Bishop Mariann's Sermon

2 as is, on the opposite extreme, asking, “What did someone else do to make me this way?”

In other words, “Whose fault is this?”

Healing begins with acceptance. And not just acceptance of whatever it is that we wish were not true about us. To heal we must accept ourselves, as we are, broken in all the places that we are broken; impaired in all the ways we are impaired. Acceptance takes us to that deep place where we know ourselves to be flawed in particular, undeniable ways and, in that broken place, unconditionally loved by God. From that place, and that place alone, can we begin to love ourselves for who we are and others as they are, wounds, warts and all.

Jesus’ tremendous healing power flowed from his unconditional acceptance of every person he met as a beloved child of God. He never defined people according to their sin or sickness, but saw them in their entirety, as God saw them. He rejected the rigid purity codes that judged sick people as spiritually unclean. Those with leprosy were particularly isolated in his day, forced to live on the borders of human society, required to cry out their condition whenever another person approached, obliged to endure condemnation for their supposed depravity. Jesus would have none of that. When lepers approached him, as did the man in today’s story, he engaged them as precious human beings. He looked into their eyes and saw them; he reached out to touch them. He was, as the Scriptures say, moved to compassion by their plight and he treated them with dignity.

That is to say, he accepted and loved them. And from that acceptance and love, they were healed.

Sometimes the only healing we get is acceptance, which is hard to imagine settling for when what we really want is to be released from whatever afflicts us. A dear friend who has made peace with her paralysis and lives a rich, full life from the confinement to a wheelchair told me that those who are just facing a similar fate don’t want to hear how she had found that peace. “They don’t want to accept what I have accepted. They want to walk again,” she said, “and I don’t blame them.” But sometimes the healing we are given is acceptance of our lot, whatever that it, and when acceptance takes us to that deep spiritual place where we are known and loved by God, acceptance is enough. There’s a story told about an old rabbi who lost his sight and could no read or see the faces of those who came to visit him. A faith healer approached him and said, “Entrust your life into my care and I will heal your blindness.” “That won’t be necessary,” the rabbi replied, “I can see all that I need to.”

Buddhism has much to teach about the spirituality of acceptance. A sacred Buddhist principle is the acceptance of suffering and discomfort as part of life. “There is no cure for hot and cold,” Buddhists will say. There is no way around the difficulties and heartaches that make us human. Suffering is not the result of a mistake you made; it’s not a punishment. To accept suffering is the first step toward freedom.

The American Buddhist nun, Pema Chodron, in a book aptly titled, The Wisdom of No Escape, writes this: The mistake that keeps us caught in our own particular kind of ignorance, unkindness and shut-downness is that we are never encouraged to see clearly what is, with gentleness. Instead, we imagine that we should try to be better than we already are, that we should try to improve ourselves, that