Fingerprints of Compassion--January 5, 2023

Fingerprints of Compassion--January 5, 2023

"A leper came to Jesus begging him, and kneeling he said to him, 'If you choose, you can make me clean.' Moved with compassion, 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." [Mark 1:40-42]

I know this doesn't feel like a Christmas-time story, and in truth it isn't, exactly.  But it is a story that reveals the kind of person Jesus is, and what it was like to be around him.  As the gospels keep showing us, Jesus is a person with a kind heart.  The angels and shepherds all fade back into the woodwork while Jesus is still in diapers, but the kindness of his love persists.  In fact, it seems like wherever Jesus went, the impression he left on people was his goodness toward them.  Plenty of people in this world throughout history have sought to build buildings, conquer nations, or create a masterpiece to ensure their legacy would be remembered, and here Jesus is content to leave fingerprints of compassion.

Sometimes it was the way Jesus sought out the people who were regarded as outcasts and invited himself over to their houses in a radical act of inclusion.  Sometimes it was how he treated women as equals in conversation when others in his time would have dismissed them altogether.  Or the way he stopped and noticed the small acts of generosity that others performed, when it would have been easy to overlook a widow's offering or a young boy with some loaves and fishes in a big crowd.  Or, like in this story, it was the way Jesus took special care to restore the dignity and humanity of someone treated for so long like a pariah because of his sickness.  What stands out is not the miracle of healing, so much as the tenderness with which it is accomplished.

You almost have to think that this man sick with leprosy was ready for disappointment and steeling himself for rejection as he came to Jesus.  He is confident that the increasingly famous rabbi and worker of wonders is capable of cleansing him of his disease--he just wants to know if Jesus is willing.  Maybe he's been turned away too many times before from others to get his hopes up with the man from Nazareth.  Maybe he's gotten used to people looking away or staring at the ground when he walks past.  Maybe he's afraid of hearing--yet again--the bad theology of passersby who are sure his sickness is the consequence of his sinful actions, or that if he would pray harder, he would have been cured already.  Whatever it is that makes him hedge his bets as he approaches Jesus, Jesus' kindness is on glorious display.

It's worth remembering that when Jesus wants to, he can heal people with just a word, a silent prayer, or even from a distance.  There's no magic ritual or recipe, and that means he doesn't have to touch this man in order to heal his disease.  But Jesus chooses to.  He heals the man's leprosy, and not only that, he does it in a way that restores his lost dignity and self-worth.  He treats this man as more than his disease, regardless of the worry about whether Jesus himself would now risk getting leprosy through touch [or at the very least, become temporarily unclean himself].  Jesus shows this man he is not afraid of him or repulsed by him, no matter what others have said or done before when he walked through the streets.  Jesus' touch leaves behind kindness that changes everything.

I cannot imagine that Jesus looks at you with anything less than the same compassionate love as he shows to this man in the story.  And I say that confidently, even though I don't know what you carry or what you've been through that has made you sometimes feel like an outcast.  I don't know what others have said to exclude you or reject you, and I don't know how many times someone else has condemned you or ignored you.  But I do know this about Jesus--he sees people beyond the labels of "clean" and "unclean," or "worthy" and "unworthy," and he simply chooses to touch us with kindness.  All of us.

And I know this, too, about Jesus' kind of compassionate love.  It is ours to practice as well.  We may not have the supernatural power to heal like Jesus' does, but there is nothing preventing us from showing the kindness Jesus embodies here.  That doesn't require divine ability or supernatural power.  Kindness that restores the dignity of people and honors their personhood, that is something we can do any day, any place.  Compassion that lifts up the ones who have been treated as "less-than" by others, that is within our grasp right now, even in the day ahead--with the sad looking cashier at the Dollar General store, or the weary neighbor who is grieving at this time of year, or the person still living with the effects of a terrible sickness, or the ones shunned by Respectable Religious people for not fitting their expectations.  Such kindness is not reserved only for the Messiah in ancient stories; it is right at our fingertips, right now.

O Jesus, restore us where we have been hurt by the world, and allow us to pass on the touch of your kindness to others.