Willing

     Following the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus comes down from the mountain and almost immediately encounters someone in need. Older translations called this man a leper, but more modern versions of the Bible acknowledge that not every skin disease is technically leprosy, and they translate the word accordingly. Regardless, in that culture this man is likely ostracized and his malady feared. He has to live outside of town and warn anyone who comes near that he has “leprosy” and is ceremonially unclean. It must take a great deal of courage for him to approach Jesus in the midst of a great crowd to ask for healing. I imagine people shying away from the man, trying to escape the radius of his impurity, or hurling epithets or even rocks in an attempt to drive him away.

     Jesus does not shy away, even when the man comes before him as a supplicant, falling to his knees and clasping his hands in earnest entreaty. “Lord, if you are willing,” he says, “you can make me clean” (v. 2).

     The text doesn’t say so, but I imagine Jesus locking eyes with him—something the man is not used to, as most people carefully avoid making eye contact with him. Then Jesus “stretched out his hand and touched him, saying, ‘I am willing. Be made clean!’ Immediately his skin disease was cleansed” (v. 3).

     I am willing. Three simple words, but they capture so much of the way God approaches relations with created beings. Willingness is a characteristic of one who is open to the other, one who seeks out relationship partners, one who does not dole out healing as with an eye dropper but rather splashes it about lavishly. We sometimes think we must beg God to meet our needs or to protect or save or heal our loved ones, as though God will not act until we say, “Pretty please with sugar on it.” On the contrary, God figuratively leans forward on God’s chair, waiting for the slightest indication of acknowledged need in order to spring into action.

     Still, we all know that not every hurt gets healed. Not every marriage survives, not every sick person recovers, not every war is brought to a just and peaceful end. Does that mean that in those cases God is not willing to respond? Of course not! God’s willingness, which of course is based in God’s unfailing love, is a constant. But as I noted in a recent sermon, God’s love is by nature uncontrolling, and there are other factors involved that can thwart God’s (always) good intentions. As an uncontrolling God—one whose power is essentially expressed in love—God needs collaborators who are also willing, and moment by moment God seeks to guide entities into a collaborative mode and then responds accordingly. The interplay of creatures’s wills with the divine will is a sort of dance, and we, unlike God, can get out of step.

     In the case of the man with the skin disease, his willingness to be healed aligns with Jesus’s willingness to bring healing, and there is a satisfactory conclusion to the dance: he is cleansed of his disease. That’s why it’s so important that we signal our willingness to cooperate with God’s intentions. God seeks ready partners—ones who are willing to run a risk or put their faith where their mouth is, so to speak—like the man who braved vilification from the community to approach Jesus with his request.

     There are other factors at play in each situation, of course. For instance, wars are complex, with many different actors having many different motivations and aims. God relates with them all in love for the purpose of bringing about a just peace, but there are so many (metaphorical) land mines and obstacles that it’s practically a miracle when peace and justice prevail.

     God is always willing to heal, to restore, to promote flourishing for all, but God needs partners who are equally willing to cooperate with God. May our willingness match God’s willingness, and may we, like the man in the gospel story, receive a positive answer to our prayers.