Year B, Lectionary 77
We must imitate both the man with leprosy and Jesus. The man with his humility and faith in bringing his problem to God and Jesus in hearing the man, touching him, and helping him be included back into the community. We are called to be inclusive, breaking down barriers, by being compassionate to others' struggles and working to have everyone enter into communion with God.
Hate feeling lost on Sundays at church? Searching for a better explanation of the Bible than what you hear from your pastor's sermon? Check out the following collection of audio, video, and text commentaries from various Christian experts for a better understanding of today's scripture that deal with: Barrier • Boundary • Choice • Community • Demon • Division • Empathy • Evangelize • Exclude • Faith • Food • Glory • Healing • Hope • Inclusion • Isolation • Journey • Joy • Leper • Margins • Mercy • Order • Outcast • Praise • Pride • Purity • Reach • Restoration • Scapegoat • Secret • Seperate • Sin • St. Damien of Moloka’i • Touch • Ugly • Unclean • Unity • Worship •
“I think this is actually a great chapter that helps remind us that yes, Paul is the apostle, yes Paul is arguably the greatest theologian in the history of the church but ultimately too Paul is a pastor...he's trying to shepherd this church through its pastoral practical problems, issues, controversies and moral decisions”
“We are desired in love and given opportunities in the messiness of our humanity to love in return”
“This is how Jesus saves us. Not from afar but coming up close to us, being with us in our pain and suffering.”
“See, God doesn't hate us no matter how off the chain we are, how crazy we get, how hateful we hate, how hurtful we are, the wars that we create of our own jealously and greediness. God does not hate those who God has created.”
“Will you let Jesus come near you and touch you, heal you in your most, your most painful wounds? Become one with you in your chaos and make you clean again?”
“I'm just wondering, Church, this morning would you break a law in order to see Jesus? Would you go across a social custom or something in order to go to the source of your healing and your strength?”
“Jesus is not defiled. He does not “catch” impurity by touching the man. On the contrary, the man “catches” healing and wholeness from Jesus.”
“A Christian who derives pleasure from making sure that people are not together is not worthy of the name 'Christian.' For Jesus came that God and human beings may be one and that human beings and human beings may be one.”
“The invitation before us today is to recognize our need and to open ourselves to God...And when we allow this to happen something changes within us. We begin to open our eyes to see and hear those others who feel separated and in doing so we take on the mind of Christ.”
“How do we choose to be restored and made clean? How do we, how do we beg for that and then at the same time fail to recognize that we're called to promote, to be imitators of Christ, to promote that same kind of healing?”
“Jesus took the lonely road of giving up his life for us, he became alone, abandoned and isolated on Golgotha and he took that path to show us grace, provide healing, and give us eternal life”
“Worry, addiction, all sorts of 'isms.' These things are leprosy and sometimes they keep us and others away from God, from the community and from ourselves.”
“Have you presented yourself before the God who is healing, the God who is feeding, the God who is loving, the God who is our all in all so that he can touch you and make you whole?”
“No matter how dark it is outside the room when there is light in the room and you open the window or the door, darkness will not come into the room. Rather, light will stream out of the room and overcome the darkness outside the room.”
“It seems like anybody suffering from something like that gentlemen, they should all be there at the feet of Jesus begging but sometimes we get comfortable in our afflictions...We're made for more than that, we're made for better than that”
“So the reason Jesus tells this man to do this is so that he can formally be reintegrated into the temple and in the community by virtue of the witness of the official priest in the temple who would examine him. So that's why Jesus says 'offer what Moses commanded as a proof to the people.'”
"we're not immune to tragic events or to illness or to anything. We just have a different, I guess, we just have a different way of approaching it and that's through the lens of faith."
In the latest episode of the 1 Christian 1 Topic Podcast "Faith Amidst Tragedy," we have a conversation with Liz on faith, suffering, and prayer. More