Paul T. Keil , 10 – 11 February 2024
6 th Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year B
Peace be with you on this, our celebration of the Sixth Sunday in Ordinary Time. You know, as I sat down to work on this homily, I prayed and meditated for a few minutes, then it suddenly struck me how this week is kind of a collision between our faith lives and our secular culture. Today (tomorrow) is Super Bowl Sunday (party!), then Fat Tuesday (party!), then the collision. This particular year Valentine’s Day and Ash Wednesday fall on the same day. So, we have, party versus prayer, fasting, and abstinence. Friends, people have seriously asked, “isn’t there a dispensation from fasting and abstinence on Ash Wednesday since it’s Valentine’s Day?” Really? Well, the short answer is NO – but perhaps most important is, how to make a mental and spiritual shift from secular festivities to spiritually meditative? How do we detach faith lives from secular lives? First, might I suggest, just for this year, if you must celebrate Valentine’s Day, do it on Fat Tuesday. Then, even though it’s not a Holy Day of Obligation, go to Mass on Ash Wednesday, eat only one full meal, abstain from meat, and as you receive ashes on your forehead seriously contemplate the phrase, “Repent, and believe in the Gospel.” And if you really want to make a spiritual shift, attend Stations of the Cross on Friday. Read daily one the Lenten booklets. Immerse yourself and relate to what God does for you out of love.
Now, speaking of relating, most of us might find it a little difficult to relate directly to today’s Gospel reading. Praise God, but in most of the world leprosy is all but irradicated. To help put the Gospel reading in context however, the Church gave us our first reading today from Leviticus. At the time of Jesus, the Book of Leviticus was revered as a sacred text of instruction from God given to Moses for the Children of Israel. Today’s first reading is from the portion dealing with the laws of ritual purity. Consequently, this guy who comes up and kneels in front of Jesus was ritually unclean as defined by Mosaic Law. He was supposed to keep his garments rent, his head bare, walk around crying out “unclean, unclean” but perhaps most extreme of all, he was supposed to dwell apart from everyone else. For an observant Jew in the 1 st Century, not only did this mean he was excluded from all normal public life, it meant he could not worship in the Temple or a synagogue. Now just think about that for a few seconds. He was completely excluded from worshiping God in the very way he had been taught from as far back as he could remember. He was not only cut off from life socially, he was cut off spiritually.
Now as I thought about this leper for a while it reminded me of a true story I read a few years back. It was about a creative Protestant Minister who had gone trough a very intensive vetting process, an in-depth selection board interview, and eventually selection as the new Pastor for a large, prosperous, and very proper church in Dallas, TX. His name was Bob, and he was moving his whole household and family from Florida to Dallas so he had over a month between his final interview and the first day he would be formally introduced to his new congregation. So, on that predetermined Sunday morning, the selection board president stepped up to the pulpit in front of a jammed packed church, but he looked a little flustered. He had talked to Pastor Bob on the phone that very morning, he knew he was in town, but he didn’t see him in the Church this morning. So, to fill in the time gap, he started reading Pastor Bob’s very impressive qualifications to the whole congregation and this – is what makes this whole story both humorous and sad. Pastor Bob came walking down the aisle that Sunday morning for the first time. You see, he hadn’t shaved or gotten his hair cut in the month since the interview and now he walked down the center aisle of the crowded Church dressed and looking quite like he was homeless. He stepped up to the pulpit and began his first homily like this; “As I walked into Church this morning, with a big smile on my face, I’d say I was generally greeted by everyone I saw just like I was that leper Jesus met in the Gospels.”
- I may not be able to relate directly to the leper in today’s Gospel but I sure can relate to that story about Pastor Bob. Perhaps the most important lesson for all of us in both of these stories is not the most apparent one however. The lesson Pastor Bob was obviously trying to teach was, don’t judge someone by his or her appearance and he certainly did a good job but as I thought about both the Gospel and Pastor Bob for a while, the thing that struck me most was maybe the courage demonstrated. Good old Pastor Bob laid his whole livelihood on the line to make, what he felt, was an important point about Christian behavior. Think about it, he basically poked everyone in that big old proper Church right in the eye with his very first homily. We Catholics can’t necessarily appreciate the risk he was taking for himself and his family. The president of that selection board could have easily met with Bob the following Monday morning and told him, “You know I think we made a mistake in your selection. We thought you were a serious Christian Pastor and now we think you need to look for another Church.”
And now we have the outrageous courage shown by the leper in Mark’s Gospel. Mark tells us, “A leper came to Jesus and kneeling down begged him and said, “If you wish, you can make me clean.” In this one single event this unnamed leper completely disregarded and violated the Mosaic Law we heard given in the first reading from Leviticus. As I said earlier, we may not be able to relate to the leprosy, but we certainly should be able to at least comprehend the courage of his great faith. The message is, God wants us to take courage in our most difficult times, come to Jesus, kneel, and beg with faith, just like this leper, or the hemorrhaging woman, or the paralytic, or the great sinner.
My friends, we are supposed to identify with these people we read about in the Bible. We’re not supposed to simply listen to these stories and walk away saying, “isn’t that sweet, Jesus healed the poor leper, or the hemorrhaging woman, or the paralytic, or the sinner.” To some degree we are all lepers, we are all hemorrhaging, we are all paralytics, and certainly we are all sinners. Like all of the outcasts in the Bible stories or like that preacher in Dallas we are all told to be courageous in our faith. This suffering leper in today’s Gospel knew who Jesus was; he courageously walked past an astonished crowd completely repulsed by his appearance and behavior, he knelt down, worshipped, and said, “If you wish, you can make me clean.” Our lesson here is not to view this as a cute little story. Our lesson is to identify with the leper and follow his example of courage. So, a big homework assignment. Lent begins Wednesday. For just a while, let’s courageously separate ourselves more fervently from our secular culture and be people of prayer and fasting.
