He had been a good Jew, a respected young man. Then he saw the spot, or the rash, or whatever it was, and was so struck with fear that he couldn’t move, couldn’t even breathe. No, it would not wash off, even after the fifth washing, the fifth rubbing so that he was now afraid it would bleed. It would not wash off, and he knew in one of those dreadful instants that his life had changed forever. Leprosy. This was not Syria, where one could have a skin disease and overcome the stigma, rise even to the level of a great general like Naaman. This was Israel, and the law was clear. Leviticus provided that

[t]he person who has the leprous disease shall wear torn clothes and let the hair of his head be disheveled; and he shall cover his upper lip and cry out, "Unclean, unclean." . . . He is unclean. He shall live alone; his dwelling shall be outside the camp.

His skin had made him an outcast, an undesirable, an object of fear, an untouchable. And no one was ever cured.

Years later, he was just a leper. His name was a pitiful, distant memory meaning nothing. The leper walked down the street and saw Jesus. Segregated, isolated, humiliated, we will never know what he saw, how he knew, but he broke the law. He did not shout, "Unclean, unclean" and stay away. He knelt, and begged. "If you choose, you can make me clean."

And Jesus looked down, and he did not see a leper. For the first time in years, a human being, not a skin condition, was reflected in the eyes of someone looking at this man. Jesus saw a human being in pain, and his "heart was moved with pity." His eyes filled with tears of sadness, and shame, and regret, and sorrow, and he said, "I do choose. Be made clean!" And he touched him. Touched him. Touched a leper!

Then Jesus said to the man, now cured of his disease, "Go, show yourself to the priest, and offer for your cleansing what Moses commanded." Jesus knew that the victim of the disease needed more than to have his skin condition cured; he needed to be cured of the effects of having been viewed for so long as a skin condition. He needed to be reinstated into society. He needed his name back. And Jesus said, "Don’t be talking about this, now." Jesus knew what would happen if he did, but the man just couldn’t control himself. Who could? And so he shouted it and danced it, and, sure enough, Jesus was mobbed.

Nice story. I really like it when Jesus is kind and heals people., and this is certainly a "feel good" story. But, really, we have to ask, "What does it have to do with us?" This miraculous healing certainly doesn’t advance the state of medical science (we can’t tell how it happened), and, I’m not aware that any of us are lepers. It’s nice to see that Jesus could and did heal people with a skin condition, but we’re not lepers, so, really, what does this story have to do with us?

Last Wednesday, at our 7:00 service, we celebrated the feast of Absalom Jones, the first African-American ordained in any major denomination. He was ordained as an Episcopal priest in 1802. He was born into slavery, bought his wife’s freedom at age twenty, and saved for eighteen more years before he was able to buy his own freedom. For almost three hundred and fifty years, more than a hundred years longer than the United States has existed, white Americans treated Black Americans as property. Conditions were cruel and, literally, inhuman.

My great-great-great grandfathers on both sides owned slaves. They both fought for the Confederacy. One was a general.

Last month, the vestry went on retreat to Camp Mikell to receive anti-racism training.

In 1956, the all white Georgia legislature changed the state flag. Two thirds of the old flag had been an official Confederate flag (red, white, and red horizontal bars). But the legislature was incensed by the landmark Supreme Court decision prohibiting racial segregation. So they changed the flag as an act of defiance. Two-thirds of the 1956 flag consisted of the "Stars and Bars," the Confederate battle flag that had become the rallying banner not for Southern heritage, but for vicious, virulent racism. It was the Klan’s emblem, and it became a defiant and racist statement by the State of Georgia. Now, this was done without a referendum. The people never voted. (But then, a large percentage of the people, the African-American community, would not have been allowed to vote anyway.)

In the 90’s, Zell Miller proposed changing the flag. I marched at the Super Bowl carrying a sign that said, "The Episcopal Church says, ‘Change the Flag!’" I was the only white person marching. We were inside a ring of protective barriers. State Troopers stood on the perimeter to protect us.

Governor Miller’s efforts failed. Under Governor Barnes’ leadership, the legislature voted to change the flag. (I believe it might be the only cause I’ve ever supported that prevailed.)

But outside the Atlanta area, sign after sign read, "Let us vote," and the old flag was flown defiantly in front of homes and businesses. Sonny Purdue read the wind and promised a referendum. Governor Barnes was defeated, in part because of the tremendous hostility changing the flag engendered in rural areas.

When I first moved to College Park and went into a grocery store, I would, think, "Where are all the white people?" Then, "Oh, yeah, there aren’t any white people." Now, five years later, I sometimes go shopping in Midtown or Dunwoody, and I think, "Where are all the black people?" Then, "Oh, yeah, there aren’t any black people."

Sometimes I’m very concerned with the problems of racism. Sometimes I’m not; for me, it’s easy to be about my business and not think about it. I can pick the time and the place to be concerned with racism — because I’m white. My black brothers and sisters don’t get that privilege.

This week I was at a Southside Ministerial Association meeting, and we heard from a pastor who is presiding over the merger of a black church and a white church. She spoke of the ugliness, the meanness, she has encountered. The other pastors and I told her we would keep her in our prayers.

At St. John’s, we do pretty well, I’m glad to say. But on the whole, churches don’t. Forty years ago Martin Luther King, Jr. said that Sunday morning was the most segregated hour in American life. For the most part, it still is.

At that same Ministerial Association meeting, a black pastor friend said to me, "You’re the only black man I know in a white man’s skin." He also said, "You’re the only white man I really trust." I knew it was high praise, and I thanked him. But it was also so sad that our skin meant that there was so much to overcome.

What does this story of Jesus healing a leper have to do with us? In Jesus’ time, "leper" meant you had any chronic skin condition. We live in a society that, in many ways—some subtle, some obvious — encourages, shapes, molds us, both black and white, to see a person’s skin, rather than a human being. I would say that that qualifies as a chronic skin condition.

Let’s don’t waste our energy on blame. It won’t be any more helpful for us to be claiming our innocence or blaming others than it would have been for that young Jewish man to say, "It’s not my fault." It wasn’t; he was still a leper. It may not be our fault, but we have a chronic skin condition. We are lepers. And, frankly, I sometimes think that our condition is hopeless.

What does this story of Jesus healing a leper have to do with us? It tells us that our condition is not hopeless. Jesus cured the leper and reinstated him. So, pray. Pray. Not as a white person. Not as a black person. Pray as a leper. Jesus will see each one of us lepers as a human being. And, with God’s help, someday we will too.