Matthew 8:1-4
Being an outcast throughout his life a leper was willing to try most anything to be included.  I heard a song today about a woman who was struggling to be included.  She sung, “We are all the same inside but everyone wants to compare me by my outside.”  The leper was just like you and I on the inside but the only thing that was seen was his medical handicap.
So he came to Jesus and  made the statement: “Lord, if you are willing, you can make me clean.” He had acknowledged the very evident power of God.  He acknowledged the ability of Jesus to heal.  He didn’t ask to be healed he just stated facts.  His willingness was a statement, not a question or even a request.  He had fallen down at the feet of Jesus and in an attitude of worship he proclaimed that the power of God through his Only Begotten Son can heal. God in human form was able to make the outside just like the inside. To become like everyone else.
Jesus stretched out his hand and made the astonishing statement, “I am willing, and you are clean.”  the leper was as clean on the outside as he was on the inside.  The scabs fell off.  The red splotches that had itched and pained this man for years turned like a pale rose.
He was probably very excited and wanted to tell everyone around him the news. But Jesus told him to keep his tongue, and to perform some required tasks in the local synagogue.
Not words, not exciting verbosities exclaimed to everyone around him proclaiming the Chosen One of Israel.
Go and make sacrifices. Do what Moses would have him do.  Do the things that normal Israelites would do if healed.  Let the outside be the same as the inside.
His actions were his testimony.  And the result of being normal in the middle of everyone else that once saw him as different, was spectacular.  The non-verbal became the verbal.  Action became the testimony.  The testimony became a calling to those who are not the same on the inside and the outside.  His miracle in itself became a shout to the world of the healing power of God.
God is still making the unlovely, the strange, the unique, the ones that shrink from the norm, the ones that are different inside and the ones that different on the outside, in an instant to become whole.
He is willing as soon as you are willing.

I have never been one to point fingers.  I believe that the effort expended in the pursuit of whom or what was at fault is simply wasted energy. My belief comes from two other mantras which I have accepted; 1) control is a myth, and 2) we are responsible for our own decisions. But we seem to live in a culture that seems to be always looking for an excuse. Things happen to both good people and not so good people.  Good things happen and we want to take credit and when the opposite raises its ugly face we want to blame. Blame is easier than understanding the reasons for tragedy and hardship.

In the recent Supreme Court decision on marriage our first reaction is to blame someone.  It is all those liberal judges, or it is that small group of dissidents that prevailed against my own sense of right and wrong. We end up singing the “woe is me” song or chant “our country is going to hell in a hand basket.”

We want to blame someone for our own personal lack of control of those black robed judges in Washington.  Our lack of control wants us to blame. Our frustration which comes from the lack of control is vented outward.

Yes there is a moral crisis in our country and in our world.  And the most followed religion in this world is seemingly unable to slow it down.  The counter-forces against the Church seem to be winning.  The cannon fire of the opposition seems to be better aimed and more powerful.  We are exasperated at our own personal and corporate control of the terrible slide downward.

Country singer Paul Overstreet wrote a song about a story in Genesis 26, which contains an important lesson for us. In this song Isaac is renamed Ike. Listen to the lyrics:

Ike had a blessing from the Lord up above,
Gave him a beautiful woman to love,
A place to live, some land to farm,
Two good legs and two good arms.

The Devil came sneaking around one night,
Decided he would do a little evil to Ike.
Figured he hit ole Ike where it hurts so he
Filled up all Ike’s wells with dirt

Ike went out to get his morning drink,
Got a dip full of dirt and his heart did sink
He knew it was the Devil so he said with a grin
God blessed me once, he can do it again

So when the rains don’t fall, and the crops all fail,
And the cow ain’t putting any milk in the pail,
Don’t sit around waiting for a check in the mail,
Just pick up your shovel and dig another well,
Pick up your shovel and dig another well.
Adversity is part of life.  For the Christian it just means we should realize God’s blessed and loved people will undergo uncontrollable problems. We can’t control the adversity. And it is not about fault.  It is how we react to adversity that counts. Life can be unfair.  People and circumstances can hurt you and steal from you, people can make decisions that you don’t agree with, the music may not be to your liking, but how we react is more important than all these things.  It is a personal decision to pick up your shovel and dig another well; because God blessed me once, he can do it again.

It is more than just smiling and setting your jaw to keep on keeping on.  There is an expectation, a faith  that God will be vindicated. In the end there is hope.  Because God is still in the blessing business.

I am traveling up river and ferociously placing paddle after paddle in the rough waters of a book that in Kindle form has 12,956 pages. It is a very large tome on the life and times of Paul the Apostle.  The current section is on the historical world of the Pharisees of the first century. I am struck at the similarities of these religious bastions of scripture and the current church.

Within the adherence and adoration of the Laws of Moses and all the accompanying interpretations was a deeply-seated hypocrisy.  They had, as a part of their study and training learned the well the art of straining out gnats and swallowing camels.

Each to reach the title of Pharisee had to learn how to defend almost any point of view.  And in doing so they had learned to be able to nullify by logic to nullify anything they professed to defend.  The intellectual prowess of Hillel the great Biblical Scholar and teacher was quite capable of slicing off any Mosaic regulation which had been found practically problematic or burdensome.  Pharisees and Sadducees alike had managed to set aside in their own favor.  They could construct rules by stretching a small particle of truth and proof texting to a point that Moses would have listened in mute astonishment.

As an example, there is an explicit mandate in the Law is the uncleanness of creeping things, yet the Talmud assures us that, “no one is appointed a member of the Sanhedrin who does not possess sufficient ingenuity to prove from the written Law that a creeping thing is ceremonially clean.” Dishonesty like this was at work even in the days when the Paul sat at the feet of Gamaliel. It seems to me that the great writer of so much of the New Testament would have struggled even to a point of frustration at a system at once so meaningless, so stringent, and so insincere? Could he fail to notice that they “hugely violated what they trivially obeyed?”

I too struggle at the rules and concepts of the Law in the church.  What is my responsibility to keep every little iota of every suggestion, mandate, commandment, precept, expectation, and even the phrase, “What would Jesus do?”  Did Jesus come to keep all these laws or is there something else?  It was against the temple to over throw the tables.  It was against the law to heal on the Sabbath.  How many times did Mary and Martha break the Sabbath rule by preparing and serving meals to the Disciples?  When Jesus touched a leper was He not made unclean?

Jesus was the Lamb of God; blameless, without spot or blemish.  What is the Law to the Christian?

Thanks be to God, “Therefore, there is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, because through Christ Jesus the law of the Spirit who gives life is set you free from the law of sin and death.”