II Kings 5:1-14
I Corinthians 9:24-27
Mark 1:40-45

Jesus heals people. As it happens in our gospel story this morning, so it can happen anytime, anywhere, with anyone. We say to Jesus: “If you choose, you can make me clean.”, and Jesus says: “I do choose. Be made clean.”. We might think the evidence does not support that, but we need to take into consideration how often we ask Jesus to make us clean versus how often we ask Jesus to solve certain problems in certain specific ways. Jesus knows clean – Jesus knows health and wholeness and happiness. We do not, at least not fully. We are not totally clueless about the fullness of human life, but we need to be careful that our partial knowledge does not lull us into thinking that we understand everything that needs to be done, and therefore if things don’t turn out that way, God has failed us.

Of course, there are tragedies in life, but we can’t blame God for what humans do to each other or to the world around us. We can’t blame God for allowing the planet to run the way it does, because if it ran any differently, we would not be here to enjoy it. We can blame ourselves for not living withing the boundaries of physical and social laws and thereby bringing bad consequences upon ourselves and others. Others can also blame us for the trouble we cause them.

But even with all that, there are unavoidable human tragedies that we do have a right to be angry about and question God for letting them happen. God doesn’t seem to mind us doing that, but God also doesn’t seem to be too quick to provide answers that we can understand. The Book of Job is a good example of that. What God does instead of providing answers is to live a human life along with us, with all its tragedies and joys. Jesus had his share of bad times, and never tried to pretend they weren’t bad. He asked God to allow the worst of it to pass him by, and when they didn’t, he asked God why he had been forsaken. We, like Jesus, can be fully human and cry to God for answers, even sometimes doubting God’s presence.

But also like Jesus, we can be fully human and choose to share God’s healing with those around us. We don’t know all the answers, but we can do what we can to help. We can also be fully human and ask others for help. We can live in such a way that our lives don’t add to the problems of the world, and sometimes we can even live in such a way that our lives reduce some of the problems in the world.

Jesus heals people. He doesn’t always do it the way we want it done, but he does do it. We just need to ask to be healed, and we need to allow others to ask in their own way, and in their own time.   AMEN