Standing in the Tragic Gap

"A leper came to Jesus begging him and kneeling he said to him, ‘If you choose, you can make me clean.’  Moved with pity, Jesus stretched out his hand and touched him, and said to him, ‘I do choose. Be made clean.’" (Mark 1:40ff)

About seven years ago I helped my son build two decks off the back of his house. I was standing on a tall aluminum step-ladder when a leg of the ladder sunk into soft soil, and the ladder went out from underneath me. I dropped like a ton of bricks with one of the legs impaling me in the back. Stunned and writhing in pain on the ground, David came running over to help me. 

Knowing I was injured, I asked him to look at my back, so he pulled up my shirt and his reaction was a hysterical, "Oh Dad! Oh wow! Oh yuck!  Dad!!"
"What?" I shouted, having visions that my kidney was hanging out.  And he just kept repeating, "Oh, Dad! Oh yuck!"

I finally got it out of him that I had a gash in the lower left part of my back.  After I thought David was calmed down, we went into the house, and I told him he had to clean the wound.  And he started in all over again, "O Dad! I don’t know! Yuck!" Finally I said, "David, you can do this! You have to do this!"

He went and found some gauze and hydrogen peroxide. By this time his face was distinctly ashen-colored, and I thought for a moment I was going to lose him to a faint.  Anyway, he soaked the gauze in the hydrogen peroxide, turned his head to the side, and just peeking out of the corner of his eye, he reached toward the wound, at arm’s length, and dabbed it with the gauze.  Then, using the same technique, from arms length, he managed to apply some of that super glue wound sealant stuff.

Because the sight of blood takes my son into the twilight zone, he had trouble reaching through the barrier of his own anxiety to get to my wound. For David, it was a bold act of reaching through a forbidden barrier.

In our gospel for today Jesus also reached through a far more serious forbidden barrier, and the reverberations of his reach are staggering and are even felt by us in this place today. To appreciate this story and the incredible power of it, we need to understand a few things about leprosy from a biblical perspective.  Leprosy was a most dreaded disease, not only for the physical suffering that it inflicted, but also for the social, emotional and spiritual suffering it imposed upon its victims. 

When the priest declared a person with leprosy ritually unclean, that person, for all practical purposes, was banished from the community.  The religious law, belief and practice required the leper to keep sufficient distance between self and others so as to not ritually contaminate them, for if a leper got too close or was so much as touched by another, the state of ritual un-cleanliness would be transferred to the other.  So, the leper was required to announce his presence in the prescribed self-deprecating manner by shouting “unclean” as he traversed the streets of the community.  Leprosy meant social and spiritual isolation, not to mention humiliation.  Lepers were religious outcasts.

Lepers and leprosy were nothing to mess with and everybody knew it – apparently everybody except Jesus that is!   In my mind, the most amazing thing in this story is that Jesus reached through a rigid and forbidden religious and social barrier, and he did the unthinkable.  He touched the leper!     

The word Jesus used to heal the man was a very special word - καθαρίσθητι, which means “be made clean.”   It’s a highly significant word, for it is the same word the priest would have used to reverse the state of the man’s un-cleanliness.  You see, only the priests had the authority to remove the stigma of ritual un-cleanliness, and only if the leprosy was cured.   The point is Jesus pre-empted the priest, and not only did Jesus declare the man clean, but he did it by reaching through a dehumanizing boundary and touching the man, something the priest would have never done in a thousand years.  And by touching him he risked making himself ritually unclean.   Jesus had the audacity to do that which was strictly reserved for the religious hierarchy, and he did it in a most scandalous way. 

The astounding thing in this story was not that the man was physically healed, but that Jesus, outside of the authority of the priesthood made the man clean, and in so doing restored the man’s dignity, restored the man to his community and restored the man’s self-respect.

What I perceive this story is ultimately about is that the early disciples and followers of Jesus experienced in Jesus someone who was about the business of reaching through formidable, dehumanizing boundaries - especially the ones that religion had imposed.  The ultimate sickness in this story was not the leprosy with which the man was stricken, but a religious system that profoundly oppressed and relegated the man, for all practical purposes, to a status less than human.    

Mark tells us that Jesus was "moved with compassion."  In other words, for Jesus and for his early followers compassion trumped everything.  Compassion trumped tradition.  Compassion trumped law.  Compassion trumped social customs.  Compassion trumped fear. Compassion trumped the authority of the priesthood.  Compassion trumped doctrine. 

You have heard me mentioned that my family of origin was dysfunctional and often abusive.  I lived every day of childhood with fear and anxiety as my constant companions.  I kept it all bottled up as a secret, because I also lived with a profound sense of shame.  I did try to share my pain and my situation once with my sixth grade Sunday school teacher.  I believe I was just looking for some understanding, some compassion, some kind of support, a listening ear for I was confused and desperate, so I reached out – one time – the last time – for a very long time.  My Sunday school teacher's response to me was that I must have done something bad or those things wouldn't be happening to me.  On that day something died in my 11-year-old-soul, and I lived for decades with a profound sense of unworthiness - unworthiness exacerbated by a figure of authority I trusted who trumped compassion with bad doctrine.  

Parker Palmer, Quaker scholar, author, educator, and activist writing in the journal Weavings, describes the life of discipleship as "standing in the tragic gap."  By "tragic gap" he means the gap between what is and what could and should be; the gap between the reality of a given situation and an alternative reality we know to be possible because we have experienced it. 

Jesus stood in the "tragic gap" between a religion that had cast a man into a sub-human exile on the one hand, and on the other hand, the dignity of total personhood.  Jesus stood in that “tragic gap” at great personal cost and risk.  He not only risked ritual un-cleanliness for himself, but he risked the wrath of the religious hierarchy who had been given the charge of preserving the very institution that mediated such dehumanizing practices.  He stood in that “tragic gap” his entire ministry, and it finally cost him his life – by death on a cross.

Like him, Jesus’ disciples and early followers were willing to stand in the “tragic gap” between the reality of the world the way it was - and the vision of what the world could be according to the kingdom of God that they experienced in the person of Jesus. 

I believe that as followers of Jesus we are called to contribute to the healing of the world's wounds, but all too often those using the name of Jesus and the name of God contribute too much to the next round of the world's wounding - not the world's healing.    Jesus took on the wounds of the world by standing in the “tragic gap” - with the cross being the final and ultimate expression of the cost.

We could say that, for Jesus, the result of standing in the “tragic gap”  was a broken heart.  “My God, my God why have you forsaken me,” Mark tells us he cried from the cross.  That’s the cry of a broken heart.  But take note that his heart did not break in the usual way.   Parker Palmer talks about two kinds of broken hearts. The kind we are most familiar with is the heart that breaks into a thousand sharp-edged fragments that can easily become shrapnel aimed in retaliation at the source of our pain.  Palmer says, "Everyday untold numbers of people try without success to 'pick up the (sharp, jagged) pieces (of their broken hearts),' some of them taking grim satisfaction in the way their heart's explosion can injure their enemies.  Here the broken heart is an unresolved wound that we carry... perhaps for a long time... sometimes trying to resolve it by inflicting a similar wound on others."  

But that is not the way Jesus' heart broke as he lived and died in the “tragic gap.”  Jesus' heart did not explode into shrapnel that inflicted pain upon others.   Jesus’ heart broke in a radically different expression.  Jesus' heart broke-open into largeness of life – his heart broke-open into a greater capacity to carry his own and the world's pain in his soul.  One gospel says that while hanging on the tragic gap of the cross he cried, “Father, forgive them.”  Jesus' broken heart became a source and resource of greater, growing, increasing, dynamic, living compassion and grace for those who chose to follow him – a life-giving heart in the face of a death-dealing world; a love-giving heart in the face crazy hated. 

That's what the early followers of Jesus experienced in him that was so intoxicating to them - and that's the profound meaning they experienced in his death on the cross; that God's heart always breaks-open;, not into fragments that become shrapnel, but breaks-open and out flows astounding love and compassion.  That's why they were so compelled to follow him.  They saw in the Jesus that the heart of God always breaks-open – and they desired for that same kind of heart to beat in their souls.

Oh, how the world needs courageous people to stand in the “tragic gaps” of the human race with hearts that break-open.  I think it is the greatest hope for so many of the conflicts of this earth: Israeli-Palestinian; Christian-Muslim; left-right; black-white; rich-poor; those with little-those with more; those with a Rolls-Royce- those with no voice.

You and I, in a few minutes, will get out of our seats and move our feet and leave this place and go back into the world.  If you name yourself a follower and disciple of Jesus, then I believe with that call comes the charge to be people who are willing to stand in the “tragic gaps” of this world – the gaps between the way the world tragically is - and the way the world could and should be according to the vision of the Kingdom of God embodied in the life of Jesus – the Jesus we follow and know.

It’s almost a guarantee that in the process our hearts will get broken by a world that is often harsh, cruel and indifferent, but because of Jesus and his heart and healing presence among us, our hearts need not break into shrapnel that injures and inflicts more pain, but can break-open in greater empathy, increasing compassion, boundless grace and an astounding vision of a more just and fair world.