Leper Lord, Down’s Syndrome Disciples

A week ago Wednesday was the Feast of Saint Francis.  One reason I love my church is that my pastor, Grover Pinson, is aware of such things.  Better still, he is unafraid to mention such things from a Baptist pulpit.  Best of all, when he does mention them, he knows what he’s talking about.  So during Sunday’s sermon he told the story of St. Francis and the Leper.

 Have you heard that one?  Well, it doesn’t begin, “St. Francis and a leper walk into a bar . . . ” although, now that I think about it, it very well could.  There are different versions, but the gist of the tale is that the young Francis, who had a phobia about leprosy, saw an afflicted beggar limping along the road toward him.  Rotting rags draped running sores.  Fly-blown flesh hung in peeled strips like mildewed wallpaper.  Damp footprints mottled the dust with pads of mud and puss.  The dandified son of a wealthy merchant drew back in horror and twitched up the cuffs of his starched khakis, fearful lest standing downwind of this lump of psoriasis should stain the popped collar of his Izod sports shirt.  Stung by a spasm of conscience, he reached for his purse, flung it at the man’s three-toed feet, and wheeled about to flee.  Some versions of the story have Francis on foot, others on horseback, but it doesn’t really matter.  What counts is that just at that moment, young Bernadone’s heart told him that a bag full of kruggerands wouldn’t pay the debt.  He turned, walked to the beggar, placed the purse in those scabrous palms, and then hugged the fellow to his breast. 

Francis later dated his conversion from that moment:  not when he heard Christ speak to him from the crucifix above the altar of the ruined Chapel of San Damiano; not when he shucked his laundry in the town square and walked away naked to embrace Lady Poverty; not when the stigmata burst through his palms on Monte Alverna - but when a putrid, polluted body became the holy sacrament, when he hugged Jesus in the horror of a leper.

After the service, I eavesdropped as a congregant told my pastor the story of her grandson, who has Down’s Syndrome.  She began visiting the school where the young man spends his days.  Though she dreaded the visits, having a natural aversion to deformity, she quickly lost her heart to mentally retarded but emotionally gifted people who loved her without reservation.  One remark struck me in particular.  She said that the overseers tried to outlaw hugging.  Some of the residents had substandard personal hygiene, and Down’s Syndrome sufferers tend toward respiratory diseases.  The prohibition failed, however.  It seems that these people live for and by affection.  An interdiction against embracing had as much force as a ban on breathing.

We think we are heroes when we hug lepers.  We never suspsect that the bravery may be greater the other way.  To hug those who shun you, ignoring the subcutaneous shiver of disgust at the very feel of your flesh, to love so deeply and hold so tightly that prejudice asphyxiates and fastidiousness expires - now that’s courage.  To hold out your arms for an embrace, even if your intended victims take advantage of that pose to nail you in it permanently - that is the act of a saint.

Of course I began thinking about Christ.  Imagine the scene when he announced, from the center of the circle of unending glory, that he intended to don the putrid protoplasm of his hybrid humans and hold them close to God of very God.  His seraphic handlers fluttered nervously at his side.  Angels and archangels quoted complex passages from theological policy manuals in a desparate bid to save the Savior from himself and from the scandal of sinful skin.  They appealed to the throne and the prohibition of his Father, but the Almighty smiled mightily and sent his only begotten.  So the Down’s Syndrome Deity, the mongoloid Christ of the manger lept into the mass of humanity.  He touched lepers when he knew full well that remote-control healing worked with equal efficiency.  He could call Lazarus from the tomb with a word of command, but he touched the open bier that bore the widow’s son in Nain.  He molded spittle-spiked mudpies on the unseeing eyes of one man, as if determined to involve them both in the messiness of creation.  In the end, they declared him unclean, but a clutch of women dirtied their hands with ceremonial polution on Judaism’s holiest day.  Love had outhugged law; determined acceptance overwhelmed disgust.

“I have decided to accept Jesus Christ as my personal savior.”  Good for you, but don’t get cocky.  The real miracle is not that we would take him, but that he would have us.  Our repentance from sin is good, but nothing like so great as his rejection of righteousness.

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