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I remember some years ago Bishop Fulton had a prime time
TV show opposite Milton Berle every Wednesday night. One
night he told about his visit to an African leper colony. He had
brought along a supply of little silver crucifixes so he would have
something special to give to each of the 500 lepers in the camp.
The first leper he met had only the stumps of his left arm. And his
right arm and hand were covered with ugly, open sores. Sheen
took one of the little crucifixes, held it a few inches above the
leper’s hand, and then let it drop into his palm.
In a flash, he was struck by what he’d done. “All at once”,
he said, “I realized there were 501 lepers in the camp, and the most
leprous of them all was myself. I had given a crucifix—the
symbol of God’s absolute love for all of us—but then I had pulled
back and closed my eyes to what the symbol implied for me. So I
looked again very hard at that little crucifix, and I knew what I had
to do. I pressed by hand to the leper’s hand with the symbol of love between us,                and then I proceeded to do that for all of the remaining 499 lepers”! None of us, thank God, are lepers. But there’s not one of us,
if we are honest, whose heart hasn’t been wounded or even broken
many times, not one of us who doesn’t need healing. So it is to all
of us that Jesus is speaking by his actions in Sunday’s gospel. In
stretching out his hand, touching that leper and healing him, Jesus
is telling us—once again—that God does love us all no matter how
damaged or broken we are. He’s telling us that no matter how bad
we have been, our God will always be there for us, always be
waiting for us to open our hearts so God can heal us.
That’s the first half of Jesus’ message, but there’s more. In
addition to what God wants to do for us, there’s the matter of what
God wants us to do for one another. And it turns out to be exactly
the same thing; we are to become healers too, healers of one
another. That sounds wonderful, but how do ordinary, wounded
people like us become healers? Very simply by remembering how our own wounds feel and remembering what we need when we are broken. What we would like, of course, is a quick fix for our
wounds, but what we need is a friend who will reach out just as
Jesus did, take us by the hand, when our hand isn’t looking so
good, and walk through the darkness with us and not let go of us
halfway! If that is what we need as we try to walk through our hurts
and losses, it is also exactly what our brothers and sisters need.
And it is something each of us can give.
Here is a real life example of what I am talking about.
Some years ago, an old man collapsed on a busy street corner
in downtown Brooklyn. Within minutes an ambulance rushed him
to Kings County Hospital. There he kept calling his son.
A nurse found a dog-eared letter in the man’s wallet. From it
she learned that his son was a marine stationed in North Carolina.
That night an anxious marine showed up at the hospital.
Immediately, the nurse took him to the old man’s bedside.
The man was heavily sedated. And so the nurse had to tell him several times, “Your son is here! Your son is here!” Finally, the old man opened his eyes. He could barely make
out his son, but he recognized his marine uniform. At that point,
the son took his father’s hand and held it lovingly.
For the rest of that night, the marine sat at the man’s bedside.
Occasionally, he patted the man’s hand and spoke to him tenderly.
Several times the nurse urged the marine to take a break and
get something to eat or drink. But he refused. Toward dawn, the old man died.
When the nurse extended her sympathy to the young man, the
marine said, “Who was that man?”
“Wasn’t he your father?” the nurse asked.
“No, he wasn’t”, said the marine. “I never saw him before in
my life”.
“Why didn’t you say something?” said the nurse.
“I would have”, said the marine, “but I could see that he was
too sick to realize I wasn’t his son. I could also see that he was
slipping fast and needed a son. So, I decided to become that son”. Ordinary—wounded people can do things like this marine
did for the old man. Extend a hand of friendship and help someone
walk through the darkness to a new day.
Jesus did it—this marine did—we are asked to do the same.
Lord Help Us!