Ten Lepers; Luke17:11-19

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Doris from Rego Park

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She died in 2003, and unless you follow all-night sports radio in New York, you would not have  heard of her. In fact, the woman satisfied all the criteria for perfect obscurity. Into her fifties, she lived in Queens with her parents, elderly Jews who fled the Holocaust. She suffered from neurofibromatosis - Elephant Man's Disease - that required frequent operations to remove skin tumors from her face and body. She had lung cancer and a chronic cough. She had an autistic compulsion to memorize factoids and arrange small objects in straight lines. She never married, she never learned to drive, and she never worked beyond menial office jobs. Her name was Doris Bauer. Under most circumstances, she was the kind of person who elicits pity - an emblem of lives that amount to little and never quite begin. She's the kind of person you think of when you're alone on dark, cold nights, appraising your accomplishments and wondering if they add up to a...
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When You Wash Your Face, Remember Your Baptism

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And when Jesus had been baptized, just as he came up from the water, suddenly the heavens were opened to him and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and alighting on him. And a voice from heaven said, “This is my Son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased.” Martin Luther believed all people were born contaminated by original sin, and baptism was a sacrament of spiritual cleansing. He didn’t want us to forget it. “When you wash your face,” he said, “Remember your baptism.” I must wonder what this tells us about the hygiene habits of medieval Europeans. Was the spiritual act of face washing a daily or weekly or monthly habit? But apart from that, one must ask: Do I remember my baptism – really? A couple years ago, when one of our Lutheran Diakonia teachers asked who remembered their baptism, I was the only person to raise my hand. This I remember: On 6 November 1966, while fighting the Cold War at an Air Force base in England, I was persuaded by the rele...
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