"Big Healing," a sermon by the Rev. David F.K. Puckett, member of the ETSS board of trustees and rector of the Episcopal Church of the Holy Spirit, Houston, given in Christ Chapel on February 16, 2006.

Mark 1: 40-45

When I was growing up I sometimes accompanied my father when he took holy communions. I acted as his acolyte, setting out the tiny chalice and paten. Once we visited a woman who was extremely ill.
When communion was over she took my father’s hand and looked at him pleadingly. She asked, “Will I ever be healed?” He turned and said to me, “Thank you, son.” This was our prearranged signal for me to disappear. I went and waited in the car. As we drove home I asked what had happened. My father answered, “I heard her confession.” I said, “But we already said the confession.” “Well,” he said, “this was different.” I knew not to ask more.

It was years before I understood what had gone on. Something more, something deep had to be expunged, brought out into the light and then released in specific absolution. I do not know how that
affected her physical healing but I feel certain that her soul found new hope. Perhaps she had peace.

This Gospel from Mark continues that writer’s chronology of Jesus’early ministry. Jesus is again on the move. It seems His reputation is traveling faster than He can. A leper throws himself at Jesus’
feet pleading, “If you will, you can make me clean.” The leprosy leaves the man that minute, no mud, ointment or washing in a river.

And even though Jesus attempts to impress the cleansed man with a kind of Messianic warning of secrecy, this fellow can’t hear it. Instead he tells everyone he meets what has happened to him. And
Jesus, to get some rest, has to camp out. But what He has done once again is to respond to what was really terrifying to people -- the inexplicable, the strange interior spiritual and personal depths of
human existence.

Jesus immediately (to use Mark’s word) declares that it is people He has come for, people He is interested in and people He will redeem, change and love. No one before has shown such a concern -- that is why they speak about His authority. It is not a question of amazement at either His scholarship or His magic -- it’s about how real He is and the obvious care He has for us. He speaks truth about how God feels about humanity, and most importantly about individual women, men and young people. He declares that God is first about mercy and then about expectation.

A young man named Paul was faced at seventeen with the decision of whether or not to have a colostomy. He was furious, beyond angry. Why should this happen to him? He wanted to live and date and just be seventeen. This was going to ruin his life. It was inconvenient, not the right time and it was gross!

His doctor listened to this tirade, mixed at times with tears of self-pity, and then after his visit at her clinic, she asked him to meet someone. Reluctantly he followed her down the hall. She opened a door where three young men were standing, laughing, visiting -- young men between Paul’s age and twenty-two. The doctor introduced them and left him there. They all had colostomies. And two had steady girlfriends, two were finishing high school -- late, but they were finishing. One was in college. They talked about sports, cars and, of course, girls.

Two weeks later, Paul agreed to have the surgery. When the doctor asked him why he had decided to do so, Paul said, “Because those guys are healed!” The leper, even in the chains of that disease that was eating him alive, a piece at a time, cried out. Whether it was fully him or just the part of him that was so tired and weary of bearing the burden of assumed sin, no matter, for he cried out to the only
one who could really make a difference in his existence -- the only one who could save him. While still trapped he takes a brave step -- he ventures the “if” question: “If you will, you could make me clean.”

The healing was partly his responsibility -- as it is with all of us. Part of this is connected to understanding that healing does not mean returning to the way life once was. Healing means moving
towards and finally embracing what God has prepared for us. Have you ever been through a divorce? I have. It’s a horrible experience. The counselor I was seeing during that time asked me early on, “Where are you?” I said, “I’m in a dark tunnel -- no light and no way out.” Every time I went he would ask that question and I would tell him that I was in that tunnel. After a couple of months when I had given him the same answer he asked, “So... how long do you plan on staying there?” It stunned me but I knew he was right. Over time when asked again I admitted, “Well maybe I’m in a hallway -- still dark, no light.” “So,” he said, “turn one on.” And still later I admitted that there might even be a door. Then this very wise and good man said, “Yes there is a door, and it is open and there is a wrapped gift there to you from God.” “A gift? You mean like a present?” “Yes.” “What’s in it?” “What do you think is in it?” Then I knew. I answered, “The rest of my life.”

Big Healing is not just what Jesus does for us. We expect that to be the case but it is not so. In fact in our narscisistic culture we demand it -- “Make me happy -- now!” Fi|x my life -- now!” Satisfy me -- now!” God says, “No.” God says no to that because it will have no meaning should such a request, such a demand be fulfilled. That’s cheap grace that does no good except to reward bad behavior -- and, I will add, not very good prayer.

What Jesus expects is change that comes out of us in response to Him. He holds out His hand filled with possibilities, new solutions, light in the darkness and a open door. All good things come from
Him. He desires all good things for us, but deep healing -- Big Healing -- is a partnership with God. When God heals us we are not moved back 10 places to a former, and in our minds, more perfect
time, but forward and quite often forward into what we cannot see or know. But God is there and God holds the lit candle. And yet, there may still be in us a place that remains festering. Admit it. It is
there and only the balm of Christ can clean and close it. It is the story we can’t stop telling, the childhood pain or embarrassment we secretly hold on to or even a moral choice we’ve made that is in fact immoral, but is now encrusted with rationalization.

For God’s sake give it up. Jesus already knows. Like an expert specialist, the supreme physician, He diagnoses and then waits for us to gain the courage to come to be healed. It is difficult but necessary -- it is the only way.

Our lives, which are so interwoven in the life and direction of our church and this seminary, are precious to God. Even in their brokenness they are precious to God. I don’t know about you, but God has done more with my failures than with my successes. So, Jesus waits for our move.

This leper in Mark made his. “’If you will, you can make me clean.’ Moved by pity, He stretched out His and and touched him and said to him, ‘I will. Be clean.’ And immediately the leprosy left him and he was made clean.”

Big Healing!