Cleanliness is Next to Godliness
a sermon based on Mark 1:40-45
by Rev. Randy L. Quinn

Periodically – though not for some time now – we get a note from school telling us a student was found with head lice. Every time we get the note, Ronda and I cringe.

We cringe because of our personal experiences with head lice.

Have any of you ever been infected with lice?

Has anyone in your household had them?

Two different times we’ve received foster children into our home and then learned that they had head lice.

Just thinking about it makes my head itch.

But what struck me about it most was the social stigma associated with lice. It is assumed that people who are infected with lice don’t have good hygiene. It’s assumed that these people are poor and live in dirty homes. It’s assumed that it’s their own fault that they are infected, as if they invited the lice to come and live on their heads.

And if we don’t buy into those assumptions, we do hear that head lice can jump from head to head. So we stand away from someone infected with them – or someone we suspect is infected.

I know how humiliating it felt as a foster parent to watch people pull their children back when we came close. I know how hurt I was when I realized that people were afraid to let their children into the church nursery after our foster children had been there – even though we had treated and removed all the head lice on our children and in our home.

One woman wouldn’t let our children play at her house.

If there are people in our society that we consider unclean, it’s people with head lice. And because we let those people live in our home, we were seen as unclean, too.

That may be why I hear this story and have compassion for the leper. I know what it feels like to be seen as an unclean outcast.

The Biblical word for leprosy includes several types of skin disease, including what we call leprosy today. But it also included psoriasis and acne. It also included birthmarks that caused the skin to have a different color.

Because the skin wasn’t pure, the people were thought to be impure and unclean. Because the outside was blemished, it was assumed that the “inside” was blemished too. Sin was seen as the root cause of all forms of leprosy.

This leper apparently didn’t buy the commonly accepted notions about leprosy. He was tired of being excluded from the community. So he approaches Jesus.

Read from Bible:

“If you choose, you can make me clean,” he says to Jesus. “Filled with compassion, Jesus reached out his hand and touched the man . . .” (Mk 1:40-41)

A few years ago I was invited to preview a series of television ads that had been proposed to address the racism of American society. As far as I know, the ads were never run. But one of them was quite profound.

The camera showed the counter at a store as two or three customers were paying for their groceries. No faces were seen, just the counter where food and money were being handled. All you saw of the people were their forearms and hands.

The first set of hands showed the customer putting money into the clerk’s hands and the clerk returning change by putting it back into the customer’s hands. The scene was repeated. In the meantime, there was some ‘chit chat’ type of dialog going on between the customers and the clerk.

A third customer comes and there is near silence as the clerk states the amount and waits. The clerk’s hands are not visible, so the customer puts money on the counter. The change is put on the counter. This customer was the first pair of hands that wasn’t white. They were the hands of a black woman.

Racism is real, but subtle was the message.

The clerk, who touched everyone else, apparently didn’t want to touch the hands of this customer because she had a different color of skin.

But touch is an important part of our society. Touch is an important part of being human. Holding hands is not just an important part of romance; studies have shown that human contact is an essential ingredient of healthy living. Touching improves our health. That’s why hugging is beneficial.

One study I read about years ago said we need twelve hugs a day to maintain our health! (I’ve always wanted to see the actual tests that were used to make that claim because twelve hugs a day seems like an awful lot – but I’ve never doubted that touch is important.)

For a while I met Julie every week. Julie was in jail at the time. And I was the only person she touched. We began our visits with a hug. We held hands when we prayed. And we ended with a hug.

The first time I met with her, I was almost embarrassed by the way she hugged me. But as I was telling Ronda about it later, I realized she hadn’t had any physical contact with anyone for over a month at that point. “In jail,” Julie told me, “the only time you touch someone is when you get into a fight and push her or punch her.”

Visits in that particular jail were done through a windowpane. And it was almost as painful to see and not touch, as it was to not see someone. As a pastor I was allowed inside the jail where physical contact was possible.

And if I didn’t know it before, Julie taught me that touching is important.

Jesus touched the leper. He left the safety of his ‘clean’ world and entered the world of the leper with the simple act of touching him.

I don’t know if he touched his arm or his hand or his shoulder or his head. I know he touched him. And I know that in that simple act the line that separated the leper from Jesus disappeared.

When Elisha heals Naaman, there is no physical contact made until after Naaman is healed of his leprosy (2 Kgs 5:1-14).

In both stories a leper is healed. The difference is that Jesus takes a risk and crosses the line between clean and unclean. Elisha never crosses that line to join the leper. In fact, when you read that story more closely, you realize he never even sees the leper.

I don’t know how many of you remember the movie “Twelve O’clock High,” starring Gregory Peck. It’s a movie about a World War II Army Air Corps bombing squadron. The movie is included in the curriculum of the Navy’s leadership training program and I have become quite familiar with the movie.

In the movie, a General, played by Gregory Peck, is assigned as commander of a squadron after a series of errors and mistakes are made. One of the first things the General does after assuming command of the squadron is to reassign the Air Exec to serve as a plane captain. He makes it clear that this is because he had failed to do his job as the Air Exec.

But the General also tells him that every person who fails to do his job and anyone who doesn’t measure up to standards will be assigned to his plane crew. Then he tells him to paint a new name on his plane. It will be called “Leper Colony.”

And sure enough. After the next sortie, the General reassigns the navigator of a plane that got lost and a bomber who couldn’t get the doors open to the “Leper Colony.”

But two things about the “Leper Colony” strike me as significant in the movie.

The first is the fact that when the General flies with the squadron, he flies as a passenger in the “Leper Colony.” While he is making it clear that this is not the plane people wanted to fly with, he is willing to take that risk himself. He trusts these people, even if they don’t trust themselves.

The second thing is that when the General’s health keeps him from performing, he appoints the Leper Colony’s plane captain as the acting commander. Working among the derelicts of the squadron had honed this man’s leadership skills in a way none of the others had done. His life had depended upon it.

When Jesus heals the leper he invites us to ask ourselves two questions. First, how are we like a leper? When do we find ourselves left out and cast out?

In those cases, Jesus says, “I am with you. You are not alone.” Jesus crosses the line and joins us even when we are unclean.

The second question Jesus raises is when was the last time you crossed the line and joined someone who was unclean? When was the last time you touched a person that needed to be touched? Who was the last person you saw who was an outcast and how did you respond?

Jesus invites us to follow his lead.

Jesus invites us to cross the line and touch the outcast.

Ever since I was little, I’ve heard the phrase, “Cleanliness is next to Godliness.” In my reading a few years ago I came upon what I thought was the source of that saying but I couldn’t find it this week – much to my dismay. But I do know that cleanliness is not the same as Godliness.

There were many, many people in Jesus’ day who were clean. They complied with all the laws and went to great lengths to prove they were in the right.

But the leper who was healed was made clean. God makes him clean. And in that act, he approaches Godliness. People can see that clean living doesn’t produce Godliness; on the contrary, Godliness produces clean living.

And when you are clean in that sense, you don’t need to tell anyone about it. Others can see it. The leper doesn’t need to tell anyone. They will know he has been made clean. They will know he has been made whole.

Jesus tells him to follow the law and make the public witness of his cleanliness in the temple, but his enthusiasm overcomes him and he tells the world.

I am clean. God has made me whole.

I am clean. God has made me whole.

And so are you. Thanks be to God.

Amen.