UNITED CHURCH OF CHRIST in SIMI VALLEY
Sixth Sunday After Epiphany - February 16, 2003
A Season of Healing

Anne G. Cohen
Mark 1:40-45

For Our Reflection:
While [confession] abases the man [sic], it raises him; while it covers
him with squalor, it renders him more clean; while it accuses, it
excuses; while it condemns, it absolves.
                      - Tertullian, On Repentance c. 200 c.e.

Made Clean

  A man with a contagious skin disease approached Jesus, begging.
  "You can make me clean, if you choose to do so."
  Angry (at least annoyed) Jesus touched him and said, "Of course I
  choose to do so...  You're clean!"  There was an immediate effect.
  After snorting, Jesus told the man to go away.  "Shut up about this. 
  Go let the priest certify your fitness for society."
  But the guy blabbed about the whole thing - creating an eager stampede
  of needy people.  Jesus had to stay out of town and was still besieged
  by people wanting something from him.          (Mark 1:40-45 retold)

This story bothers me.  Its been cleaned up in most English
translations.  But in it's crude vernacular, Mark describes a cryptic
guy who is surrounded by messed up people who are totally self-involved
and clueless about the point of his message.

Jesus doesn't cure this beggar out of warmth and pity.  He finds the man
annoying and basically helps him out to get him out of his hair - which,
as we all know, Jesus had a lot of.
Jesus literally SNORTS - tells him to go home and be quiet.  The man
defies him and the entire world decides to come find this miracle worker
and annoy him into healing them.

According to Mark, they've all missed the point and are only getting in
the way of Jesus' real mission - which is - proclaiming the arrival of
the Kingdom or Kindom or Beloved Community of God.
And with the arrival of God's Sovereign Rule - the burden of healing a
nation does not fall into the hands of one special representative.
With the arrival of God's Realm - we stop treating each other with
suspicion, judgment and contempt.
Page Two

We quit shunning and marginalizing the freaks and the unusual,
idiosyncratic members of the family and the psychos and the diseased or
aging or crazy people.
We reorganize ourselves to that everyone has equal access to health
care, home care, nutritious food, spiritual food, human affection.
We form networks of mutual care and responsibility, use what we need and
give away the rest.
And we take the time to nurture most those who are most vulnerable to
abuse and suffering.

The whole point is that you DON'T need Jesus to clean up your mess for
you.
We TAKE responsibility for our own mess, quit setting up rules that
exclude people and begin to act like we actually recognize and
understand our interconnectedness, our INTER-BEING - with each other and
the planet.
We MOURN the deaths of innocent civilians in Afghanistan, Iraq, Israel,
India,South Africa, with as much passion and mindfulness as we mourn the
loss of seven intelligent, creative, talented, funny and VERY PRIVILEGED
astronauts.
We TREAT our partners and kids with as much respect and regard as we
treat our best friends.  And we cherish our relationships in the United
Nations as if our lives depended on it - BECAUSE THEY DO.
The POINT is that WE need to help GOD heal the world and not wait for
Jesus to do it.

This story bothers me because it reveals that Jesus got as frustrated
and ticked off as I do.  It shows that he was motivated to help people
out of annoyance, not just warm fuzzies.  This bothers me because my
Sunday School upbringing has been fairly consistent on the point that,
like Jesus, we should be loving and compassionate and joyful in our
desire to heal the world - and I have judged myself harshly for years
because I kind of resent having to clean up other people's messes when
its hard enough to keep my own life and house and relationships and
integrity and soul CLEAN. 

I have NOT been a cheerful giver with an attitude of gratitude - at
least, not ALL of the time.  And I thought that meant that I was a bad
person - or at LEAST an ungenerous person - self-involved - much like
the so-called leper.

But, you know, if I had read this story a long time ago in it's original
Greek - or, at least, in an honest translation - I might have felt
better about myself a long time ago.
Page Three

Yes, I'm a self-absorbed person, way too sensitive to my own tiny
sufferings, whining a lot to God about how I wish he or she would please
fix my life for me.
Sure, I've got contagious negativity sometimes, that "dark, drizzly
November in my soul" that tends to leak out and make mud in the middle
of the desert.
Of course I make huge mistakes every time I enter the stemware
department or offer my advice or choose a career or allow the car radio
to set my speed limit.
I hate being stolen from and I resent mortality and I can't believe that
I have to go through menopause NOW.

But this does not make me a bad person.  If I catalog the good deeds and
acts of kindness, the healing touches and compassionate tears, the
attempts at conflict mediation and increasing world peace, the refusals
to commiserate in destructive behavior and the well-intentioned efforts
that actually caused no harm - then I'm not so bad at all.
And if all the good I've done WHILE I've been anxious or annoyed or
angry or snorting COUNTS, then you're looking at a possible candidate
for sainthood here.

This story bothers me because I've always thought of myself as the leper
in the story - begging God for something I'm not even worthy of.  And
this story makes it actually plausible that each one of us could also be
Jesus - very human, attempting to make the larger point about COMMUNITY
and JUSTICE and SOCIALISM - and being forced to deal with one little
mess at a time - one disease at a time - one person at a time - one
minute at a time. 

And it tells us that we can do it and must do it - because of and in
spite of frustrations, disappointments, anger, annoyance and menopause.
We can and must continue to clean up this amazing mess we've all made of
our world and our environment and our own souls - in the face of - and
in the company of - our fellow clueless human sisters and brothers - all
the saints who are as messed up as we are.

A lot of our fellow saints, most of them as annoyed as I tend to be,
were in the streets yesterday - in Rome and Berlin, Paris and New York,
Baghdad and Tel Aviv, London and Santa Monica, Sydney and Hollywood.
They were suggesting some non-violent ways out of "this fine mess we've
gotten ourselves into."  I haven't seen so many lepers in the streets
since 1969 in San Francisco.  But, I'll tell you, they all looked like
Jesus to me.
Page Four

Of course, no reasonable person would march for peace in the face of a
madman like Hitler or Sadaam Hussein.  And it would be outrageous to
suggest that we solve the problem without using massive weapons of
destruction to destroy potential weapons of mass destruction - dragging
out this dangerous situation into an uncertain future.  Its ridiculous
to believe that non-violence can stop violence.

But I truly believe that Jesus was NOT a reasonable person.  I believe
that Jesus was an outrageous person with a temper and a flare for the
dramatic.  He kept walking around in the street painting word pictures
of the Beloved Community where enemies stood hand in hand, women and men
talked with each other in public, weapons were used as farming
implements and Judas sat at the table with the disciples.
His pictures had big flashing numbers in them, like seventy times seven
times that we are supposed to work things out with our enemy brothers
before considering committing murder - however justified we believe that
murder to be.
This is outrageous, but this is the Jesus I see in these word pictures -
the pictures he described to us before he was murdered himself.

I 'm going to risk blasphemy here -but being a leper, I have nothing to
lose. 
I don't believe that the murder of Jesus cleansed me or anyone else of
our sins.  I believe that the blood of Jesus washes over us still in the
tsunami of suffering and death that occurs every day.

We have not been made clean, we have been stained like glass so that we
might see the world through the eyes of those in pain.  We have not been
made clean, we have been made aware - so that we can respond - whatever
our bad attitude, whatever our vengeful reactive thoughts might be - we
can respond with acts of healing.  And it is in the healing of the world
that we are made clean.

Micki Terusa died this week.  You might say that she was a leper and a
saint, a humanitarian with a lousy attitude - with good reason.  Life
was extremely unkind to her, as were many formative people she
encountered.  Experience and biology forced her to fight alcoholism,
nicotine addiction, social stigma and cancer.  Because of the loss of a
son, the abandonment of her family, the lack of a lover and the literal
rape of the world, Micki had nothing to lose.  So she gave it all away.


Page Five

Micki rescued more abused and abandoned dogs, cats and horses than we
could count.  She dragged herself and any other lepers she could find to
this church for spiritual food and hope.  She moved this church off of
it's privileged behind to feed hungry-homeless-human beings.
She saw the gaping hole where the Good Samaritan was supposed to be and
stepped into the breach - bad attitude and all.  And I'll be darned if
she didn't start looking a lot like Jesus to a whole bunch of people.
And I'll be darned if a whole bunch of other people around her didn't
start to to clean up some of the mess with her and begin looking like
Jesus too.

Just like Jesus, the world made a bloody mess out of her.  But through
the stained glass of her life we can see that she was made clean by her
acts of compassion, bathed by the healing tears of her God.

I barely knew Micki - it bothered me how messed up her life was and how
familiar that felt - looking at my own mess.  But I miss her already.
And I thank God for her and all the rough and outrageous leper-saints
who bring life to life and color to color - and do their best to clean
up their own mess along with everyone else's.

God bless her soul.
God bless this God-awful mess that we are in.
May we be made clean in our continued, disgruntled efforts to clean it
up.
And by those efforts may we bless God with everything we've got.

****************
Sunday Bulletin
February 16, 2003 10:00 a.m.

Music for Gathering
Welcome and Perspective on the Day
Musical Preparation for Worship - A Time for Centering

+ Call to Worship
God of wholeness,
you have created us bodily,
that our work and faith may be one.
May we offer our worship from lives of integrity;
and maintain the fabric of this world
with hearts that are set on you... Amen.

+ Hymn of Care Touch the Earth Lightly Hymnal # 569

+ Unburdening Prayer (unison)
  Gracious and Holy One, creator of all things and of emptiness,
I come to you full of much that clutters and distracts,
stifles and burdens me, and makes me a burden to others.
  Empty me now of gnawing dissatisfactions, of anxious imaginings,
of fretful preoccupations, of nagging prejudices, of old scores to
settle,
and of the arrogance of being right.
  Empty me of the ways I unthinkingly think of myself as powerless,
as a victim, as determined by sex, age, race,
as being less than I am, or as other than yours.
  Empty me of the disguises and lies in which I hide myself
from other people and from my responsibility for my neighbors
and for the world.
  Hollow out in me a space in which I will find myself,
find peace and a whole heart, a forgiving spirit and holiness,
the springs of laughter, and the will to reach boldly for abundant life
for myself and the whole human family.

Time for Silent Reflection
One: My soul waits in silence.
All: God is my rock and my fortress. I will be at peace.
Silent Reflection
The Assurance of Good News (unison)
Weeping may linger for the night, but joy comes with the morning.
God has turned our mourning into dancing.
We shall give thanks forever!

Sung Response
Hallelujah! God be praised!

Conversation with Our Children The Strong Man Who Cried

Reading from the Christian Gospels Mark 1:40-45
Teaching and Proclamation   Made Clean

Intercessions, Celebrations and Encouragements
Call to Prayer Give Me a Clean Heart Hymnal # 188
Time for Silence
 Our Joys and Concerns and an Offering of Prayer
Sung Response In Solitude Hymnal #521 vv. 1 & 2

We Offer Our Gifts So That Our Lives May Be Our Prayer
Offertory Prayer of
Dedication (unison)
Holy God, whose name is not honoured where the needy are not served, and
the powerless are treated with contempt: may we embrace our neighbour
with the same tenderness that we ourselves
require; so your justice may be fulfilled in love... Amen.

+ Hymn of Healing We Yearn, O Christ, for Wholeness Hymnal # 179

+ Commissioning (unison)
God of our integrity, in whom knowledge of truth and passion for justice
are one; our hearts were sentimental and you cleansed them with your
rigorous mercy; our thoughts were rigid and you engaged them with your
compassionate mind. Heal our fragmented souls; teach our naivety;
confront our laziness; and inflame our longing to know your loving
discernment and to live out your active love... Amen.

+ Sung Response Hymnal #775
And God will raise you up on eagle?s wings,
bear you on the breath of dawn,
make you to shine like the sun,
and hold you in the palm of God?s hand.

+ Postlude

WORSHIP NOTES
The cross marks (+) in the order of service are an invitation for those
in the
congregation who are able to stand to do so.
The New Century Hymnal or Hymnal has a black cover.
The Chapel Songbook is a blue, looseleaf notebook.
Call to Worship is from All Desires Known by Janet Morley, p. 23
Unburdening Prayer is from Guerrillas of Grace by Ted Loder, p.46
The Assurance of Good News is adapted from Psalm 30 NRSV
Conversation with Our Children The Strong Man Who Cried is from Does
God Have a Big Toe?
Stories about Stories in the Bible by Rabbi Marc Gellman pp.57-59
Prayer of Dedication is from All Desires Known by Janet Morley, p. 23
Commissioning Ibid. p. 79