The Rev. Clare Fischer-Davies
St. Martin ’s Church
February 12, 2006
Epiphany 6 B
The leper comes right up to Jesus and asks for what he needs. “If you choose,” he says – “you can make me clean”
Mark never wastes any words in his gospel – he never says more than is absolutely necessary to make his point. So the narrative is crisp – almost terse – and we have to fill in the blanks ourselves in order to understand why this healing miracle is so important.
“Leprosy” in both the old and the new testaments is a generic word referring to a whole roster of skin complaints. It could be anything from psoriasis to shingles – from eczema to acne – anything that marred the skin. In the Torah, leprosy is one of the maladies that make a person unclean – and unfit for the ritual life of the community. In order to preserve the purity of the community, anyone unclean had to be separated out and barred from contact.
Our Hebrew ancestors didn’t understand anything about infectious diseases or contagion – but they understood the concept of isolating someone who carried disease. To preserve the spiritual and physical health of the community, anyone whose skin was scaly, bumpy, blistered, oozing or discolored, was cut off from home and family and friends.
If and when the skin healed, there was an elaborate ritual proceeding to follow that would restore the once leprous individual to the life of the community. But sometimes the skin didn’t heal. All kinds of skin conditions are chronic – and poor sanitation and inadequate nutrition contributed to never-ending skin disorders that kept the suffering person in a constant state of physical, mental, emotional and spiritual isolation.
This healing miracle at the very beginning of Mark’s Gospel is like a huge neon sign flashing “Pay attention! Important stuff happening here!” Certainly the story reveals Jesus’ compassion and his healing power, but it tells us much more than simply what a kind heart Jesus has.
This miracle is a sign of the Kingdom. “The time is fulfilled,” Jesus says just a few verses before this story begins, “The Kingdom of God has come near.” The time is fulfilled – God’s Kingdom is no longer some future hope, but a present reality – and things are going to be different.
Jesus’ first healing miracle gives us a glimpse of that difference – a tantalizing glimpse. He heals Simon Peter’s mother-in-law by touching her. Again, there’s more at work here than just Jesus’ tender concern for a sick woman. In that culture, a man never, ever touched a woman who was not a member of his family. It was an enormous taboo – and Jesus violates it. Ok – someone in Mark’s first audience might think – he shouldn’t be going around touching women he’s not related to – but since her son-in-law doesn’t make a fuss, I guess it’s acceptable.
But then here comes the leper. “If you choose,” he says, “You can make me clean.”
Touching a woman – all right, we’ll let that pass. Touching a leper – the foundations of the world start to shake. By every rule, every custom in his own religious tradition, Jesus should turn away from the leper. He might feel very, very sorry for him, but he simply may not touch him. If Jesus touches the leper, he himself becomes unclean, and like the leper – must live isolated and apart until he can be ritually cleansed.
The whole audience must have been holding its breath as they heard the story the first time. No – surely not – he wouldn’t dare –
But he does. Jesus stretches out his hand and touches him. “I do choose,” he says, “Be made clean.”
You can almost hear the collective gasp.
The time is fulfilled. The Kingdom of God has come near. Jesus is showing us what the Kingdom looks like by stretching out his hand to someone considered untouchable. His disease had made the leper an outsider, kept beyond the boundary the community had drawn around himself.
“Go, show yourself to the priest,” Jesus says. He doesn’t send the healed man to the religious leaders in order show off or make a point. Jesus sends the man to his priest so that he can undertake the cleansing ritual that will restore him to full participation in the community. Jesus does much more than just clear up the man’s blotchy skin – he gives him his life back – his social, religious, even family life. The outsider is brought inside.
Boundaries will continue to be important in Mark – in the ancient world there were all kinds of cultural and sacred boundaries, and Jesus steps over all of them. He eats with the wrong people, he keeps company with known sinners, he travels around in Gentile territory, he violates Sabbath law – and instead of being contaminated himself, healing and reconciliation flow from him.
The Kingdom of God has come near – and the boundaries that help define a culture, that make it feel safe, that give it order and meaning – all of those boundaries are rendered meaningless. That sounds wonderful to our progressive, enlightened ears – and just about now, we all give ourselves a pat on the back and congratulate ourselves for appreciating Jesus’ annihilation of human boundaries.
But we need to be careful. We may be more invested in the boundaries that circumscribe our lives than we realize, or want to admit. Our boundaries aren’t written down in a law code; we don’t forbid people to enter our community because of ritual proscriptions, but every church has boundaries.
That’s not entirely a bad thing. Some boundaries help give us a sense of identity – help visitors understand who we are and how they can move from the outside to the inside. Some boundaries create safe spaces for children and other vulnerable members, and create policies and procedures that protect what has been entrusted to us.
But other boundaries exclude, reject and isolate. They aren’t written down, no one has ever voted on them, but they can just as surely keep someone from entering the life of this community as the leper’s disease kept him cut off. Any church that wants to grow needs to examine just what kind of boundaries it has – which ones give meaning to the community’s life, and which ones are antithetical to the Kingdom.
Who do we welcome? Who do we seek to incorporate? Who gets the most attention? In our zeal to attract the always-desirable-young-family-with 2.2-children, who do we overlook? How open are we really to those who may not look like us or think like us?
These are hard questions that every church needs to wrestle with. And we have to keep going back to the gospel. Jesus proclaims the Kingdom, and then starts to show us what the Kingdom looks like. He steps right over boundaries, he goes to the most despised, ostracized people in his culture, he mixes ethnic groups – and again and again we hear that the Kingdom just doesn’t look like anything we’ve ever seen before. The Kingdom is a place where the first are last and the last are first, where outsiders are brought in, where sins are forgiven, where diseases and division are healed.
A colleague said recently in an online discussion group, “They didn’t crucify Jesus because he made sick people well.” Jesus is crucified for proclaiming a Kingdom that transcends, even annihilates human boundaries; for proclaiming a Kingdom that transcends, even annihilates human kingdoms.
The healing miracles in Mark are not ultimately about kind Jesus is, or how tender and compassionate his heart. I treasure Jesus’ kindness, and tenderness and compassion – but if I stop there, I trivialize the gospel with my own sentimentality.
The Kingdom of God has come near. The Kingdom looks like nothing we’ve ever seen before – and it is Jesus’ healing miracles that give us a glimpse of its glory. “If you choose, you can make me clean,” the leper says. “I do choose,” Jesus replies. He stretches out his hand, touches the leper, and nothing is ever the same again.
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