Picture a “person on the street” interview in Jerusalem about the year 30AD. With camera rolling the reporter sticks a microphone in the face of any random passer-by and asks, “What do you think of Jesus?” I would bet that for most people the response would be, “You mean that healer from Nazareth?” While his followers would know about his teaching and his parables, probably what the general populace would have heard most about Jesus was his healing power. Since Jesus is a healer let us today turn to him today and beg for healing in the midst of a pandemic. Let us address him just as the leper did and say, “If you wish, you can make us clean.” How does Jesus answer us today?
The first possible answer: I do will it. Be made clean. But wait a minute. If that is what Jesus says why is the pandemic still raging? Did you ever hear about the JayJay whose house was threatened by a flood? His neighbor came over and told him, there’s an emergency evacuation order. Hop in my car and I’ll drive you to safety. No, JayJay answered, God told me he would save me. As the water was rising a police four wheel drive truck came up to the house. You’d better get in. The flood is coming. No, JayJay answered, God told me he would save me. As the water kept rising JayJay went up to the second floor and the National Guard boat came by and yelled to him, You’d better get in. The water is dangerous. No, JayJay said. God told me he would save me. As the water rose JayJay went into the attic and chopped a hole so he could get out onto the roof. The Coast Guard helicopter came by and lowered a basket to airlift him. No, JayJay said, go rescue someone else. God told me he would save. Well, the water kept rising and JayJay drowned. He was not happy when he got to the pearly gates and accused God. I thought you said you would save me. God simply sighed and said, I sent a car, a truck, a boat and a helicopter to save you. What more could I do? The point, of course, is that we have all that we need to experience the healing power of Jesus, if people heed the directions of the doctors. In New Zealand, where they have done so, there have been a total of 25 deaths, the most recent one all the way back on September 16. Jesus has sent us what we need to be made clean through the knowledge of the medical professionals. We have only to do our part.
Jesus might give another answer to the request: If you wish, you can make me clean. He might say something like: I do wish it but I can only make each one of you clean by making all of you clean. We have learned during this pandemic how interconnected we all are. What you do impacts me and what I do impacts you. To insist on my rights, my prerogatives, my personal preferences in the middle of a health crisis like this one is the recipe for disaster. Only by thinking in terms of the common good will the healing that makes us all clean happen. No one is an island, the poet says, we are part of the whole – and in these days of easy travel that includes the entire world. Of course, the necessity of thinking of the common good is not limited to issues of health. The interconnected-ness we share impacts every aspect of our lives. For a society to work we have to be concerned that every citizen is treated fairly by the police. An economic system that divides the world into haves and have-nots is doomed to collapse. The fact that my forebears made it to this land – either willingly or forcibly – gives me a responsibility to care for all immigrants. We all must care for our “common home,” as Pope Francis calls the earth, and not try to take care of my own comforts at the cost of environmental deterioration. The kind of healing that Jesus brings is all inclusive.
There is another answer Jesus might give to the request: If you wish you can make me clean. Jesus could say, “I do wish it. But before I make you clean, what are the lessons have you learned from this experience of pandemic?” I’m reminded of a line from an old song, “Don’t it always seem to go that you don’t know what you got till it’s gone.” What are the take-aways from a year of social isolation? We have found things that really matter, that we’ll never take for granted again: being able to be with family, giving hugs to grandchildren, going to the grocery store, seeing a movie, attending a concert, visiting a museum, riding the bus, smiling at other people, shaking hands, having guests over for dinner, watching the game together, the list goes on and on. In the realm of Church, how we’ve missed the experience of community with one another, being hospitable to new members, being able to sing out with full voice, hearing the choir, holding hands, giving the kiss of peace, seeing the children grow, and most of all, receiving Holy Communion. How grateful we are for all of those seemingly ordinary things.
Lent begins this week. I don’t know about you but I feel like I’ve given up so much this last year that I don’t have to give up anything for Lent! What I must do, however, is recover what has been lost. Maybe a Lenten practice we can all adopt is to start the process of re-connecting with all that we’ve missed this past few months. Jesus does will that we be made clean, that we be made whole. Let’s all find a way to connect with God, with family, with one another as our Lenten practice. Let’s show that there can be love even in a time of pandemic.
