This was my homily on the 6th Sunday of Ordinary Time, Sunday, February 12th.
Do you always want your beloved child to run up to you and give you a big hug? At all times?
Several years ago when my boys were small, they discovered these large clay deposits near a swimming hole on one of our camping trips. They also quickly discovered that this clay made great body paint! They would get all wet, and then smear the clay all over their body. Then, they would run toward my wife yelling, “We love you, Mommy!” The intention was to give her big hugs. Naturally, she ran the opposite direction – her actions declaring, “If you really love me, you will clean yourself prior to hugging me!”
But we as parents don’t always run from dirty children, even though we may get covered with filth ourselves. Imagine that you hear the distressed cry of your child. Your precious son or daughter has fallen face first into the mud, and is now running towards you, tears streaming through the dirt. Here they come, with mud on their clothes, their face, their eyes, in their hair. What do you do? Do you say, “Don’t come near me!?” No, you take them in your arms, soiling your own clothes; you comfort them, gently clean all the dirt from their eyes, ears, nostrils, mouth. You love them, clean them, and comfort them.
That child has come to you, saying through their tears, “I am a mess. I can’t clean myself. If you are willing, you can make me clean.” And, you ARE willing.
Today in our gospel, we see how Jesus responds in exactly the same way to a leper. For a Jew, a leper was the ultimate in uncleanness. And this incident gives us a beautiful image of the way Jesus responds to us, when we come to him, admitting our own inadequacies, and acknowledging that he alone can make us clean.
Note that the leper comes to Jesus. This was a violation of all the rules and regulations concerning lepers. He was supposed to shout, “Unclean!” to keep people away. But instead, he runs to Jesus. And Jesus does not run away; like a parent welcoming their crying, mud-covered child, Jesus allows the leper to approach him. Jesus puts the leper’s needs before his own.
Then, what does the leper ask? Does he say, “Heal my disease?” No. He says, “Make me clean.” What he was really saying was, “I want to worship God. I want to be in relationship with God. I want to be able to touch others, so that I can be in relationship with the people of God.” Of course he wants physical healing. But becoming clean is more than becoming healed!
And what does Jesus do? He heals the leper. Jesus gives the leper a gift.
Our 8th grade teens spent the day on their Confirmation Retreat learning about the gifts that we all receive from Jesus: the gifts of the Holy Spirit. They learned that each of us is given certain gifts, and that these gifts are no good is we keep them locked up for only ourselves. A gift is not a gift until you give it away. We need to use our gifts, as St. Paul said, in whatever we do, for the glory of God. What we are is God’s gift to us. What we become is our gift to God.
We need to remember that God created us and gave each of us a unique combination of talent and personality, which we are then called to use in service to God and others. But sometimes, we get wrapped up in our own little world. We become self-absorbed, and we want to hang onto our gifts because they’re ours. Here is a little prayer that help break through this habit.
Touch your forehead, mouth, heart and hands as you say this:
Start your day off with this prayer, and your perspective on life will change.
The gospel message is clear: Jesus is approachable no matter what our condition. Jesus will never reject us no matter who we are, what we’ve done, or how we look. God is gracious, loving, kind, forgiving, willing to restore our relationships with others, and to heal our relationship with him. God is more than enough!
We pray that we may never hesitate to approach Jesus in prayer for healing, consolation and perseverance. May we never deprive anyone from God’s loving kindness, especially those considered by our society as untouchable, unlovable, undesirable and unbearable. And we pray that we are moved with excitement, just like the leper, to spread the good news of Jesus to all we meet, to live the gospel by the way we live our lives; to use the gifts that we have received in service to others – and all for the glory of God!
