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February 16, 2003 Sixth Sunday of the Year
† A leper came to Jesus and kneeling down begged him and said, "If you wish, you can make me clean."
Moved with pity, Jesus stretched out his hand, touched him and said to him, "I do will it. Be made clean."
-Mark 1:40-45
'A world larger than your heart'
In
John Drinkwater's play Abraham Lincoln, this exchange takes place between President Lincoln and a Northern woman, and anti-Confederate zealot.
Lincoln tells her about the latest victory by Northern forces-- the Confederate army lost 2700 men, while Union forces lost 800. The woman is ecstatic. "How splendid, Mr. President!"
Lincoln is stunned at her reaction. "But, madam, 3500 human lives lost…"
"Oh, you must not talk like that Mr. President. There were only 800 that mattered."
Lincoln's shoulders drop as he says slowly and emotionally: "Madam, the world is larger than your heart."
CONNECTION: Our attitudes and perceptions, our view of the world often reduces others to "lepers" -- those we fear, those who don't "fit" our image of sophistication and culture, those whose religion or race or identity or beliefs seem to threaten our own. We exile these lepers to the margins of society outside our gates; we reduce these lepers to simple labels and stereotypes; we reject these lepers as too "unclean" to be part of our lives and our world. The Christ who heals lepers comes to perform a much greater miracle--to heal us of our debilitating sense of self that fails to realize the sacredness and dignity of those we demean as "lepers" at our own gates.
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