Called by a leper to live in the resurrection

Revelation 21:10, 22 – 22: 5

The angel showed me the holy city of Jerusalem coming down out of heaven from God.

In 1956 – so many years ago – our family moved from the small rural town of Burlington, Washington (near Anacortes) to a spanking new suburb south of San Francisco. Created in the 1950s, California suburbs, indeed most American suburbs, were built for mostly white, middle class Americans attracted to the new industries and professions created in the post-war boom years. Ours was a fairly safe neighborhood, filled with houses that looked pretty much alike, bordered by wide sidewalks and neatly planted lawns, our backyards separated by wood fences which provided a decent measure of privacy. Unlike the suburbs of Europe, where the poor and the impoverished lived – and, I might add, still live – our little suburb was an oasis of relative calm and safety compared to our densely populated, ethnically diverse, beguiling, fractious, and crime-ridden neighbor, San Francisco. While one could find anonymity in a city that welcomed the people of many nations into its apartment buildings and rows of tiny cookie-cutter houses, one could readily find isolation, loneliness, and desperate poverty set next to pockets of astonishing wealth in the city. Indeed, the walk from Nob Hill and its majestic Episcopal cathedral to the seedy tenderloin district took only ten minutes.

During my third-grade year, my mother’s brother, Arnold, came for a visit to our suburban rambler. A Lutheran pastor, he was also a biker, a bourbon-lover, and a university-trained singer with a beautiful voice, a man of varied tastes and remarkable talents. At the end of his visit, of which I remember next to nothing, he left a book on my bed, my bedroom serving as his guestroom. It was published in 1956, written by Nikos Kazantzakis, the great Greek author, and entitled Saint Francis. Why he left it, I don’t know but I took it up and began to read this story of the Little Poor Man of Assisi who lived in the 13th century, this young man who abandoned an upwardly mobile life in order to follow the poor Christ among the poor.

What I remember from the novel is an encounter between Francis and a leper, a story that has been indelibly burned into my memory. Leaving the walled and fortified city of Assisi, Francis hears a ringing bell and a voice crying out, “Leper, beware. Leper, beware.” Living right outside the gates where they received food scraps thrown down to them by city dwellers, medieval lepers were required by law to alert others of their presence by carrying and ringing a bell whenever they ventured forth from their hovels and calling out their presence so that “healthy” people could avoid contact with them by stepping to the side. Accompanied by his companion, Brother Leo, one of the first members of his movement, Francis seemed to be moving toward the leper. Immediately alarmed, Leo pulled him away and dragged him into the roadside depression, caught him in a headlock in order to immobilize him, all the while telling him not to look, not to look.

But if you’ve ever held anyone in a headlock, you know that the minute the other person relaxes his or her body, you, too, relax your hold just ever so slightly. And thus, Francis relaxed for just a moment and in that moment when Leo eased his hold on him, Francis slipped out, jumped to the road, and ran toward the startled leper who begged him to stay away. Ignoring this reasonable advice, Francis embraced the leper and kissed him gently – yes gently – but earnestly on his rotting lips. And, in that very moment when lips touched lips, a searing explosion of light and fire hurled Francis to the ground, his goatee burned off his face, his simple grey tunic singed with fire burns, his body limp in unconsciousness as Leo tired to revive him – Leo now thinking that their fledgling gospel project to live among, to serve, and eventually to bring the poor, the untouchables, and the marginalized into the city of life, into the city of God, into the church, was now completely and utterly lost simply because Francis, in his recklessness, had embraced and kissed the leper, the surest way to contract the disease.

In that searing explosion of light and fire, the leper disappeared in the wink of an eye. Now anxious and bewildered, Leo asked Francis as he came to consciousness: “What just happened? Who was that leper who vanished in the light?”

For some time Francis was silent and then with a smile of sheer joy on his face said, “Dear Leo, do you not know the One who said, ‘I was a stranger and you welcomed me, sick and you visited me’? For it was none other than the Lord Christ, asking us if we would recognize him in our poor brother.”

Some time after reading this story, our family went into the city with my grandmother to go to Blum’s Candy Store where one could find exquisite chocolates and order the most decadent ice cream sundaes. As we walked around a corner, I bumped into a “bum,” reeking with the smell of alcohol and urine, seated on the street, his rheumy eyes looking up at me. I was usually frightened of such men for they were a part of the dangerous and menacing fabric of urban life, men who would never be seen in our tranquil and well-ordered suburb. But, of course, while I say that I was frightened – and perhaps you, too, are frightened or at least try to avoid such persons in our own city – I know now— that then—I never saw such men as “persons,” as real human beings, but as sad failures or dark threats to my safety. That is, until that moment when I stopped but for a second, the story of an unexpected encounter in medieval Assisi prodding my imagination, that story which made me pause but for a moment and ask: is this the Lord Christ, inviting me to see someone, this one, as a beloved child of the Most High God?

In his vision of the heavenly Jerusalem, of God’s city here on earth, John writes that there is light which shines generously on all people, not some but all; that its gates are never shut, never shut to anyone, especially to those who may be counted “least” or “little” in the cities of this world and thus in our own Emerald City; that the many, not the few, but the many are welcomed, their cultural gifts and wisdoms bumping into each other, expanding our notion of what it means to be God’s children created in marvelous diversity; that there is clean water – neither oil saturated nor fouled with toxins – but clean water flowing in abundance for all who are thirsty; that there is the tree of life which continually bears fruit every month of the year so that no one – no one – need go hungry; that the leaves of the tree of life are available to anyone – anyone – who is need of healing, whether or not they can pay a price; and that there, in the middle of the city, is the Lamb of God, our Lord Christ, once put to death for his alliance with all the needy ones of this earth, once put to death because he pronounced God’s holy blessing and God’s holy love for the odd, the unethical, the rheumy-eyed drunk, the woman of the street, the impoverished, the bourbon-lovers, the hated Samaritan, the legalist, the liberal, the conservative, the doubter, the leper, the poor man, the new-born baby and the old lady, the orphan and the mother, the one who can’t make a commitment to anything and the one who is steadfast come hell or high water, as well as all those who, like me, imagine – perhaps in our folly – that our commitment to good order, education, and decent behavior will somehow save the world.

On all these and on all of us, he pronounced and still pronounces God’s holy blessing, God’s holy love. For in the city of God – into which we have been washed in the Easter River of holy baptism – we should expect and not be surprised to see the leper – whoever the “leper” may be for us, yes, whoever the “leper” may be for us – coming toward us and asking, yes, asking for a kiss.

I was a stranger, says the Lamb, and you welcomed me.

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