THE UNTOUCHABLES - by Revd Gilbert Wong

SCRIPTURE:    Mark 1:40-45

12 February 2006

SERMON IN A SENTENCE:   The church needs to be careful not to be sidetracked from its primary task, which is to proclaim the Gospel.

VERSES 40-42:  A LEPER CAME TO HIM

"A leper came to (Jesus) begging him" (v. 40).  In Jesus' day, the word leprosy was used for a broad range of skin conditions. "Scribes counted as many as seventy-two different afflictions that were defined as leprosy," including such diseases as boils and ringworm (Edwards, 68 -- see also Leviticus 13-14).  Some of those diseases had no known cure, and were thus greatly feared.  Some were highly communicable, so lepers were required to live in isolation.  Torah law prescribes, "The person who has the leprous disease shall wear torn clothes and let the hair of his head be dishevelled; and he shall cover his upper lip and cry out, 'Unclean, unclean.' ...He shall live alone; his dwelling shall be outside the camp" (Leviticus 13:45-46).  The OT has several accounts of God afflicting people with leprosy as punishment (Numbers 12:9-10; 2 Kings 5:27; 15:5; 2 Chronicles 26:19-21), so people tended to interpret leprosy as punishment for sin.

Leprosy therefore had multiple dimensions -- medical, religious, social and financial.  The afflicted person (medical) was considered to be ritually unclean (spiritual).  Lepers were required to live alone and to maintain a distance of fifty paces from other people (social).  If the leper touched another person or was touched by them, the other person was considered to be diseased and ritually unclean until examined by a priest and pronounced clean.  In other words, both the disease (medical) and the ritual impurity (spiritual) were communicable.  The afflicted person was unable to work, and was thus reduced to begging (financial).  Most likely his family was also reduced to begging.  The medical problem was terrible, but the other consequences added crushing weight to an already awful situation.

"and kneeling (the leper) said to (Jesus), 'If you choose, you can make me clean" (v. 40).  This leper comes to Jesus begging on his knees.  It is clear that he transgresses the fifty-pace boundary that he is supposed to maintain, because Jesus reaches out and touches him.  The leper says, "If you choose, you can make me clean" (v. 40).  The leper has obviously heard the news about Jesus healing other people, but is uncertain whether Jesus will heal him.  If leprosy is God's judgment for sin, perhaps Jesus will require him to serve his full sentence. 

The man does not ask to be healed (medical), but rather to be made clean (spiritual and social).  There is, in this story, no reference to healing, but there are four references to cleansing.  However, one cannot be made clean without also being made disease-free, so this man is asking to be fully restored to normal life in all dimensions.  His plea for cleansing rather than healing suggests that he values the restoration of his spiritual and social status even above his physical healing.  It also acknowledges his faith that Jesus works by God's power.  Only God can heal a leper, and only the priest (God's appointed representative) can pronounce a leper clean.

"Moved with pity" (v. 41).  This verse presents us with a difficult translation problem.  Most manuscripts say that Jesus was filled with pity or compassion, but others say that he was angry.  Compassion makes more sense in this context, and some good manuscripts use.  However, there are also reasons to accept anger as the proper reading here: 

Why would Jesus be angry?  Scholars emphasize that Jesus was trying to maintain a proper balance between teaching and healing, the two primary forms of his ministry in the first half of this Gospel.  For the most part, people were drawn to him by his healing miracles, and often failed to see his deeper spiritual dimension.  Another possibility, then, is that the healing of a leper would draw people to Jesus for the wrong reasons, something that actually happens in v. 45.  In v. 41, then, Jesus senses that the leper is asking him to do something that will throw his ministry off-track.  The leper's plea forces him to choose between mission and compassion -- to compromise one or the other.  It is easy to see how Jesus would respond with anger to such a no-win choice.  This explanation also explains the strong language of v. 43 (see below) and Jesus' stern warning to the leper not to tell anyone but the priest.

"Moved with pity, Jesus stretched out his hand and touched him, and said to him, 'I do choose.  Be made clean!' “(v. 41).  If Jesus can heal the man by touch, presumably he could also heal him without touching him.  His touch seems reckless, because touching the leper should contaminate Jesus (both medically and spiritually).  However, in this case, it is not the leper who is contagious, but Jesus.  The leper does not transmit his uncleanness to Jesus, but Jesus transmits his wholeness and holiness to the leper and makes him clean (medically, spiritually, and socially).

In this Gospel, we will read about Jesus touching or associating with other people in ways that would potentially defile him -- tombs and swine (5:1-20); a haemorrhaging woman (5:25-27); a corpse (5:41); Gentiles and unclean spirits (7:24-26).  In each instance, he transmits his wholeness and holiness rather than the other way around.

Immediately the leprosy left him, and he was made clean" (v. 42).  Jesus' "word is not like the words and the authority of the scribes.  His word has the power to do what it says" (Jensen).  Mark does not tell us whether Jesus simply stopped the disease or also removed the disfigurement that the disease would already have caused.  Because simply stopping the disease seems such a halfway measure, we should assume that he also restored the man to a normal appearance.

VERSES 43-44:  GO, SHOW YOURSELF TO THE PRIEST

"After sternly warning him" (v. 43).  The word is used to describe a horse snorting.  When used of people, it conveys anger, displeasure, or indignation.  Mark will use this same word to describe the disciples' anger at the woman who anoints Jesus with expensive ointment (14:4-5). 

"He sent him away" (v. 43).  The Greek word is translated elsewhere as "driving out" or "casting out" -- i.e., the Spirit driving Jesus into the wilderness (1:12) and casting out demons (1:34, 39).  It conveys a good deal of force -- force that the translation, "sent him away," fails to convey.

So this passage conveys an angry, urgent mood on Jesus' part -- words that seem out of place in a healing story.  We must ask why they are there.  They seem more appropriate in an exorcism story, so scholars have wondered if Mark somehow mixed elements of an exorcism story into this healing story.  However, it seems more likely that Jesus is angry because, in healing the leper, he risked attracting people who will be interested in him only for his magical powers -- thereby compromising his ministry.  This also explains his forceful warning not to say anything to anyone except the priest.  Keep my secret!  Don't blow my cover!  Jesus' anger might also be related to his awareness that the man will disobey his command to secrecy.

"Go, show yourself to the priest, and offer for your cleansing what Moses commanded" (v. 44).  After warning the man to tell nobody nothing, Jesus orders him to show himself to the priest and to offer the proper offering.  Leviticus 13 tells the priest how to inspect a person for leprosy -- what to look for and what to do.  Leviticus 14 tells about the offerings to be offered and the ritual to be performed to cleanse (spiritually) a person who is found to be disease-free (medically).  The cleansing is an eight-day process, culminating in the cleansed leper bringing two male lambs, a ewe lamb, a grain offering, and a log of oil for sacrifice (Leviticus 14:10).  Leviticus makes an allowance for a poor person who cannot afford such expensive offerings (Leviticus 14:21 ff.). 

Jesus' command for the cleansed leper to show himself to the priest is in the man's interest, because he cannot re-enter society without the priest's approval.  It also demonstrates Jesus' devotion to Torah law, a matter that will shortly be in dispute as he forgives a paralytic's sins -- God's prerogative (2:1-13), calls a tax collector to be his disciple (2:14-17), defends his disciples' failure to fast (2:18-22) and their harvest of grain on the Sabbath (2:23-27) -- etc., etc., etc. 

"as a testimony to them" (v. 44).  What is the purpose of this witness or testimony?  Is the man bearing witness only to the fact that he has been made clean, or is he also bearing witness to Jesus' unique power?  It would seem that both are true.  "The man's healing will vividly demonstrate the difference between Jesus and the custodians of official religion:  they can only pronounce people clean; Jesus can make them clean" (Geddert, 52). 

It is quite legitimate to translate the Greek words as "against them" instead of "to them."  It is possible, therefore, to translate Jesus' words, "as a testimony against them."  When the man presents himself to the priest, the priest will have to assess his physical condition. If he finds the man to be disease-free, the priest will have to bear public witness to that fact and participate in a cleansing ceremony to allow the man to re-enter society.  "Jesus' statement then means that if the priests establish that healing has taken place and accept the sacrifice for cleansing but fail to recognize the person and power through whom healing has come, they will stand condemned by the very evidence which they have supplied" (Lane, 88). 

If this is the intent of "as a testimony to/against them" -- if Jesus intends to force the priest to acknowledge Jesus' Godly power -- the urgency of his stern admonition to go to the priest becomes obvious.  Not only will the man's visit to the priest restore the man to society, but it will also condemn the priests, who will certify the healing and thus Jesus' Godly power -- but who will continue to oppose Jesus.

VERSE 45:  BUT HE BEGAN TO PROCLAIM IT FREELY

The man disobeys Jesus' order, preaching the word so effectively that people overwhelm Jesus, seeking his help.  The spreading good news has happened (vv. 14-15), and, however inconvenient for Jesus, the man's disobedient proclamation was, and was recognized as, good news" (French, 120).  The problem is that "the publicity created audiences, not congregations (Craddock, 104).  There are at least four points of irony in this verse:

-- A disobedient man is among the first to preach the good news about Jesus.

-- Jesus' fame hampers rather than enhances his ministry.

-- This story began with the leper forced to live "outside the camp" (Lev. 13:46) and ends with his restoration to community life.  The story begins with Jesus moving freely among villages, and ends with him forced to live "out in the country" (v. 45).  The two men have traded places.  Jesus finds himself suffering a leper's isolation.

-- "An ability of Jesus, namely his power to heal (...1:40), has now become the cause of his inability to move about (...1:45)" (Marcus, 210).