Workers for Shalom

Scripture: 2 Chronicles 26: 16-21 and Luke 5: 10b – 16

Sermon: Workers for Shalom

Topics: shalom, Uzziah, leprosy, redemption

Preached: October 1, 2006

Rev. Mike Abma

2 Chronicles 26: 16-21

But when he had become strong he grew proud, to his destruction. For he was false to the Lord his God, and entered the temple of the Lord to make offering on the altar of incense. ¹⁷But the priest Azariah went in after him, with eighty priests of the Lord who were men of valour; ¹⁸they withstood King Uzziah, and said to him, ‘It is not for you, Uzziah, to make offering to the Lord, but for the priests the descendants of Aaron, who are consecrated to make offering. Go out of the sanctuary; for you have done wrong, and it will bring you no honour from the Lord God.’ ¹⁹Then Uzziah was angry. Now he had a censer in his hand to make offering, and when he became angry with the priests a leprous disease broke out on his forehead, in the presence of the priests in the house of the Lord, by the altar of incense. ²⁰When the chief priest Azariah, and all the priests, looked at him, he was leprous in his forehead. They hurried him out, and he himself hurried to get out, because the Lord had struck him. ²¹King Uzziah was leprous to the day of his death, and being leprous lived in a separate house, for he was excluded from the house of the Lord. His son Jotham was in charge of the palace of the king, governing the people of the land.

This is the Word of the Lord

Thanks be to God

INTRODUCTION

I began working on this sermon knowing very little about Uzziah, the 9^th king of Judah.

What I learned about him was rather impressive.

The kingdom of Judah that he inherited was in shambles.

Jerusalem had just been invaded. The walls had been broken. The temple had been pillaged. And Uzziah was only 16 when he began to reign.

He was the king of Judah for the next 52 years.

That is an amazingly long time. And Uzziah accomplished an incredible amount in that time. He rebuilt Jerusalem. He reorganized the army. He fortified the trade routes. He became something of a military guru. Not since the days of Solomon did a king of Judah have so much wealth and power.

Then Uzziah went too far.

The Jewish world was divided between the holy, the clean, and the unclean.

Only priests were allowed inside the holy section of the temple.

But Uzziah entered into that restricted area and began burning incense.

Not only did he enter this part of the temple, and perform an act reserved for the priests, but he also became angry when the priests reprimanded him.

Immediately Uzziah developed leprosy on his forehead – the most visible part of his body. The priests saw it and somehow, Uzziah sensed he had it too.

Leprosy rendered a person unclean.

To be unclean in the holy temple was a dangerous thing.

That is why the priests hurried Uzziah out.

That is why even Uzziah himself was eager to leave.

From that day forward this powerful king lived in isolation and seclusion until the day he died.

That was the power of leprosy.

It had the power to cut a powerful king from his kingdom in a moment.

What exactly was leprosy?

We really do not know for sure. The word for “leprosy” in the Old Testament describes not only certain symptoms on a person’s skin, but also the discoloration of clothes and houses. That is why most scholars believe “leprosy” was a catch-all category for many different conditions.

We may not be sure what leprosy was, but we are more certain of what happened if a priest judged that you had leprosy. You were immediately declared “unclean.” You were immediately isolated from everyone else so that your uncleanness would not infect others.

Leprosy didn’t only bring the label of being “unclean,” it also often brought the suspicion of being punished by God.

If you remember, Miriam was afflicted with leprosy when she rebelled against Moses.

Gehazi was afflicted with leprosy when he lied to Elisha the prophet;

And here in our text Uzziah was afflicted with leprosy when he presumed he could do the task of the priests.

Leprosy, then evoked two main feeling in people – fear and judgment.

Fear that they too would become infected.

And judgment that the leper must have sinned in some way.

JESUS and LEPROSY

Our New Testament text has Jesus confronted by a leper.

Not just a leper, but a person covered in leprosy.

Here was a person whose uncleanness would normally evoke fear and revulsion.

How does Jesus respond?

After writing his book The Jesus I Never Knew, Philip Yancey made a list of the top surprises or discoveries he made about Jesus.

One of the top discoveries was that Jesus was in fact a Jew: that fact is found at the end of our text. When the leper is healed, what does Jesus ask him to do? He says, “Go to the priest.” Why? Because it was only a priest who could give him a clean bill of health so he could rejoin society.

But the second discovery Yancey made about Jesus is that he often did not act like a Jew. Normally, if a leper approached a Jewish person, they would run away.

In fact, lepers were obligated to shout, “Unclean, Unclean” wherever they went so that the “clean” population could keep their distance.

Jesus does a very un-Jewish thing.

He does not turn away in revulsion.

He does not run away in fear.

When this leper approaches, kneels before him, and asks to be healed,

Jesus reaches out and touches him. Here is a detail included in Matthew, Mark and Luke.

It is such a seemingly small detail in the story, but reaching out and touching this leper makes all the difference.

The crowd must have gasped in horror.

The disciples must have flinched in fear.

But Jesus shows in this gesture why he came into the world.

His power is greater than any affliction.

His holiness is stronger than any uncleanness.

Instead of Jesus becoming infected with the leper’s uncleanness,

The leper is infected with Jesus’ holiness.

Here is a sign of the kingdom Jesus brings,

A kingdom

In which the blind receive sight

The lame walk

The deaf hear,

those with leprosy are cured

and the dead are raised.

SHALOM MAKERS

This challenge is that this kingdom is planted in a world that is still quick to be afraid of others and quick to judge.

The author John Tayman recently wrote a book called The Colony. It is about a leper colony that lasted for 140 years on an isolated Hawaiian island. In the 1860’s, people became so panicked about any type of epidemic that it became a crime to have leprosy in the Hawaiian islands. If you were suspected of having leprosy you were arrested, imprisoned, given a quick examination by a doctor and if he thought you had leprosy, you were exiled to a small isolated peninsula of the Hawaiian island of Molokai. You were simply dropped off and left to die. In fact, when you were dropped off, they considered you dead.

Over the years hundreds, then thousands, of people were left to die on this small corner of land. Some of the people who were exiled had what we know as leprosy, or more technically, Hansen’s disease. But many were misdiagnosed and exiled for no reason whatsoever. In its early years, people described the leper colony on Molokai as the most cursed place on the planet. One writer called it the Pit of Hell.

Incredibly, there was one man who decided to go to this leper colony voluntarily. He was Father Damien, a Roman Catholic priest from Belgium. When Father Damian arrived at this isolated leper colony, he was given the Handshake Test. This was a test given to all new arrivals. If, when you arrived, you immediately shied away and refused to touch anyone else, then you were shunned. But if you were willing to actually shake people’s hands, often hands without all their fingers, then you were welcomed. When Father Damien arrived, he not only shook people’s hands, but he embraced them – he literally gave them all a big bear hug. Under Father Damien’s guidance, this little leper colony became a community that cared for each person and loved each person.

That is ideally what living the compassion of Christ is all about. It is allowing the love of Christ to overcome any barrier, any condition that keeps people trapped in shame and denied the dignity of being a creature of God. This is a lesson many of the most respected leaders in the church had to learn:

* When St. Francis of Assissi wrote about what really changed him, he wrote that at first the sight of lepers nauseated him. Then, then, by the grace of God, he was able to enter a leper colony, he was able to see beyond the leprosy to these children of God.

* When Philip Yancey was trying to make sense of all the hurt in the world, he visited an orthopedic surgeon named Dr. Paul Brand. Dr. Brand and his wife Margaret, ran a hospital for lepers in India. For Yancey, Dr. Brand was something of a father figure but also a model Christian. Dr. Brand’s loving care for each leprosy patient convinced Yancey that Christianity didn’t only work in theory – it also worked in practice.

It really is possible to serve others sacrificially, to remain humble, and to find joy and contentment in life.

* Brand, himself, was inspired by Mother Teresa, who also worked with lepers in India. Brand remembers Mother Teresa saying to him, “Yes, we have treatments for people with diseases like leprosy. But these treatments do not address the main problem – the disease of being unwanted.”

* Addressing the disease of being unwanted is also what drove another compassionate Roman Catholic priest by the name of Henri Nouwen. Nouwen had to face his own fears in welcoming the most despised in this world. Then he spent his life trying to help us all not look at other people as first of all ungodly or immoral, but first of all as people dying for love. He was a person who spent his life reminding us that brokenness is not simply something we notice on the outside, but brokenness is something we all carry around on the inside. The church is a community of broken people, lepers if you will, who are only made whole and made clean through the love of Christ.

* I will admit to you that when I started as a pastor, I had to face many of my own fears. One fear was visiting people in the hospital. Why was I afraid of that? Maybe it was because I spent a fair bit of time in a hospital as a very young child with pneumonia; maybe it is because my father spent many months in a hospital with a back injury. Whatever the reason, it was hard for me to go and visit broken and battered bodies with tubes and monitors and a thousand and one other devises hooked up to them. But the truth is, some of the most important work I have done has been in those very hospital rooms, not turning away, but turning toward the pain.

CONCLUSION

Do you know what happened to that Molokai leper colony? Well, the harsh isolation laws for lepers were not repealed until 1969. The leper colony became a National Historic Park in 1976. Do you know there are still 27 residents – people who were sent to the colony as children because they were thought to have leprosy — who remain living in little cottages. The real irony is that there is now a luxury resort being planned on that very site.

100 years ago, this spit of land was called the most cursed place on the planet.

Now it is being advertised as a little piece of paradise on earth.

Isn’t that simply amazing.

From death to life;

From hell to paradise.

That is the work of the kingdom of Jesus Christ.

There are so many more “most cursed places on the planet” to redeem and restore.

I think of all the prisons in this country. Human warehouses into which people are cast and forgotten. Our natural reaction is fear and revulsion, but by God’s grace, we can begin to see these people as thirsty for God’s love.

I think of all the facilities built for enemy combatants – Islamic jihadists and terrorists we are told – people we are told to fear and be revolted by. But again, by God’s grace, is it possible to begin to see these people as thirsty for God’s love?

Wherever people are left forgotten, unwanted, discarded by the world,

That is where we can begin the work of the kingdom of Christ

by embracing the retched,

and touching the terrorist,

and working for shalom

one person at a time.