Mark 1: 40-45

Sisters & brothers, grace to you and peace from the God of all, from the Christ of compassion, and from the Spirit of comfort. Amen.

One of the singularly-most-popular words these days in the vocabulary of modern psychology is the word “boundaries.”

Everyone, it seems, is aware of observing appropriate boundaries.

Workshops are offered in the workplace to assist people to understand and respect the need for professional boundaries.

Boundaries show us limits, offer us parameters, present us with a playing field or a basis for operation; they enable us to stay within a prescribed scope, and provide us with appropriate lines of being in relationship.

I have a friend who is a therapist, and whose dog — named Inca — in addition to recognizing and obeying such words as “come,” “sit,” “stay,” and “roll over,” also understands the word “boundaries.” Upon hearing its owner say, “Inca, boundaries” the dog will stop dead in its tracks or literally back up or take steps away from the object of its attention. The dog’s got a good therapist — what can I say?! (Whether or not Inca respects boundaries when it comes to a fire hydrant, I don’t know!)

Boundaries are good things. I do not mean to minimize, disparage, nor make light of them.  To know our boundaries with each other is to conduct ourselves in an appropriate manner within community, to honor and respect our neighbor. Without boundaries, we are prone to violate, to offend, to overstep, to be inappropriate. Boundaries are necessary and helpful for us as we are in relationship with one another.

One of my favorite boundary violation stories is a light-hearted one from my first parish after seminary, in a small town in southern Minnesota with one of those charming five-aisle-wide grocery stores on Main Street, Johnson’s Grocery. I had just arrived in town as the new associate pastor at First Lutheran Church, where 1,000 of the town’ s 1,500 people were members. As I stood at the checkout line, placing my items on the conveyor belt, an elderly gentleman from the parish stood there and commented on each of my grocery selections as the bag boy — one of my youth group kids — nervously placed my bathroom tissue, my cereal, and my frozen pizzas into their brown paper privacy. About that time I was feeling like putting a brown paper bag over his head. Boundaries! My friend’s dog Inca knows better!

Jesus was one who boldly violated boundaries. Not in ways that were unhealthy or disrespectful of persons, but quite the contrary: Jesus always violated boundaries in ways which completely disregarded the societal values which dehumanized those most marginalized or in need in the community. Jesus always pushed the boundary lines out further and wider and deeper to encompass and include those who were the cast-asides and the rejected. Jesus always sought to make the lines more inclusive of the many and exclusive of none, rather than exclusive of the many and inclusive only of the special few.

Today’s gospel sheds some Epiphany light upon this particular boundary-dispelling trait of Jesus’. A leper, a man whose skin was literally rotting and falling off his body, approaches Jesus and — knowing in his heart who Jesus is or at the very least what Jesus could do and indeed had done for others, kneels down before him and asks Jesus to heal him if he so chose. In doing so, the leper had majorly violated a boundary. In ancient times, lepers were strictly prohibited by law from approaching the general public; any contact whatsoever, it was believed, could mean transmission of the disease, and so this outcast had not only violated a boundary but had broken a law.

But Jesus trumps the leper with an even-greater boundary violation: Jesus not only refuses to back away, but stretches out his hands and places them on him — coming in direct contact not only with the man but with the most wretched part of him: his suffering, his highly-contagious disease, his pain.  Rather than being “moved with pity” as the New Revised Standard Version translation chooses to describe Jesus, the literal translation of the Greek word orgizo is rage.  In other words, Jesus was quite literally raging against the power of sin, death, and all evil — determined to banish their dehumanizing effect on this man whose illness had made him a societal outcast.  It is Jesus’ anger toward such deathly, devilish forces at bear in the man that cause him to willfully respond in healing to his plea.

It is precisely this kind of compassionate boundary violating that earned Jesus the kind of popularity and celebrity which was cause for his frequent retreats to the countryside, far from the crowds.  Jesus touched all people without reserve; Jesus reached out and did not withhold in spite of social pressures to do so; Jesus crossed over the human-made boundaries that kept people separated from people and made direct, healing contact with the most unappealing, most unwelcome, most unloveable of humanity. And doing so would ultimately get him in trouble in a big way.

The Byzantine mosaic on the cover of this morning’s bulletin illustrates this deeper truth. It is not just the leper whom Jesus touches; it is not just the mentally ill or demon-possessed whom Jesus delivers; it is not just the cancer victim or AIDS patient or Alzheimers sufferer to whom Jesus draws near. Even as Jesus is reaching out to the leper whose body is covered with sores too many to number, we are reminded of the innumerable ways in which we, too, are touched in our brokenness, as Jesus crosses the boundary of sin and death and draws near with his salvation for all. Jesus knows our ugliness, our pain, our hurts, our secrets, our sadness, our guilt, our apathy, our shame, our failures and failings, our inmost heart of hearts, and touches us with the same kind of boundary-violating compassion that healed the outcast leper and restored him to wholeness of life.

As Jesus’ followers, we too are called to the same kind of boundary-crossing compassion. The kind of boat-rocking, eyebrow raising service that is bound to get us in trouble for going one step too far, for crossing too many comfort zones, for violating someone’s preconceived notions concerning what the church is to be about. For instance, some congregations have chosen to become sanctuaries for undocumented persons, while others have provided shelter for homeless folks or a warm meal for the hungry. Other congregations have taken very public stands against global and societal injustices, such as world hunger, poverty, war and aggression, civil rights and marriage equality for all. All in the name of Jesus, the one whose anger and rage at the forces of darkness and death caused him to cross comfort zones and violate deathly boundaries with the power of love, and of healing, and of wholeness. We too are called to the business of such boundary-crossing, darkness-dispelling, light-shining ministry, which reaches out in healing and with justice for those who are suffering any injustice, disease, and prejudice.

Jesus is always in the midst of such violations of grace.

And Jesus always stands beside the broken and suffering, reaching out and touching the most painful and hard-to-look-at places.

So, boundaries be damned! The light of Jesus Christ knows nothing of them, and his epiphany among us insures that every dark and despairing place will be flooded with his light which knows no limits, no parameters, no restrictions, no distinctions, and no conditions. For in Jesus, the final boundary has been violated once and for all: that of sin, death, and the power of all evil. The cross of Christ is the ultimate boundary-crossing, and his resurrection the cosmic violation of death’s lasting grip over us all.

With the psalmist we sing of that eternal and victorious violation: “O Lord, you have raised my soul from the dead, restored me to life from those who sink into the grave. At night there are tears, but joy comes with dawn. I will praise you, Lord, for you have rescued me.” Amen.