Harry B. Partin - "The Language of His Hands" (June 19, 1966; June 5, 1966)

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-	Mark portrait of Jesus,	0:43
	presents him as one	0:48
	who is	0:51
	active	0:52
	and compassionate,	0:55
	by the middle of the first chapter of the gospel,	0:59
	according to Mark,	1:03
	we find Jesus already actively	1:06
	engaged in his public ministry.	1:10
	And before the end of the first chapter,	1:16
	we have Mark's account,	1:20
	of Jesus,	1:23
	healing of the leper	1:25
	In order to grasp the meaning	1:30
	and significance of this event,	1:32
	I think it is necessary to recall for a moment	1:37
	how lepers were viewed	1:42
	and how they were dealt with.	1:47
	We had a brief passage from the book of Leviticus,	1:52
	13th chapter of Leviticus, and a part of the 14th chapter	1:59
	are given to detailed instructions	2:05
	about	2:11
	how to deal	2:12
	with lepers	2:14
	and with those suspected	2:17
	of having leprosy,	2:21
	Moses and Aaron are told what to do	2:25
	when as Leviticus 13 one puts it	2:29
	a man has on the skin of his body,	2:34
	a swelling	2:39
	or an eruption	2:41
	or a spot.	2:44
	And it turns into a leprous disease	2:48
	on the skin of his body.	2:52
	Leviticus goes on to say that the priests,	2:56
	shall examine,	3:01
	he shall perform certain tests,	3:04
	which were prescribed.	3:09
	And if leprosy is confirmed,	3:12
	shall pronounce the man unclean.	3:17
	The leper, who has the disease,	3:23
	says Leviticus,	3:27
	shall wear torn clothes	3:30
	and left the hair of his head hang loose	3:34
	behavior, characteristic	3:40
	of mourning.	3:44
	In this case, perhaps off one mourning,	3:47
	his own living death,	3:50
	Leviticus continued,	3:55
	and he shall cover his upper lip	3:59
	and cry,	4:02
	Unclean!	4:03
	Unclean!	4:05
	He shall remain unclean as long as he has the disease.	4:08
	He is unclean.	4:15
	He shall dwell alone	4:19
	in the habitation outside the camp,	4:23
	Why unclean this?	4:29
	Leviticus has in mind something more	4:32
	than the nastiness of the disease	4:35
	and indeed something more than we,	4:40
	when we think of the spread of a disease	4:43
	from one person to another,	4:49
	for the writers of Leviticus	4:53
	are thinking of a kind off supernatural contagion.	4:56
	The contagion which threatens to defile	5:04
	all black with which it comes in contact,	5:08
	the whole order of	5:15
	the social as well as personal,	5:19
	cosmic as well as historic,	5:23
	is threatened with defiled,	5:27
	through the contagion, which has appeared here.	5:33
	And so it must be contained,	5:39
	Roger Castillo in his book,	5:46
	Man and the Sacred,	5:50
	as written up this attitude towards uncleanliness	5:53
	contagious,	5:58
	impurity.	6:01
	These various impurities,	6:04
	he writes,	6:07
	expose the entire community to danger,	6:10
	for nothing is more contagious	6:16
	than supernatural defilement,	6:19
	thus each society has,	6:24
	as his first duty,	6:29
	protection from defilement,	6:31
	by rigidly excluding	6:35
	from its midst,	6:38
	those who bear it,	6:41
	no relationships with the members of the group are allowed.	6:44
	And the boot group tries to save itself	6:50
	from the puerperant poison	6:55
	that the offenders contain and carry,	6:58
	mentally and naturally.	7:04
	It seems probable that,	7:11
	many skin diseases were called leprosy	7:14
	were diagnosed as leprosy.	7:21
	Anyone with a skin disease	7:26
	might well find himself,	7:31
	declared a leper	7:36
	and be separated,	7:40
	segregated,	7:43
	banished,	7:47
	hence a carrier	7:50
	and container	7:52
	of the terrible contagion,	7:55
	if your skin cleared up.	7:59
	He had the possibility of presenting himself,	8:04
	to the priests, who would again, examine him.	8:07
	And if the priest determined that the leprosy was gone,	8:13
	and the contagion had vanished,	8:20
	he would then perform a right off cleansing,	8:24
	a right,	8:30
	which is described in the 14th chapter of Leviticus.	8:31
	And he may have been given a certificate,	8:38
	which attested that he was now clean.	8:43
	And now people could have relations with him,	8:49
	that again, he was a member of the community.	8:54
	Let us not hasten as we preachers are,	9:03
	want to do	9:08
	condemn out of hand, this ancient custom,	9:11
	leprosy was a dreadful disease.	9:17
	As indeed it has been until recent times.	9:22
	We have, I think to try to appreciate	9:28
	the anxiety,	9:33
	fear,	9:36
	the sheer terror	9:38
	that the people felt	9:40
	in the presence of this dreaded thing,	9:42
	by segregating the leper,	9:47
	or if need be those suspected of having leprosy,	9:51
	the community acted to protect itself,	9:56
	to protect itself,	10:03
	and that seems	10:06
	rational	10:09
	and prudent.	10:11
	But the question comes,	10:14
	are there higher value	10:17
	than prudence,	10:20
	is such prudence at all.	10:24
	And at what cost to the leper,	10:28
	at what cost to the man who was banished,	10:33
	who is put outside the camp,	10:38
	at what cost to him,	10:42
	does the community protect itself?	10:45
	Psalm 88,	10:52
	has sometimes been called the lepers song,	10:54
	at any rate,	11:01
	this song	11:03
	gives poignant expression, to the feeling of a man,	11:06
	who has been cut off	11:11
	forsaken,	11:15
	Oh Lord, my God.	11:18
	I cry for help, by day,	11:22
	I cry out in the night before thee	11:28
	incline thine ear,	11:34
	to my cry,	11:36
	when my soul is full of troubles	11:41
	and my life draws near to you.	11:44
	I am reckoned among those go down to the pit.	11:50
	I am a man who has no strength,	11:57
	like one forsaken among the dead.	12:02
	Like the slain	12:08
	that lie in debris.	12:11
	Like those who thou dust, remember no more,	12:16
	for they are cut off	12:21
	from thy hand.	12:24
	Thou has caused	12:28
	my companions to shun me,	12:31
	Thou has made me a thing of horror,	12:36
	too	12:40
	I am shut in	12:44
	so that I cannot escape.	12:46
	My eye grows dim through sorrow.	12:50
	Every day I call upon thee, oh Lord,	12:56
	I spread out my hand to Thee,	13:00
	does thou work wonders for the dead.	13:07
	do shades rise up to praise Thee.	13:14
	Is thy steadfast love declared in the grave?	13:19
	or thy faithfulness in a battle.	13:26
	Are thy wonders known in the darkness,	13:31
	for thy saving held me	13:38
	in the land of forgetfulness,	13:41
	is there saving help	13:47
	in the land of forgetfulness,	13:51
	the leper,	13:57
	believed,	14:00
	there is,	14:01
	for this Mark tells us,	14:05
	a leper came to Him,	14:08
	to Jesus,	14:12
	beseeching Him and kneeling	14:15
	said to Him,	14:17
	if you will,	14:19
	you can make me clean.	14:22
	Use your imagination.	14:28
	Behold in your minds eye,	14:33
	the sin with mark paints	14:38
	with a huge death stroke of his pen,	14:42
	moved with pity.	14:49
	He's stretched out his hand and touched him	14:52
	and said to him,	15:00
	I will. Be clean.	15:03
	Mark goes on to relate	15:10
	miraculous cleansing of 11,	15:15
	not one, but two miracles	15:22
	are performed.	15:26
	And the greater of the two may pass the unnoticed.	15:29
	The greater miracle,	15:34
	was not to cleanse,	15:37
	but to touch him.	15:41
	He stretched out His hand and touched him,	15:46
	how far Jesus hand had to stretch,	15:52
	it had to reach across the chasm of custom,	15:59
	through the dread valley of paralyzing fear,	16:11
	beyond the barrier,	16:17
	a biblical prohibition.	16:20
	How far,	16:25
	it had to reach to the man,	16:29
	to the man, as he walked,	16:34
	to give, saving help	16:38
	in the land of forgetfulness,	16:42
	it was difficult,	16:47
	as difficult for Jesus,	16:49
	as it would be for you, or for me,	16:51
	how human,	16:56
	how natural	16:58
	to hold back	17:01
	to find another way.	17:04
	And yet	17:07
	Jesus touched him,	17:09
	and in the touching violated a taboo,	17:13
	which itself violated God's compassion,	17:19
	here as in	17:27
	the other events,	17:30
	in the life of Jesus,	17:34
	nothing less than a personal touch	17:37
	with the person in need	17:42
	would satisfy Jesus,	17:45
	a personal touch,	17:49
	with the person in need,	17:52
	we hear his words.	17:57
	I will,	18:00
	be clear,	18:03
	we often give primary attention to the words, on cases,	18:06
	the words,	18:13
	it used to be the costume,	18:15
	perhaps it still is in some circles,	18:17
	to print the words of Jesus in red,	18:20
	the kind of word honorary,	18:26
	if the outward expression may be permitted,	18:29
	but let us learn	18:34
	to listen	18:37
	to the language of His hands,	18:39
	the language of Jesus hands.	18:44
	What did Jesus say to the leper,	18:49
	with His hands?	18:53
	What do His hand say to us,	18:56
	who would be his disciples,	19:00
	hands do speak.	19:04
	They have a language of their own.	19:08
	How many of us have had to resort to that language of hands?	19:14
	When we found ourselves in	19:18
	another country and could not speak the foreign tongue.	19:21
	And so we talked, we communicated,	19:25
	we expressed something with our hands,	19:29
	then more frequently than not,	19:34
	we made ourselves understood.	19:37
	The language of the hands	19:41
	is more universal	19:45
	and sometimes more expressive,	19:47
	than the language of the tongue.	19:51
	Hands can say many things.	19:56
	A hand can say anger, when it is clenched in a fist,	20:00
	it can say friendship, when it is offered to another hand,	20:06
	it can say love when it ministers tenderly to a sick child.	20:14
	Hands can say adoration and supplication,	20:23
	when they are placed in prayer as a doers pray hand.	20:29
	I saw it the other day,	20:36
	the remarkable series of photographs,	20:38
	photographs of the hands of eight priests,	20:42
	saying mass,	20:48
	a priest does not say mass	20:52
	merely with his tongue,	20:56
	but also with his hands,	20:58
	in the gospel according to John	21:04
	we're told that the word became flesh	21:07
	and dwelt among us	21:13
	full of grace	21:16
	and truth.	21:18
	That's the word became incarnate.	21:21
	It became a human voice	21:27
	and it became human hands.	21:31
	The hands of Jesus,	21:35
	Jesus spoke compassionately with his hands,	21:40
	by his hands He identified himself with a man in soul need,	21:48
	doing what all others refused to do,	21:54
	by his hands,	22:02
	by his touching of the leper,	22:04
	Jesus repudiated the isolation,	22:08
	the segregation,	22:13
	which customs,	22:15
	religion,	22:18
	and common sense had decree.	22:20
	He received the leper again into the human family.	22:24
	He reached down into the land of forgetfulness,	22:30
	the land of the living dead,	22:36
	to declare God's steadfast love	22:40
	and to restore hopelessness,	22:46
	to be sure not all were oblivious	22:51
	to the lepers who lived	22:54
	as Leviticus puts it outside the camp	22:56
	food might be set out	23:00
	and other provisions may,	23:02
	but no one dared,	23:05
	indeed no one was expected to get close,	23:08
	let alone touch.	23:13
	It was enough to make some provision	23:16
	for the physical needs of the leper.	23:22
	The cartoon in Pugh	23:29
	showed a titled Lady,	23:33
	distributing charity,	23:38
	in slums	23:41
	from a limousine.	23:43
	One of the slum dwellers thanked her	23:46
	in unexpectedly fulsome turn.	23:49
	"Thank you lady. May we meet in heaven"	23:53
	The lady exclaimed, God forbid!	23:59
	and said sharply to her chauffeur drive off.	24:03
	Your ass	24:07
	We have moved far	24:11
	from the concept of ritual	24:14
	and uncleanliness	24:17
	and of supernatural contagion and defilement.	24:21
	We just don't consult the priestly writers of Leviticus,	24:27
	Our segregation have found other basis,	24:34
	race, religion, moray, and the rest.	24:38
	We know,	24:47
	it is not that we take no responsibility for others	24:50
	It is rather that the responsibility	24:54
	which we take is often very limited	24:57
	and indirect.	25:03
	We do not want to get involved.	25:07
	We will give a little of what we have,	25:13
	but nothing of ourselves,	25:16
	do not touch	25:21
	becomes all or cyber Monday,	25:24
	or we are afraid that it will cost to touch.	25:28
	That we will break something	25:35
	and we are right.	25:39
	It probably will cost,	25:41
	but we are disciples of one who did touch,	25:46
	who got involved,	25:53
	who gave Himself	25:57
	and that not without cost,	26:01
	for the hands that touched a leper's sores,	26:04
	were nailed to a cross.	26:08
	Jesus did not get away with impunity.	26:12
	And he does not promise impunity to us.	26:17
	Let me close with some words of F W H Myles,	26:24
	words, which he puts in the mouth, of John the Baptist.	26:30
	Ooh that the heavens were rent.	26:38
	And one came down,	26:41
	who saw men's hurt with kindlier eyes than mine,	26:45
	fiercer, than I resented every wrong,	26:52
	sweated, more painful drops	26:57
	than these,	27:00
	that flow in nightly passion for my people sins,	27:01
	died with it,	27:07
	lived beyond it,	27:10
	ye but now,	27:14
	if this indeed were Jesus,	27:16
	this is the land.	27:21
	And if so in one complete and sacred agony,	27:24
	he lifted all the weight of all the world	27:29
	and if men knew it,	27:35
	that were enough,	27:40
	it is enough.	27:45
	The leper knew it,	27:49
	in the touch of Jesus.	27:52
	And we know,	27:57
	lets pray.	28:02
	Oh God of heaven,	28:10
	who has set us in this common world,	28:16
	of human beatitude,	28:21
	Grant us there in to live willingly,	28:27
	taking true part with our fellows	28:33
	in humility and sacrifice.	28:37
	Give us to dwell as men among men	28:42
	in the measure and power of thine eternal kingdom.	28:48
	Serving with joy, the gospel of thine earth dwelling love,	28:55
	in Jesus Christ, our Savior.	29:01
	And now,	29:07
	may the love of God,	29:10
	our Father,	29:13
	the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ	29:17
	and the communion of the Holy Spirit,	29:22
	be with us all.	29:26
	(choir voices)	29:35

Item Info

Title:

Harry B. Partin - "The Language of His Hands" (June 19, 1966; June 5, 1966)

Permalink:

https://idn.duke.edu/ark:/87924/r4445nd8p

Date:

June 19, 1966
June 5, 1966

Speaker:

Partin, Harry B.

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Duke University. Chapel

Identifier:

UA.17.01.0003 RR-0343
ref5889_tid
uachapelsermaud
duke:628686
dcrau002339
ark:/87924/r4445nd8p
7972f0af-0ae2-44ec-b707-4a9d52f1f735

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Duke Chapel Recordings

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Duke University Chapel recordings, 1954-2005

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North Carolina
Durham (N.C.)

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CC BY-NC 4.0

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Harry B. Partin - "The Language of His Hands" (June 19, 1966; June 5, 1966)

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