Choose Love

Choose Love--February 7, 2018

"A leper came to [Jesus] begging him, and kneeling he said to him, 'If you choose, you can make me clean.' Moved with pity, Jesus stretched out his hand and touched him, and said to him, 'I do choose. Be made clean!' Immediately the leprosy left him, and he was made clean. After sternly warning him he sent him away at once, saying, 'See that you say nothing to anyone; but go, show yourself to the priest, and offer for your cleansing what Moses commanded, as a testimony to them'." [Mark 1:40-44]

If I asked you to tell me about someone whom you love, I bet you would start telling me stories. 

I bet you would start giving me little vignettes, little moments, to describe the person you have in mind.  I bet you would start telling me some of the reasons why you love such a person--memories of times they did something wonderful, or showed up for you when you needed them, examples of their goodness or their character, times they made you laugh so hard that tears started to roll down your cheek, or times you were so sad and they sat with you while there were tears running their cheeks, too.  You would tell me, not the meaningless details of their physical appearance, but you would tell me the little details about how they do things, their quirks and mannerisms, their favorite sayings and personality traits.  If someone says to you, "Tell me about a dear friend," you don't respond, "Five-foot-eight, brown hair, and size ten shoes," but you would tell me about the way your friend can make fun of themselves, or a time your friend showed a deep strength under pressure, or about the ordinary conversations around kitchen tables or the time they drove you to the airport.  If I asked you to tell me about your son, your daughter, your mother, your father, your spouse, or the person you most respect in this world, I suspect you would tell me about the ways these people do the stuff of everyday life, because there in those details are the reasons they are important to you. I bet you would start to tell me stories to show me why they matter in your life.

The Gospel-writers, Mark included, are doing much the same when the tell us stories about Jesus.  They are answering the request, "Tell me about this Jesus whom you love," and they are answering by giving us stories, glimpses, moments, with details that show us... well, that show us why they love him.  Mark here is telling us a story that shows the way Jesus met with a world full of suffering, and it is precisely in the way Jesus meets such suffering that is so compelling.  So just take the story in for a moment, and hear it as Mark telling you about his dear friend, whom he loves and respects greatly.

This is why Mark finds Jesus so compelling--this is what Jesus' "way" in the world looks like.  Jesus' way means choosing to love:

In a world full of people who tell themselves they are too busy with their personal to-do lists, Jesus chooses to stop to listen to the man who comes up to him, sick and living with his own walking death-sentence that has cut him off from his home, his family, his work, and from being treated like an actual person.

In a world where we are taught to fear strangers and to rationalize avoiding them with the fear that they might cause trouble for us, Jesus chooses to listen to this stranger and talk to him without running away or just pigeon-holing him as "just another beggar who is too lazy to go find work."

In a world where we increasingly settle for doing the bare minimum when it comes to helping someone else, where fear of "the other" keeps us from offering an arm or a shoulder, Jesus not only heals the sick stranger who comes up to him, but chooses to touch him in order to heal him, even though we all know that this same Jesus has the power to heal just by a word.

In a world where celebrities and public figures want to get as much attention for themselves when they do their photo-op good deed, a world in which the powerful feel entitled to applause and needy for good press about their own perceived "greatness," Jesus does a miracle while no one else is watching, and then tells the man who is now healed to keep it quiet.  

That's what the way of Jesus looks like.  It is this seamless interweaving of love and courage, of humility and compassion, that... well, that makes me love Jesus.  And what is especially beautiful to me is that Jesus just responds this way without thinking twice about it, without debating or calling a press conference to tell the world he is about to do "the greatest healing in the world."  He doesn't hem and haw about whether it is "safe" to talk with "one of those lepers," and he doesn't go off on a rant about how this beggar should have tried healing himself first.  And when a disciple like Mark, two thousand years ago, starts thinking about what it is that makes Jesus so captivating, he tells stories like these... so that we will fall in love with Jesus and his way of life as well.

When we talk about "following the way of Jesus," it's never just an abstract list of commands: "Be nice.  Don't be arrogant.  Don't grab attention for yourself."  If we try and make it through the day juggling a long list of competing rules, we'll never be acting naturally but always doing a sort of moral calculus and wondering if we are getting the answers right.  But walking the way of Jesus means learning to be the kind of people who respond to life, and whoever crosses our paths, with the love-and-courage-and-humility-and compassion of Jesus without being lectured into it first.   It means we are becoming, the more and more we are immersed in these stories of Jesus, and the more and more we see other saints among us practicing the way of Jesus, too, and then the more and more we live through daily life, more and more like this Jesus ourselves, too.  That's what it is to walk "the way of Jesus."  It's less about carrying a set of rules by which we judge whether others are doing enough, and certainly not about just wearing the name of Jesus as way of making ourselves feel superior.  And instead it's about becoming the kind of people who respond to situations in front of us the way Jesus does--so that, for example, we won't be afraid of the sick stranger who comes  up to us, or we won't have some narcissistic need to toot our own horns all the time, or we won't hide behind fear of what "those people" might to do us if we dare let them get close, and in one simple gesture of love we will embrace the people who come into our lives with Jesus' same compassion.

That's what I love about Jesus.  That's what I find compelling about him, and that's what I want to become like myself.  And when someone asks me, "What is it about Jesus that draws you to him," that's what I find myself thinking back.  

On this day, choose love like Jesus does.  Choose that love-which-is-also-courage-which-is-also-humility-which-is-also-compassion.  That is to say, choose the way of Jesus in this day.

Jesus, our Way, shape us to face the moment by moment events of this day the same way you do, and the way you did walking dusty roads in Palestine.