April 6 Research

Alyce McKenzie

I always appreciate it when someone says to me "Have a blessed day." But I never know quite know how to respond. "Thank you" is a polite response, but I'm being offered a blessing, not a compliment. "I intend to," sounds too snarky. And "Accepting God's blessedness means sharing it with others" sounds way too preachy. But that's the gist of our passage from Mark this week. Jesus blesses the leper's day and the leper squanders the blessing in disobedience. More on that later.

At various times in our lives we have prayed for others, for our family, and for ourselves. In doing so, we are in good company with all the petitioners of the gospels. In the gospels sometimes people petition Jesus for healing on behalf of others, as, for example, the case with Jesus and the friends of the paralytic and Jesus and the centurion, Sometimes they petition Jesus on behalf of their children, as is the case with Jesus and the Syrophoenician mother and the father of the boy with the demon. And sometimes people petition Jesus for themselves, as, for example, the blind beggar Bartimaeus. This is the case with our text for this week. The leper came to Jesus, begging for healing for his leprosy.

Leprosy in Jesus' day referred to any of a number of skin diseases that the Old Testament considered unclean. Those afflicted by them were isolated and prevented from participating in the religious life of the community. Leprosy was considered to be a punishment for sin, as we see in the cases of Miriam, Gehazi, and King Uzziah. So the leper, who is not named, is one who is ostracized from the community and made to feel responsible for his own physical affliction. If we identify with the leper, we need to ask ourselves what it is in our lives that makes us feel cut off from community and ashamed at the presence of some condition, habit, or secret in our lives. As agents of Jesus' healing, we need to ask ourselves who is it in our community who feels cut off and ashamed?

We need to give the leper credit for being proactive, as approaching Jesus must have taken some degree of courage. Kneeling before Jesus, he said to him, "If you choose, you can make me clean." At the same time that he is proactive, he is tentative: "Lord, if you choose." He has no doubt that Jesus has the power to heal him. He's just not sure Jesus will be willing to heal him. Note that he asks to be "made clean". This is a reference to both ceremonial and physical cleansing. His request indicates the religious significance of the disease for the community.

The NRSV translates verse 41 as "Moved with pity." It makes sense that Jesus would have empathy for the man. Some older manuscripts have "Moved with anger." New Testament scholar Bonnie Thurston points out that, in her view, the more difficult reading is more likely the more authentic one. Why would Jesus be angry? Says Thurston, "Anger was an appropriate response to a devastating disease, especially one that leads to social ostracism". Maybe he was angry at the purity laws that isolated this man from the community and made him think less of himself. Maybe we don't need to choose between the two emotions, anger and pity. Pity and anger can intermingle.

I can be angry that human laws put someone in the position of appearing pitiful to others. I can pity someone while being angry at the need to pity them. Jesus' anger, if it was that, doesn't seem to be directed at the man but at the purity laws that make him doubt, even for a moment, that Jesus would be willing to heal him.

The theme of resistance to Jesus' ministry from both human and demonic forces threads through Mark's gospel. God's kingdom of justice and peace breaks through in Jesus' teachings, healings, exorcisms, and miracles. At the same time, just about every scene in Mark's gospel reflects a struggle, a tension between God's goal for wholeness and peace and the forces that resist that goal.

This scene of the healing of the leper is no different. The man's own doubt that Jesus is willing to heal him is one obstacle. Jesus overcomes it quickly. Then, after he has been healed, the man's own disobedience is an obstacle to Jesus' ministry. After he makes the man clean, restoring him to community, Jesus sends him to the priests to present proof of the healing. Jesus "sternly warns him" to keep quiet about the healing. The healed leper immediately goes and blabs it to anyone who will listen. The result is that Jesus' ministry is limited.

This is the first time we encounter the "Messianic Secret" in the gospel of Mark. The so-called "Messianic Secret" was a theory proposed by William Wrede, a German Lutheran Theologian in 1901. It refers to the motif of secrecy about Jesus' Messianic identity found primarily in the gospel of Mark. Wrede's theory was that it was the creation of the evangelist to explain why Jesus was rejected and put to death. More recent scholarship offers a number of reasons why the "messianic secret" may have come from Jesus himself.

Jesus may have employed it in an attempt to avoid political violence. Jesus may have employed it because he did not want to be known only as a wonder worker, of whom there were many in his day. Jesus may have employed it because he wanted to teach people what his messiahship really meant in a gradual progression.

We have to learn and live into deep and difficult truths gradually. And the chief theme of Mark's gospel is certainly deep and difficult. "The crucified Messiah is the fulfillment of God's promise . . ." The kingdom in its glory comes at the end of a path of suffering and service. Jesus is a servant king we are to follow. Says New Testament scholar Helmut Koester, "The 'messianic secret' of Jesus is that God's revelation in history is not fulfilled in the demonstration of divine greatness, but in the humiliation of the divine human being in his death on the cross".

The leper's premature and truncated "good news" portrayed Jesus as a wonder worker and caused him to mobbed before he could be heard. The leper's disobedience hampers Jesus' ministry. He now has to stay in the country, because going into a town would mean being mobbed by the sick and the curious.

The cleansed leper's disobedience foreshadows the failure of just about everybody in the gospel of Mark to obey Jesus.

The one who performs miracles and healings that restore people to community and to wholeness also, at the same time, calls people to take up their cross and follow him along a way of sacrifice and possibly, death.

To be a disciple in Mark's gospel is to "follow" Jesus. This is not just a spatial following, but is, rather, a technical term for discipleship. The healed and exorcized are to "follow" Jesus as a mark of their full restoration. The leper accepts his cleansing but fails to accept his commissioning. He confused bragging about his blessing with living out the good news of sacrificial love for others in imitation of Jesus Christ.

If we're going to truly have a blessed day, it will necessarily involve being a blessing to others.

Craig Condon

During the time when Jesus lived on the earth, leprosy was widespread. It was a dreaded disease. The word “leper” can refer to a person suffering from any of several different skin diseases. When someone had leprosy, they were covered with sores all over their bodies. Unlike chicken pox, these sores did not go away. When someone had leprosy, their situation was hopeless because there was no cure at that time. To make matters worse, other people considered them to be unclean and were not allowed to touch them. Many people believed that people who had leprosy got the disease because of some terrible sin they had committed.

Physically, leprosy seems incurable because it reverses the pain process. Most diseases have pain as an early warning that helps in healing. Leprosy is just the opposite. The disease destroys the signal system for pain, leaving the body without its natural protect ion against self-destruction. A leper is burned, cut, and broken without the warning of pain. Skin falls off, fingers, arms, toes, and legs die and drop away in defiance of the normal process of the body to heal itself. In the absence of pain, the leper loses the hope of healing.

Leprosy is also a hopeless social disease. Because lepers are so grotesque, respectable society labels them as contagious and sends them into exile. It is one thing to be condemned to die, but it is quite another thing to die in isolation. Lepers were to cry out, “Unclean, unclean” wherever they walked. Decent people avoided the contamination of even their shadows. For Israelites, God was worshipped in the community. Being cut off from that community also meant being cut off from God.

The Law of Moses required all such infected individuals to stay away from healthy men and women, but in the passage we heard from Mark’s Gospel, the man approached Jesus. The man clearly believed that Jesus had the power to heal him; he simply did not know if the Lord desired to do so. If we identify with the leper, we need to ask ourselves what it is in our lives that makes us feel cut off from community and ashamed at the presence of some condition, habit, or secret in our lives.

Here is the early and yet ultimate test of the feelings of Jesus. During His ministry, He will meet the full range of physical needs-blindness, blood disease, epilepsy, palsy, paralysis, and even insanity. But of all these diseases, leprosy is the symbol of hopelessness. A leper is not only considered physically uncurable, but he also suffers under social rejection and spiritual condemnation. Don’t forget, Jesus hears the scum of the earth cry out, “If you are willing, you can make me clean.”

Some ancient manuscripts have the term “being angered” rather than the term “moved with compassion.” If the former reading is correct, then Jesus was probably angry that the work of the devil had enslaved and injured the affected man. That Jesus touched this leper-and theoretically made Himself ritually unclean and exposing Himself to the disease-stood in stark contrast to the rabbis’ treatment of lepers. Jesus was on a collision course with legalistic religion throughout His ministry. The Good News challenges the drudgery of the Old Testament Law. Jesus’ authority challenged the scribes and the Pharisees. His concern for human needs was opposed by the traditions of the church.

When we read that Jesus is moved with compassion, it means that He feels Himself so deeply into the sufferings of the leper that it is just as if He Himself is suffering as a leper. Jesus is not moved with pity-that is too condescending; not with sympathy-that is too superficial; not with empathy-that is too distant. Not just mind for mind, hand for hand, or even heart for heart, but stomach for stomach, blood for blood, gut for gut, Jesus feels His way into the leper’s needs, just like he feels His way into our needs today.

Jesus met all sorts of physical needs during His ministry, but leprosy was a symbol of hopelessness. Jesus matched the most difficult of human needs with the deepest of human feelings. He knew the full range of human emotions because He was human. He responded to His feelings by touching the leper. Jesus let the leper and us know that He will take our place-not only in the risk of physical contamination, but in social contamination as well. By doing this, Jesus shows us what true compassion really means.

Jesus’ compassion had a cost. He had to give up His ministry in the city because the leper told people how he was healed. People had to come to Jesus in the desert, just like Jesus comes to us in the deserts of our lives. The leper’s actions set the edge of legal opposition to Jesus. Conflict now becomes His never-ending and ever-escalating fact of life.

The man disobeyed Jesus’ instructions not to tell anyone about his healing. He was affected emotionally and rejoiced. He followed his own feelings instead of following Jesus’ commands. Why did Jesus strictly warn the man not to broadcast what He had done? First, Jesus wanted more time to define His messiahship on His terms before people could misinterpret it on their own terms. Second, if the Romans learned that He was the Messiah, it would prematurely end His ministry, and He had much more to do before His time on earth was done.

Just like Jesus took the man’s leprosy, He can take our sin. Sin makes us feel alone. We don’t feel like going to church and hanging out with fellow Christians who can encourage us. As we mature in our Christian faith we realize that this is when we need Christ and Christian fellowship the most.

At some point in our lives, we will ask the same thing the leper asked: “Lord, if you will, you can make me clean.” Each and every one of us will face serious illness. Each and every one of us will go to medical professionals and use the best of medical resources. Each and every one of us will pray and beg, “Jesus, if you will, you have the power to heal. My son, my daughter, my mom, my dad, my friend, me. Please Lord, use your powers to make the medical treatments that I am receiving effective. In your name. Amen.” We will all say that prayer with similar words. We will beg for healing, that God will bless the medical procedures we are receiving.

What else do we hear in this text? At the very heart of the story for today, the Bible says, “Jesus was moved with pity.” When He sees us in our diseases, whether it be cancer, heart attacks, or AIDS, God is always moved with pity. Although the culture might not be moved with pity, God is always moved with pity, because He is a God of healing and compassion. He does not allow disease in any form.

Who has not experienced the effects of the leprosy of sin in our lives? The selfishness of sin cuts a person off from family members and friends when: lies are told; goods argued over; siblings exhibit rivalry; parents play favorites; spouses argue excessively and don’t seek help; success is measured by the size of income; and students cheat in school. Hansen’s disease, which is the medical term for leprosy, is treatable with drugs. Sin and its fragmenting and isolating effects are not so easily eliminated.

Sometimes we may find ourselves in a situation where we are uncomfortable, like when we had chicken pox. But there may come a time in our lives when we find ourselves in a situation that is truly hopeless. When that happens, where can we turn? How do we find hope in a hopeless situation? We can turn to Jesus. When the situation is hopeless, Jesus is our only hope.

Jesus shouted the gospel from the housetops, so that the voice of the gospel would echo through history. Like the healed man, we should shout for all to hear, “The Lord has healed me. The Lord has intervened in my life and made me well.” Mark tells us that each hearer of the Gospel experiences Jesus’ compassion and desire to heal us. What he said to the leper is offered to a sinful world and to each of us as well. As God gives us opportunities, we can extend grace and show compassion with a gentle touch that conveys dignity and value. The simple, healing power of human touch goes a long way to remind hurting people of our care and concern. More important is the fact that they are reminded of Christ’s care, concern, and love for them.

David Lose

A leper came to him begging him, and kneeling he said to him, “If you choose, you can make me clean.” Moved with pity, Jesus stretched out his hand and touched him, and said to him, “I do choose. Be made clean!” Immediately the leprosy left him, and he was made clean. After sternly warning him he sent him away at once, saying to him, “See that you say nothing to anyone; but go, show yourself to the priest, and offer for your cleansing what Moses commanded, as a testimony to them.” But he went out and began to proclaim it freely, and to spread the word, so that Jesus could no longer go into a town openly, but stayed out in the country; and people came to him from every quarter.

There is a poignancy to this scene that is rather uncharacteristic of Mark’s gospel. This is most apparent at two spots. First, the absolute earnestness of the man with leprosy: he comes profoundly aware of both his need and Jesus’ capacity to meet it. There is a winsome desperation about his request: “If you choose….”

Second, Jesus is visibly affected by the man’s request. Mark rarely betrays Jesus’ emotional or psychological state, but he tells us that Jesus is moved by the man’s need and so he both affirms his request “I do choose” and then also heals him.

Part of what we witness in this scene, then, is a mutual vulnerability that while perhaps more easily apparent in the man’s request – he knows he is at Jesus’ mercy – is nevertheless also a part of Jesus’ response as he allows himself to be moved, touched, affected by this man’s condition.

Is that part of what it is to be members of the Body of Christ – to both honest about our own need and open to being affected by the need of others? I think so. But I have to confess a certain ambivalence about this. On the one hand, I find the idea of a community that is this honest, this real, this willing to be in genuine and caring relationship with each other so incredibly attractive. At the same time, it’s a little scary. What is I admit my need only to be rejected, or find another’s needs too large to carry?

There is an unavoidable risk to genuine relationship that makes us both excited and nervous, both eager and anxious, to enter into it. And that is for good reason. There is always a cost to bearing one another’s burdens. Perhaps this is why Jesus’ directs the man he heals to be silent – he would like, if possible, to minimize the cost. Yet the man cannot keep silent…and Jesus can no longer go into towns openly. He is forced to the country, to the wilderness once more.

David Ewart

It is now believed that the disease we call leprosy was rare or non-existent in Palestine at the time of Jesus. However, since that was the translation adopted in the King James Version, that is still widely used even in modern translations.

The exact nature of the disease does not really concern us, because whatever the illness, a person with this disease was outcast from the community, forced to wear torn clothes, let their hair hang loose and uncared for, and warn approaching people by crying out, "Unclean! Unclean!"

Any person healed of the disease also needed to be declared by a priest to be free of the ban of social isolation - that is, to be declared "Clean."

Thus, in the New Testament, "healing" is often a two-step process: recovery from the physical illness or symptoms; then, being declared "clean" and accepted back into the community. (See Leviticus 13 and 14)

It is difficult for me to know how much I am reading back into the text my modern concern for the importance of the self - the importance of personal, willing, participation - voluntary consent - but I find it extra-ordinary that so many of the healing stories involve a conversation about naming one's desires or one's willingness.

The leper does not simply beg, "Please heal me." Rather, there is an affirmation of Jesus' authority that also requires his willingness:

If you choose, you can make me clean.

The verb translated as "you can make me clean," and "be made clean," also means "declare to be clean."

"Moved with pity" - other manuscripts have, "Moved with anger."

When Jesus reaches out his hand and touches the leper, he violates the social ban imposed on the leper - Jesus touches an "Untouchable."

Note the two steps: the leprosy leaves the man, and secondly, he is made clean.

All that remains now is for the priest to declare the man clean so that he can be formally restored to his community. This is what Jesus tells him to go and do.

The fact that Jesus tells him to say nothing to anyone is in keeping with his honorable behavior as a Holy Man of God.

At the time of Jesus it was dishonorable and shameless to boast, to claim a higher status or honor for oneself.

Others could praise you. Could gossip about you; could spread the word about what great things you could do. Could make it impossible for you to go into towns because the crowds attracted to see you would be too great.

But you? You yourself could NOT be seen as seeking this fame. Seeking fame - or even publicly agreeing to it - would be shameful, and therefore would prove that you were not truly worthy of the honor others were giving you.

This text is rich with possibilities for reflecting on social isolation and the touching willingness that heals and restores community.

Richard Neill Donovan

MARK 1:40-42. A LEPER CAME TO HIM

In Jesus' time, the word leprosy was used for a wide range of skin diseases, not just the affliction we know today as Hansen's disease. “The scribes counted about seventy-two different skin conditions that were defined as leprosy,” including diseases such as boils and ringworm. Some of these diseases had no known cure, and so were greatly feared. Some were highly contagious, so lepers were required to live in isolated places. Torah law says: “The leper who has the plague shall have his clothes torn and his head uncovered, and he shall be covered with a mask and cry, ‘Unclean! Unclean!’… He shall be unclean; he shall be unclean; he shall dwell alone; his dwelling shall be outside the camp”. The Old Testament has several passages where God afflicted the people by punishing them with leprosy, so people often interpreted leprosy as a punishment for sin.

Thus, leprosy had multiple dimensions: physical, religious, social, and financial. The affected person (physically) was considered ritually unclean (spiritually). Lepers were required to live alone and maintain a distance of fifty paces from other people (socially). If the person with leprosy touched another person or was touched by someone, that person was considered ritually and physically unclean until examined and pronounced clean by the priest. In other words, both physical (medically) and ritual (spiritual) impurity were contagious. The person afflicted with leprosy could not work and was therefore reduced to begging (financially). And because of this, their family would also be reduced to poverty. The spiritual, social, and financial consequences of leprosy—impurity, isolation, and poverty—were more terrible than the physical consequences of these milder forms of the disease.

Chapters 13 and 14 of Leviticus prescribe in great detail how leprosy was diagnosed, and made the priest responsible for examining people with skin problems to determine if they had leprosy. The priest was also responsible for assessing whether the person with leprosy was healed of the disease. If so, Leviticus specified a ritual to restore the person to a state of purity.

This leper comes to Jesus on his knees, begging. He clearly oversteps the fifty-step limit they were supposed to maintain, because Jesus reaches out and touches him. The leper says, “If you are willing, you can make me clean”. Obviously, this leper has heard news that Jesus has healed others, but he doesn’t know if Jesus would be willing to heal him. If leprosy was God’s judgment for sin, perhaps Jesus would let him serve out his full sentence.

This man is not asking to be healed (physically), but to be cleansed (spiritually and socially). There is no reference to healing in this story, but there are four references to cleansing. However, one cannot be clean without also being free from disease, so this man is asking to be fully restored to a normal life in all its dimensions. This man's plea for cleansing, rather than healing, suggests that he values ​​the restoration of his spiritual and social status far more than his physical healing. He also acknowledges his faith that Jesus acts by the power of God. Only God can heal the leper, and only the priest (God's appointed representative) can pronounce the leper clean.

Verse 41 presents a difficult translation problem. Most ancient manuscripts say Jesus was full of pity or compassion, but others say he was full of anger. Compassion makes more sense in this context, and some good manuscripts use compassion. However, there are also several reasons to read anger into this passage:

·       First, a common translation principle is that the more difficult reading should be preferred, especially because copyists are tempted to "improve" a manuscript by changing a difficult reading to an easier one, but this doesn't happen the other way around. In this case, copyists would be tempted to change Jesus' anger to compassion, thus making the reading easier, but they wouldn't be tempted to change compassion to anger.

·       Second, Matthew and Luke, who use Mark as their source, avoid any mention of Jesus' emotion. If Mark had used the word compassion, Matthew and Luke would have been expected to include it in their own accounts. However, if Mark did use the word anger, Matthew and Luke would likely have omitted it from their accounts.

Why would Jesus be angry? Scholars dismiss the possibility that he was angry with the leper for violating the fifty-step rule, because Jesus doesn't stop to touch the man. Nor do they believe Jesus was angry at being interrupted, because he was frequently interrupted and generally didn't respond angrily.

However, scholars also emphasize that Jesus was trying to maintain a balance between teaching and healing, the two primary forms of his ministry in the first half of this gospel. Most of the time, people are drawn to him by his healing miracles, and they frequently fail to see the deeper spiritual dimension. Another possibility, then, is that the healing of a leper would be so dramatic that it would draw people to Jesus for the wrong reasons, something that indeed happens in verse 45. In verse 41, then, Jesus senses that the leper is asking him for something that will derail his ministry. The leper's plea, then, forces him to choose between mission and compassion, to risk one or the other. It is easy to see that Jesus would respond angrily to this no-win situation. This also explains the strong language of verse 43 (see below) and Jesus's strict warning to the leper not to tell anyone but to go to the priest.

Anyway, in verse 41, Jesus says, “I will,” reaches out his hand, touches the leper, and says, “be clean”.

If Jesus can heal a man with a touch, then he can also heal him without touching him. His touch seems reckless, because touching a leper would contaminate Jesus (both physically and spiritually). However, in this case, it is not the leper who is contagious, but Jesus. The leper does not infect Jesus with his impurity; rather, Jesus infects the leper with his healing and holiness, making him clean (physically, spiritually, and socially).

In this Gospel, we read about Jesus touching or associating with people in ways that would potentially defile him: tombs and pigs; a woman with a hemorrhage; a corpse; Gentiles and unclean spirits. In each situation, he conveys his healing and holiness, not the other way around.

MARK 1:45. BUT HE BEGAN TO PUBLISH IT A LOT

This man disobeys Jesus' command, preaching the word so effectively that people overwhelm Jesus when they begin to seek him out. The problem is that "publicity creates an audience, but not a congregation". There are at least four ironic points in this verse:

·       A disobedient man is the first to preach the good news about Jesus.

·       Jesus' fame hinders rather than helps his ministry.

·       The story began with the leper forced to live “outside the camp”, and ends with his restoration to community life. The story begins with Jesus moving freely through the villages, and ends with him being forced to live “outside in the deserted places”. In a sense, Jesus and the leper have switched places. Jesus now finds himself suffering from the isolation that the leper once held.

Jeffrey K. London

“Why wouldn’t Jesus just heal him!” I may have only been 8 years old but I knew what the Bible said, it said that whenever Jesus touched people they would become healed. I mean, after all, it was going to be Randy’s birthday soon. Didn’t Jesus want to give Randy the best birthday present ever and heal him? What had Randy done that would make Jesus not want to heal him? Why did he have to stay in that wheelchair when Jesus could make him walk and run and play with the rest of us?

My Dad said those were all good questions, but he didn’t give me any answers. Which made me wonder if my Dad knew the answer and was playing that game where I was supposed to figure it out for myself. Or maybe, maybe even my Dad, the presbyterian minister, didn’t know the answer?

It was a confusing time. There seemed to be so much going on that I didn’t understand. Every night before we had dinner, my mother would listen to cheesy elevator music on the radio and watch the little black and white television in the kitchen at the same time. The news always had pictures of the war in Vietnam and the peace marchers and the civil rights marchers. It almost felt like every night at the same time all the world’s problems invaded our little kitchen to the sound of “Danke Shane.” I mean, didn’t we have enough problems of our own? I couldn’t seem to get my times tables down and my math teacher said I should go to summer school. My newborn sister, Susan, had never come home from the hospital. She’d been there for a long time and they still didn’t know what was wrong with her. Some people at church were mad at Dad because he was talking with young men at coffee houses; young men who didn’t want to go to Vietnam and fight in the war. They were saying that Dad shouldn’t do that, that he was wrong for listening to hippies and talking to freaks. Some other people in the church were mad because they found out Dad had taken us to a “Negro Church” for a wedding and that he had participated in the service.

And then there was the problem of…the powered milk. I knew we didn’t have much money, but when we started having to drink that awful, awful powdered milk I just knew things had gone from bad to worse.

Why wouldn’t Jesus just touch my family, and Randy, and the whole world and make it better? Why did there have to be little boys in wheelchairs, and little sisters in the hospital, and angry church people, and war, and hate, and powdered milk?

My 3rd Grade Sunday School teachers were Mr. And Mrs. Vananna. Of course, we thought we were really smart and called them Mr. And Mrs. “Banana” (as if they’d never heard that one before). Each Sunday morning we gathered for Sunday School in our room and joined hands around the table and said a prayer. Most of the time Mr. and Mrs. Vananna did all the talking during the prayer, but sometimes one or two of us would speak up and say something. On this particular Sunday, I prayed out loud for Randy, for my sister Susan, for my family, for our church, for hippies and freaks, and
for all the men fighting in the war. After the prayer, everyone just looked at me. They just stared at me like I was from another planet. And then a kid named John Mark pointed his finger at me and said, “Jeff just prayed for the gooks!”

“I did not!” (I didn’t even know what he was talking about!)

“Yes you did,” said John Mark, “You prayed for ‘ALL’ the men fighting in the war and that means the bad guys too!”

Mr. And Mrs. Vananna were not much help. They told us to stop fighting and to remember that war and violence have nothing to do with the Christian faith. And then they quickly tried to change the subject by making us read the story of Herod killing all the children two years old and younger, and doing a worksheet.

After church, in the car ride home, I told my Dad that I had prayed for the “gooks” but I hadn’t meant to, I’d only meant to pray for our side. My Dad asked me if I thought Jesus loved the Vietnamese too, and would Jesus call them names like that? I didn’t know what to say, I hadn’t really had much time to think about all of it.

And then my Dad asked me if Jesus ever prayed for his enemies? Well, I knew the answer to that one.

“Yes,” I told my Dad, “Jesus prayed for his enemies and Jesus said we should pray for our enemies too.” (I thought that last little piece of information oughta impress him.)

But then my Dad asked me, “But is praying for our enemies enough? What about love? Didn’t Jesus also say ‘love your enemies?’”

“Oh yeah,” I said, “I forgot about that part.”

Dad went on to say that, “Jesus loved his friends and his enemies. Jesus had compassion for all kinds of people.”

“What’s ‘compassion?’” I asked.

“Compassion is being kind because you feel it in your stomach; it’s doing the right thing for the right reason; it’s feeling like you skinned your knee when you see someone else’s; it’s feeling love and anger at the same time; but most of all it’s not being afraid to touch someone who’s sad or lonely or hurting.”

“So if I have this compassion stuff I can help people, right? I can just touch Randy and Susan and everything will be all right?”

My Dad smiled and said, “Compassion doesn’t make the world perfect, but it does let people know we love them and we care about them. To have compassion doesn’t mean you have to do something gigantic, sometimes the greatest miracle of all is just to touch someone and tell them that you care. And when we touch people like that, we’re like Jesus. Do you understand that?”

“Not really,” I said. “I’m only 8 years old. The only thing I really understand is that somehow it’s always about Jesus.”

“Yeah,” my Dad said, “I think you’ve got it. It is all about Jesus. Jesus is God’s compassion.”

That afternoon I went over to Randy’s house. He said he was putting together his invitation list for his birthday party.  He didn’t have very many names on it. He said he put my name first because I was his best friend; because I never called him a cripple or made fun of him; because I wasn’t afraid to play with him; and because I didn’t think I would catch his “disease” if I touched him.

I felt pretty good about what Randy said to me and I thought maybe I do have some of this compassion stuff and don’t even know it. But I wasn’t Randy’s friend because I was trying to be compassionate. I was Randy’s friend because I liked him, and he was fun to play with, and he always had tons of silly putty. Did that count? Was I being like Jesus even if I wasn’t trying to be compassionate?

I thought long and hard all day about “compassion.” By evening my little brain felt tired and worn out. I thought I understood, but it was a lot to understand when you’re only 8 years old. “Compassion” was a big word and an even bigger “thing.” I wasn’t sure I had enough of it to make a difference, to touch people like my Dad was talking about, to be like Jesus.

Anyway, all of this thinking and learning had sure made me hungry and tired. We always had grilled cheese sandwiches and tomato soup on T.V. trays for Sunday evening supper while we watched Wild Kingdom and The Wonderful World of Disney. But I was still hungry when it was time to go bed, so I ran into the kitchen and picked out a Fig Newton from the cookie tin and went to the refrigerator and there…

inside our old blue refrigerator,

on the top shelf,

at age 8 eye level,

was a pint of real milk

with a piece of masking tape on it that read,

“For Jeff.”

Amen.

Jeffrey K. London

The Laughter Barrel

I have tried my best throughout this last week to stay at least 15 feet away from Pastor Steve and his bad case of the flu. In fact, we in the office have made him shout, “Unclean! Influenza!” so we know when he’s coming and we can get out of the way. Poor guy has probably felt like a leper all week.

And it is leprosy, at first hearing, that seems to be the thread of connection between our Old Testament Lesson and our Gospel lesson. But I think it’s something more universal than leprosy. I think the first thing that unites these two passages is — desperation. Namaan and the leper in Mark are both desperate to be healed, to be made whole. They’ll do anything to be healed, to be whole. Namaan travels miles and spends a lot of money based on the word of a slave girl, all in the hope that some unknown prophet in some far away conquered land might be able to rid him of this disease. It doesn’t happen the way Namaan had in mind, he has to swallow his pride and eat a little crow, but it does happen, he is healed, and he gets it — he gives God thanks and praise.

Likewise the leper who approaches Jesus risks it all just by getting close. Now leprosy could be anything from a rash to a flesh eating bacteria. It didn’t matter. People were scared to death of leprosy. People lived in absolute fear of leprosy and all those who had leprosy. So, if you had a skin disease you were made into an instant outsider. The law in Leviticus was clear: “The person who has the leprous disease shall wear torn clothes and let the hair of his head be disheveled; and he shall cover his upper lip and cry out, ‘Unclean! Unclean!’ And he shall live alone, his dwelling shall be outside the camp.” (Lev. 13:45-46)

So if you had leprosy you lost everything — job, family, place in the community — everything. The leper who approaches Jesus shows his desperation by breaking the law, by coming into the city, and getting close enough to Jesus that he could talk to him. He’s lucky he wasn’t stoned. But Jesus has pity on this poor desperate leper and heals him. Suddenly, the leper’s desperation is turned to joy! Jesus tells him to go and show himself to the priest, to prove that he’s cured, and also, Jesus tells him, don’t talk about this healing with other people. In other words, Jesus didn’t want to be known only as a healer, or worse yet, as a magician. But so overcome with joy is this former leper, that he can’t control himself. He goes and blabs to anyone and everyone. This former leper becomes not just a proclaimer of the good news, he actually becomes the good news. His joy, his laughter is absolutely infectious and spreads more quickly than any form of leprosy the world has known.

This “joy factor” is another aspect that unites Namaan and the former leper in Mark. Both of them experienced an outpouring of joy. But this uncontrollable sense of joy was not just because they had been healed. No, it was because they had been made whole; they could re-enter the community, they could go home to their families, they could get back to their jobs, they could live life again.

This is where I think we have to be careful to distinguish between healing and wholeness. Lot’s of people are healed from a disease but go back to living the same dead-end lives they were living before they got sick. To be made whole is something else. It is to be changed, it is to be transformed, it is to know that God is at work in your life, it is to be overcome by joy. To be healed can mean a lot of things, death is a form of healing. But to be made whole is to be enveloped by a peace that passes all understanding, it is to know a joy that bubbles up uncontrollably, it is to know the power of God’s grace in one’s life, and it is to respond with thanks, with gratitude, with laughter.

So what we really have is a series of contrasts. We have the contrast between those who have leprosy and those who don’t; between a fearful culture and desperate people; between people who long to know wholeness and the one who can make them whole.

In a lot of ways it sounds like our world. I mean, we live among lepers. Sometimes we’re the leper and other times we treat others like lepers. And there’s no question we’re all in search of wholeness. If we’re honest we can admit that there are so many different kinds of barriers that separate us human beings, that make us (or somebody else) a leper — fear, mistrust, misunderstanding, anger loneliness, the inability to communicate with each other, the inability to communicate even with those we love the most and are closest to. In so many ways, we move through life shrouded in desperation. Either we feel like a leper to the world, untouchable and unclean — or we have chosen others to be treated like lepers, untouchable and unclean.

Just think about what’s happened in the last few days with these Danish cartoons depicting the prophet Mohammed. Think about how something as seemingly mundane as a “cartoon” has not only fanned the flames of hatred, but has brought on such a bad case of leprosy that people have stopped talking and started killing one another. Now, I don’t think this a question of freedom of the press or free speech. Of course, these cartoonists have every legal right to print these cartoons. Freedom of speech is just the smokescreen we hide behind so that we don’t have to address the real issues, so we don’t have to examine the actual leprosy. Just as the Muslims hide behind the claim that Islam does not permit any depictions of Mohammed (which is only true in some parts of Islamic world). No the real issue, the leprosy, we face has more to do with the fact that we simply, and yet profoundly, do not understand one another and no one, so far, is willing to sit down and talk. It’s easier to treat one another as lepers. It’s easier to avoid any chance of coming together, because, heaven forbid it, we might be transformed by one other, we might be changed, we might even come away liking one another, we might sense the movement of God and experience joy — and we just can’t have that, can we? We can’t risk that possibility, can we?

Resa Aslan is a Muslim and a journalist. She writes that, “the sad irony (in all of this) is that the Muslims who have resorted to violence in response to this offense are merely reaffirming the stereotypes advanced by the cartoons. Likewise, the Europeans who point to the Muslim reaction as proof that ‘Islam has no place in Europe’ have only reaffirmed the stereotype of Europeans as aggressively anti-Islamic.”

Stereotypes are a form of leprosy that keep people apart. It’s a form of leprosy that we willingly take on because it offers us a safe haven form having to interact with the other and the other unknown. It’s just easier to adopt this form of leprosy than it is to risk reaching out and touching or being touched. It’s not until human beings are able to see one another as children of God that we’ll be able to sit down and begin to try and understand one another. This is true not just for Muslims and Christians, or Muslims and Jews, its also true for grown ups and teenagers, for blacks and whites, gay and straight, liberals and conservatives, old hymn lovers and new music lovers.

Because, you see, it’s not just a matter of being willing to reach out and touch. We can control that. We can control when we reach out and who we touch. No, it’s also, perhaps more importantly, a matter of being willing to risk being touched, touched by God and changed, transformed, made whole.

Author and poet Maya Angelou, in talking about the history of slavery in this country, states that on many plantations the slaves were not allowed to laugh. There was a rule against it. So when the urge to laugh became uncontrollable, when the urge to laugh became absolutely irrepressible, they had what they called “the laughter barrel.” At the moment when they couldn’t hold it in any longer they would, under the pretext of getting something out of the barrel, lean way down inside and let it all out. They would laugh and laugh and laugh.

Now, Maya Angelou goes on to say that what was behind such a strange rule was — fear. The plantation owners

feared that if the slaves were allowed to laugh, they might laugh at the masters. Or, worse yet, the laughter of the slaves might become so infectious that the masters would start laughing with the slaves. And how can you laugh with a person one day and have that person be a slave the next?

I think the church today must become the modern day version of the laughter barrel. We live in a world that is in many ways hostile. The church is our safe place. It’s where we can come and let it all out. It’s where we can come and wrestle with the tough issues. It’s where we can come and be held accountable and hold others accountable in love. It’s where can come and seek the presence and guidance of God’s Spirit. It’s where we can come and experience wholeness. It’s where we can come and talk about our experiences of grace. And the church is where we can come and practice not only letting our joy out, but also sharing our joy with that hostile world out there.

You see, it’s not just about being together here in the church, it’s about being the church. Like the leper in Mark, it’s not just about spreading the good news, it’s about being the good news. And this is where we learn to be the good news. This is where we are touched, where our identity and character is formed by God’s Word, God’s sacraments, God’s Spirit. This is where we practice being authentic persons, genuine vessels of God’s care and compassion.

Look around you, this is God’s gift of a laughter barrel where lepers are welcome and so are tough questions. There’s no question that leprosy, in any of its many forms, is infectious. There’s no question that our world is sick and suffering. But we cannot forget that health and wholeness can be just as infectious. We cannot forget that God’s will for the world is peace and salvation. That’s why it’s so important that we learn to genuinely express the joy we experience through the touch of Jesus Christ in lives, not just here, but out there. That’s why it’s so important that we learn to laugh for joy in ways that share good news, in ways that cause us to become the good news! All in the hope that as we touch and risk being touched the world might be infected by God and reduced to the uncontrollable need to laugh…together.

Amen.

Amy Butler

Today is the sixth Sunday of Epiphany, the season in which we are following Jesus through the gospel texts hoping for a little light to shine into the darkness of our limited human perspectives. See, we thought we knew this Jesus . . . some of us have been following him for YEARS—decades, even. Surely there’s not too much about him we don’t already know!

But Epiphany is the church season that should rock our comfortable assumptions and shake the very foundations of what we thought we always knew about Jesus.

Remember last week we saw the human side of Jesus, the side of him that was so weighed down by the expectations of the hurting people all around him; the side of him that was so very frustrated with the way people perceived him and the way they seemed to misunderstand his message.

And if that vision of Jesus sneaking off in the middle of the night while a line of sick people waited to be healed didn’t rock your preconceived ideas about him enough, well today Jesus gets political. Yes, if we look hard enough at our gospel text today we can begin to see the truly radical nature of his message. This Jesus was no soft-hearted mediator whose goal it was to bring people together, to make people feel good about themselves, to live in peace and harmony. No, we can see starting right here in this story of the healing of the leper in Mark’s gospel that Jesus came out swinging . . . his goal and methodology involved cutting a wide swath across “life as we know it” and challenging every level of accepted understanding.

And don’t think that he was preaching just a religious message. Oh no, today’s gospel illustrates very clearly that Jesus was offensively political; shockingly challenging the social structure in which he lived . . . and when it came to religion, well, the institution didn’t stand a chance in the harsh and revealing light of his message.

It’s hard for us to understand the full impact of today’s gospel lesson without a little bit of background, so here we go.

First of all, the simple explanation of Jesus societal designations in Jesus’ day was that there were people who were holy and people who were not holy. Within that basic delineation there was an unspoken caste system in which everyone fit somewhere. There were those who were basically always holy—priests, Levites, church leaders and teachers or rabbis. Then there were those who were basically holy but had occasional lapses into unholiness—lapses that could be fixed pretty easily through sacrifices and ritual cleansings. Then there were those who were pretty much always unclean because of the nature of their work or the circumstances of who they were. Those would be people like women, tax collectors and shepherds. And then there were those who, for whatever reason, were totally unclean all the time and likely permanently. They were not allowed participation in the community at all. This group includes people with chronic illness, people who were married or related to outsiders, people with physical or mental disabilities.

There were perfectly good reasons for this to have been put into place at the beginning of the nation of Israel, of course. Purity laws were established to protect the community from disease. But by the time Jesus showed up, these laws of purity had exploded into a rigid system of differentiation that was being used by some to gain power and exercise control over others.

See, back in Jesus’ day purity was directly related to physical wholeness. And conversely, physical lack of wholeness was equated with impurity or unholiness. There was no differentiation. Therefore, people who were handicapped, chronically ill, eunuchs, etc., were considered impure. And furthermore, there was no concept of illness randomly afflicting people. If you got sick it was because God was unhappy with you; there was something about you that was unholy, that offended God in some way.

And remember, in Jesus’ day unholy was unholy; you got that way either by circumstances of birth, contraction of illness or certain behavior choices. And, for whatever reason, when you became unholy, well, then, you became unclean. While rich people were not guaranteed holiness, of course, it was likely that you’d have a higher chance of being UNholy if you were from a lower class, forced to work in an unclean or less highly-regarded profession or if you had inadequate food, shelter or medical care, the end result being illness.

In ancient Jewish society, being unclean meant not just that you could not participate in religious rituals like worship in the synagogue, it also meant that you were excluded from any and all social interactions because, you see, nobody wanted to “catch” your uncleanliness, therefore becoming unholy, therefore being isolated from the community. It was a vicious cycle and one that affected every part of a person’s life.

In the 1860s, the same decade Calvary Baptist Church was founded, a young Belgian Catholic priest was assigned to serve as a missionary in the remote Hawaiian Islands. Father Damian de Veuster served as a parish priest for eight years in a populated area until he heard about a colony for people with leprosy located on another island, Molokai.

After visiting the colony, named Kalaupapa, he was horrified at the state of this remote settlement, where people who contracted this feared disease were sent, away from the rest of society, to die. The conditions in which they lived were appalling; they had become outcasts from society and had no options or hope for happy lives. Father Damian felt called to serve the lepers of Molokai so he moved to the settlement and lived out the remainder of his life working to create community in that place, to offer dignity and comfort to those who were suffering and to help them die in comfort. Father Damian lived out his life in the settlement, eventually contracting the disease and dying. His legacy is one of bravery and courage, of reading about the standard-breaking actions of this man Jesus and deciding to do exactly what he did.

A cure for leprosy, which is now called Hansen’s Disease, was discovered in 1946, but as the disease is often spread in remote areas with poor hygiene and inadequate drinking water, there are still cases in which people contract the disease and suffer from its consequences. While diagnosis and treatment are increasingly easy for modern medicine, last year alone over 400,000 new cases of leprosy were discovered in the world. Leprosy is a contagious bacterial disease that affects the nerve endings of the skin. It is particularly terrifying because, run rampant, sufferers of leprosy eventually end up physically disfigured as their extremities fall victim to the disease. This physical disfigurement results in a societal rejection, even as recently as Father Damian’s day. You can imagine how much worse it was when Jesus walked the earth.

The last residents of Kalaupapa moved there in the 1940s. When I was growing up in Hawaii many of them decided to try to leave, to reassimilate into regular society since they were no longer contagious. I recall the stigma and curiosity surrounding these folks, even though I understood the nature of their situation. If we live in a society in which this kind of illness was understood from a scientific point of view and there remains a stigma, can you imagine what it was like back in Jesus’ day?

And the disease had such a vast, far-reaching affect in someone’s life. If you have time this afternoon take a trip through Leviticus chapters 13 and 14 and you’ll be able to see clearly the very detailed and intricate process by which society dealt with lepers. For example, if a person—even a child—was found to have leprosy, he was put out of the community immediately. The law said he was required to wear his hair disheveled and clothes of rags. He could not come within 50 paces of any clean person and when he came near enough to be heard the law says he had to cover the top of his mouth with his hand and cry out loudly, “Unclean, Unclean!”

That cannot have been good for the social life.

A person in Jesus’ day who had the disease of leprosy was a social outcast with no means of survival, alienated from family and forced outside the community, and worse than all of those things put together, a person with leprosy was totally and completely unholy, separated from God, damned.

So all of this background is enough to give us the tools to see our gospel lesson this morning in a much clearer light than we might otherwise. Would you take a look at this shocking turn of events? Jesus was heading out on his merry way when a leper came up to him and asked him if he would heal him. Begged him, in fact. And you and I know, from the historical and cultural background we now have, that what he was begging for was more than physical health; it was restoration to the community; it was the love and acceptance of God.

And, having read the Levitical code on how lepers should be treated we already know that this man shockingly violated the laws of his community. Remember? He was supposed to stay 50 paces away, cover his upper lip and yell, “Unclean!” whenever someone came close enough. We know that rule was broken because in just the next verse Mark reports that Jesus reached out a hand to touch the man—he dared to come within arm’s length of Jesus, breaking the law.

Now Jesus grew up a good Jewish boy. He was considered a learned teacher and rabbi. There was no possibility that he did not know this leprous man was violating the law; and there was no way he did not know that having any interaction with this man at all—even talking with him—would render Jesus and his disciples and his family and his followers . . . unclean. Unholy.

There’s a phrase in the gospel text that is the pivotal point in this text, and here it is, verse 41. Our Bible says, “Moved with compassion, (Jesus) stretched out his hand, and touched him”. There are two things to take away from this phrase and they are the light that shines on the message of Jesus this Epiphany Sunday.

First, Jesus was moved with compassion (or pity). This word pity in the Greek is the subject of some controversy within biblical translation circles. You see, in some of the earliest texts this word is not pity but instead, anger. Anger. Scholars think that this earlier version of the text is probably more authentic. So, if Jesus was angry, who was he angry at? The man? No! Right after this Jesus says definitively and with conviction, “I want to. Be made clean”. Jesus intentionally touches and heals the man. Jesus was not angry at the leper. I think this is where the political radical Jesus comes out. Jesus was angry, you see, at the societal structures that had set up an equation: cleanliness equals holiness and holiness equals acceptance and approval from God.

See, the way things stood in the society in which he lived, there was a certain standard of holiness and if you were going to err, to make a mistake in your actions, it was always better to err on the side of holiness. Not sure if eating a certain thing is okay? Skip it. Questions about doing an activity on the Sabbath? Don’t do it, just to be safe. Not sure if talking to someone would be questioned? Ignore him.

Jesus knew the law of holiness, but his message flew in the face of that kind of holiness. See, in Jesus’ message we begin to see that if we have to err, we err not on the side of holiness . . . but on the side of compassion. It was a radical new standard. Remember in his famous Sermon on the Mount, a compilation of teachings found in Luke chapter 6, Jesus details an alternative way to please God. He says, “Be compassionate—or, be merciful, as I am compassionate.”

Sure God is holy, but the law of compassion and mercy is higher than the law of restriction and alienation. The structures of society had used the law of God to create a system that excluded people when God’s intent all along was radical INclusion.

It was then that the second part of this radical phrase hits home. Jesus stretched out his hand and touched the man. In so doing he did not just express his anger at injustice, he took it one step further, risked the disapproval of his community and the possibility that they might very well consider him, not just a weirdo but definitively unclean . . . unholy. Jesus identified a circle that surrounded him, a circle of holiness and acceptance, of societal approval and religious standing . . . and he reached right outside that circle to pull someone from the outside in.

What happened when Jesus made that bold move? Well, a lot more happened than just a few people sucking in their breaths in disbelief. Jesus’ action instead started a ball rolling that has yet to stop, a ball that pushes us from our positions of comfort and favor with God and into a circle much, much bigger than the one we’d like to draw around ourselves.

Jesus’ anger and Jesus’ reaching out to touch someone who was left out in the cold changed everything about who we know God to be.

It’s easy, so easy for us to soft peddle this passage, to sort of gloss it over and go on our merry ways trying our best to be holy. Back then, after all, people didn’t understand about illness. They didn’t have antibiotics or penicillin. They didn’t know that if you caught a disease it had nothing to do with your personal level of holiness. We know all of that.

Or do we?

Who are the people outside OUR circles? Think, please. There are many in our society whom we dismiss and wish to exclude. Jesus says no. The person who you might consider to be the most unholy, unclean outsider? This is the person Jesus reaches out and welcomes into the circle. Who would Jesus reach out to, from your life, to draw in?

This is a very important question to consider, friends, because there is often a great degree of irony in our lives. See, we might not have leprosy, but there’s no way we’re holy all the time. There are parts of who we are the put us smack OUTSIDE the circle—unholy, unclean, unloved by God.

This is where Jesus reaches out of the circles we draw and reminds us this Epiphany that the law of compassion is the highest law of all, that grace and love and inclusion—these are the real evidence of a living and vital relationship with God.

This part of his message? This is the part that made everyone so very mad. By inviting outsiders in Jesus was turning societal structures on their heads, changing everything, introducing a way that was different. And change, trying something new, living with a different way, well . . . these things are hard . . . offensive even. This holy anger and radical compassion of his led Jesus, after all, straight to the cross.

The light if Epiphany is showing us that the message of Jesus is a hard message. Unpopular, against the status quo. As the light of Epiphany clarifies our visions, you and I are going to have a choice: will we draw the circles tighter . . . or will we reach outside the circles to bring others in?

Philip W. McLarty

The gospel lesson this morning picks up where we left off last week. Last week we heard about how Jesus healed Peter’s mother-in-law and people came from everywhere hoping he’d heal them as well.

Well, he healed a bunch, but the next morning there were that many more. People came from everywhere. The problem was when they got there Jesus was nowhere to be found. He’d gotten up before daybreak and slipped away to be alone with God in prayer. When his disciples found him and told him that everyone was looking for him, he said,

“Let’s go elsewhere into the next towns,
that I may preach there also,
because I came out for this reason.” (Mark 1:38)

Mark says they went through the Galilee where Jesus proclaimed God’s kingdom in the synagogues and cast out demons along the way. Then he says,

“A leper came to him, begging him,
kneeling down to him,
and saying to him,
‘If you want to, you can make me clean.'” (Mark 1:40)

Just so we’re clear, leprosy was a dreaded disease in Jesus’ day. It still is. According to the World Health Organization, there are about 600,000 new cases of leprosy each year. Of course, with the help of modern medicine, it’s not as bad as it once was. There’s still no cure, but at least it can be contained.

But, in Jesus’ day, leprosy was bad news. In extreme cases, the flesh would rot on the bone. In the process, it would form open lesions. If you were lucky, gangrene would set in, and you’d die quickly.

But not all cases were that severe. Richard Donovan writes,

“In Jesus’ day, the word leprosy was used for a broad range of skin conditions. ‘Scribes counted as many as seventy-two different afflictions that were defined as leprosy,’ including such diseases as boils and ringworm.”

The point is there were lots of different forms of leprosy in Jesus’ day, but they were all treated the same. The Torah made no provision for psoriasis or a bad case of acne. Leprosy was leprosy, and if the priest said you had it, the Law was clear:

“The leper in whom the plague is shall wear torn clothes, and the hair of his head shall hang loose. He shall cover his upper lip, and shall cry, ‘Unclean! Unclean!’… He is unclean. He shall dwell alone. Outside of the camp shall be his dwelling.” (Leviticus 13:45-46).

What’s worse was the social stigma. In Old Testament times, it was generally assumed that, if you were afflicted with a terrible disease like leprosy, you must have done something really bad, and this was your punishment.

Remember the story of Job and his three friends? They came on the pretense of consoling him. What they really wanted was to get him to fess up: “Golly Jeez, Job, what did you do to deserve this? Must’ve been a doozie! Tell us about it.” The stigma was as bad as the disease.

Then there was the practical reality. Once declared a leper, the individual was cut off from his family and friends and community of support. He was no longer able to make a living or support his family. He couldn’t even go to the synagogue to pray. It was a fate worse than death.

Can you imagine what it was like to be a leper in Jesus’ day – to live as an outcast, to be excluded, to live in a perpetual state of quarantine? What comes to my mind are times of driving up to, say, a country club where there was a sign at the gate saying, “Members Only,” and I wasn’t one. But that hardly compares to being a leper, now does it?

Some analogies come to mind. Racial segregation, for example. I remember when I was in seminary watching the news about Apartheid in South Africa and thinking what an inhumane way to live. Then it dawned on me that that’s the way it used to be here in Hope, when I was growing up in the late 40s and early 50s.

I also thought about what it would be like to be gay or lesbian, living the semblance of a normal life in public, but knowing full well that, if you said too much or expressed your feelings too openly, you could lose your job or be ostracized by the community.

Then I thought about the issue of illegal immigration. Just a couple of weeks ago, Congressman Mike Ross was in town to meet with members of the Ministerial Alliance. We talked for over an hour about our role as pastors in relating to undocumented workers. It’s estimated that there are about 12.5 million in this country today. What’s it like to live as an alien in a foreign land where, if you got sick or beat up or abused in some way, you were afraid to say anything or ask for help, for fear of being deported?

These are only three examples. I’m sure you can think of others. To be a leper is to be untouchable. And so, according to Mark, “A leper came to him, begging him, kneeling down to him, and saying to him, ‘If you want to, you can make me clean.'” (Mark 1:40)

Can you hear the desperation in his voice? Can you imagine the agony he must have felt being separated from his wife and children and cut off from society? If only he could be made clean, he could go back to his family and resume a normal life.

Obviously, he’d heard about Jesus, how he’d healed others. If only Jesus would extend that healing touch to him. And so, he said, “If you choose, you can make me clean.”

Well, we know the rest of the story, don’t we? Jesus had compassion on the man. Mark says,

“Being moved with compassion,
(Jesus) stretched out his hand, and touched him,
and said to him, ‘I want to. Be made clean.’
When he had said this,
immediately the leprosy departed from him,
and he was made clean.” (Mark 1:41-42)

We’d all like to think that, if we’d been there in Jesus’ shoes that day, we would’ve done the same thing, that if we had the power to cleanse a leper, we’d do it in a heartbeat. Well, the Good News is we do!

No, I’m not talking about practicing medicine without a license. I’m talking about addressing the root cause of what alienates us from God and each other – what makes us all feel like lepers at times – and the power to restore us and reconcile us and make us whole. Are you ready for this?

We’re alienated from God and each other by our sinful human nature; but we can be reconciled and restored by the power of God’s forgiveness and love.

That’s it in a nutshell: At the heart of every human being there’s a basic feeling of unworthiness. It may be just a twinge, or it may be all-consuming; it may be lie out in the open, or it may be covered by layers of bravado and false confidence. But deep down inside we’re all painfully aware of our sinful nature and we know that, if we were to stand before the judgment seat of God today, we wouldn’t have a chance.

That’s not to say we’ve committed some heinous crime. It’s simply to say that we think perverse thoughts and say unkind things and act in self-serving ways. While we may look like fine, upstanding men and women on the surface, inside we know better.

I don’t say this to put us down or make us feel bad; on the contrary, I say it to set the stage for what is the most remarkable word we can ever hear, and that is:

God already knows this and loves us just the same. God sent Jesus into the world to die for the forgiveness of our sins. Once we hear that and accept it as fact, it has the power to transform our lives – to cleanse us and make us whole.

As it does, we have the opportunity to become the catalyst of transformation for others – not by pounding them over the head with a Bible, but by accepting them for who they are and by offering them the gift of faith and friendship in the name of Jesus Christ.

Berniece Johnson was just such a friend to me. Her son, Jim, and I were roommates at Dixie Music Camp in Monticello in 1960. Berniece and her husband, Bennie, drove Jim up from Orange, Texas and helped him make his bed and get his part of the room organized. Then they took him to dinner and invited me to go along.

That was the beginning of an abiding friendship that continues to bless my life to this day. Don’t ask me to explain it, and don’t think for a moment that I did anything to deserve it. It just happened. I guess you could say Berniece saw something in me worth redeeming. Or maybe it wasn’t rational at all. Love is like that. Whatever, the upshot was that she loved me unconditionally and had the grace to show it in countless ways.

In her eyes, I could do no wrong. At first, I thought that was because I had her fooled. If she only knew me deep down inside, I thought, she’d feel differently. But, over the years, I realized that she knew me, through and through – she had all along – and the remarkable thing was she loved me anyway.

It took a long time for me to believe that someone could love me unconditionally. To this day, I still wonder how it’s possible, except that now I accept it for what it is – an expression of God’s love and God’s willingness to claim us as his own, no matter what. In return, I try to be to others that person Berniece was – and is – to me.

Here’s what I’ve found: The more secure you feel in being loved, the freer you are to be yourself and to talk openly about your innermost fears and insecurities and regrets; and the more you open yourself to who you really are deep down inside, the more you feel the cleansing power of God’s Spirit, and the freer you become to live in the fullness of God’s peace and love.

This is where you come in: Because you’ve heard the Good News that Christ died for you; because you’ve received the gift of God’s grace and know that your sins are forgiven; you have the ability to cleanse others and set them free. But there’s a caveat: Only if you choose.

It takes a lot of courage to reach out and touch a leper, to befriend one who might otherwise seem untouchable. It involves patience and perseverance and the willingness to give without expecting much in return. Plus, it involves vulnerability and risk for, so often, the ones who hurt us the most are those we love.

Yet, at the end of the day, can you think of a greater accomplishment or a more lasting reward than to be the catalyst by which God’s love became a reality for another – a reality that cleansed them and set them free?

One of the great old Negro spirituals reminds us that …

There is a balm in Gilead
To make the wounded whole;
There is a balm in Gilead
To heal the sin sick soul.

And then it goes on to make it so simple and within the reach of us all:

If you can’t preach like Peter,
If you can’t pray like Paul,
Just tell the love of Jesus,
And say He died for all.

The leper told Jesus, “If you want to, you can make me clean.” Well, hear this: If you choose, you can bring healing and wholeness to others by sharing the love of God in Jesus Christ.

Jesus told the leper, “I want to. Be made clean.” May we invite Jesus to make us clean today.

Sarah Henrich

In this short and apparently simple story Jesus is approached by a leper whom he heals.

Jesus sends the leper back to receive the certification of the priest as to his being made clean and able to re-enter his community. Like Peter’s mother-in-law in the previous story, this former leper becomes a disciple by “spreading the word” about Jesus, announcing what Jesus had done for him.

The problem with the man’s discipleship is that Jesus had commanded him to remain silent about what had happened. In his disobedience to Jesus’ command, whatever his motive may have been, the news he heralded made it impossible for Jesus to go openly into the towns of Galilee. As soon as Jesus appeared in these towns, the crowds became overwhelming. Jesus was eager to heal, but also to announce that God’s reign was coming near. He was in a hurry, on a mission. These are the same settlements that Jesus had determined to visit to his own heralding of the coming reign of God (verse 38).

Let us begin with the seeming simplicity of this story. There are a number of problems with both text and translation of these few verses, probably because of the difficulties inherent in the story itself. First note that verse 40 includes the idea that the leper gets down on his knees although there is considerable doubt that the earliest texts of Mark contained this phrase. Second and more importantly, in some manuscripts of Mark’s gospel, the word translated in verse 41 as “moved by compassion” is in several manuscripts “moved by anger”.

There is no manuscript doubt about the very strong language in verse 43 where Jesus is said to have “snorted” at the recently healed leper. The word embrimaomai expresses great distaste or anger. It is used in Mark only one other time where the twelve scold the woman who had “wasted” money on anointing Jesus. Why would Jesus be angered at the leper? Many have wondered, many have speculated, and no one has a convincing conclusion. To add to the puzzle of translating this word in relation to Jesus, the verb in that sentence is “threw out, cast out,” the same verb used to describe the action of the Holy Spirit with Jesus in Mark 1:12 and the action Jesus takes with demons in other locations. Jesus shakes his head in anger and throws the leper out, demanding that he tell no one how he came to be healed.

Had Jesus been doing an exorcism, this kind of reaction would have been expected. We also know that Jesus’ reaction to Peter’s “rebuke” of him in 8:33 is also harsh. Mark’s Jesus often surprises us with the intensity of his emotion, not least his negative emotion. In 8:33, Peter, though having made the right confession about Jesus is rebuked for trying to impose his own understanding of “messiah” on Jesus. There Peter’s misconception is linked to Satan, as are those demons whom Jesus “throws out” repeatedly.

My sense of this angry verse is that it is not so much connected to the leper personally, any more than Peter is personally attacked. Rather it is Jesus’ anger and determination vis-à-vis the powers that hold creation and its creatures in thrall. These powers are expressed in all sorts of ways — through illness, of course, but in the systems and manners and values that humans have developed to cope with a world subject to powers other than God. Surely no preacher lacks for illustrations of that kind of frustration, often expressed among us toward people who themselves have no control over oppressive powers.

Of considerable interest is the reversal that takes place within this story. The realities of the leper and Jesus are switched within five verses. The leper who ought not enter a community without being freed from his ailment returns to his village, his priest, and his role in life. Jesus is suddenly unable to enter a village and is kept from his role in life. Whether or not Jesus believed that he had come to heal folks, people needed him to do just that, trusted that he could, and managed to find him wherever he went. We know both from history and from the story of John the Baptist that the development of crowds around a central figure in the Galilee and in Jerusalem would be dangerous to that figure.

Whether people understood their leader as prophet, king, Messiah, teacher, or rabble rouser (it all depends whom you ask!), such crowds made the powers-that-be very nervous indeed. While no one has come up with a way to interpret consistently the “Messianic secret” passages in Mark’s gospel, two things seem clear:

1)         Jesus wants to temper enthusiasm about the his own identity as the “Holy One of God” until he has endured the cross;

and

2)         the presence of crowds is a threat to Jesus’ own mission as herald of God’s reign.

It is important for contemporary readers that not all types of discipleship seem to be appropriate in every time and place. When the Gadarene demoniac is healed in Mark 5:1-15, Jesus sends him home precisely to proclaim what the Lord has done for him. The preacher may be able to develop these stories with an eye to the quite distinctive calls to discipleship that shape the lives of those whom Jesus has healed.

As part of this reversal, notice the “if” clause in verse 40. This use of “if” in Greek suggests that the condition set up is very likely indeed to be true. One could almost translate it as “since.” The verb in the condition is best translated by “wish” or “choose” (New Revised Standard Version). The leper says something like, “If you want to (and you do), you are able to cleanse me. Jesus confirms his willingness with a simple. “I am willing.” This seems to me to be central to the passage and here’s why.

At this still early point in Mark we are learning about Jesus and what discipleship as one of Jesus’ followers might be. Mark has shown us a Jesus able and willing to heal all sorts of woes from illnesses to possession. These healings, it is very clear, are signs of what God’s reign means for human beings — a restoration to a condition of blessedness or thriving or flourishing. Humankind will no longer be oppressed by the powers of evil. We have seen Jesus’ intense interactions with the demons who know him. We have also heard Jesus insist that it is his calling to destroy these powers hostile to God’s reign even as he must go about announcing it so that all may have the opportunity to repent and trust God.

So Jesus must go where the people are. By the end of this story, Jesus has shown us what it costs to go where the people are and it is a cost he is “willing” to pay. He begins as the one free to wander and proclaim, urgent in his message and successful in gathering crowds. By the end of the story Jesus has traded places with the former leper who is now wandering freely, proclaiming what the Lord has done and creating widespread positive response, while Jesus has become isolated and lonely. There is an exchange of roles, an exchange of realities between Jesus and the man whom he has healed: this points long-range to the role that Jesus is willing to take for humanity itself, giving up his life of freedom for the loneliness of the one isolated on Golgotha, whose “willingness” is a proclamation in its own right. He will use the language of “willing” in 14:36, exchanging his own desires for what the Father “wills.”

Rick Morley

I take the stories of healing/ exorcism/ and raising-of-the-dead at several levels.

First, there’s obviously the point that the Gospel authors wanted to make, that Jesus healed real people of real calamity. In this story we hear of a real man, with a real bad condition (leprosy), being really healed. That’s big stuff. Jesus doesn’t just kind-of-vaguely come down and sort-of interact with generic-people. Jesus encountered this man, and this man encountered Jesus—and out of that encounter something wondrous and holy happened.

Second, these stories can be read as parable. The Gospel Evangelists are never shy about condemning the religious leaders and structures of the first century. They were originally set up in the Hebrew Bible to be sources of life, truth, and holiness—and by the time Jesus gets on the scene they are anything but those things. In this sense, this story can also be told of a Temple/ Hebrew Nation that is so bad off that it’s leprous—but, at the same time it’s not so far gone that nothing can be done for it. If Jesus “chooses” it can be made clean. If the religious authorities and structures come before Jesus kneeling, begging, and repenting, Jesus can be moved with pity and make it clean once more.

And third, there is a very personal aspect to these stories. They aren’t just about “structures” and “systems,” they are about you and me. They are about personal encounters—but not just personal encounters that happened so many years ago, but personal encounters today. The fact that so many people who are healed are nameless in the stories adds to this. They are “every man” and “every woman.” One should read this story and see ourselves as the leper who comes to Jesus, whose plea moved Jesus within the core of his being (which is what the Greek word means), and who leave the meeting with Jesus completely changed.

In fact, even more this story should compel us to, like the leper, come before Jesus—with all our uncleanness, with all of our moral disease, with our limbs literally pealing off—and fall on our knees. Pleading. Not hiding our faults, but confessing them. And asking Jesus to make us clean.

And then we wait for Jesus to reach out and touch us.

You. Me.

I don’t know about you, but that gives me goosebumps. Jesus, upon seeing me as I am, is deeply moved and is compelled to touch me that I might live a holy and full life.

The Listening Hermit

Warning: Jesus is Contagious!

A cursory reading of the footnotes for this text in any bible reveals the need for some “translation of the translation” if we are going to access the text in our 2012 contexts.

We know nothing about lepers.
Truth be told, it is unlikely that the disease we associate with leprosy is the disease referred to in the biblical text. The leprosy we know probably only came to the middle east from India after bible times. In Bible times “leprosy” which literally means scaly or rough referred to any skin disease like psoriasis, acne, or boils. In a pre-scientific time, the fear of contagion would have made people reluctant to have contact with anything which may have caused them to suffer or even be excluded for society.
It may be useful in our context to return to the literal words of rough and scaly as referring to the people we cast out from our circles of acceptance and avoid contact with. I am sure most of us have rough and scaly relatives, right inside our families we would want to avoid contact with.

I will leave you to make your own two lists…

1. Rough and Scaly people I personally choose to avoid.

2. Rough and Scaly people that the church should avoid.

The texts show Jesus moved with emotion (the majority say pity but others say anger). I quite like the choice. In fact I can even picture Jesus feeling pity for the rough and scaly outcast and anger at the society that marginalized him.

It would be a good balance for modern day Christ followers to keep, don’t you think? Can we be prophetically angry at the structural violence that crushes people and groups, whilst keeping our hearts open with compassion for the sufferers?

Another aspect of the passage that bears explaining is this continual demand for secrecy by Jesus. There are many theories since the first advanced by William Wrede in 1901. For sake of simple proclamation this Sunday, it seems most likely that Jesus wanted to avoid celebrity so as to move about freely.
We should never forget that he was in the North because he couldn’t be in the South. The gruesome death of John the Baptizer at the hands of Herod down South was the reason for Jesus being in Galilee. So some secrecy might have been a matter of security

Despite the above, I also affirm the theory that in the understanding of Jesus, the notion of Messiah had become distorted by the political expectations and yearnings of oppressed people. Jesus didn’t want to become a Messiah of the Popular Mold. He needed time to show who the Suffering Servant was. That would only be completed when he showed the depths of his love in death.
Again a modern context question arises. Do I trust Jesus to be himself as I follow him or do I want him to fit my preconceived mold I have cast for him?

Finally, I love how effective the attempt at silencing the healed leper is!
For all the best reasons for secrecy which we have considered above, there is something Jesus has underestimated.
He hasn’t reckoned in the power of effervescent witness from those who have been touched by God! There is just no silencing the babble of blessed ones. As Don Fransciso made famous in his song, “I gotta tell somebody, what Jesus did for me!”

Could it be that the church is dying today as it is, because we have protected ourselves from the possibility of the healing encounters that might happen if some rough and scaly people got close enough to Jesus?
Our sanctuaries and our sacraments are sanitised and leprosy free.
Rough and scaly people are just not welcome.
So instead of effervescent witness there is sterile silence.
Sad really…

James Boyce

Last Sunday’s gospel lesson impressed upon us the scope of Jesus’ ministry and mission,

and the power of the good news of His preaching and healing to impact the lives of all who flocked to hear the message of forgiveness and presence of God’s new reign. With today’s lesson there is no relenting in the intensity and success of that mission, whose fast-paced movement by now has developed a kind of rhythm.

In the final words of last Sunday’s lesson, we heard that Jesus’ mission encompassed all of Galilee and drew the whole world to Jesus’ doorstep. But today, once again much like in the case of Peter’s mother-in-law, we are drawn back to the particular, to the impact of Jesus’ healing power upon the life of one individual. In fact, the whole movement of today’s lesson mirrors that of last Sunday’s verses, Mark 1:29-39. Whereas that lesson began with the healing of Peter’s mother-in-law and ended with reference to Jesus’ mission throughout the whole of Galilee, this lesson begins with the healing of a person with leprosy and ends with reference to the spread of Jesus’ fame and people coming to Him from “everywhere.”

The clear effect of the progression of these texts is to proclaim the power of the good news, present from the very beginning in Jesus’ mission and ministry. Whereas in the other synoptic gospels this story needs some time to work its way out, in Mark this power has its “epiphany” already in Mark’s unique portrayal of the ministry and preaching of John the Baptist. When Jesus announces the “kingdom of God” has already come near and the reign of God is upon us in this good news, His preaching compounds and strengthens that message. “Immediately,” (to use Mark’s favorite word) the powers that be are engaged. Jesus’ healing and casting out of demons acknowledge His authority and power as something to be reckoned with. In Jesus’ presence lives will be changed. But as the story progresses, beginning especially in last Sunday’s lesson, there are signs that such power will not go unchallenged. The new and the old are bound to clash; the new will not be contained by the old. That impending clash becomes more explicit in Mark 2:1-12 and 2:13-22, but it already breathes beneath the surface in this Sunday’s lesson.

The leper’s arrival and request press the issues of the good news squarely: “If you are willing, you have the power to make me clean”. The NRSV’s “if you choose, you can…” disguises and softens Mark’s loaded words of “will” and “power.” Here, we are invited to face the issue of how Jesus will address the matter of “clean and unclean” in the particular realities of this world. That particularity is clear in the leper’s question, which is not about cleansing and power in general, but about the power to make “me” clean. Ultimately, the issue of the good news is whether it has the power to effect change in my life and yours.

The leper’s question recognizes that if there is to be healing, it will be dependent on a God who “wills” that it be so. The “if” in his question leaves that matter provocatively up in the air. As such his words remind us that hearing the arrival of this Jesus as good news is contingent on finding in him the epiphany of a God who actually “wills” that this healing be so. But his words also recognize that such actuality takes more than “will.” The will to cleanse remains only a possibility until it meets the appearance of One who has the “power” to deliver on the promise of that will. This issue of power is central, for it stands both at the beginning and end of this lesson, though it is unfortunately disguised in the English translations. It is here in the leper’s request (verse 40). It is there again in verse 45, where strangely and surprisingly we hear that the successful spread of the word about Jesus means He no longer “has the power” (NRSV, “could”) to go around “openly.” Instead, He must stay in secret in the wilderness. (Literally, he does not have the ability for “epiphany”).

Of course these matters of power will ultimately move this story to the cross. But for now, Jesus’ immediate answer is clear. Jesus is moved with compassion. He reaches out, touches the leper, and says, “I am willing.” If there is any question of the requisite power to cleanse, it is avoided and leapt over. The “I will” becomes immediate reality in Jesus’ command: “Be made clean”.

In Jesus, “I will” is the power of the good news to change lives and the message of Epiphany; that in Jesus this will and power of God is clearly revealed. Boundaries are crossed; issues of power are addressed; unclean becomes clean; the sick become whole. And Jesus will get into trouble for this!

The trouble is perhaps suggested in the refusal of this good news to be restrained, even by Jesus’ own command. Jesus gives the former leper two commands, “See that you don’t tell anyone,” and “Go show yourself to the priest,” neither of which he obeys. Instead, this man goes out and “preaches” the “word” mightily (Greek: polla; literally, “in many words”). And his preaching is effective, so much so that Jesus becomes hampered in His own ministry (Mark 1:45).

This epiphany story draws us into a number of tensions of discipleship and faith. The leper’s story makes clear that God’s will in Jesus to touch, to cleanse, and to make whole is not just imagination or wish. Instead, it is promise that has the power to touch the particularity of lives, broken and suffering from the powers of the unclean in this world. It also makes clear that the proclamation of this good news has the power, even today, to burst the boundaries of constraint that would keep this good word from being heard. The story of this Jesus will get out!

But tucked within this story, even so close to the beginning of Mark’s good news, is the impending approach of a journey eventually leading to the cross. In these few short verses, this story moves from Jesus’ “power” to His “lack of power.” The story moves from open proclamation of this healing, to Jesus’ inability because of it to no longer go about openly, resulting in His return to the wilderness. However, people still flock to Him in the “wilderness,” inviting us to look back in this story and recall a similar report about John the Baptist. But these words also point us ahead to Mark 9:2-9, next Sunday’s lesson for the last Sunday of Epiphany, traditionally known as Transfiguration Sunday.