Dear Friends,

This Sunday's Gospel tells the story of Jesus' healing of a person with leprosy. In biblical times, persons afflicted with skin disorders even such as psoriasis or eczema were categorized as 'lepers' and were condemned to lives lived on the margins of society. As a child, I suffered dreadfully from eczema, and recall days spent trying to hide my hands which itched unbearably, and often slit open as a result of the swelling, and nights with my hands wrapped in salve and bandages. While I remember vividly the sense of shame I felt when my little hands bled and felt 'ugly', I was blessed to live in a time when compassion was more the response rather than social isolation.

However, in today's world we clearly have examples of people who are ostracized due to physical illness and/or disability. There is the very obvious stigmatization which continues to accompany people living with HIV/AIDS and among other biases, we have a society which has yet to adequately meet with compassion people living with mental illness. Over the past 20 years, I have frequently had occasion to visit a loved one hospitalized due to mental illness, and I have been awestruck by how very few visitors indeed grace the halls of a psychiatric hospital. In many cases, patients have 'burned their bridges' behind them, and family and loved ones have found the gap increasingly unbridgeable as time passes. While progress is being made, our society has yet to learn how to accommodate and integrate those with psychiatric limitations into the mainstream of life.

Jesus' response to "the leper" in this story as told by Mark's gospel, is that he is "moved with compassion"... a more literal translation would be that "he had a gut reaction". When was the last time your 'gut' moved with compassion? I'm sure that each of us has had those moments. We each have, I hope, been the recipient of another's 'gut' full of compassion meeting our pain. It seems to me, that in our increasingly competitive, over stimulated and troubled world, this "gut reaction" is more and more difficult to pay attention to. We move so quickly and have so much 'coming at us, that the kind of noticing that is necessary to respond "from our gut" is hard to come by, especially as we swirl in the mainstream. In Marks' account, Jesus' very deliberately seeks to be 'on the outside' in order to be in solidarity with those who are marginalized. From the edges, it is much more difficult to cast a critical eye on those with whom we walk, then when we plant ourselves securely in the 'center' where the world swirls around us, so to speak. I remember with heartache those years of visiting in the psyche unit, and while I rejoice that my loved one no longer requires that kind of care, I truly pray that I will never forget the view from within.

I think that this Sunday's readings call us to move outside of our safe centers, to reach out to those in our lives and our world who struggle with illness, and to deepen our compassionate 'guts'. What might we do to free up our loving kindness so that our response to those in need will be as spontaneous as was Jesus' response in this gospel. How might each of us more profoundly embody "the good news"?

This Sunday, we will celebrate a communal Anointing of the Sick during our liturgy. Together we will pray for those who are seeking healing, and for ourselves that we might be deeply compassionate healers in our world.

If you are seeking community to nurture you in your love for God and God's people and creation, we invite you to join us at Spirit of Life. As a community, we try wholeheartedly to "be Christ" to one another, to tend to the needs of one another, and to those in need in our world. Together, we celebrate our belief that we are being transformed by God's grace as we gather together in prayer. We warmly invite you to come and gather with us at our Table, and join in our experience of the "kin-dom" of God. We are an inclusive, open, affirming and interactive community, deeply committed to being a people of "justice and joy."

We wish you deep joy in your life and your relationship with our God,

Find more about past weekly reflections and podcasts in our ARCHIVE PAGE.