Mark 1:40-45
February 12, 2006
Sermon preached by Rev. Donald Ng at the First Chinese Baptist Church in San Francisco.
The approximately one million tribal people living in Northern Thailand are scattered throughout almost 3500 villages. They lack the ability to sustain their traditionally nomadic lifestyle so they become vulnerable to poverty and exploitation. Each year, a number of tribal girls leave their homes under false pretenses and end up in exploitative labor situations. They become victims of abuse and human trafficking. Many end up with AIDS.
I want to tell you about two places we visited in Thailand. At Chiang Mai, we went to the New Life Center where ABC missionary Karen Smith welcomed us. The mission of the New Life Center is to provide a safe living environment, vocational training, citizenship advocacy, and spiritual development so that these women might get a second start. If it wasn’t for the New Life Center, these women would be unwelcome in their own villages and left to fend for themselves.
We also visited the House of Love where ABC missionary Kim Brown is. Remember she came and spoke at our church over a year ago? The House of Love is primarily comprised of children who are HIV/AIDS infected born to HIV-positive mothers. Some of the children have been abused or have been living on the streets so the Social Welfare Department referred these children here. We were told that about 30 children have died at the House of Love since it opened in 1994. If it wasn’t for the House of Love, these children would not be able to attend school or receive medical care or worship together, play games, and celebrate birthdays and holidays. They would only be set aside and labeled contagious who nobody would want to be near.
Leprosy
And this was the way the man in today’s gospel has been treated. He is a leper. As a leper, he was a very sick man. When a leper walks down the path, he is required to shout out that he was a leper, warning everyone not to come close to him. Leprosy is considered contagious. One was specifically prohibited by scripture from even touching a leper. If one had leprosy, there were rules that excluded the leper from public gatherings, even religious gatherings. We can say that the AIDS disease today is analogous to leprosy in the Bible. Because of his disease, this poor man was unfit for contact with other human beings. Just like the women and children in Thailand, these people were unfit to return to their villages. They were outcasts and untouchables.
I can still remember when I was a child; a little guy in my elementary school got the dreaded disease of polio. He wore these heavy braces up and down both his legs. He needed to use crutches to get around. Like kids, we were afraid to get close to him fearing that we might catch what he has. When the March of Dimes came along, we were encouraged to save up our dimes so that none of us would end up like this little boy. Thank God for the Salk and Sabin vaccines! I can imagine how isolated, the shunning, the loneliness this little boy must have felt. If it wasn’t for our teacher who told us to involve this little boy in our games, he would have been left all by himself.
It may be AIDS or polio or leprosy or perhaps even the common occurrence of losing one’s job—being lay-off. We think that all these people have communicable diseases to be avoided. We don’t want to catch what they’ve got. Yes, even people who for no other reason but are victims of deep misfortune are seen as being contagious. We want to avoid them.
Healing the Leper
In Mark’s Scripture, a leper; notice that if we are politically correct, we should say “a man with leprosy.” But since this man has leprosy, he has lost his identity of humanity and is only seen by others as the disease. He is a leper.
When this man saw Jesus, he saw the possibility of deliverance. He was filled with hope. Down on his knees, begging, the man says, “if you will, you can make me clean, Jesus.”
And what was Jesus’ response? Most of our Bibles say that Jesus was filled with pity and compassion. But notice the little footnote on the bottom of the page. The Greek word in Mark’s text says that Jesus was filled with anger. When Jesus looked at this poor man, his heart was filled with rage.
When Matthew and Luke retell this story from Mark, both of them omitted any reference to Jesus’ anger. They don’t even say that Jesus felt compassion. Most of the time, we want to polish up Jesus, to remove any references to Jesus’ humanity. We don’t like to depict Jesus weeping, angry, or otherwise acting in a human way. We want Jesus to always be God. But Jesus was also fully human.
But why was Jesus angry? Was he angry because this leper had broken the Law of Moses? Had he stepped over the boundary between the clean and the unclean, the healthy and the unhealthy? That interpretation would not make sense because Mark says that Jesus was “moved with pity and Jesus put out his hand and touched him. Jesus says, “I do choose to make you clean.” If Jesus had been concerned about breaking the Law of Moses, upon seeing this man he would have moved away from him, not reach out toward him and touched him.
Or perhaps, Jesus was angry because the man approaches him in a testing way. What does this man mean, “if you will, you can make me clean?” Is this like the man saying, “If you are really the Messiah, and if you really have love for those in need, then you will prove that you are the Messiah and make me clean?” But Jesus doesn’t seem to be angry about that. When the man says, “If you will,” Jesus immediately responds, “I will,” and heals the man.
I think Jesus was filled with anger, not at the breaking of the ancient law, nor because of the way the sick man approached him, but he was angry because of the man’s sickness, because of what this sickness had done to the man, ravaging his body and because of the way his illness had isolated him from the warmth of human community. He was angry at the evil of it all. This was not the way God intended life to be.
When the leper cried out, “Make me clean!” the man was crying out for more than healing. He was crying out to be received back into human community. He was pleading for a chance to become fully human again. And, whether he knew it or not, he was also pleading, “Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” He was pleading for the triumph of the good purposes of God, not someday, but today, not in heaven, but here, and now.
Jesus, moved by anger, pity and compassion announces, “I will.” Jesus puts him back into contact with the rest of humanity. He tells the man to go show himself to the priests. The man is to go witness to the religious authorities that life has overcome death; that there is a new power loose in the world in the person of Jesus. The man was to go and tell that to all of the professional religious people, even before he went home, back to his beloved family. Maybe Jesus wanted to tell the priests because isn’t it usually the case that religious authorities are the last to believe that something new and liberating is happening?
Role Reversal
Then Jesus told the man to not tell anyone else. But the man failed to obey Jesus. Perhaps that seems incredibly ungrateful. Jesus has healed him from leprosy and all Jesus asked was that, after showing the religious authorities what had happened, he should keep it to himself. But he could not keep it to himself. He had to go and shout to everybody what Jesus had done for him. He was so grateful, so excited. Can you blame him? He was now free.
But because he went and told everybody, ironically, Jesus is no longer free. A once trapped man is now free to go where he wants. Jesus must now be isolated, apart from the city. Now Jesus is forced to stay in Galilee, out in the countryside. Ironically, the man is free, for the first time in a long time, to go back to town and enjoy human company. Jesus the liberator is forced to stay out in the countryside. Jesus has become an isolated man.
Jesus not only got very angry at the presence of evil, he also acted against evil. He restored a bruised and broken man to health and wholeness. He restored him to human community. And as the result, Jesus becomes a marked man, a lonely man, eventually a dead man. Jesus sacrificed his personal freedom in order to care for someone else.
It’s rare that an act of goodness comes without some cost. It is rare that some deed of compassion does not cause some pain to the doer and the giver.
I know that some people in our church are suffering from kidney failure. Since we have two kidneys and can live with only one, we are called to consider the possibility of donating a kidney to save a loved one. But the donor’s life will become more restricted. The donor may need to take various drugs to offset the loss of the kidney. There will be restrictions.
A couple of years ago, we sponsored a Bone Marrow donors program at the Recreation Center next door. Since there’s a shortage of bone marrow matches for Asians, many of us filled out the forms, got our blood types recorded and signed up on the national registry. Now I am asked if I want to renew my decision to give bone marrow if and when there might be a need. If that time comes, I know that rarely a deed of compassion does not cause some pain to the donor.
I had a good colleague in Valley Forge who happened to have two children born with autism. Joe and his wife, Ginny dedicated their lives to caring for their autistic children. They might have placed them in an institution where others could have cared for them. But they felt it would be better for them if they remained at home. They knew that they would have a more satisfying life if they stayed at home and they attended to their needs. This has been wonderful for their children. Their daughter, Becky has learned enough skills to keep a job. Their son, Matthew with severe autism has learned how to communicate with his parents by using a special computer keyboard.
Joe and Ginny almost on their own compassion and perhaps anger organized a state-wide association for children with disabilities. While their children have received the best care their parents can offer, Joe and Ginny’s lives have been severely restricted and confined. There have been many occasions when they have been unable to go on vacation or socialize with friends because they had taken on the care of their children. And yet, if I were to talk with them, they would say, “Our children are the best things that ever happened to us. They have given us a wonderful purpose in our lives. They are gifts to us.”
It’s rare that an act of goodness comes without cost. It is rare that some deed of compassion does not cause some pain to the doer and the giver. When we do something with compassion, it’s contagious and we catch the suffering from those whom we helped.
Contagious Jesus
This is the way with Jesus. When he came face to face with evil in the world, he was angry. He didn’t sit back and wondered about what’s clean and unclean, healthy and unhealthy. Rather, he announced, “I will!” He reached out, he got involved, he touched, and he healed. As the result, he caught what we had. He, for our sakes, became infected with our sinfulness, the limitations of our humanity. God in Christ could not remain in majestic isolation from us. Rather, he came to us, shared our situation, touched us, and paid dearly for that.
Though he was not infected with leprosy, his body, hanging on the cross, was afflicted much worst. He was, in the words of the Hebrews, crucified not in the middle of the big city, but “outside the gate” on a lonely hill, an untouchable outcast for our sake.
I think I can speak for our group who went to visit the New Life Center and the House of Love. When we saw the young women and the little children, our hearts cried out, “We will reach out to them, touch them, hug them, have our pictures taken with them, get down on the floor to give them the little ditty bags filled with little toys and Sees lollipops.” And with deep humility and prayer, we hope that our short visit conveyed to them that they are God’s children and God welcomes them into his family.
Let us pray.
O God, help us to be contagious with your love as Jesus was with the man with leprosy. Let us not be afraid to become angry against the evil in the world that cause your loved ones to be alienated and separated from your plan for human communities. We pray that we will work toward the acceptance of your people as Jesus did. Teach us to live and to love as Jesus lived and loved. Amen.