Detours of Life

Seeing our Lord’s love in life’s stops and starts

01/17/2019

Mark 1:40-45 A leper came to him and kneeling down begged him and said, "If you wish, you can make me clean." Moved with pity, he stretched out his hand, touched the leper, and said to him, "I do will it. Be made clean." The leprosy left him immediately, and he was made clean. Then, warning him sternly, he dismissed him at once. Then he said to him, "See that you tell no one anything, but go, show yourself to the priest and offer for your cleansing what Moses prescribed; that will be proof for them." The man went away and began to publicize the whole matter. He spread the report abroad so that it was impossible for Jesus to enter a town openly. He remained outside in deserted places, and people kept coming to him from everywhere.

I have learned a lot about my faith from my parents, which I think most of us can safely say. I marvel at how much they have taught me, both directly and indirectly and they still do, even though I am the priest and I am supposed to know everything. One lesson I learned as a small boy was that even the detours are part of the journey of love.

When I was young my family would drive to New York City to visit my uncle and his family. They lived in Long Island. Most people can drive the distance between Little Rock and New York in a day and a half, or even in one long day. It’s about 18 hours. But the three children insisted we stop at a hotel early, one that had a swimming pool of course, so we could swim. The journey became longer and more expensive because we wanted to take a detour. My brother, on the other hand, when he takes his family on vacations, he piles the kids into the car and drives all night while they sleep. They get there faster and cheaper, and he doesn’t have to hear their fighting and complaining, “Are we there yet?” But my parents let us take detours on our journey to New York City, and only now do I realize what a sacrifice of love it was for them.

In the gospel Jesus demonstrates how detours can be signs of his sacrificial love for the people. Jesus begins his Galilean ministry and he is on a long, three-year journey to Jerusalem. And he wasn’t going there for a vacation. Along the way, he cures a leper with the stern warning not to reveal that Jesus was performed the miracle. But the happily healed man cannot contain his relief and joy and so he broadcasts it everywhere.  What is the consequence? We read: “He spread the report abroad so that it was impossible for Jesus to enter a town openly. He remained in deserted places, and people kept coming to him from everywhere.” In other words, even though Jesus knew the consequences of curing the leper – that he would not keep it quiet – he allowed him to create a detour on the Lord’s journey to Jerusalem. And that miraculous detour, like stopping at a hotel with a swimming pool for the night, only made the journey longer and more difficult for our Lord.

But that’s how much Jesus loves us. He didn’t just throw us all into the back of the car and drive all night. The fact that Jesus became a man means not only that he donned a human nature (and dealt with its limitations on his divinity), but also that he had to deal with our human nature, our weaknesses and neediness, like parents have to deal with their kids on vacation trips. Even the detours are signs of our Lord’s sacrificial love for us.

Folks, how do you deal with the detours of your own life’s long journey to the eternal Jerusalem, that is, to heaven? Some of those detours are of our own making while others are made for us by others. In our own way, we, too, must labor lovingly with the limitations of a human nature we have (our own sins), but also accommodate ourselves to the weaknesses and neediness of the humanity of others, like Jesus did. Some of the detours we deal with could be a divorce we did not want, or perhaps a disease that we never saw coming, or the death of a family member or close friend, or any number of experiences that derail our life and cause the journey to become longer and a lot more expensive.

But Jesus lovingly lets us take the detour and he waits patiently for us to pick up the journey again. He is not in a hurry to get us to heaven, even though, like my parents, he knows that is where we will be truly and eternally happy. Even the detours are signs of his sacrificial love for us.

Praised be Jesus Christ!