Healing of the leper
I have heard it said by some of my colleagues that Mark’s Gospel is a subversive gospel. Their reasoning is that this Good News account of Jesus cuts to the heart of social, political, religious and power structures of the day. While I don’t like the word subversive, I agree that Mark’s Gospel goes right to the heart of what we have become. Mark challenges us to transform into what we were meant to be. Our scripture reading today, Mark 1: 40-45, gives us an insight as to what it is we are meant to be.
Mark tells us that a leper came to Jesus, begging on his knees. “If you want to, you can cleanse me.” (v. 40)
Jesus, in the emotional stirrings of his compassion, says to the leper. “I want to. Be clean.”(v.41) He reaches out and touches the untouchable leper and he is cleansed.
What we need to understand is that the healing of the leper was not just a physical healing. Lepers also were socially dead. Lepers were considered religiously unclean, as well. They were to live outside of the community and could not have any physical contact with others. They were expected to shout, “UNCLEAN, UNCLEAN,” sounding an alert so that others could avoid contact with them.
Leprosy was a big deal in the first century. Diagnosis of the disease was, at best, a guess. Any condition of the skin that was considered abnormal was leprosy. Any kind of rash, severe acne, any patch of dry skin, any skin discoloration, if it was on the skin and appeared abnormal in any way, it was leprosy.
It could be possible that all our leper needed was a bottle of skin lotion and a good nights sleep. The point is, if you had a skin abnormality, you could have been labeled a leper. Which would have meant that you were socially and religiously dead and forced to live outside the community. To be cursed with this diagnosis meant the loss of one’s humanity.
Jesus, moved by his compassion and love of humanity, shatters the social and religious barriers. Jesus entered into the leper’s world of social and religious damnation and spoke to him saying, “yes, I do choose!” Jesus then touched him. Jesus stood in the midst of this man’s hell and restored him to humanity with the simple power of human touch. Jesus opened the barriers that the social and religious institutions had built and graciously gifted him with that, which should have never been taken away, his humanity.
Jesus not only restores the humanity of the leper, he calls us to restore the humanity of the world. Jesus’ call to compassionate ministry in an uncompassionate world is boldly echoed in our text today. Our society and religious institutions are constantly building barriers that deny the humanity of those who are on the margins.
Just like the lepers of so long ago, society and religious institutions still continue to stigmatize the suffering and the outcasts regardless of fault or blame. Jesus, in his touching of the leper, shatters all our artificial categories of clean and unclean, insider and outsider. Jesus grants citizenship to all. Jesus welcomes all of humanity – the mentally ill, the troublemaker, the gang banger, the elderly, the lonely, the depressed. People of all colors, no matter what their sexual orientation may be, are welcome into the fellowship of the reign of God. Jesus, because of his willingness to challenge the powers and principalities that seek to dominate, admonish and eliminate the humanity created in God’s image, steps across all the barriers dividing race and class, and he reconfigures the exclusive, deathly social order into one of hospitality, community, love and equality.
As children of God, we are called to break down the barriers we have built and to restore our humanity and welcome all of God’s children into our communities.
