The super bowl is over and the New York Giants are the champions of the National Football League. The season is over until late August and we all need to get on to other things. I thought that it was a wonderful game, a close game that could have gone either way. There were some great plays and also some terrible mistakes. I was astounded by the safety on the first play from scrimmage when Tom Brady threw the ball away from the end zone and gave the Giants two points. It was also thrilling to see Mario Manningham’s miraculous catch of Eli Manning’s pass on the sidelines that brought the Giants to the fifty yard line. That is the way that all games go, whether normal league games or the ones for the Lombardi Trophy. There will be endless chatter about who could have done what and didn’t, or what a great play so and so made, but in the long run none of it matters. The players and the coaches pocket their winnings and we go on with our lives. I was somewhat amazed at the price of Super bowl tickets this year. They were somewhat north of two-thousand dollars, without scalpers. They were certainly out of my price range.
Clergy don’t make a whole lot of money. Rosie and I have been comfortable in our work. We have had excellent parishes who took good care of us, but we certainly didn’t get rich in the process. I have loved working with all sorts and conditions of people and have received considerably more than I have given. I still love to preach and teach and I am more than thankful when I see that those efforts produce fruit.
I am touched by the story in Mark’s gospel about the leper coming to Jesus and saying to him, If you choose, you can make me clean. Jesus says back to him, I do choose. Be made clean! There is no quid pro quo here, Jesus heals the leper because he is sick and needs the touch of God to be made whole. He doesn’t even do it to make a believer out of the leper. The whole story is the man’s sickness and Jesus’ ability to make him clean; but when I look closely at the story in Mark, there is indeed a price: Jesus told the leper to tell no one about his healing, to go to the priest and offer the testimony that Moses commanded. The Gospel says that the man didn’t do that, that instead he spread the story openly so that Jesus couldn’t go anywhere without people flocking to him, so he stayed out in the countryside. Jesus got no payment for his work. I doubt if Jesus could have afforded to go to a Super bowl game.
I certainly understand the way that the leper felt. If I had been healed of that heinous disease by Jesus, I think that I would have told everyone also. What a magnificent gift that healing was.
In Second Kings, there is the story of another healing. The Syrian General Naaman comes to Elisha to be healed of his leprosy. Elisha doesn’t even come out to talk to him but simply tells him to wash in the Jordan river and he will be healed. This makes Naaman angry and he complains loudly. His servants ask him that if he had been told to do something difficult that he would have done it, so why doesn’t he just do what Elisha tells him? The great general washes in the Jordan and is healed. Elisha refused payment for this. Elisha’s servant Gehazi chased after Naaman and got payment from him and took it back to Elisha. Elisha rebuked Gehazi and told him that because of what he did, the leprosy of Naaman would cling to him forever. A rather harsh punishment for charging Naaman for his healing, but for Elisha, like Jesus, healing had no price. It is interesting that Naaman went away from Elisha praising God and declaring that no God had power but the God of Israel.
Healing without price, preaching without price is what God requires of us. No wonder clergy are not paid well. Some of them don’t want to be paid at all, such is their faith. The reward for what we do in the name of God is the bringing of the Kingdom of God into the world. That, in reality is not the job of the clergy, but the job of the whole Christian community. We all are the ones who are to heal and preach without price that God may be made known in all the world. The way that God is made known is by the work that we all do with those who are without resource, whether it is through illness or poverty. Those who have lost their homes or their health or food for their table are the ones to whom we are sent, not to convert them, but to help them. That is the message that we get from the gospels and from all of scripture. When we forget that, the whole of the Christian message is lost.
With our work clear, we can get on with reaching into the places in our communities around us where our resources are needed and in that way be the people of God in a world that needs God’s touch very much. Our God will certainly help us in this work. It is the reason that we are called together in community to be the Church.
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