FINDINGS III By Harry T. Cook

Epiphany VI 2012   

Mark 1: 40-45           

Harry T. Cook

"And a leper came to him." This is not an incidental stage direction. Neither is it filler, nor even simply a transition. A couple of things to note: A leper would not ordinarily have such easy access to anyone not a leper himself, which means that Mark intended to breach a socio-political barrier, and to depict Jesus as allowing it to be breached or to make it possible to be breached. Already the mid-to-late first century C.E. sensibilities are aroused. How could this be? I think it is the same reaction expressed at 1:27 where "amazement" greeted Jesus' teaching and his power over the demonic spirit. No ordinary things happening here!

From the merely social point of view, all kinds of written and unwritten laws have been broken with the access the leper had (or appropriated) to Jesus -- never mind the fact that Jesus was willing to receive and to touch the leper. No further "miracle" need be sought, and what "healing" took place is not necessarily what the words say on the surface. Persons afflicted with skin disorders in the first century C.E. (and we're not quite certain what all the term λεπρός may have covered in terms of skin abnormalities) were ostracized and marginalized as any human folk has ever been. They were not permitted to participate in the everyday warp and woof of life. They were "unclean," i.e. the opposite of καθαρίσσαι (as in catharsis) which the leper requested of Jesus to be made.

So to front and center of the gospel comes a leper who is embraced in the σπλαγχνισθεις (lit. "outpouring of the gut") of Jesus. And that, in a way, is the gospel in the proverbial nutshell. The gospel, in the end, is not a theological or doctrinal thing. It is a thing of the heart, of the gut. It has to do with how people receive other people and behave toward them. It has to do with the breaking down of mistakenly erected barriers between individuals and among groups.

It may also have to do with something closer to the material sense of the text. Mark does not say directly that Jesus broke down a barrier of any kind -- social or otherwise -- yet the text suggests it. Mark does say that the leper was made clean (καθαρίσθητι). It is fair to say that Mark meant exactly that, i.e. that Jesus was the agent of some out-of-the-ordinary transformation of a sick person into a well person, or of an ostracized person into a socially acceptable person. - No grandstander, Jesus asks the ex-leper not to say anything about it, which will not be the last time Jesus will invoke secrecy.

It is legitimate to ask what purpose keeping such good news secret might serve. Jesus is depicted as following the counsel of Leviticus 13:49 and 14:2-32 in telling the leper (or ex-leper) to go show himself to the priest and to offer the required thank offerings for the healing. Yet the showing the leprous self to the priest is supposed to come before any cleansing takes place. That is the clear meaning of Leviticus 14. Nevertheless, if Mark's Jesus is saying to the man, "Go show your cleansed body to the priest," then either Mark misunderstood Leviticus, or he understood it only too well. The healed ex-leper would be an affront to the priest who himself was to be the agent of the cleansing. Just, then, as the scribes of 1:22 might have been deeply offended by the acclamation of Jesus as a teacher quite unlike themselves, so the priest alluded to in 1:44 would be equally offended by Jesus the healer.

Either way, the healed leper is depicted as ignoring Jesus' admonition and felt himself free to carry abroad the word of it with the result that Jesus could no longer openly enter a village, but had to stay in the countryside. No luck. People found him.

It is in Mark's interest and in keeping with his understanding of Jesus and of the Jesus movement of Mark's time to depict people coming to seek out Jesus -- but really, his posthumous movement. Those who flowed from synagogue Judaism into the Jesus movement were championed by the author(s) and/or complier(s) of the gospel in their desire to leave the dreary and pointless slavery to jot and tittle.

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The homilist or bible study class leader has an easy out with this passage. Either can use it as evidence that Jesus Christ was a healer by supernatural means, which proves that he was and is the messiah, the son of the one God. End of homily. End of class. Now it's time for coffee and pastries.

Or either of the aforementioned ministers could take the harder look and see that Mark was writing about the pulling down of dividing walls between one kind of human being and another. Leprosy is not the issue. Ostracism and exclusion are the issues. The modern-day versions of leper colonies are beyond the pale of the gospel. Ghettos and the segregation that created them are not acceptable. Apartheid is unacceptable. The isolation of Gaza is immoral.

The sense of the Markan passage at hand is that old laws, old ways of thinking are pass� and need reworking. At this latter task the church in general is miserably behind the eight-ball. That its hierarchs are still feuding about whether gay, lesbian, bi- or transgender persons are acceptable other than as penitents is a stunning disappointment. That its theologians still muck about trying to make a case for a triune deity or the bodily resurrection and ascension into heaven of Jesus Christ causes the head to shake in sad wonderment.

Any entity that will claim to exist in the name of Jesus must remove barriers of exclusion and those societies here and there have declared untouchable. Only when its barriers are down, the excluded have been included and the untouchable have not only been touched but embraced dare any religious community take the name of Jesus to itself. Otherwise it would be grand larceny so to do.