The Lutheran Hour
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"A Dirty Job, Done"
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Text: Mark 1:45
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Christ is risen! He is risen, indeed! Upon Calvary’s cross Jesus shouldered our grief and carried our sorrows. To Him fell the dirtiest of jobs: saving humanity from the devil, the world, itself. Now, in resurrection victory the Savior shows He has done all which is necessary to save us. Today the Holy Spirit calls us to faith in our risen Redeemer. God grant He gives such a faith to us all. Amen.
The Discovery Channel has a program called Dirty Jobs. On that program, the host, Mike Rowe, spends a day or two doing work most people don’t want to do – which most of us would refuse to do. Over the years he has collected road kill and scraped gum off sidewalks; he has been a sludge recycler, a septic tank technician, an owl vomit collector, and a cow hoof trimmer.
Still, I’m not going to talk about any of those jobs. I’m going to talk about a job which will never be featured on any TV program. I’m talking about the job of changing diapers.
Now, when I asked my Administrative Assistant, Rose, how she felt about changing diapers, she said, with some degree of sarcasm in her voice, “It was always the high point of my day. I did it because I had to.” When I asked about changing the diapers of another person’s child, not those of her own daughters, or her beautiful grandchildren, she said, “I can’t imagine why I would do that. I was willing to change the diapers of my children, wash four sets of sheets when they had the flu. I did it because I loved my children. But I don’t necessarily love the children of someone else.” Now I don’t want you to think poorly of Rose. She is a wonderful lady – gentle, kind, and caring. Even so, she says it makes a difference if the child is hers or not. I think the same might be said by many of you ladies and almost every man. All of us agree there are jobs we are willing to do if we’re helping a person who is special to us – if that person is loved by us.
If you understand that concept, you will understand what happened the day Jesus was sought out by a man who was afflicted by a disease which the Bible calls “leprosy.” Some of you can remember the days when polio was a terrifying scourge. Many of you can recall the years when AIDS first came crashing into the world.
That is almost the way it was for someone in Jesus’ day who was diagnosed with leprosy. I say, “almost” because for the leper it was worse – far, far worse than having polio or AIDS. According to the Old Testament (Leviticus 13:45-46), when a person was diagnosed with leprosy, he immediately became an outcast from family and friends. Getting close to a leper was forbidden. Touching a leper was forbidden. Touching anything a leper had touched was forbidden. From the moment of diagnosis the leper was ordered to wear torn clothes, to let his hair go wild, to cover the lower part of his face, to croak out the warning, “Unclean! Unclean!” It was not unusual for a community to torch the house in which a leper had lived and ancient records carry accounts of healthy individuals, who, having inadvertently touched something which belonged to a leper, grabbed a sword and severed their hand. Having leprosy was a living death. That’s why rabbis said it was as difficult to heal a leper as it was to raise the dead.
Remember that line: “It is as difficult to heal a leper as it is to raise the dead.” The line is accurate and important to the telling of a story which comes to us from the first chapter of Mark’s Gospel. The story begins with a leper coming to Jesus. Some say it was an act of bravery for the sick man to be so bold. An act of bravery? Perhaps. It most certainly was an act of desperation.
The story begins with a leper coming to Jesus, kneeling down before Him and in solicitation and supplication, pleading, “Lord, if you want, You can make me clean.” We have been in similar situations. Have you not seen people standing near a freeway with their thumb out asking for a ride? They are saying, “If you want, you can take me to my destination.” How did you react to their request for help? How many of you in the city have not seen someone with a hand-lettered cardboard sign which read: “I am unemployed and have three children. Will work for food for my family.” They were saying, “If you want, you can help me care for my family.” What did you do with that request? Only a short month-and-a-half ago you probably walked past Salvation Army bell ringers. The red buckets by their side said, “This Christmas season you can help those who are in need – if you want.” What did you do? Yes, many of you dropped in a dollar. But what did you do the second time you went by a ringer? A third?
In truth, I don’t know what you did in these situations when you were asked to make a difference. I know what Jesus did for that leper who was kneeling before Him, asking for help. Mark tells the story simply. He tells us Jesus was filed with compassion. Who wouldn’t be? The man may have been physically scarred by his illness; his future was a dark disaster. Most of us would be filled with compassion. But compassion would not, could not, change the man’s tomorrows. Compassion was not enough for Jesus. Compassion motivated Jesus to put out His hand and touch the leprous man.
Now if you’re thinking, “Isn’t that nice?” you need to stop and think about the impact of Jesus’ gesture. At the beginning of this message I spoke of dirty jobs – jobs that are so bad, so foul, so disgusting, so nasty – that nobody wants to do them. With His touch, Jesus did a job that you and I would never do. With His touch of the leper, Jesus made Himself unclean; with this touch, Jesus made Himself “off-limits” to the rest of society. With this touch, Jesus identified, got close to that man in a way no one else would have considered. With His touch, Jesus showed the stuff of which He was made. With His touch, Jesus showed His willingness to do just about the dirtiest job this world can produce.
Although the Bible doesn’t say so, if anyone had been there that day, they would have gasped in horror. If anybody had seen Jesus’ hand move toward the man, they would have called out, “Don’t do it! Don’t run the risk! Are You crazy?” That’s how we would have reacted to this dirty job, but Jesus, filled with compassion, touched the leper, healed him, and sent him on his way with orders not to tell anyone about what had happened. The Bible’s story concludes with the leper totally disregarding Jesus’ instructions. It ends with the leper telling anyone – everyone – what the Savior had done for Him. And people who knew the leper, well, they listened to his tale. They listened, and then they gathered up every invalid, every sick soul they could find and brought them to Jesus for healing. How could the story have ended differently? Jesus had brought a person back from the dead; He had done the dirtiest of jobs; almost the dirtiest of jobs.
So, my friends, did you like the story? It’s one of my favorites. I hope it is one of your special Savior stories, too. It ought to be, because the story of the leper is yours. No, I don’t mean you have leprosy. Truth is, in North America not one person in a hundred has ever seen a person with that disease. The introduction of wonder drugs has made that malady fairly treatable and reduced the fear leprosy once brought forth. Even so, the leper’s story is ours. We do have a disease, an inherited, a self-inflicted disease. We have a disease, which without the Savior’s touch, is terrible, terminal, incurable. Now, I know when ministers start saying things like that, in kind of a mystical, figurative way, people start to turn them off. They ask, “What’s he talking about? I don’t have any disease, and I certainly don’t have leprosy.”
If that’s where you are and if that’s what you’re thinking, let me speak plainly. Sin is your illness. You aren’t a leper; you’re a sinner. There I’ve said it. You and I – and all of humanity – are sinners. We were born sinners, and we will die sinners. Leprosy may be an ugly disease which, untreated, leaves the outside of its victims disfigured and deformed. Sin is no less ugly, only its ugliness shows up on the inside, on our souls. You know, we have all kinds of products which cover up our outside shortcomings: mints to mask our bad breath; deodorants to camouflage our bad smell; room fresheners to destroy lingering odors; but there are no commercial products which can take care of the spiritual stink of sin.
Don’t deny it. It’s true. Because of sin, we stink. Let me ask: many of you are married; some of you for a very long time. Does your partner know you? I mean really know you? When you have an argument, a debate, a discussion, I don’t care what you call it; when you are at odds with each other, do you speak what is on you mind, do you say what you really feel, or do you temper your words? Why do you do that? What are you afraid of? Are you afraid that the person you love might be shocked and saddened by the things you really want to say? Some of you folks are courting. I don’t know if anyone uses that word anymore; how about dating, going out, hanging together? You have found someone you like and are trying to impress them enough so that they will like you in return. During this time of discovery, are you letting them see the same person your brothers and sisters see? Of course not! You don’t want to scare them off. You try to look good, act right, speak properly, and not be too offensive.
Should I continue? Tell you what, you continue. Go up to the nicest person you know, the most gentle soul in your circle of family and friends and ask them one, very simple question. Ask them, “Are you really this nice all the time?” I can tell you how they will reply. Nine times out of 10 they’re going to laugh and say, “I’m not nice at all.” That’s not false modesty on their part. They laugh because they’re shocked you would think they are nice. They know they’re not. Deep down inside us all is a dark leprosy of sin. It is selfish, it is angry, and it is hurtful. We may try to keep it in check; we may work to prevent anyone from seeing, but it remains. You know it is there inside you, and so does God. It’s that dark spot of leprous sin which makes you ugly; it’s that dark spot of sin which makes us lonely, and frightened, and cruel, and nasty, and isolated, and a host of other evils which are eating us away; which will eventually kill us. The Bible is correct when it says: “The soul which sins will die” (Ezekiel 18:4). As surely as the leper was going to die of his sickness, your sin is going to kill you.
Like the leper, for us there is no hope; there can be no happiness as long as that sin sits inside us, slowly eating away at us and destroying us. Because our condition is hopeless, we, like the leper, must go to Jesus. Recognizing our future, fearing our fate, we need to kneel before God’s sinless Son, our Savior, and implore: “Lord, if You want, You can make all the difference in my life. If You want, You can make me clean.” Those who, by the Holy Spirit’s power, do that have always been amazed to see how Jesus will respond to such a request. Filled with compassion for you, Jesus has, and will continue, to reach out His hand to help you. That’s what He does – what He always does. Read Scripture and you will see God’s compassion giving hope to Adam and Eve after they had sinned. It was God’s compassion which heard the cries of the enslaved Children of Israel and freed them. It was God’s compassion which called the People of Promise back from their idolatries and welcomed them home. It was God’s compassion for a lost and sinful world which had His Son, Jesus, born in Bethlehem. It was Jesus’ compassion which reached out to the leper; which called a sinful tax collector away from his table; which forgave a woman caught in adultery; which restored a dead Lazarus to his mourning family. It is the Savior’s compassion for sinners which caused Him to give His life as a ransom price for our healing.
A few years after the leper had knelt before Jesus, the Savior Himself knelt in a Garden. In that Garden He prayed; and as He prayed, our sins – the weight of all we have done wrong, the dark, black spots of our leperous sins – were given to Him. Everything we have ever done wrong: the things of which we are most ashamed, the things which we have tried so hard to hide, all these He saw. Then, having seen us at our worst, filled with compassion, He got up, and allowed Himself to be arrested and taken to trial. Jesus’ compassion for you kept Him silent when He was unjustly accused of uncommitted crimes. Jesus’ compassion kept Him from striking out when He was beaten, whipped, and crowned with thorns. Jesus’ compassion sent Him to the cross of Calvary and that same compassion kept Him there. So you and I might be forgiven, Jesus’ compassion – Jesus’ love – had Him do the dirtiest, the foulest, job this world has conceived. The innocent Son of God lived and died so you and I might be saved.
Then, as assurance that His sacrifice had been accepted; so we might know Jesus had completed the dirty job of sacrifice which no one else could do, three days after His body had been laid into a borrowed tomb, He rose. A living, breathing, conquering Christ rose from the dead and with His resurrection, you and I – all who believe – can never be condemned to death and damnation. The dirty job of saving us was done, and now, all who believe on Jesus as their Savior, are free to live a forgiven life of thanksgiving. Because of Jesus, we are, like the leper, free to tell all those around us what God’s Son has done. That is what I am doing right now. Letting you know that the same Savior who can heal a leper, can also heal you. He, who can bring a leper back from the dead, can do the same for you. Indeed, that is what God’s Son, our Savior, has done.
It was May 21, 1946; the place was Los Alamos. A young scientist was doing a dirty job. Preparing for an upcoming atomic test in the Pacific, he was calculating how much U-235 was needed to achieve a chain reaction. The scientist, Louis Slotin by name, did that by pushing two hemispheres of uranium together. Then, when the mass started to become critical, he pulled those hemispheres apart with his screwdriver. That day, just as the material became critical, Louis’ screwdriver slipped; the hemispheres of uranium came too close; the room was filled with a dazzling, bluish haze. Louis chose not to run. Instead, he tore the two hemispheres apart with his hands. Waiting for the car which was to take him to the hospital, he said to his friend, “You’ll come through this all right, but I haven’t the faintest chance.” Nine days later, in pain, he died.
More than 19 centuries ago the Son of the living God, filled with compassion, did the dirtiest of jobs. Not by accident, but willingly, Jesus walked into sin’s destruction and allowed Himself to die so we might live. With His life, on the cross, at His resurrection, He broke sin’s deadly reaction and because of His sacrifice, we have been saved. As I say, it was a dirty job, but it was a job which was finished for you. Believe it. Trust it. Be saved by it. And if we can tell you more about this dirty job Jesus did, please, call us at The Lutheran Hour. Amen.
LUTHERAN HOUR MAILBOX (Questions & Answers) for February 15, 2009
Topic: VegetarianismANNOUNCER: Is it wrong to eat meat? Is a vegan diet more in line with what the Bible teaches? Pastor Ken Klaus responds to a listener’s concerns. I’m Mark Eischer. Pastor, are you familiar with what a vegan is?
KLAUS: A vegan is a very strict sort of vegetarian who avoids all animal products in their diet.
ANNOUNCER: That’s right. So that means no meat, no dairy, no eggs, that sort of thing. OK, with that as background, on to our listener’s e-mail. It says: We invited our relatives over for a barbecue and our niece informed us that she is now a vegan. Not only that, but she started laying into us about how it’s not right to eat meat; how it’s against nature, against the Bible, against animals, and against just about everything. Well, we eventually changed the subject – and then we went out behind the garage to eat our burgers and brats. Now, we know it’s good to cut back on eating red meat for health reasons, but is this really a theological issue?
KLAUS: Mark, this may be a new topic for us, but it’s really hardly a new issue for the church.
ANNOUNCER: Thinking here about animals that were sacrificed in Old Testament times, including the Passover lamb – the lamb that pointed ahead to Jesus, the Lamb of God, who would one day take away the sins of the world.
KLAUS: A great many lambs were sacrificed over the centuries, and some of that meat was eaten. In fact, modern day Samaritans still maintain their sacrifices. There was also a notable incident in the New Testament concerning the eating of meat.
ANNOUNCER: I believe you’re speaking here of the dispute about eating meat that had been sacrificed to idols?
KLAUS: Exactly. They really got into that one. The animals were sacrificed to idols in the pagan temples. These idols didn’t have much of an appetite and so there was always a lot of meat left over after the service and the meat was then available for sale. Christians knew the false gods didn’t really exist, so it was no big deal to them, but other people who didn’t know this thought that by consuming this meat they were somehow participating in idol worship. It got some new believers really shook up.
ANNOUNCER: And the eventual outcome of this was that it was OK to eat the meat – there was nothing inherently sinful in doing that – but don’t do something if it’s going to offend a weaker Christian
KLAUS: Good summary of a very complicated issue.
ANNOUNCER: Well then, are we saying that this family shouldn’t have had their brats and burgers because it wound offend their niece?
KLAUS: I think the niece had the right to share her personal beliefs. And for her they are a matter of conscience for which she should be respected. On the other hand, she doesn’t have the right to make her conscience the rule for other people. That’s going too far.
ANNOUNCER: So, she should do what she believes to be right?
KLAUS: Yes. For her to eat meat would be wrong.
ANNOUNCER: But she shouldn’t make that the rule for others?
KLAUS: Exactly.
ANNOUNCER: Well, what does the Bible say about eating meat? Is it all right?
KLAUS: You know I’m going to get letters on this one.
ANNOUNCER: We love hearing from our listeners.
KLAUS: All right. If you look at Genesis 9:2-3, God is speaking to Noah and He says, “The fear of you and the dread of you shall be upon every beast of the earth and upon every bird of the heaven, upon everything that creeps on the ground and all the fish of the sea. Into your hand they are delivered. Every moving thing that lives shall be food for you. And as I gave you the green plants, I give you everything.” That’s as succinct as it gets. We’re allowed to eat meat.
ANNOUNCER: And the Lord later reiterates that to the Apostle Peter.
KLAUS: Yes, right. When Peter was staying at Jaffa, in a vision he saw a sheet containing all kinds of animals; and the Lord told the apostle it was perfectly acceptable for him to eat all of the meat, even those things which had once been considered to be very unclean.
ANNOUNCER: So then, this was the Lord’s way of saying to Peter that Jesus had fulfilled and completed all of the Old Testament laws and rules.
KLAUS: Exactly. Mark, there is one other thing we ought to say in regard to this topic about animals.
ANNOUNCER: What’s that?
KLAUS: In recent years, we’ve all seen movies detailing the inhumane treatment of animals, whether it be personal pets or animals bound for the slaughterhouse. We ought to say that, while the eating of meat is allowed, cruel mistreatment of animals is not. God has given humans dominion over the earth and all of His creatures, but we are not to be cruel stewards.
ANNOUNCER: Thank you, Pastor Klaus. This has been a presentation of Lutheran Hour Ministries.
Music selections for this program:
“A Mighty Fortress” arranged by John Leavitt. Concordia Publishing House/SESAC
“What Shall I Render to the Lord” by James Southwick Cool. Concordia Publishing House
“Drawn to the Cross” arranged by Chris Loemker. Concordia Publishing House
“Oh, That I Had a Thousand Voices” arranged by Chris Loemker. Concordia Publishing House