will not touch, instead, we look at Jesus and let that redefine our picture of "the sacred."
It is Love that makes you Real, according to the Skin Horse.
And it is Love, even risk-taking, daring Love that crosses boundaries we all swore were impenetrable, that makes a thing, or a person, or an outstretched hand... holy.
May such a "holy" God grant us such holiness as will move us, like Jesus, to reach an outstretched hand to those called "untouchable," and to lead us with Jesus to bring the healing to someone else that arises from treating them like accepted human beings.
Lord Jesus, make us holy in all the ways that you are holy... and redefine us where we need it to be made in your image.
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