Love in A Leprous Time

In 1985 the noted Columbian novelist, Gabriel García Márquez wrote Love in the Time of Cholera.  The story is set in an un-named, steamy South American country at the time beset by multiple outbreaks of cholera.[1]

The main characters are caught up in tempestuous love affairs.  To say their lives are messy is an understatement.  Like cholera which slowly drains the body, these relationships drain the psyche.  The main character, Florentino, is love-sick with the consuming symptoms paralleling those of cholera.  At the end of the novel, the yellow cholera flag on a passing ship plying the river docks at port symbolizing complete surrender – to love and to the disease.[2]

We live in a diseased time, a leprous time.  We denounce our opponents as “unclean,” evil, despicable.  The actions of our government, subtle and not so subtle, are dark and deadly in our diseased society.  We’re waging a running war on science.  We concoct “alternate facts” to sanitize our history.  We pray, in the words of Kierkegaard, that this is not a “sickness unto death.”  A soul sickness of us all.

As ICE raids terrorize our populace, the yellow flag would not be inappropriate. 

This last week, the Illinois governor, J.B. Pritzker, lambasted ICE agents who stormed an apartment in Chicago.  He decried this raid carried out by “jack-booted thugs” in the middle of the night.  An invasion of his state and the city of Chicago. 

Early on October 6th, landing on the roof, agents swarmed the apartments, kicking in doors, discharging flash-bang grenades, rousting people, naked, out of their beds, terrified kids screaming as they’re ripped from their parent’s arms.

Pertissue Fisher is still recovering from being detained by the storm troopers who burst into her South Shore apartment and pulled her out of bed. 

“’An agent put a gun in her face’ she said.  Another placed her in handcuffs tight enough to leave bruises.”[3]  Though Fisher and the other victims are U.S. citizens. they were held for hours.  At 54, she is terrified to think what would have happened to her family if they had shot her.  “I have kids, I have grandkids, and if I would have [gotten] killed, who gonna answer for it?  Nobody.” [4]

U.S. citizens, for God’s sake!  Never in my born days would I have imagined such terror being inflicted upon decent, law-abiding citizens.  And with impunity.  Not what we were taught in 8^th grade U.S. history.

We live in a time of great sickness.  Possibly a sickness unto death as this democracy slides into totalitarianism and its demise?  The vestiges of our civil society are leprous indeed. Unclean.  Stinking to high heaven.

And yet it is in such times – precisely in such times — that the miracle of Jesus healing power is made manifest.  Yes, even amidst broken doors, tear gas, flashbang smoke and terrified, screaming and crying children.  In this chaotic dark night of national despair, we need Christ’s healing word, his healing touch.

You know the story.  “On the way to Jerusalem Jesus was going through the region between Samaria and Galilee.  As he entered a village, ten lepers approached him.  Keeping their distance, they called out, saying, ‘Jesus, Master, have mercy on us!’  When he saw them, he said to them, ‘Go show yourselves to the priests.’  And as they went, they were made clean.”

Now the story takes a surprising turn.  One of the cleansed lepers turns back.  Praising Jesus, he fell to the ground.  Yes, you guessed it, the hated Samaritan, a despised foreigner.  Out of the ten, only one showed gratitude for his release from that dreaded, disfiguring disease.  The Samaritan!

Incredulous, Jesus asks, “Was none of them found to return and give praise to God except this foreigner?”

Gratitude here is the remedy.  Just as urged in the 12-step movement, what’s needed to get you through life — “An attitude of gratitude.” That and “Brats, Cheese and Beer.”

Yes, my Wisconsin friends have a slogan for their political work; it’s on my coffee cup: “Brats, Cheese and Beer can save Democracy.”  Now, for sure there’s magic in brats, cheese and beer, but the real magic is that other ingredient – ALL of US.  That’s all of us coming together to work for a more just, more humane society through the sharing of those delectables.

Good food and justice work go together like none other.  They are the grease in the machinery of gratitude.  Why do you think Jesus was always feeding people?  All that is the antivenom to this leprous, diseased time.  And in the midst of our disease, we will make love.  And justice is what love looks like in the public square.

It begins with gratitude and goes from there.  No one gives back like our teachers acting out their thankfulness for what had been passed on to them.  Their vocation is an entire life of gratitude. It’s certainly not about the pay. And if it’s only one out of ten, through God’s power working for good, that shall suffice.

In the ACLU magazine for the fall, I came across one teacher preparing his students to live in this diseased world of racism and entitlement.[5]

Starting with the leadership of a principal, Jaime Cook, whose school reflects the values of inclusion.  “We’re constantly striving to keep all of our students free from fear.”  And down into the classroom.

When ICE raids threatened students at Sackets Harbor, (NY) teachers and parents organized public demonstrations.  When one family was ripped from their community in the dead of night, teachers and parents at that school organized larger rallies protesting ICE in their community.  The news of which got Governor Kathy Hochul’s attention.

The New York governor could not think of “any public safety justification for ICE agents to rip an innocent family, including a child in the third grade from their Sackets Harbor home.”  On April 7, the principal, Jaime Cook, learned that the combined pressure of the governor and the local citizenry had ended up in freeing this family.

Teachers and students organized a warm welcome back for the third-grader who had been taken.  Students made cards.  A huge welcome sign to hang in the classroom.  Yes, cookies and punch – no, brats. cheese, and definitely no beer.  

Principal Cook gave her teachers full support in making their school community a place that practices what they teach.

“We’re teaching about what it means to live your morals…You gotta walk the talk, otherwise you’re not a very good teacher.”  Further, “When one of your best friends is taken in the night, that ripples through a classroom…When we look out for one of our students, we’re really looking out for all of them.”

An attitude of gratitude in action!

That caring by a community is the best remedy for what ails us — our leprous politics.  Our leprous polarization shall not have the last word.  At heart, at our best, we Americans are better than our disease.  Yes, in a time of cholera we will make justice, for that indeed is what love looks like in the public square.

In ways big and small, gratitude for what we have finds expression in various ways.  At St. Francis this past week at the meeting of Inland Congregations United for Change, we organized to get “know your rights” cards out to families in our area.  A small thing, but it sends a loud and clear message to our immigrant neighbors, we have your back.  You belong.  This is your America.  “Live long and prosper.”

I’ve found that those immigrant families generally show much more gratitude for their new life in America than most of us who are native-born.  We take so much for granted. 

And while some of us are a little embarrassed by all the flag waving, stop and think what that flag means to those new arrivals – a new life of opportunity, an education for their children, a decent job.  Yes, a whole new life. 

Sure, it’s messy.  We don’t always live up to that promise.  Just like love in real life, in a time of pestilence, is often messy.  Or as one of my married friends says of her marriage, “It’s complicated.”  That’s the given.  And that’s the glory.

This past September 15^th, we noted the anniversary of the 1963 bombing of the 16^th Street Baptist Church in Bermingham, Alabama.  By that Sunday night, Dr. Martin Luther King had arrived by air.

Following that outrage, Dr. King urged his hearers in his eulogy for three of those innocent girls killed in that savage bombing – he urged them to hear what those girls had to say to the rest of us in their deaths.  In part, this is what King urged:

“They say to each of us, black and white alike, that we must substitute courage for caution.  They say to us that we must be concerned not merely about who murdered them, but about the system, the way of life, the philosophy which produced the murderers.  Their death says to us that we must work passionately and unrelentingly for the realization of the American dream.”

In gratitude, that is the ongoing work we the living are privileged to continue.  All “to the Glory of God and our neighbor’s good.”  Amen.

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[1] Gabriel García Márquez, Love in a Time of Cholera (New York: Vintage Books, 1988)

[2] Op. cit., 340.

[3] Mary Norkol, “After military-style raid on South Shore, apartments, Congressmembers rally around residents,” Chicago Sun Times, October 6, 2025.

[4] Ibid.

[5] ACLU Magazine, Fall 2025.

October 12, 2025

Pentecost 18, Proper 23 – Jon Braveroff Memorial BBQ
2 Kings 5:1-3, 7-15c Psalm 111;
2 Timothy 2:8-15; Luke 17:11-19

“Love in A Leprous Time”