Clean Us - Mark 1: 40-45

There are many different names and titles that we use to identify characteristics of Jesus. Counselor. Prince of Peace. Mighty God. Lord of Lords. Messiah. Teacher. Preacher. Son of God and Son of Man. Christ. Rabbi. The Great I Am. Most High. Emmanuel. The Almighty. The Great Lamb. Our Shepherd. The Way. The Vine. The Living Bread of Life. The Rose of Sharon. The Light. The Bright Morning Star. The Living Stone. The Chief Cornerstone. The Advocate. The Cup of Life. The list goes on and on. But in today’s scripture passage Jesus is most notably the Healer.

In fact, Jesus has been the Great Healer for most of the first chapter of Mark’s gospel. This is the third healing story within 45 verses. What is Mark trying to tell us through these narratives and what makes this healing story different then the others the gospel writer told?

Two weeks ago we looked at the first healing story in the gospel of Mark about the man with the evil spirits. That man was healed within the synagogue, amongst his neighbors and friends. He did not ask to be healed, yet Jesus cast out the evil spirits anyway. The second healing story we haven’t discussed as part of a sermon. It was of Simon’s mother-in-law who was at death’s door with a high fever. Others asked Jesus to go and heal her and she was simply healed. But in today’s story, a man had the faith and gumption to approach Jesus and ask for healing.

Why was it such a bold act for this man to approach Jesus? Haven’t we all asked Jesus for healing at one point or another in our lives? This man was a leper, a social outcast. By law he wasn’t allowed to approach Jesus or any other person. Because his disease was so contagious, those with lepersay were banished from the community and had to go and live by themselves or in a colony with others suffering from lepresey. They were marginalized by a social illness brought on by their physical disease. They were viewed as impure, unclean, and a source of dangerous contamination. So under Levitical law, once the priest became aware of someone contracting lepresey, they were were no longer allowed to pray in the temple or go to the synagogue. They were completely expelled from society.

Yet, this leper came to Jesus. He knew that he shouldn’t according to the law. He knew that he was putting Jesus at risk of contracting his isolating disease. But he was at his wits end. He had to try something. So he went to Jesus and knelt before him, begging to be healed. He obviously had some sort of faith to come and see Jesus in this way; he had to believe that Jesus could truly heal him. Further he tells Jesus, “if you choose you can make me clean.” And Jesus did choose.

We live in a culture where many preachers ave used and abused this story and others like it to condemn people who are ill. Telling people that if they just had enough faith they would be healed. But what these preachers and those following their teachings miss is who Jesus was really healing in this passage. On the surface it looks like Jesus healed the man who had faith. And this may be true. But the story doesn’t end there. Some translations, including the one that we are using today state that Jesus was moved with compassion to heal this man, but an equal number say that Jesus was moved with anger. What did Jesus have to be angry about? And can pity and anger be mixed together?

Jesus was angry at the societal norms that made this beloved man of God an outcast from society. Jesus’ healing of this man disrupted the social order and turned around all of the laws that Jesus was supposed to be abiding by concerning people who were deemed unclean. Unfit to interact with the rest of society. He was breaking down boundaries. Jesus was so angry by how the religious and civil society were treating this man, and others with his disease, that he was moved with pity, and with this pity he reached out and did something that he did not have to do - he touched the man. Jesus is powerful enough to heal people without touching them. He had already shown that when he cast out the unclean spirits from the man in the temple simply by the command of his voice. But he knew that this man needed human touch, so he reached out and caressed him, breaking the rules that had prevented the man from not having any human contact for so long. Jesus said with both his actions and his voice that he did choose to heal the man. And isn’t this truly the message of the gospel - that Jesus has come to liberate those who have been deemed unclean. Those who have been marginalized and outcasted from society. Those who are in need of the caress of hope.

This past week I was in New York City at the General Board of Global Missions, one of the parts of the United Methodist Church that serves people who are in need of hope and healing around the world through our shares of ministry. I was so impressed to see how the United Methodist Church was present in over 136 countries around the wold. Working with the poor to change systems and societal norms. Teaching native women how to share the gospel with societies where reading is not the norm. Training chiefs, preachers, and emams about malaria and other preventable diseases and helping them be agents of change through the Nothing But Nets and Imagine No Malaria campaigns. GBGM is helping pastors reach out to those in their congregations suffering from addictions and related violence. They are training young people to be peer counselors concerning abusive relationships and addictions. And these are just a few examples of how we are reaching out and partnering with people to bring hope and healing and wholeness around the world.

The seminar was two jam packed days and on the day in between our learnings we traveled to three United Methodist ministries and churches in New York City who are truly offering the caress of hope to those whom others have turned away. While there another young clergy made the following comment to me: “I love ministry that evolves from the simple questions: ‘what is God calling us to do about this?’ There is an aids epidemic? Maybe we should make it possible for people to get tested twice a week. People can’t find work? We have a kitchen to feed them and a chef who comes in to teach them how to cook so they can find work. People haven’t paid their taxes in a few years? We have a basement where some accountants came come. Let’s put two and two together.”

What I loved about these ministries we visited and the work that GBGM is doing is that it is truly the intersection between compassion for people and anger at society. Brothers and sisters we have moved well beyond the time when we can simply respond to people with compassion while allowing the same oppressive systems to be untouched and unchanged. This is neither love nor justice. Our United Methodist heritage calls for us to change systems while reaching out to people. And honestly, that can be scary work. It seems a lot easier to give people some money then to ask the hard question of what has prevented them from having a job or money to take care of their family in the first place and striving to help the individual while charing the system.It means that we need to be asking questions that do not have easy answers. It also means acknowledging our own guilt.

I have to wonder if Jesus was also angry at himself when we he saw this man. Surly it was not the first leper he had seen. Yet it was the first one that we were told that he reached out and healed. For 30 years Jesus had been part of the system, implicitly or explicitly, that ostracized this man and others like him, and now he was face to face with a human being not a set of rules or boundaries. But in that moment, Jesus set aside concern from himself, or following the rules, and took this man’s uncleanliness upon himself. Even though this man was healed by Jesus touch, under Levitical law, Jesus was now supposed to be banished even if he never contracted lepresey himself, because he intentionally put himself in harms way. And that scares us. We don’t want to be putting ourselves in situations where we may be at risk or may break rules. But Jesus felt compelled to do so in that moment, and he changed a mans life because of that, and started to change a society.

My parents are with us today, and I’m sure they can tell us about plenty of times that they have felt that I have put myself at risk for others. Times I have traveled to bad neighborhoods or have worked with people that made them feel a bit uncomfortable at first. But even with all of the risks, I felt compelled to do so because I had a vision. We are not all called to go to dangerous places, that is why GBGM represents us as a denominational church, sending missionaries to over 60 countries. And we are not called as this church to necessarily be doing the same ministries as the churches I visited in NYC - those are their missions that stem from their vision and the prayer that God has answered for them when they asked, “what are you asking us to do about this God? What are you calling us to do?” But we called to be agents of change, hope, and healing here. We are to be asking the question what is God asking us to do in this place, here and now, to bring healing. And the answer may surprise us. It may make us feel uncomfortable and ask us to put ourselves aside for others. But we have to ask. Because Jesus, the one who has all of those names and titles, has been healer in our lives so we are to be healers in the lives of others. No matter what the cost. No matter what.