Homily: Washed Anew in Grace

Year B / Ordinary Time / Week 6 / Sunday

Readings: Leviticus 13.1-2, 44-46/ Responsorial Psalm 31. 1-2,5,11 (R/v 7) / I Corinthians 10.31-11.1 / Mark 1.40-45

We’ve all seen those advertisements about washing detergents. They guarantee to clean and remove the most deep-down, hard-to-remove stains, like ink blotches, greasy curry splashes, coffee marks and mud smears. 

Consider the claims they make. “Kao Attack: Makes Clothes Cleaner, Softer and Easier to Iron.” “Tide: For a Brilliant Clean Every Time.” “Breeze: Power Clean; Removes Stains.” Yes, they all promise to make our clothes brighter, fresher and clean again.

“To make clean” is a theme in today’s readings. It is a good theme for our reflection as we approach Lent -- this time when God invites us to make ourselves clean again by letting God realign our lives to God’s ways. This is why today’s theme offers us the opportunity to reflect on the kind of Christian life we are living today.

The leper is the image of uncleanness in our first reading. He has to be cast out and avoided because in ancient times any form of skin disease -- which the word ‘leprosy’ denotes -- was considered contagious and deadly. The Israelites feared that all skin disorders could infect others, and so harm the community’s health. Their fear was rooted in an interpretation that physical deformities and mental illness were signs of God’s displeasure. This is why Moses who had the authority of God declared that people who suffered from these ailments had to be rejected, excluded, and alienated. 

Haven’t we sometimes had a leper-like experience? Haven’t we found our ideas and suggestions rejected no matter how well intentioned they are?  Haven’t others who are afraid of our race, nationality or language excluded us? Haven’t we been looked down because of how much we are earning or the kind of education we have? Haven’t others among us ridiculed us for our body shape or our learning difficulties like dyslexia? And, haven’t some of us been treated unjustly because others cannot charitably embrace us in our divorce or separation, our sexual orientation or political bent? 

These are various ways others unjustly condemn us as unclean. I believe we have all suffered discrimination in one form or another, either in the past or even now. 

Today’s gospel story of Jesus healing the leper offers us three insights that can help us to live our Christian life better, whether it is the leper-like experience we suffer because of others, or it is the kind of life we live by condemning and excluding others as  lepers.

First, Jesus’ healing should help us live our Christian lives more faithfully. The leper came to Jesus with a simple hope and faith: “If you wish, you can make me clean.” 

Jesus’ response was a tender “I do will it. Be made clean.” Jesus did not just say this; he touched the leper to heal him. Jesus’ action expressed the divine yes of God’s loving mercy to make good again all that is unclean in each of us. This truth should help us live more faithfully because we can trust that Jesus will always reach out to heal us in our unworthiness, like he did the leper. 

Second, Jesus’ healing should challenge us to live our Christian lives more honestly. By healing the leper, Jesus is challenging us to heal and make others clean again in our eyes and in the eyes of others. 

All too often we judge others bad, wrong, evil, sinful, and unchristian because we are hurt and disappointed by one we love or trust, or we are pained and frustrated by another, or we have simply become unforgiving and hateful towards our enemy. Then, with our intent, words and actions we make them unclean before us and others.  I am ashamed I have hurt others in this way before; you might you’ve done likewise too. Not every Christian, are we?

Yet today, Jesus graciously shows us how all that it will take to make those we have hurt clean again is to have a merciful and tender heart, like he had for the leper. Such a heart really listens to, tenderly feels for, and compassionately wants to response to another who says, “If you wish, you can make me clean.”  Can you and I do this?

Jesus responded by healing the leper physically. More significantly, Jesus healed by welcoming him back into and uniting him with the community. Today, Jesus is asking us to heal the people whose own faults, sin, illness make them unclean, or whom we have branded unclean, by going one step further: we are to heal them by welcoming them into our lives and into the life of our community, and never set them apart again. 

Indeed, Jesus models for us what healing is all: making the unclean clean again so that they are whole and holy. Can you and I do this too?

Third, Jesus’ healing should empower us to live our Christian lives more joyfully. Like the leper in today’s gospel story, you and I are being invited to present ourselves to Jesus, not as dirty, unclean and rejectable, but as one in need of his healing because he comes not just to be with and amongst us but he who comes to be for us Saviour.  

Let’s be honest: we will all always be in some state of being stained, soiled and spoilt because of our past or present mistakes and unholy actions. Even here at this Eucharist, some of us come as we are, sinful and struggling. But don't we all come to this Eucharist and to God daring to hope in Jesus’ forgiving and healing love?  If we do, aren't we like the leper who had enough hope to believe that his "If" -- "If I ask Jesus, won't he healed me?" -- will be answered? We might feel like we deserve to be rejected, excluded and abandoned by God because of the smudges of uncleanness in our lives. But like the leper we are saved because God has given us hope  to utter to Jesus, "If you wish, you can make me clean." And we know we can say this because we have all experienced God's presence, not absence, when we turned to him before. If God has done so in the past, how can God ever turn away from us now or in the future?

A few minutes ago, we sang this responsorial refrain: “I turn to you, Lord, in time of trouble, and you fill me with the joy of salvation.” I believe Jesus hears this hope we have in him who will save us from the hell of our own confinement or the imprisonment we have forced others into. Does Jesus desire to “will it” to heal us? Yes, I believe. If so, we have to answer the more important question: Do we yearn for Jesus to heal us and include us in God’s friendship? 

What we can do better at all times in our Christian life, then, and especially, at this Eucharist, is to allow Jesus to wash us anew in his grace. All too often, we grow accustomed to our dirt, which is different from our goodness of humanness, even as we work hard at living it better daily.  

Today’s gospel story is calling us to that necessary honesty of coming before God as we are and helping others to do the same. Together we will come because we believe God desires to free us from those unclean stains, like leprosy, and to heal us for communion with God and community.  

If we believe in this truth, it must be Jesus – and not the washing detergents promise but can never absolutely remove the most stubborn stains – who is really the one who washes clean. Yes, it is Jesus and no other who will always wash away our most unchristian sins, and make us cleaner, fresher and brighter for God and one another.

Preached at St Ignatius Church

Photo: from the Internet (www.motherearthnews.com)