6th Sunday in Ordinary Time
February 12, 2012
8 Am & 10 AM Liturgies
J.A. Loftus, S.J.
If you take away only one line from today’s homily, let it be the one I
will sing in just a moment. The line comes from an old friend to many of us.
His name was Frederick McFeely Rogers–known to most simply as “Mr.
Rogers.” He was the ordained Presbyterian minister who delighted millions
for over three decades on Public Television both here and in Canada where
he got his big start with the CBC.
A song opened every show. I bet most of you could sing it with me.
“It’s a beautiful day in this neighborhood. A beautiful day for a neighbor.
Would you be mine?...Could you be mine?...Please won’t you be my
neighbor?” A question worth remembering! Hold on to it!
We don’t often hear from the book of Leviticus in Catholic worship.
That’s because many consider it “dry as dirt.” It spells out God’s covenant
with Israel in meticulous and definitive laws and admonitions: what one can
eat and drink, how one must act at worship, what one wears, and on it goes
into most details of everyday life in the community.
We hear from Leviticus today because it also spells out who gets to stay
inside the camp and who is cast out. This may not seem like a big deal for us,
but for a wandering nomadic tribe in Moses’ time it was a very big deal. As it
still was in Jesus’ time. Israel was (and many would say still is) a very
community oriented clan. To be cast “outside” could literally mean death–
certainly socially, but often physically as well.
Now we have all heard enough homilies over the years to know that
biblical leprosy is not the Hanson’s disease we now know through scientific
research in the 20th century. It is a much larger category that includes any
communicable skin disease. Anything that could “infect” Israel doesn’t
belong in the neighborhood. “It,” whatever “it” is that contaminates the
group is to be cut off. And that holds for anyone else who comes into contact
with “it.”
If this sounds unnecessarily harsh, and perhaps even a bit primitive to
you, think back to the mid-80's and remember how we supposedly postmodern people reacted to the early threat of HIV/AIDS. I can remember my
first visit to a friend at St. Michael’s hospital in Toronto. I was gloved,
gowned, and groomed like a space-alien just in order to touch a dying young
man with sacred oil. It was for his safety we were told. But we were just as
scared as Moses’ and Aaron’s tribe in today’s reading.
St. Mark, no doubt, knew the book of Leviticus well. And he knew his
own contemporary experience of what needed to be excluded from the
community for everyone’s safety. So in telling Jesus’ story, he borrows a
technique from some of our modern bumper stickers–particularly the one
that reads WWJD. “What Would Jesus Do?” That’s what St. Mark wants to
share with his readers then and today. So he tells what appears to be just
another miracle story: Jesus heals again! But this story is decidedly
different. It is not just “another ordinary miracle story.”
In Mark’s gospel, Jesus has already healed any number of other people,
and often just by willing their healing (remember Jairus’ daughter?). And
sometimes he heals others despite his apparent lack of awareness (remember
the woman who just touches his cloak?). But here he is different. Mark tells
us when the leper falls to his knees to beg Jesus for help, Jesus responds first
by reaching down, touching him tenderly, and physically raising him, pulling
him back up healed and whole and ready to return to the neighborhood of
Israel, inside the camp. And, of course, in touching him Jesus himself
becomes just as “unclean,” and just as much of an “outcast.”
St. Mark’s point makes me as uncomfortable in the year 2012 as it was
designed to make his first readers feel. What would Jesus do? What does
Jesus expect us to do? For Mark, these are pretty basic and pretty simple
questions.
So, who are today’s dangerous people who need to be kept outside the
camp? Who are the people who threaten our security today? Is it certain
races or ethnic groups? Does it have anything to do with people of a
particular age, or gender, or social and economic status? Is it people of a
certain level of education (or lack thereof)? Perhaps those who have a
different sexual orientation? Maybe it’s “conservatives,” or “liberals”?
Reasons for keeping certain people “outside the camp” don’t have to appear
compelling to others. We just have to know they don’t belong in our
neighborhood.
Jesus knows first-hand how uncomfortable it feels to be an outcast.
Everyone in this church knows too. At some point we have all felt that way.
St. Mark says today: get used to it! Followers of Jesus don’t indulge in
“group-think.” They can’t really believe Robert Frost’s poem: “Good fences
make good neighbors” (Mending Wall, 1914). They are different because of
his example–at least when they follow his example. We are invited to
embrace–not tolerate, but embrace–the very people whom others shun, the
very people of whom we are afraid. No one can be beyond the circle of Jesus’
compassion. No one!
Mr. Rogers knew Mark’s gospel well. He too was baptized and
ordained to preach it–and sometimes, if necessary, with words—in a song.
“It’s a beautiful day in this neighborhood. A beautiful day for a neighbor.
Would you be mine?... Could you be mine?... Please won’t you be my
neighbor.”
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