The Religious Liberty of Pity

This has been a full week, in terms of religion, politics, and public policy.  In the last few years, I’ve come to follow politics more closely and coming here to Metro DC has only made that more pronounced. One consequence of that is when the axis of faith and politics cross, as they did this week, it becomes harder to ignore the point of intersection. And maybe I could be faulted for ignoring them too much in my preaching. I will readily admit, I have never felt comfortable there.

At our Bible study on Tuesday night, we looked at the Mark’s story of Jesus healing the leper, and this text has been playing in the background of the debate on the news and in print for me like a song that gets stuck in your head. 

To be correct, this has been building for awhile. This latest episode, with the US Conference of Roman Catholic Bishops and contraception is just the latest installment. It turned up the volume. 

But before that, there was a Supreme Court decision about religious liberty, or separation of church and state, involving Hosanna-Tabor Lutheran Church, a congregation of the Missouri Synod. 

The congregation ran a parochial school and one of the teachers developed a physical disability. She began experiencing narcoleptic episodes.  She would frequently lose consciousness. Falling asleep involuntarily is a dangerous thing if you’re a teacher in front of a class. Now, students may suffer narcolepsy, I know I had a severe case in history class. I was always falling asleep.  Thankfully, the end of the semester was all it took to cure me. It’s a little different when you’re the teacher. 

It took a leave of absence for the teacher to get treatment and after treatment, she looked to get her job back.  The congregation said, “uh, not so fast,” and long story short, the teacher sued under the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). 

The congregation fought her on the grounds that the case did not belong in a court, as they were a religious institution.  The case went all the way to the Supreme Court, which unanimously sided with the congregation. 

Because it was a religious school, separation of church and state exempted the congregation from the standards of protection, fairness and justice that the ADA provided. 

It’s hard to really applaud a decision which basically states, in so many words, that basic standards of fairness, justice and protection have no place in a religious institution. The ads for Hebrew National hot dogs, and answering to a higher authority, come to mind. But, maybe that’s just me.

Then, this past week, the US Conference of Roman Catholic Bishops, raised a tremendous outcry, against being required to provide access to contraception to employees in Roman Catholic sponsored institutions, hospitals and universities for example.  The bishops cited Roman Catholic teaching that artificial contraception is immoral and they should not be required to pay for something they object to.

And I wondered how the Quakers felt about having their tax dollars going to fund our ongoing wars.  Or, the Mennonites.  Or, even how I feel about that.  Just how do you go about getting one of these exemption things anyway?   

In the background of this is Jesus healing a leper.  A truly remarkable story.  You know about the lot of a leper in the time of Jesus, right?  Lepers lived as outcasts.  They were forbidden to enter a city, or a village, or to have any sort of physical contact with a clean person, whatsoever.  In fact, if they happened upon anyone they had to shout a warning.      

Now, there is an indisputable logic to this.  Leprosy is highly contagious.  And the community, in order to protect itself isolates the leper and demands strict compliance.  We can understand the rationale behind the practice, and truth be told, agree with it for the most part.  The health and safety of the community must come first.

So, when the leper comes to Jesus, he crosses a tremendous divide.  A divide that is not unfamiliar to us either.  The huge gap between clean and unclean; acceptable and unacceptable; approved social practice and taboo---life and death.

The leper marches right up to Jesus, ignoring all the good and sound barriers that separate him for the good of the health and safety of the community and pleads with Jesus, “If you choose, you could make me well.” 

Do you hear the risk the leper is taking?  Socially prescribed behavior demanded Jesus turn his back on the leper.  Take down his license plate and turn him into the Temple DMV.  No ifs, ands, or buts. 

But instead, Mark records the most utterly remarkable, astounding words in this entire text.  The words that have been looping through my head all this week like a catchy tune while the courts, and the bishops, and the politicians do their strange, peculiar American dance.   

Mark writes that Jesus was “moved with pity.”  Three simple words. Of all the things Jesus could have said…should have said…he says, “I do choose.  Be made clean.” 

And, not only does he say it, he reaches across the barriers, the walls, the impassable divides that separate peoples, and communities, and ideologies, and he touches the man.  Physical contact with a leper…the ultimate taboo. 

Pity, compassion moves Jesus.  Pity and compassion is the fuel in the engine of faith.  It compels us from the safe, secure confines of legal doctrines and moral teachings, stifling air of dogmatic authorities, and drives us into the presence of God himself. 

We believe that morality is primarily about following the rules.  Adhering to certain doctrines, practices and teachings.  This entire week’s debate about contraception and religious liberty has been a perfect illustration of that.   That and the underlying issue of authority that always drives these debates.

As Lutherans, we don’t need to look outside of ourselves for examples of this debate.  Our own debates about sexuality fall into that category too. 

“What does the Bible say?”

“What does our doctrine allow?”

“What about tradition?” 

The sides line up.  People start staking out turf, claiming authority for themselves

For Jesus though, morality was not about doctrines, or dogmas, or teachings, or even about authority.  For Jesus, morality begins with pity.  Compassion.  Addressing the needs of another and the rules don’t even enter into it.  

Moved with pity…in spite of it all…Jesus reaches out his hand in the most basic and human of all gestures.  He touches another at the point of his deepest need, despite everything that said Jesus shouldn’t, and makes him clean. 

I wonder where pity and compassion might have moved the people of Hosanna-Tabor Lutheran Church?  Where pity and compassion might move the US Conference of Roman Catholic bishops? 

Where will we allow pity and compassion to move us?