Reading I: Leviticus 13:1-2,44-46Responsorial Psalm: Psalm 32:1-2,5,11
Reading II: 1 Corinthians 10:31--11:1
Gospel: Mark 1:40-45
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This Sunday, we are confronted by a clear dichotomy between exclusion and inclusion. The Book of Leviticus instructs the Jewish priesthood on what to do about lepers in the community. The short answer: Get them out! But Jesus sees the Kingdom of God differently. By curing the leper, he not only relieves the pain and suffering that accompany a terrible disease; he removes the stigma which has separated the leper from the community and restores him to full inclusion in God's Kingdom.
Other lepers have not been so lucky. Toward the end of the nineteenth century, the scourge of leprosy began to spread in the Hawaiian Islands following the arrival of Western settlers late in the eighteenth century. In 1868, a leper colony was established on the island of Molokai in order to isolate lepers and prevent the spread of leprosy in Hawaii. Conditions on the island of Molokai were reprehensible; the lepers were abandoned to die brutal and lonely deaths. To these lepers, it must have seemed as though the community had shunned them and they had lost their place in the Kingdom of God.
The man who would change that was Fr. Damien De Veuster, now known to us as Bl. Damien of Molokai. Fr. Damien was a Belgian missionary who requested an assignment to work with the abandoned lepers of Molokai. Upon arriving, Fr. Damien transformed the leper colony into a community of faith, restoring dignity to the lives and the deaths of the lepers of Molokai. Christ's apostle to the lepers did not heal them, but he did offer them inclusion in the Kingdom of God. Truly standing in the person of Christ, Fr. Damien became one of the lepers as Christ became one of us, and in so doing proclaimed to them that they were meant to enjoy the eternal blessing of God's Kingdom. Fr. Damien offered his life as a living Eucharist, uniting the sacrifice made by the Molokai lepers with his own and presenting them to the Father even as he made Christ present to the lepers of Molokai.
In the Church today, Christian queers are the lepers. We are the pariahs, the outcasts, the ones from whom the community must be protected. We have been declared unclean by the priests and forced out of our communities of faith: abandoned to lives without meaning, left to journeys without destinations, and barred from the Kingdom of God. Those who claim to be our sisters and brothers would have us go around shouting, "Unclean! Unclean!" and walk out of their communities and their lives forever.
But we know that Jesus Christ has a different plan for us. We have met him along the way and he has said to us: "I do will it. Be made clean." He has told us to present ourselves to the priests, but they have refused to recognize that the Lord Jesus has made us clean just as he has made them clean. Although the Lord God has been moved to reach out to us and make us part of his Kingdom, the priests have hardened their hearts against us and against him. They will not allow us to be included in their faith communities. May God replace their hearts of stone with hearts of flesh.
For our part, we must be like Bl. Damien of Molokai. Like the healed leper, can we not help but tell others what Jesus has done for us, even though his own Body may resist it? Like Bl. Damien, we must live among our queer sisters and brothers and in so doing reveal the God who came to live among us. We must be crucified with and for our queer sisters and brothers, and thus reveal the God who was crucified for love of each one of us. We must rise above our persecution and refuse to submit to it, lifting up our queer sisters and brothers with us, revealing the God who rose from the dead and conquered sin and death for all.
In our own lives, we must live as part of the Kingdom of God so that our queer sisters and brothers will see us and know that this way is open to them as well. We must be the Word who became flesh and pitched his tent among us.
