Epiphany VI, Year B
2 Kings 5:1-14
1 Corinthians, 9:24-27
Mark, 1:40-45
+ In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
WHAT are we to do with Wall Street? A lot of folks have argued that we need to limit the compensation of financial executives whose companies are on the public dole. The stimulus package may have a provision to cap executive pay in institutions getting billions of Federal dough. Wall Street, however, wants lax rules for its Welfare Kings – for the good of the country, of course. Wall Street has had the chutzpah, the testosterone rush, to argue that its executives must be paid more than half a million dollars a year otherwise – get this! – there will be a brain drain. It’s a PR strategy that tells us they’re still into taking big risks. What do you think? Who’d be head-hunting the Wall Street geniuses? Detroit?
One of the more intriguing theories of what Wall Street needs came in a column by Nicholas Kristof in last Sunday’s paper.1 He may have identified a contributing factor to our financial upheaval. He suggested that the thing banks need as much as money is women.
While hobnobbing in Davos with the financial elite, a frequent theme he heard from “the dead white men who parade annually around Davos” was that “the optimal bank would have been Lehman Brothers and Sisters.” Almost all of the players in the financial ‘industry’ are men. Kristof cracks that “senior staff meetings resemble a urologist’s waiting room.”
Possibly the homogeneity of the money people weakened our financial system. A recent British study found that by measuring a trader’s testosterone level in the morning his profitability for the day could be predicted. “Higher testosterone meant more risk-taking and, usually, more money.” That often works in good times, and over the short-run, but unchecked it leads to greater and greater risk and likely reduces the trader’s ability to make rational decisions. It’s hardly a new idea that testosterone often leads to irrational behavior, and those of us who have been victims of it will groan and wince with embarrassment all our lives. I suppose we could call the experience a brain drain.
It’s also not a new idea that men surrounded by their other men often behave less rationally and take bigger risks. Kristof points out, “A greater gender balance could reduce some of these unhelpful consequences of male herding.” More women on Wall Street might have helped to reign in some of the risky behavior. Studies suggest that women are less susceptible to male peer pressure to make big bets. Women may be more risk averse. It looks like Wall Street, it looks like all of us, would’ve benefitted from more risk aversion.
More and more research suggests that diverse groups make better decisions and are better at problem solving. Research suggests that groups, communities, become stronger, more competent at achieving their purpose, if they can welcome and integrate people different from themselves – people not only of both sexes and different races, but also people of different views, experiences, economic means, interests, intellectual abilities.
The Jewish Law required people with skin diseases – what we imprecisely call ‘leprosy’ – to live outside of the community. They were separated from their families, friends, communal life. They couldn’t worship, farm, or conduct any business. They lived on the fringe. They begged for a meager subsistence. When they came near a populated area, they’d have to cry out ‘unclean’ to warn people that a leper was nearby. People couldn’t come too close to lepers without making themselves ritually impure.
In today’s gospel, Jesus breaks this barrier and allows the leper to draw close to him. Jesus even touches the leper. Jesus risks becoming a leper himself. Jesus made himself vulnerable, identified with the sick, the outcast, the suffering, the unwanted. Jesus healed the leper of his skin disease, but more profoundly than restoring this man’s physical health is his restoration to the community, the healing of relationships, the re-integration of this lost man to the community. By including him, the community becomes richer, more diverse, stronger, healthier. The miracle here is not only the healing and wholeness of the leper, but of the healing and wholeness of the community.
Jesus had compassion for the leper, probably compassion not because of the man’s disease, which likely was not terribly serious, not life-threatening, but compassion because the leper was ostracized, rejected, isolated. Jesus was a subversive. He challenged the conventional and established norms of his community. He objected to the demeaning, dehumanizing custom of his community.
We don’t know from the gospel whether the healing changed the heart of the community. What would have been more miraculous than a man being cured of leprosy would be a community changing its heart, becoming more open, more inclusive, more compassionate. Did the healing of the leper make the community less fearful, less anxious of differences, less exclusive?
This is a challenge to Christians today. Do we, the body of Christ, reach out to touch the unattractive, the unpleasant, the isolated, the ostracized? Do we welcome those not like us? Do we offer a place for everyone to belong? Do we pray that the story of the leper will change our hearts?
I don’t think that Jesus expected to accomplish this bigger miracle. He told the leper, “See that you say nothing to any one.” He doesn’t want the community to know how it happened. That’s because Jesus wants to be known as more than a miracle man, more than a wonder-worker, more than a thaumaturge. Jesus wants healing and wholeness, compassion for the suffering and excluded, but he doesn’t want to be a star, a spectacle, a celebrity genie.
The man who had been a leper ignores Jesus’ direction and begins telling people about his healing. The community, people like you and me, begins to pursue Jesus, but they don’t really get the gospel, they really don’t seek faith in God, they really don’t want a change of heart. Indeed, they become a hindrance to Jesus’ ministry. They want to use God. They want God to make them feel special, significant, by doing something extraordinary for them. Of course, each of them is special, significant, precious to God, but he doesn’t show that by doing tricks for us, by doing what we want.
Years ago The New York Times published a story on narcissism, and the reporter quoted James Masterson, a noted Cornell University psychiatrist. On account of the article, Masterson got a dozen people calling him for therapy.
Each of the dozen came for an evaluation. Each indeed exhibited the very symptoms that Masterson had noted in the newspaper article. All wanted to continue therapy, but Masterson did not have time to see them. He referred them to associates. None [of the twelve] returned for treatment. ... [They really weren’t interested in healing.] They wanted to use Masterson... Because of Masterson’s reputation, being in therapy with him would greatly reinforce their image of themselves, while being in therapy with someone else would not [make them feel special and significant].2
This dozen expresses something of the human condition. This dozen would fit in with the crowd pursuing Jesus. The crowd wants Jesus, but on its own terms. They don’t want the healing he offers, instead they want their own prescription filled. They want Jesus to make them feel special, to eliminate their burdens, to relieve their suffering and misery. But think of Jesus and his life. The way of God is to come in the ordinary and anonymous; the way of God is to identify with those held in low esteem, the outcast, the overlooked; the way of God is to endure suffering, misery, hardship, rejection.
Jesus challenges the expectations and assumptions of the community. He wants people to change their values, attitudes, behavior. That is what brings healing and wholeness. Health, wholeness, well-being involve so much more than our physical bodies, but have to do with our inner selves, our relationships with God, with other people, with ourselves.
In the last year or two, the mood of the country has grown much more anxious and troubled. We have daunting, but not insurmountable, problems. For many, it seems as if President Obama is the solution. The Obama-mania has been astonishing. In my lifetime, I’ve seen few, if any, public figures who have been the object of so much adoration and expectation: restore the economy; protect us from terrorists; end a long, devastating war; reform education; fix health care; make us green; wean us from our addiction to oil; give us energy independence; stop the polar ice caps from melting; etc., etc.
We’re worried, we’re feeling threatened, and we want a national savior, but it’s wishful thinking, unhealthy fantasizing. This isn’t work for a single person. The way forward is not so much for him to make changes, but rather it’s you and I who need to change, to develop new ways of doing things, new expectations, new attitudes. Are we going to assume responsibility for our community or look to the stars?
It’s the same thing that’s happening in today’s gospel. Will the people allow Jesus to be more than an genie? Will they let his good news change their hearts? Will they assume responsibility for the health of their community? That would require them to question and to change some of their customs, customs reinforced by religious belief. Jesus came and challenged their interpretation of the Law. Jesus disappointed them because he didn’t live up to their expectations for the Messiah, he didn’t fill their prescription, and so eventually the crowd turned on him.
Jesus wants disciples, not users. He wants us to be open to learning and new things, instead of insisting on our own way. He wants us to assume responsibility for his ministry and to minister to others. He wants our hearts to change, and they can, they have. That’s the biggest miracle he offers, the most thorough healing.
+ In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
1 Nicholas Kristof, ‘Mistresses of the Universe,’ The New York Times, February 8, 2009.
2 Peter L. Steinke, Congregational Leadership in Anxious Times, The Alban Institute (2006), pp. 169-170
©2009 Lane John Davenport
