The Internal and External Meet

Texts:

Psalm 30

Leviticus 14:1-20

Acts 19:11-20

"Jesus I know and Paul I know, but who are you?"

The texts for today are a bit strange.  On the one hand, we have the Levitical law for what lepers need to do to be cleansed.  On the other, we have a story of some of the sons of the high priest trying to cast out demons in Jesus' name who cannot do it and are, moreover, overpowered by the unclean spirit, who send them away naked and (I'm guessing) terrified.  Then there is Psalm 30 in the middle:

"You have turned my mourning into dancing; 

you have taken off my sackcloth,

and clothed me with joy,

so that my soul may praise you and not be silent.

O LORD my God, I will give thanks to you forever."

What is it to be made clean?  Were people with leprosy (a word used to describe any number of skin conditions) considered unclean internally as well as externally?  Relegated to the outskirts of their communities, I cannot help but wonder who the people with leprosy are among us today.  Who do we push out of our churches so that we can present a clean-looking group of people?  People more conservative than us?  People more liberal than us?  People who are gay?  People who are old?  People who are young?  People with special needs?  If, at this point, we determine that our church doesn't do that but that we know of a church that does, we're kidding ourselves.

It begs the hard question: do we seek the appearance of external purity within our communities so that we do not have to take a long hard look at our own issues?  Sometimes, I wonder if the lepers were relegated to the outskirts of their communities because their external apperance reminded people too much of their own internal appearance.  All the stuff we try to hide, all the stuff we try to put in the regions of our selves where nobody - sometimes not even our partners - will find it, bears the painful mark of the struggle between external and internal.

I think many people divide themselves between internal and external.  We present to the world a facade that is marginally successful at hiding the internal.  We try to position ourselves in a place where we are able to coach, guide, or counsel people whose internal brokenness bubbles out of them uninvited, even as we swallow our own brokenness, suffocating it with our pride.  We do not hold brokenness well.

In a few weeks, we will celebrate Ash Wednesday.  This is the day in which the internal and external lives of faith rise to meet each other as we enter the time of Lent.  It is a time of embracing the paradox of what it is to be broken/holy-sinner/saints.  Many of us will bear the mark of an ashen cross on our foreheads.  Some of us will wipe ours off, quoting Matthew 6:1, "Beware of practicing your piety before others," others of us will maintain the mark so that, each time we look in the mirror, we will remember that we are dust.  There is yet another group who will remain conflicted, fearing the mark will be off-putting for those who do not identify as people of faith, but also feeling guilty if we remove the mark.  Stuck between a rock and a hard spot, I think this drives at the point of Ash Wednesday: it is a struggle to between the dust of our existence and the gift of breath.  The twinges of awkwardness point to what it is to be a person of faith - it is to fit, but not quite; it is to be made clean but know the scars of brokenness; it is to know we have been buried with Christ in our baptisms but to fear our birth into eternal life; it is to confess in one breath that we are dust and in the next realize that God has molded the dust into something beautiful.


"Sing praises to the LORD, O you his faithful ones,
and give thanks to his holy name.
For his anger is but for a moment;
his favor is for a lifetime.
Weeping may linger for the night,
but joy comes in the morning."