Epiphany 6B – 2006 2 Kings 5:1-15, Psalm 42, 1 Corinthians 9:24-27, Mark 1:40-45 The Rev. J. Brian Ponder Church of the Resurrection Starkville, Mississippi February 12, 2006 In the name of God: Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Amen Three different times over the break between semesters, I traveled to the Gulf Coast to assist in the efforts taking place there, particularly through Camp Coast Care, a relief and recovery operation currently housed on the grounds of Coast Episcopal School. As may many of you, I had heard the stories of this place and places like it. Camp Coast Care stands as a beacon of hope for many—those seeking assistance in the aftermath of the storms, anxiously making it day-to-day, facing the fears and realities of the unknowing—and a place for putting into action what we should be about as human beings, not just as Christians, but especially because we are. My assignment while there was to aide in the relief effort by allowing some of the folks in charge time away from the Camp to be with family—to recuperate. I assumed a fill-in role for site direction, involving decision making and team check-in. It involved anything and everything from leading evening worship, being a cheerleader of sorts and soliciting volunteer assignments, to deciding what supplies and donations to accept, which ones to refer more appropriately to other relief centers and agencies and deciding how, when, and with what motivations to distribute any number of “things,” but particularly gift cards and discretionary monies. Not an easy task … except when it came to black bean and mini-Chiquita distributions … where no discretion was necessary … they just keep multiplying … so much so that they’re still being given away by the flat and case loads, respectively. Mine was just one role to fill at Camp Coast Care. There’s a job for everyone … NO … a ministry for everyone at Camp Coast Care, whether it’s registering visitors and volunteers, welcoming guests, helping folks find a parking space, wiping down dining and serving tables in the gymnasium, or handing out food, clothing, cleaning supplies and personal hygiene products in the site’s two stores or assisting in any number of ways in the medical tent. Then there’s the off-site work … folks called to muck-out houses, tear out and hang sheetrock, re-roof, clear debris from yards and haul out keepsakes-turned-trash to the rights of way. It’s all a process of helping folks rebound and rebuild, helping folks take the next step, or carrying them as the case may be. It’s all still very much a case of triage being performed, but the days are coming when the efforts will turn towards a case-managed system, so that individuals and families can be followed throughout the process of reclaiming their lives, owning their stories and reaching the places in their various lives where they can think beyond the many tomorrows yet to come. It will be a long and arduous road. And, yet, it’s too simple, too easy for us to imagine that things are better, that things are up-and-running, that things are normal. There’s a term being thrown around on the Coast, not lightly mind you, but a word that describes the current way of being. The term is “the new normal.” It speaks to the reality of folks emerging from the darkness, emerging from the places of disrepair and despair into a new way of being … a new way of being post-Katrina, post-Rita … “the new normal.” This process will be an ongoing one, and we are called to respond, each and every one of us in ways still being revealed. It’s our duty as human beings. It’s our call as Christians. And not just because it’s Mississippians in need, no we’re called as Christians to respond anytime and anywhere full humanity is compromised, where human dignity is lessened through plight, struggle, turmoil, degradation. … It’s just hit closer to home this time, and because of it, it just has to make more sense. Each of the trips during my three weeks on the Coast has afforded me something new, something fresh, something unexpected, something real, and all of it has come through the ordinary and mundane as much as through the profound: through conversations with folks, both those seeking assistance and those offering their helping hands and hearts; through people playing down, if even mentioning, the sacrifices made to be part of the processes of renewal; through the tears of sorrow and joy and the shared, yet unique, situations that people have found themselves; through the shouts of “Praise be to God for this day!” that so many greet us upon their arrival; and it’s sorted out in the grace-filled moments even and especially in the very midst of the not-so-gracious ones when the belief in and hope for abundance gives way to the helplessness of what to do next, or where to go, or that this, too, may be gone in the blink of an eye, or the tugging matches that sometimes arise from fear of short supplies of blankets, or formula, or new pants or dresses the right size, and the scurrying to hoard because folks just can’t believe it’s all true … that what’s before them is theirs for the taking. … The theology we profess in that place is that all will be served, basic needs will be met. We operate from a belief in God’s ever-sustaining abundance. Our hope is that those who seek assistance there get it, that they too will take that leap in and of faith with us. Most of the volunteers come to realize the longer they’re there that we can’t, that is each of us, save the world—at least not in the same ways we’ve made pilgrimage to the Coast … not with our preconceived notions of God and just what will be our specific roles to play. But many do realize that we can accomplish much, bit by bit, dent by dent, and that lives can be changed, that things will get better … slowly, that the healing of personal touch is at the root of our ministry at this moment in time, … that we can transform, if we open ourselves to transformation. … Personal touch … each and every person touched … each and every person transformed … that’s what it’s all about. I came across the following quote in preparation for this sermon today. Through the ages, barrenness, futility, tragedy, have hounded the years when [humankind has] tried to hold Jesus back, to put little man-made boundaries around the boundless word of God, to shut Jesus into some little prison of border, or breed, or birth. … The operation of social agencies is indispensable in an intricate, intermeshed, social world. But the personal touch of life on life is indispensable in any world and every world. There is no adequate substitute for outstretched hands and outstretched lives. No committee or organization can supplant them. Without them, the nerve of compassion atrophies. The world of love, which was in Jesus, must become flesh and dwell among [humankind]. Some of the complexities of control issues, some of the “It-could-be-done-betters,” some of the “I-came-here-to-save-the-days,” give way to the reality of, the simplicity of, “I’ve been transformed. I’ve been forever changed” through the unexpected, through the doing of a new thing, through resting in the uncertainty of it all. The storm victims of the Coast and of other areas throughout the region are by no means the lepers of today’s world. But it cannot be denied that the storms have brought to light the disparities in class-ism, racial inequality, socio-economic standing and you name it, “stigmas” that for all too long have kept us at arms length rather than in true embrace—personal touch. Now, perhaps more than ever, have we the opportunity to respond as would Jesus. Our gospel lesson today recounts the story of an individual coming to Jesus seeking … yearning for things to be different. Can it be true? Can this man heal? And if he can, will he? The pragmatic heart would rationalize: “I’m not sure you will, but I think you can.” The believing heart would resound: “I am sure you will, if you can.” There’s a world of difference in the two. The latter is that which we are called to profess. Jesus’ encounter with the leper is not the most pleasant. The afflicted man puts Jesus in a position to act or not—he leaves room open for choice. And, Jesus, though moved to compassion in our version of the story, is not exactly pleased with the situation if we go to the Greek texts. Jesus’ stomach turned, literally, if we go back to the sources. But what’s more, his heart turned. The relief, the reward, the resolution was no resolution at all for Jesus. The cost, as we know some 2,000 years later was great, but Jesus chose to touch the man, to make him clean, to get his hands dirty and in so doing, to restore the man to dignity and to full humanity. Jesus’ only reward, if any and if you can call it that, was contact, reaching out and making a difference in a moment where he could and where he chose to do so. We, too, are called to do likewise. In the midst of the ordinary and mundane, we’re called to act in extraordinary ways, not by our own power, but proclaiming faith in the One working through us—and we’re called even more to do so in some not-so ordinary and mundane circumstances as well. … We’re only now beginning to see the lasting difficulties associated by weathering these storms. The waves and water may be gone, but picking up the pieces has only begun. Just as the leper’s request of Jesus to “make me clean,” the cries and pleas of thousands now in our very midst to “help me clean up, help me rebuild” will involve miracles. And there are miracles being worked. My invitation to you is to join in the miracle, both in ways you know you can, and open to be empowered in ways you never thought possible. That’s what this Christian life is about … the mysterious working of the Spirit. Places of degradation are not pleasant ones. They’re not easy places to be, or nice places to visit. … But transformation doesn’t really happen when we’re comfortable, does it? It comes in going into the darkness and through easing the pain of others, through listening, really listening, and sifting through our personal motivations, and shifting our paradigms, and acting from places of joy, dispelling desperation, and being transformed by encounters with grace. There are two requests we make of folks who come to Camp Coast Care. Both, I think, go hand-in-hand with what’s at the heart of today’s Gospel. First: “We get one moment, one chance, to meet the needs of those seeking assistance. And in that moment we can either judge, or we can serve, but we can’t do both.” Second: “Tell the story. Tell the story. Your job’s not done here until you tell the story.” Jesus’ encounter with the leper, whether a chance meeting or not, afforded him the one opportunity to make a difference in the life of this stranger. In choosing to make a difference, the once-afflicted leper found wholeness, not forgetting the past brokenness, but finding a new normal. The telling the story part … that’s maybe the part that’s not really about what it seems … because the leper did what he wasn’t supposed to do, what he was ordered not to do. But the leper was working without the benefit of the full story, without insight into the fully revealed nature of Christ. We, however, know the rest of the story, … or at least most of it. The story we’re called to share is not a one-sided, one-aspect, narrow view of Jesus as only healer, or only reconciler. It’s both and more, so much more. The story we ask folks to take back from Camp Coast Care is about how they came to the Coast seeking to make a difference, but how they themselves became transformed. It’s the story of finding transformation by participating in it, by being both participants in and agents of transformation. We are called this day to do nonetheless in our everyday lives and, indeed, the everyday lives we encounter, the ones we’re called to touch, each and every one of us. May we ever have the courage and strength to do so. Amen.   Buttrick, George Arthur, commentary ed. The Interpreter’s Bible, v.7. New York: Abingdon, 1951. Pages 666-667. Ibid.