Today we come to the third in our important
summer series of sermons on Mark’s Gospel. In the first, Mark told us
that the day God had long promised had arrived in the person of Jesus. In our
first reading today from Isaiah 29, we hear God promise that ‘once more I will
astound these people with wonder upon wonder’ and that it will be a time of
amazing spiritual fertility, the deaf will hear God’s word, the blind will see
his coming, the humble will be honoured and the needy will rejoice. That long
awaited day had arrived with the coming of Jesus, anointed with God’s Holy
Spirit, and with the authority to overcome all the sin, disease and chaos that
Satan had wrought upon God’s creation.
In the second passage last week, we
saw Jesus begin to demonstrate this new age of God’s kingly rule, as he
exercises supreme authority in his teaching, in driving out unclean spirits,
and in healing the sick. All this had taken place in Capernaum, on the shore of
the Lake of Galilee, which seems to have been his home base – the teaching,
exorcism and healing taking place in the synagogue and in and around Simon
Peter’s home. Today we see his
ministry extended as he travels throughout the region of Galilee, and today’s
Gospel ends with his fame being so widespread that he can no longer enter a
town openly, and even as he stays outside the towns, people flock to him from everywhere.
So we have seen Jesus bringing in God’s rule
on earth, and confronting Satan and his power, in three ways: he teaches the
Good News that God’s sovereign reign has now begun; he drives out unclean
spirits; and he heals the sick. And in every area that he ministers, what comes
through in particular is his total authority.
But at the centre of today’s passage is his
encounter with a leper, and although this may – at first glance – look very
similar to previous healing miracles, there is an extra, highly important
factor at work here, which is why Mark records it at length and in detail.
To introduce this, I want to draw your
attention to one word in particular in verse 41. The version you have in front
of you reads: “Filled with compassion, Jesus reached out his hand and
touched the man...” But let me read it
to you in a newer version, ‘The Revised
English Version’ – ‘Jesus was moved to anger; he stretched out his hand,
touched him and said; ‘I will, be clean’. Similarly, if you look in the New
English Bible, which was supposed to be become the official C of E replacement
for the Authorised King James Version, we read: “In warm indignation,
Jesus stretched out his hand, touched him, and said, ‘Indeed I will, be clean
again.’
So, was Jesus filled with compassion
at the sight of the leper, or was he filled with indignation/ anger?
Well, some manuscripts read ‘compassion’ and some read ‘anger’ and the
translators have to choose which they think is the correct reading. There are
some criteria which experts apply in such cases, for example in a case like
this, you reckon that the more difficult reading is probably the original. And
clearly the more difficult reading on the surface here, at least, is ‘anger’.
It is easy for us to imagine Jesus being filled with compassion at the sight of
a suffering leper, and hard for us to imagine it making him angry.
Personally, I don’t doubt for a moment that
Jesus was compassionate, but I feel totally convinced that – faced with this
poor leper - Jesus was angry, and his anger made him all the more determined to
heal this man’s condition, and that this anger on God’s behalf is the key to
understanding why this man’s leprosy is in a very different category from (say)
the healing of Simon Peter’s mother-in-law.
To understand this, we have to try to get to
grips with a very different culture from our familiar western society. Leprosy
was not just a disease, it was a life sentence that impinged on every
aspect of that poor man’s life. For Jesus, healing the disease was (so
to speak) the easy bit. Restoring the man to an honourable place in his family
and in society would be much more difficult. For a start, leprosy was believed
to be contagious, so no-one would go anywhere near him to tend his symptoms, or
even to talk to him. So it was a sentence to solitary confinement, unless he
could be officially pronounced cured.
But on top of that, it also made him ritually unclean, so he was
completely excluded from Israel’s worshipping community, the very bedrock of
society. And there was more even than that. That society had – and still has –
an immensely deeply rooted culture of honour and shame, which we find very
difficult to understand. It remains at the heart of that culture to this day.
There was nothing more deadly that could happen to a man or woman than that
they should be deemed to have brought dishonour and shame upon a family. And
there were few things which brought more shame upon a man than having leprosy.
So the man was a total outcast. No-one would
go anywhere near him. No-one would talk to him or tend his sores. He had live
in total isolation and exclusion from every aspect of normal social life. And
he had to live with the deadly shame society heaped upon him. For Jesus to see
a man suffering from a disease would certainly evoke Jesus’ compassion. To see
a man rendered virtually inhuman – an outcast in the dust, cut off from society
in every form – that made him angry. (Just by the way, he would not have met a
leper in Capernaum, because a leper would never have been allowed anywhere
near. We find him here in some isolated place that reflects the man’s own
condition).
So Jesus’ mission was much more than just to
heal the man’s leprosy. It was to restore him to his family and kinsfolk, his
friends, his synagogue, his profession (whatever it was), to give him back
everything that made him human. And, above all, to take him from a place of
shame, and restore his honour in society.
So Jesus is moved to anger that a human
being, made in God’s image, can be reduced to such a state, shunned by
everyone. He reaches out and touches him – an action which must have completely
astonished those who saw it, and not least the man himself. An action which
would have made Jesus himself ritually unclean. And his healing touch and word not only took away the leprosy, but
restored him to his community. No wonder this healing caused a sensation!
So Mark is taking us through various types of
healing – from exorcism, to sockness, to exclusion from society. And next week
we shall see Jesus healing a man with the forgiveness of sins, and the calling
of a man from an occupation that brought a different kind of shameful exclusion
– a tax collector. These, he says, are the people he came to heal and restore.
This exemplifies the Good News.
What can we learn from this powerful story? First,
we see that, in the coming of God’s Kingdom in Jesus, there is the power to
restore all those who – for whatever reason – experience isolation and
loneliness. People can feel excluded from our community for many reasons. It
may be because they are of a different colour or race, or have difficulty with
our language or culture. It may be because someone has committed an offence
which we find repugnant. It may be because we cannot accept a person’s sexuality.
It may be because they come from a different class of society, or for some
reason are just different and we don’t feel comfortable with them. It
may be because they are depressed and we don’t know how to engage with them, or
simply bereaved and we don’t know what to say. We like people who are like us.
There can be dozens of reasons why we tend to exclude people from our society,
and cross the road and pass by on the other side.
The leper experienced disease, effective
imprisonment and total exclusion. Jesus came to bring healing, liberation and
inclusion. These are hallmarks of the Kingdom of God, and must be
characteristic of the Church and the Christian. We say of St Michael’s that we
are ‘open for all’. We must make sure that it’s true in deed as well as
in word.
Finally, there is
another reason why Mark tells us of this encounter. He is beginning to point us
forward to the crucifixion. If the Romans had wanted to put a person to death
with the utmost cruelty, they could have devised all kinds of tortures much
more cruel and prolonged. The point about crucifixion was that it brought the
very ultimate in public shame. You were taken to a prominent place, usually a
hill, where everyone could see you, shamefully stripped and hung up to die. You
were totally helpless, totally abandoned, utterly shamed. In his letter to the
Galatians, Paul quotes the Old Testament Law when he writes that ‘Cursed is
everyone who is hung on a tree’ but ‘Christ redeemed us from the curse of the
Law by becoming a curse for us’. (Gal. 3:13).
When Jesus was crucified, he was stripped of all honour, all power, all
authority – isolated, outcast, abandoned.
And he went to that fate of his own free will because, in that act of
submission, a cosmic event took place of eternal power and significance.
It often seems as if the Gospels are in two
separate parts. The first describes the life and ministry of Jesus, and
the second (quite distinctly) the cross and resurrection. But that’s a
fundamental misunderstanding. The Gospels are all of a piece, and we shall
learn and understand more about the Kingdom of God and he mission of Jesus as
we continue to explore through Mark’s Gospel. The shadow of the cross is there
from the beginning.
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But for today, if you feel on the outside
looking in – somewhat lonely and isolated -
then today’s Good News from the Gospel is that Jesus wants to invite you
to the party, to share in the fellowship of the Gospel, to free you from that
invisible prison, heal your wounds, and embrace you into his kingdom. And – if
you are enjoying the Gospel party already – look out for those who seem to be
on their own, out in the dark, or lingering on the edge of the magic circle.
Jesus reached out and touched the man, and he was both healed and embraced. As
Isaiah had foretold, the day had come when ‘out of the gloom and darkness, the
eyes of the blind will see.. the humble will rejoice in the Lord; the needy
will rejoice in the Holy One of Israel. The ruthless will vanish and those who
mock or scorn will disappear...’ Praise God that Christ is risen from the dead
and his Kingdom is in the midst of us today.
Discussion:
1. Do you sometimes feel ‘excluded’ or on the edge of a
community – church, family, society? How does this make you feel? Are there
things you might do to make you feel more ‘included’? What sort of things might
these be?
2. What can we all do to be more aware of
those around us who are on the margins, and reach out to them? What are the
barriers and how can be overcome them? How far is it true to say that St
Michael’s is ‘Open for all’.
3. Has our western society lost all sense of
‘shame’? How far is this a good or bad thing?
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