Ministry
In one of the villages, Jesus met a man with an advanced case of leprosy. When the man saw Jesus, he bowed with his face to the ground, begging to be healed. “Lord,” he said, “if you are willing, you can heal me and make me clean.” Jesus reached out and touched him. “I am willing,” he said. “Be healed!” And instantly the leprosy disappeared. Then Jesus instructed him not to tell anyone what had happened. He said, “Go to the priest and let him examine you. Take along the offering required in the law of Moses for those who have been healed of leprosy. This will be a public testimony that you have been cleansed.” But despite Jesus’ instructions, the report of his power spread even faster, and vast crowds came to hear him preach and to be healed of their diseases. But Jesus often withdrew to the wilderness for prayer.
Luke 5:12-16
STORY
On Jan. 3, 1865, the Kingdom of Hawaii, then a sovereign state, enacted “An Act to Prevent the Spread of Leprosy.” Any person suspected of having the ancient disease – which is mentioned as far back as the Bible – would be inspected and, if deemed incurable, permanently exiled to a peninsula on the island of Molokai.
More than 8,000 people with leprosy fell victim to this policy of permanent segregation over the next century. Native Hawaiians renamed leprosy ma’i ho’oka’awale ‘ohana’ meaning “the sickness that separates family.” Surrounded by steep cliffs and treacherous ocean, the peninsula served as a natural prison and soon gathered a reputation as a de facto death sentence.
One man moved to Molokai willingly, Father Damien. Born Jozef De Veuster in Belgium, he came to Hawaii as a young Catholic missionary, and voluntarily lived in the leprosy colony.
Damien landed at Molokai on May 10, 1873. In a letter to his brother, wroting that he would make himself “a leper with lepers,” in order to “gain all to Christ.”
He employed his carpentry skills to build two chapels, shelters for the residents, and a multitude of coffins. He provided rudimentary medical care, secured a fresh water supply, and established an orphanage. At a time when fear of being near people with leprosy was the norm, the priest also ate with residents from the same pot, and shared his pipe with them.
By the beginning of 1885, Damien began to show signs of having contracted leprosy, and in 1886 the priest formally became known as Admission #2886 to the settlements. Three years later, in 1889, he succumbed to the disease, after sixteen years of compassionate ministry.
Damien’s ministry garnered an international audience, elevating him to something of a celebrity, and his death prompted an immediate response. The future king of England, Edward VII, proposed to erect a monument to Damien on Molokai, to establish a ward devoted to leprosy in a London medical institution and to fund research on leprosy in India. Damien’s example inspired the creation of several other organizations devoted to the study and treatment of leprosy, from the United States and Belgium to Congo and Korea.
He was canonized as a saint in 2009. Father Damien was designated the patron saint of people with leprosy, or Hansen’s disease.
DEVOTION
Leviticus, chapters thirteen and fourteen, clearly outlines the laws governing leprosy, though reading these passages it is difficult for us to comprehend the discriminatory rules enforced upon these afflicted souls. Lepers had to live in communes outside of the city gates. They were required to announce their presence by crying three times, “Unclean! Unclean! Unclean!” A garment must be worn above the upper lip, the hair kept in disarray, and the regulations in Leviticus read on ad infinitum.
In the Middle Ages a person with leprosy would be brought into the church and a funeral service would be conducted. At the conclusion of the sacramental act the penitent would be sent out of the church wearing a black robe to live as if already dead. Forbidden to reenter the church, the sanctuary walls had “squint” holes so Sabbath worship could be observed while being outside. Today, I wonder, through ignorance or prejudice, by apathy or enmity, how many people do we consign to live as if dead?
In the culture of Palestine, leprosy labeled an individual as being afflicted with the vilest of all diseases. There is no other illness, laceration, deformity or legion that equals the severity of this ailment. When Jesus sent forth the twelve, he specifically instructed them to “heal the sick and cleanse the lepers,” (Mt 10:8) for it was clearly understood that society regarded the latter far worse than the former, thus requiring special mention.
Welcoming the leper Jesus demonstrated that no one disease, of body, mind, or soul, is beyond the embrace of God’s healing power. As the Jewish community shunned lepers, our culture today is plagued with its own bigotries, compelling the hapless to live “outside the gate.” Sadly, desolate they shall remain unless we “preach good news to the poor, proclaim release to the captives, recovering of sight to the blind, and to set at liberty those who are oppressed.” (Lk 4:18)
If labeled, Jesus was a radical theologian. He was neither a conservative nor a liberal, as these myopic individuals tend to be bombastic, opinionated, judgmental, closed-minded and stagnant; though, on the other hand, Jesus was radical for he confronted the status quo. Ethically respondent, Jesus easily moved across the spectrum of being ultraconservative to the embellishment of a flaming liberal; yet, Jesus was steadily and adamantly radical for he unfailingly placed human dignity and social justice above ritual and custom. Only radicals are crucified for they confront the established order, disrupting a society that only allows one to enter by invitation only. John Howard Yoder in his seminal book The Politics of Jesus wrote, “The believer’s cross is, like that of Jesus, the price of nonconformity.”
In our morning scriptural reading Jesus was able to heal for he was able to “touch.” Jesus’ healing power came with his ability to associate himself with the infirmities of others. Partnership with the afflicted enabled Jesus to heal.
It is a spiritually exhausting ministry, for after instructing the man to go to the Temple, Jesus then went to a solitary place to pray.
On September 19, 1864, there was a gloomy and tragic scene in the city of Winchester, located in the heart of Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley, as 4,000 casualties from the Third Battle of Winchester were brought to makeshift hospitals throughout the community. In the city all public buildings, churches, and private dwellings became hospital wards.
It did not take long for Surgeon James Ghiselin to realize the 40 structures transformed into ersatz hospitals would be insufficient to handle the army’s casualties. He orchestrated five-hundred tents to be erected, that would be known as the Sheridan Field Hospital, named after the general commanding the Union troops in the valley, Phil Sheridan, becoming the largest hospital of its kind constructed during the Civil War. He also secured nurses from the U.S. Christian Commission to assist in tending to the wounded. Among them was Jane Boswell Moore.
Moore, a native of Baltimore, Maryland, who at the war’s outset aided wounded and sick Union soldiers brought to the city, believed that by the late summer of 1862, that her talents could be put to better use in the field. Throughout the war, she cared for the wounded at the battles of Winchester, Antietam, Chancellorsville, Gettysburg, and Petersburg. At the conclusion of the war, she was in Richmond aiding wounded Union troopers. After the war, she became a domestic missionary for the Presbyterian Church.
During her ministry in Winchester, she aided wounded soldiers in various hospitals throughout the town, including the Sheridan Field Hospital. As had been the case throughout her service, Moore took a special interest in the soldiers under her charge, and decided to share their stories and her experiences with them by sending letters to a number of religious and secular periodicals. It was her hope that publication of these letters would encourage donations of supplies. Her letters illuminated the sufferings of the wounded, and serve as a powerful reminder of war’s devastating and tragic consequences.
Sharing in one letter, that she and the other nurses went to the graves of fallen soldiers to place flowers before their crosses. She solemnly wrote: and standing in the stead of kindred, dedicate this day, by an act of respect, to the dead, who sleep in Virginia soil….On this bright morning, we pluck a sprig of evergreen to send to the loved ones far away from the grave in which their son and brother is sleeping, and our hearts are saddened to think how these mounds are filling loving hearts with anguish and desolation….Every one of these small shingle-boards, with its miserable and almost illegible penciling, has its history, and that of some is heartrending. Shall I briefly allude to those whose names were carved by same hand?
In her lengthy letter she selected the stories of a number of men who perished from their battlefield wounds. One of the men was Corporal Isaac Price, 15th West Virginia Infantry, who lost both arms. Recalling the first time she met him, penning: looks dispirited, as he sits with both arms gone. Perhaps he is thinking of the wife, mother, and nine children at home on whom as well as himself this heavy trial has fallen… Well, reader, no doubt you are weary of so much suffering, and so also are we,…
Let us have a ministry of touch.