Cry Leper

When I was a child I had severe eczema which, mixed with the dry rough skin inherited from my father, was quite a sight to behold.  When the eczema broke out, normal schoolyard antics added to the fun: my nickname was ‘scaly’, and sometimes ‘leper’.  Some kids would not want to touch or stand close to me refusing to hold hands with me when we lined up to walk, and the more inquisitive asking (at a distance) how contagious I was! Mob mentality, even for pre-teens, was alive and well. Since some decided that I was not perfect, and that I did not deserve to be in a group with them: I was not wanted. They mostly did not have it in the power to eject me (I came from a tight family), so they shunned me instead.

My school mates (if I can called them that) who chose to call me ‘leper’, did not think for a minute that I had leprosy. They wanted to convey to me that I did not fit in. In Jesus time this been honed down to a fine art over centuries: leper was the cry towards the hated and despised. We all know that keeping a group together is always better when there is a common enemy. The purity laws proscribed against Samaritans and other non-Semites as well as against the sick, giving divine reasons for illnesses and separation.

It was part of Jesus’ mission to challenge and question the law, to get to the bottom of what it was protecting or attacking. The original purity laws developed for the protection of the Jewish people, but by Jesus’ time they were being used to control people: much of the spirit of the law had disappeared. Jesus reached out to the despised of society and drew them into his life: there were none that were excluded. However, Jesus did not declare a free for all: he thoughtfully submitted himself to the law, as in the gospel he asked the leper to go to the Jewish Priest and offer the sacrifice proscribed for healing. The freedom Jesus offers is supported by an identifiable ethical system.

Jesus calls us to question, to reach out and the transform within this system, which is the moral and social justice teaching of the church, given to us in the apostolic teaching and then honed in response to human situations over the last two thousand years. Backed by this, Jesus challenges us not to go along with the mob, but to think, to make decisions and know why they had been made.

Last night I flicked don the ABC to catch a snippet of "Tonight in Gordon Street" in which the presenter was lauding Gay Marriage: he even had a couple in the audience who, in his words” can’t get legally married yet, but we can TV marry them.”  He did this to great applause. It was classic set up of mob mentality, and I think if I had been there I probably would have kept my opposition quiet for fear of being attacked. Like so many other issues, that of marriage is about protection of rights: last night no one was shouting about the right of a child to have a mother and father.  Yet those there last night seemed full of opinion and short on theory.

Soon you and I will be called to comment on this and other issues. Are we ready with fact and ethics?

Homily, Our Lady Queen of Peace Cathedral, 12th February 2012 6th Sunday in Ordinary Time Year b