Community Church Sermons

Year B

February 15, 2009

The Sixth Sunday After Epiphany

“Sacred Scars”

2 Kings 5:1-14; Mark 1:40

Rev. Rhonda Abbott Blevins

As the seminary professor prepared for a new semester of classes, she contemplated that very first day with her students. She normally would have the budding theologians introduce themselves during their inaugural session together, but she had grown weary of the tried and true method of having students tell their name, their hometown, and perhaps one interesting factoid about themselves. So she began class that semester saying to her students, “Tell me about your scars.” She invited each person to tell the class the story behind one of their physical scars. Wisely, she advised them to refrain from displaying scars normally hidden underneath clothes. She didn’t have any preconceptions about how this exercise would play out in a classroom full of strangers, but what Barbara Brown Taylor experienced that day was a very rich sharing of human story. A couple of women recounted scars left by Caesarian sections. Athletes remembered knee surgeries. Taylor herself told a humorous tale about a singular, small scar on her fingertip that she inflicted upon herself one day while she was cutting some fabric, the television murmuring off to the side. President Nixon appeared on the screen to resign as President of the United States of America. Barbara Brown Taylor, in a moment of absent-minded disbelief, snipped her fingertip right off. In the seminary classroom that day men and women told holy tales, and somewhere in the middle of it all, they discovered their common humanity.

In our scripture readings today we encounter two individuals afflicted with leprosy. The word “leprosy” is from the Greek word that means “scales on a fish.” Although leprosy is caused by a bacterial infection, it “does its damage . . . by destroying nerve endings.”[1] It was Dr. Paul Brand who discovered that those infected with leprosy actually lose the sensation of pain, and therefore injure “themselves by such simple actions as gripping a splintered rake or wearing tight shoes. Pressure sores form, infection sets in,” and because there is no pain, the injured person does not know to tend to the wounded area.[2] Dr. Brand spent millions of dollars researching a way to create pain for the patients he treated. “I thank God for pain,” he once declared with utmost sincerity to an interviewer. He said that he could not imagine a greater gift he could offer his leprosy patients. Later on, Dr. Brand would co-author a book with the gentleman who interviewed him that day. Together with Philip Yancey he published a book with a paradoxical title if I’ve ever heard one called The Gift of Pain.

Most of us don’t think of pain as a gift. In fact, most of us think of pain as a curse. We wonder why a loving, omnipotent God allows pain and suffering. Yet here is a physician whose life work was devoted to treating lepers, thanking God for the gift of pain.

Back in our scripture lesson we meet the great Aramean General Naaman, a man victorious in battle and highly regarded among his people. Naaman was accustomed to having power and wielding control, like any military commander throughout history. He also had the favor of the king, and when he asked permission to seek a cure for his leprosy in another country, the king granted his request. Chances are, Naaman had exhausted all of the potential remedies available to him in his own land, and this was a last-ditch effort to find healing from a foreign miracle-worker named Elisha. General Naaman had declared war on his affliction, and victory would be his for the taking!

As he traveled a great distance to meet the one who could bring him victory over his leprosy, the General devised his battle plan. He outlined a strategy for how his healing would take place. His plan for healing contained four steps we learn from the scripture (v. 11):

·        Step 1: The prophet will come out to meet me.

·        Step 2: The prophet will stand and call on the name of his God.

·        Step 3: The prophet will wave his hand over my wounds.

·        Step 4: Shazaam! The prophet will cure me of my leprosy.

He had it all worked out in his mind, but as we learn in the scripture, that’s not at all how it happened. Instead, Elisha didn’t even give the great General the common courtesy of going out to speak with him personally. “How dare he? Doesn’t he know who I am?” Instead, the prophet sent a messenger with a ridiculous remedy of washing in the Jordan River seven times. “Are you kidding? I traveled all the way to Israel to be told to wash in a dirty river?” The General was livid. Wouldn’t you be? You travel all the way to New Zealand, for instance, for treatment and the doctor tells you to go for a swim? Yet despite his rage, the General was desperate for a cure, and he did just what the prophet ordered though he had little faith that it would succeed.

Aren’t we a little bit like Naaman? Faced with situations in which we have little control, we make plans and devise schemes and try to play God. We say to God or whoever might be listening to our inner thoughts: “Here’s how I want this to go down.” We craft our four-point strategy and we expect God to follow our command. Then we find ourselves humbled when our healing comes in ways we could never imagine.

After Naaman came up out of that dirty water the seventh time, the Bible tells us his flesh became like the skin of a small child. But I wonder (the scripture doesn’t say), did Naaman have any scars? Most folks healed of leprosy today bear some mark, some facial disfiguration, blindness, or possible the loss of fingers, toes, or limbs. Did Naaman make his journey back to Aram with skin that was smooth and clean, but scarred? Was there a mark to remind the General that his healing came from a power outside himself?

A couple of Saturdays ago, the Great Syrup Incident of 2009 happened at my house. That morning my sweet husband made waffles, and then we both went about cleaning as we were expecting company the next day. My assignment was the upstairs; Terry’s assignment was the downstairs area, which is also where our 21-month-old son, Jake, was playing. As Terry tells the story, he had been busy cleaning a bathroom, when he realized that Jake had been quiet far too long. He went in to check, and he found Jake lying on his belly on the family room carpet, giggling uncontrollably with our 30-pound dog on top of him licking him wildly. Terry immediately yelled at the dog, and then he caught a waft of something sticky-sweet in the air. Syrup! When he helped Jake up off the floor, the little guy was covered head to toe in syrup, the empty squeeze bottle a testament to what had occurred. There was syrup on the couch, on the ottoman, and a little syrup trail ran between the couch and our Lazy Boy, which endured the brunt of the attack. The dog had enjoyed a good coating of syrup as well. I was upstairs cleaning the tub when Terry carried “Mr. Aunt Jemima” to me saying, “You might as well fill up that tub.”

We spent the rest of the day cleaning up the syrup catastrophe. We got the kid clean, and the dog clean enough. Our SteamVac came in quite handy for the carpet and upholstery. We felt like we had gotten most of the sticky-sweet cleaned up, but I noticed just a couple of days ago, the syrup trail is starting to reappear in the carpet. Evidence that the Great Syrup Incident of 2009 really did happen.

The reappearance of the syrup trail reminds me that though I can do my best to cover up the afflictions of the past, they continue to lurk just beneath the surface. The syrup scar, barely visible, reminds me of the violation, but more than that, it reminds me of the story behind the scar. The scar reminds me that there’s a little boy in my life who means much more to me than a worn piece of Berber.  The scar reminds me that I am blessed: with a husband who makes waffles on Saturday mornings; with a little boy who can find great adventure in a bottle of syrup. My widower husband likes to say that life is a constant re-write, and of this I am somewhat aware. I may face lonelier Saturdays in the future. . . but the memory of the Great Syrup Incident will be with me always . . . like a scar . . . a Sacred Scar.

A couple of days ago I gathered with some fellow travelers for our first class together through our church’s Center for Lifelong Learning. Our class is called “Embracing the Journey,” and it is an experiential and highly relational exercise in spiritual formation. Armed with Barbara Brown Taylor’s idea, I invited each person to tell the story behind one of their scars. What happened over the next several minutes was extraordinary. As participants shared personal stories ripe with fear and pain, love and hope, the great paradox of life rose to the surface. We found our common humanity in the sharing of our stories. We discovered that each of our scars tells a powerful tale of a life lived. One person even called her scar “blessed.”

Sacred scars. What stories do your scars tell? What sacred stories do they hold? Sacred Scars. Sacred stories. Share yours with someone today and find your common humanity.