I Do Choose

Sermon for Sunday, February 15, 2009
Scripture: Mark 1:40-45

It was almost 2 decades ago, but it is a day that continues to live on in infamy. It was a day of rebellion, a day of battles, a day of cold, uneaten food. We were visiting my grandmother in Florida, sitting down to a peaceful dinner. But a storm was brewing. You see, it may be hard to believe now, but as a child I was a bit of a smart-mouthed kid. “Pass the potatoes,” I said as we began our meal. Like any good parent, my mother jumped in. “What’s the magic word?” she asked me. “Pass the potatoes,” I said again. “Pass the potatoes what? What do we say?” she replied. I knew full well what I was supposed to say. I was old enough to know that the magic word, the courteous word, was “please.” “Pass the potatoes please,” I was supposed to say. But today was not the day to mess with me. I was tired, I was hungry, and I really wasn’t in the mood to be polite. I wasn’t in the mood to be bossed around by some know-it-all mother. So instead, in my infinite wisdom and wit, I announced with a loud voice, “Pass the potatoes NOW!”

I suppose most of you know what happened next, because “NOW” was not the magic word. So I was sent away from the table, into the room where I was staying. No dinner for you, Mr. Smartmouth. Off I went into vacation purgatory, waiting for my fate to be decided sometime after dinner. After a minute or two, a thought came to my head. “Wait a second,” I thought to myself. This isn’t right. I don’t deserve to be treated like this. So back out I went, proudly marching back toward the dinner table. I sat back down, and without a word, began eating. “Just what do you think you’re doing?” my father asked. But I was prepared for such a time as this. “Father,” I said, “this is America. This is a free country, and I can do whatever I want!” See, I had paid attention in school! I knew all about life, liberty, and the pursuit of one’s own dinner!

Well, of course I was in the wrong. Of course I had disobeyed and disrespected my parents – which all of us do from time to time as children. We test the waters, we push back, we rebel just to see what we can get away with – it’s all part of growing up and learning what the boundaries are that our parents have set. I lost the battle that day at my grandmother’s house – a day my mother and grandmother still love to talk about (primarily because they remember how hard it was not to laugh at my brilliant argument about freedom).

On that day, I thought that I had a choice about whether or not to be polite. I thought that I could choose to say “please” and “thank you” or I could choose not to. If I chose to ignore proper manners, that was a human right protected by the founding tenets of our country. And that is exactly how we want to be. We like to have the ball in our court. We like to be the ones calling the shots, making the decisions. We don’t want others to make choices for us. We get to choose which TV station we watch, which brand salad dressing we’ll buy, who our doctor will be, which car we will drive, who our friends will be, which way we’ll drive to work today, and on and on and on. Our lives are made up of millions of decisions, one right after another. And this barrage of choices in front of us each day gives us the illusion that everything is under our control. But what if we can’t always choose? What if we are forced to admit some things are out of our control?

That day at my grandmother’s house, I thought that I could choose to be polite or not, but really I couldn’t. The choice was made for me – I was going to be a polite boy, and I had no choice but to submit to that way of operating. The leper was diseased. He did not choose to have a skin disease – would anyone choose such a thing for themselves? He had no say in the matter – he was diseased, cast out from society, and left alone in the wilderness. He did not choose leprosy – leprosy chose him. And just as his illness was not in his control, neither was his medical care. Although he desires to be healed, he is well aware that there’s nothing he can do to heal himself.

But he knows Jesus has the power to heal him. Mark doesn’t say how the leper knows of Jesus’ power, but he knows. And he approaches Jesus on his knees, begging for healing. One might expect that in such a situation, the leper’s plea would be, “Heal me. I want you to heal me. Please heal me. I beg of you, heal me.” And I suspect that some manner of desperation was present in the leper. I doubt we would expect anything different than a desperate plea for healing. But this is not the leper’s plea. He may have been desperately seeking healing, but he did not frame his plea in that way. You see, he recognized that no matter how much he pleaded, it was Jesus alone who could heal. Ultimately, his health rested in the choice of Jesus – and only Jesus. And so the words of the leper are not “I choose to be healed.” They are, “If you choose, you can make me clean.”

If Jesus chooses, the leper can be made clean. If Jesus chooses, healing will take place. And Jesus does choose. He does choose to heal by his proclamation (“Be made clean!”) and by his action (touching the leper). This is already the third healing story in Mark, and we haven’t left the first chapter yet. An unclean spirit is ordered out of the man at the synagogue, Simon’s mother is healed, and now this: a leper kneeling at the feet of Jesus and praying for healing.

In his desperate prayer for healing, the leper models the way we are to approach our own prayers for healing. He seeks out Jesus. He kneels at the feet of Jesus. He lets his desire for healing be made known. But ultimately, he acknowledges that it is Jesus’ decision. It is Jesus’ choice to heal him. All power and authority, all control over his own health rests in the hands of Jesus.

My friends, we are all lepers. We are all in need of some kind of healing. Some of us are physically diseased, with cancer, with heart ailments, with lung ailments, or even simply suffering from aches and pains. We are in need of physical healing. Some of us are emotionally diseased, infected with abusive behavior from loved ones, infected with the criticism of others, or even infected with our own criticism of ourselves. We are in need of emotional healing, of sewing up the wounds inflicted within our own minds. And all of us are in need of spiritual healing. All of us are marked with the disease of original sin. All of us are marked as sinners who daily fall short of perfection. All of us have infected ourselves with the sin that keeps us from being in relationship with God. And so we are all in need of spiritual healing, of reconciliation with the Lord our God. All of us are in need of Jesus’ healing acts in his earthly life. All of us need to be healed by his death on the cross. And all of us need to be healed by his resurrection. We are all lepers in need of a healer.

How then do we approach Jesus Christ? How do we ask for healing? Do we approach with humility, kneeling and begging? Do we submit that it is Jesus Christ alone who can heal, and that it is up to Jesus to decide if and how healing will take place? Do we let our own desires fade away and place all authority in our lives into the hands of the Savior? Or do we rush to Jesus and look him in the eye, demanding that we choose our destiny, or demanding that God’s choices be made in our favor? How do we approach the throne of grace? Do we let Jesus be the healer, or do we demand that we be allowed to choose our own destiny?

Susannah Wesley had a parenting style that my parents unwittingly followed during the outburst at my grandmother’s house. Susannah Wesley was the mother of John and Charles Wesley, the founders of the Methodist movement. She was a strict disciplinarian, demanding that all of her 10 children learn early on that a child’s will must conform to the will of his or her parent’s will. Only if a child can conform her will to her parent’s will can she then learn to conform her will to God’s will.

C.S. Lewis once wrote that “There are only two kinds of people in the end: those who say to God, ‘Thy will be done,’ and those to whom God says, in the end, ‘Thy will be done.’” Not our will, but your will, O God. This is how we are to pray – just as the leper prayed. God chooses how to act in our lives. We have no control over God’s actions. And ultimately it is not what we want that is important – it is what God wants that is important. We must submit to God’s will – although we often act as if it is the other way around. We often act as if God may someday submit to our will. But that is not the reality to which we are called. We are called to the reality that Jesus chooses to heal us as he may. We are called to the reality that Jesus has already chosen to heal our spiritual wounds through his death on the cross and his ascendance into heaven. As we enter into the liturgical season of Lent, we will begin to follow Jesus towards this reality. We will discover how Jesus has already healed our souls, and we will discover how he continues to work in our lives to provide healing, mysterious as it may be. We will wrestle with what it means to submit to the will of God when we really don’t want to. And hopefully, we will approach Jesus Christ with the same humble spirit as the leper, admitting that all power and authority lies in God alone. Hopefully, we will accept God’s will in our lives and be reminded of the hope which lies in this morning’s story: Jesus does choose healing. Jesus does choose to reach out and touch us. Jesus does choose us. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.