This evening I’m leading the reflection at the vestry meeting at Grace Church, Bainbridge Island. Sometimes we commemorate a saint of the day. Today I chose to commemorate someone who is exceedingly unlikely to make it onto anybody’s calendar of saints, yet did something startling and prophetic, something well worth remembering — and emulating. Here is the reflection I prepared.
Diana, Princess of Wales
July 1, 1961 — August 31, 1997
A reading from the Gospel according to Matthew.
When Jesus had come down from the mountain, great crowds followed him, and there was a man with a skin disease who came to him and knelt before him, saying, “Lord, if you are willing, you can make me clean.” He stretched out his hand and touched him, saying, “I am willing. Be made clean!” Immediately his skin disease was cleansed. Then Jesus said to him, “See that you say nothing to anyone, but go, show yourself to the priest, and offer the gift that Moses commanded, as a testimony to them.”
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Diana always flowered in the presence of the disabled or the ill. And later, as she came to understand the symbolic potency of gesture, she used her position to break taboos. In April 1987—a time when AIDS was still considered a pariah disease—she attended the opening of the first AIDS ward in the U.K. at the Middlesex Hospital. Her decision to shake hands, without gloves, with 12 male AIDS patients was critical in dispelling prejudice toward the ailment. –Tina Brown, Princess Diana’s Legacy is More Urgent than Ever, in McLeans, July 31, 2017
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Reflection Questions
Who are you afraid to touch, because they are, in one way or another, “unclean”?
Have you observed the prophetic act of touching the untouchable? What happened? How did it change you?
Who might we be called to touch? Are there any among us even now who long for prophetic touch?