Epiphany 6 B; Mark 1:40-45

I knew a school teacher once, Mrs. Daugherty, a stout but tiny old Irish woman who was formidable. She had a reputation for being not mean necessarily but especially strict. She was one of the ones about whom there were rumors, that even though paddling kids hadn't been allowed in the school for 20 years or so, she still had a paddle hanging in her office. And it didn't really matter if this was true because any kid with sense knew enough to know that they didn't want to find out.

Well one year she was met with a kid, Lee, who was going to be her match, at least people thought this might be the case. This was a kid who had been in and out of detention centers already, who was mean and cruel to the other kids, who never did his work, who really spent the first day, maybe two of each class session in the classroom with a teacher, and then the rest sitting on a chair outside the principal's office or in a makeshift detention that had been created just for him, down in the gym with the big, burly gym teacher who could handle him. The police had even been called to the school before about Lee and everyone knew after he was old enough to not be required by law to be there he would be done with school. So when he entered Mrs. Daugherty's classroom, paddle or not, no one was holding their breath about how long he would make it there but folks were braced for the storm or these two strong personalities meeting.

On the first day of school Lee came to dressed rather inappropriately, with dirty hair and no materials. He sat at a desk not assigned to him and when roll was called, looked at Mrs. Daugherty as if to say I dare you to call my name. And looked back with something like an acceptance of the dare. When she did call it, he didn't say anything and she just smiled at him, nodded and passed right by. Which set up a pattern that lasted for weeks. She would call on each kid for something, Lee would refuse to participate and she would smile kindly at him and move on. When all the other kids were working quietly and Lee was tearing up paper or doing something distracting she would walk up to him and talk to him like she didn't even notice. He wouldn't really talk back but she would sit there talking about owls or trees or algebra, whatever the class was learning about. Lee would tear paper, Mrs. Daugherty would talk. Lee would get in trouble at recess, she would come back to the classroom from her break and sit there, with him at his desk, and she would talk about basketball or soccer. Lee would sit, Mrs. Daugherty would talk. Finally after months of this without a word about it from anyone, Lee stopped ripping paper and started doing his work. He stopped hitting kids on the playground and started bouncing a ball. But Mrs. Daugherty would still sit by him and talk to him in class sometimes and once in a while he would even talk back.

We're not going to pretend that Lee's problems were solved for the rest of his life because of this one year. But Lee was different after that. He still couldn't really follow the rules but he was kinder and less aggressive. He spoke sometimes instead of throwing, hitting or pushing, which was a huge changed. He graduated from high school six years later, walked across the stage and everything! It was as if he had been healed or whatever he was sick with as an elementary school kid.

I had the chance to talk to Mrs. Daugherty about him years later and I asked her where she got the patience to never raise her voice, never send him away, never lose her temper with Lee. She told me that she didn't really treat Lee any differently than she did any of her other children. That they each had walls that they had put up or someone had put up for them, barriers to learning, to behaving, to succeeding and mostly to being loved. All she ever did with any student was try to find ways to love them through, around or in spite of those walls and barriers. With some kids that meant being strict, with Lee it didn't, all he had ever known were rules and punishment. So with Lee it was almost easier because all she had to do was love all of him exactly like he was, embrace the wall, so to speak, and eventually she was allowed in. Sure it took patience but that was her job, God gave her a room full of little puzzles each year and her job was to figure out as much as she could about who they were and what they needed before they had to move on.

I tell you this story because I want to ask if any of you have ever meet someone who was just plain angry at the whole world? Someone like Lee who just can't be civil or pleasant no matter what? Most of us have in one form or another and Jesus seems to have met someone like that in our gospel lesson today. He was a leper which means that he had some kind of skin disorder. We really don't know what. We really don't even know if he was very sick. What we do know is that all of society, even the church, especially the church had let this man down, blamed him for his own illness and left him behind, on the outside. Maybe he started out being patient when he was told to stay out of the temple while he was sick. He understood. But then maybe patience had turned into sadness when his friends stopped coming by. And then sadness to fear when he was told that he had to live outside of town and tear his clothes and declare himself unclean to all passerby and then, finally fear to anger when he finally looked around and his whole life was gone, those that he loved were moving on, those he respected didn't respect him and those he cared for were languishing without his support.

So he lived out of town, like the priests said he had to, out in the wilderness without companionship and he taunted the passerby, at least that is what he seems to be doing when Jesus happens by. It isn't as if he is calling out because his faith is so intense, at least the complicated greek words don't indicate it. What they show is that he did something much more like yell "I dare you, to make me clean". Yeah, I dare you and your God to care about me. To think about me. To look at me in my dirty clothes and open sores and tear stained face. I dare you Jesus. I dare you to care about me.

And Jesus does. He reaches out to him. He says quite literally I accept your dare. I'll do it. I'll take you up on that. And he reaches out to him and he heals him. Jesus saw right through the wall that this man had put up to protect himself.

This is the third in a series of stories about Jesus healing the sick, broken and outcast in Mark, we've gone over the two other stories during the past couple weeks and they are all quite different but the theme that carries through all of them is that of Jesus' reactions to people and their reactions to him. The ailments that people have are different, the ways that they encounter Jesus are different but the healing is just the same.

They express very little faith, very little desire for healing or the love of God but Jesus looks at them and sees who they are and what they need. We have so many stories of healing in the New testament and sometimes I wonder why. Why devote so much time to these accounts when we could have been given answers to the mysteries of life or simple instructions for how to run a successful church, raise a happy family, solve the religious debates that have divided the church for centuries and so on and so on.

The only answer that I can come up with is that healing is what it is all about. It is as if we are all students in Mrs. Daugherty's classroom. Each one of us a little puzzle with secret wounds and secret walls and defenses that we put up, maybe not as big and obvious as the leper's but maybe just as painful to us. And Jesus is the one, who is willing, when no one else is, to hear a real plea in our dare to heal us to cure us and to help us let the walls down and he does.

He does it through words of healing and absolution, telling us each and every day as we sit there and act defiant, that we are loved and forgiven. Talking to us about whatever the church is learning about that day, sitting with us when we are forced to be all by ourselves. And then finally going out with us and speaking through us when it is our turn to be the loving voice for the Lees in our lives and the healing hands to the lepers in our world. Amen.