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Mark 1:40-45

If You Choose

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Mark 1:40-45

If You Choose

By Dr. Philip W. McLarty

The gospel lesson this morning picks up where we left off last week.  Last week we heard about how Jesus healed Peter’s mother-in-law and people came from everywhere hoping he’d heal them as well.

Well, he healed a bunch, but the next morning there were that many more.  People came from everywhere.  The problem was when they got there Jesus was nowhere to be found.  He’d gotten up before daybreak and slipped away to be alone with God in prayer.  When his disciples found him and told him that everyone was looking for him, he said,

“Let’s go elsewhere into the next towns,
that I may preach there also,
because I came out for this reason.”
(Mark 1:38)

Mark says they went through the Galilee where Jesus proclaimed God’s kingdom in the synagogues and cast out demons along the way.  Then he says,

“A leper came to him, begging him,
kneeling down to him,
and saying to him,
‘If you want to, you can make me clean.'” (Mark 1:40)

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Just so we’re clear, leprosy was a dreaded disease in Jesus’ day.  It still is.  According to the World Health Organization, there are about 600,000 new cases of leprosy each year.  Of course, with the help of modern medicine, it’s not as bad as it once was.  There’s still no cure, but at least it can be contained.

But, in Jesus’ day, leprosy was bad news.  In extreme cases, the flesh would rot on the bone.  In the process, it would form open lesions.  If you were lucky, gangrene would set in, and you’d die quickly.

But not all cases were that severe.  Richard Donovan writes,

“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.” (SermonWriter, Volume 13, Number 12, ISSN 1071-9962)

The point is there were lots of different forms of leprosy in Jesus’ day, but they were all treated the same.  The Torah made no provision for psoriasis or a bad case of acne.  Leprosy was leprosy, and if the priest said you had it, the Law was clear:

“The leper in whom the plague is shall wear torn clothes, and the hair of his head shall hang loose. He shall cover his upper lip, and shall cry, ‘Unclean! Unclean!’… He is unclean. He shall dwell alone. Outside of the camp shall be his dwelling.” (Leviticus 13:45-46).

What’s worse was the social stigma.  In Old Testament times, it was generally assumed that, if you were afflicted with a terrible disease like leprosy, you must have done something really bad, and this was your punishment.

Remember the story of Job and his three friends?  They came on the pretense of consoling him.  What they really wanted was to get him to fess up: “Golly Jeez, Job, what did you do to deserve this?  Must’ve been a doozie!  Tell us about it.”  The stigma was as bad as the disease.

Then there was the practical reality.  Once declared a leper, the individual was cut off from his family and friends and community of support.  He was no longer able to make a living or support his family.  He couldn’t even go to the synagogue to pray.  It was a fate worse than death.

Can you imagine what it was like to be a leper in Jesus’ day – to live as an outcast, to be excluded, to live in a perpetual state of quarantine?  What comes to my mind are times of driving up to, say, a country club where there was a sign at the gate saying, “Members Only,” and I wasn’t one.  But that hardly compares to being a leper, now does it?

Some analogies come to mind.  Racial segregation, for example.  I remember when I was in seminary watching the news about Apartheid in South Africa and thinking what an inhumane way to live.  Then it dawned on me that that’s the way it used to be here in Hope, when I was growing up in the late 40s and early 50s.

I also thought about what it would be like to be gay or lesbian, living the semblance of a normal life in public, but knowing full well that, if you said too much or expressed your feelings too openly, you could lose your job or be ostracized by the community.

Then I thought about the issue of illegal immigration.  Just a couple of weeks ago, Congressman Mike Ross was in town to meet with members of the Ministerial Alliance.  We talked for over an hour about our role as pastors in relating to undocumented workers.  It’s estimated that there are about 12.5 million in this country today.  What’s it like to live as an alien in a foreign land where, if you got sick or beat up or abused in some way, you were afraid to say anything or ask for help, for fear of being deported?

These are only three examples.  I’m sure you can think of others.  To be a leper is to be untouchable.  And so, according to Mark, “A leper came to him, begging him, kneeling down to him, and saying to him, ‘If you want to, you can make me clean.'” (Mark 1:40)

Can you hear the desperation in his voice?  Can you imagine the agony he must have felt being separated from his wife and children and cut off from society?  If only he could be made clean, he could go back to his family and resume a normal life.

Obviously, he’d heard about Jesus, how he’d healed others.  If only Jesus would extend that healing touch to him.  And so, he said, “If you choose, you can make me clean.”

Well, we know the rest of the story, don’t we?  Jesus had compassion on the man.  Mark says,

“Being moved with compassion,
(Jesus) stretched out his hand, and touched him,
and said to him, ‘I want to. Be made clean.’
When he had said this,
immediately the leprosy departed from him,
and he was made clean.” (Mark 1:41-42)

We’d all like to think that, if we’d been there in Jesus’ shoes that day, we would’ve done the same thing, that if we had the power to cleanse a leper, we’d do it in a heartbeat.  Well, the Good News is we do!

No, I’m not talking about practicing medicine without a license.  I’m talking about addressing the root cause of what alienates us from God and each other – what makes us all feel like lepers at times – and the power to restore us and reconcile us and make us whole.  Are you ready for this?

We’re alienated from God and each other by our sinful human nature; but we can be reconciled and restored by the power of God’s forgiveness and love.

That’s it in a nutshell: At the heart of every human being there’s a basic feeling of unworthiness.  It may be just a twinge, or it may be all-consuming; it may be lie out in the open, or it may be covered by layers of bravado and false confidence.  But deep down inside we’re all painfully aware of our sinful nature and we know that, if we were to stand before the judgment seat of God today, we wouldn’t have a chance.

That’s not to say we’ve committed some heinous crime.  It’s simply to say that we think perverse thoughts and say unkind things and act in self-serving ways.  While we may look like fine, upstanding men and women on the surface, inside we know better.

I don’t say this to put us down or make us feel bad; on the contrary, I say it to set the stage for what is the most remarkable word we can ever hear, and that is:

God already knows this and loves us just the same.  God sent Jesus into the world to die for the forgiveness of our sins.  Once we hear that and accept it as fact, it has the power to transform our lives – to cleanse us and make us whole.

As it does, we have the opportunity to become the catalyst of transformation for others – not by pounding them over the head with a Bible, but by accepting them for who they are and by offering them the gift of faith and friendship in the name of Jesus Christ.

Berniece Johnson was just such a friend to me.  Her son, Jim, and I were roommates at Dixie Music Camp in Monticello in 1960.  Berniece and her husband, Bennie, drove Jim up from Orange, Texas and helped him make his bed and get his part of the room organized.  Then they took him to dinner and invited me to go along.

That was the beginning of an abiding friendship that continues to bless my life to this day.  Don’t ask me to explain it, and don’t think for a moment that I did anything to deserve it.  It just happened.  I guess you could say Berniece saw something in me worth redeeming.  Or maybe it wasn’t rational at all.  Love is like that.  Whatever, the upshot was that she loved me unconditionally and had the grace to show it in countless ways.

In her eyes, I could do no wrong.  At first, I thought that was because I had her fooled.  If she only knew me deep down inside, I thought, she’d feel differently.  But, over the years, I realized that she knew me, through and through – she had all along – and the remarkable thing was she loved me anyway.

It took a long time for me to believe that someone could love me unconditionally.  To this day, I still wonder how it’s possible, except that now I accept it for what it is – an expression of God’s love and God’s willingness to claim us as his own, no matter what.  In return, I try to be to others that person Berniece was – and is – to me.

Here’s what I’ve found: The more secure you feel in being loved, the freer you are to be yourself and to talk openly about your innermost fears and insecurities and regrets; and the more you open yourself to who you really are deep down inside, the more you feel the cleansing power of God’s Spirit, and the freer you become to live in the fullness of God’s peace and love.

This is where you come in: Because you’ve heard the Good News that Christ died for you; because you’ve received the gift of God’s grace and know that your sins are forgiven; you have the ability to cleanse others and set them free.  But there’s a caveat: Only if you choose.

It takes a lot of courage to reach out and touch a leper, to befriend one who might otherwise seem untouchable.  It involves patience and perseverance and the willingness to give without expecting much in return.  Plus, it involves vulnerability and risk for, so often, the ones who hurt us the most are those we love.

Yet, at the end of the day, can you think of a greater accomplishment or a more lasting reward than to be the catalyst by which God’s love became a reality for another – a reality that cleansed them and set them free?

One of the great old Negro spirituals reminds us that …

There is a balm in Gilead
To make the wounded whole;
There is a balm in Gilead
To heal the sin sick soul.

And then it goes on to make it so simple and within the reach of us all:

If you can’t preach like Peter,
If you can’t pray like Paul,
Just tell the love of Jesus,
And say He died for all.

The leper told Jesus, “If you want to, you can make me clean.”  Well, hear this: If you choose, you can bring healing and wholeness to others by sharing the love of God in Jesus Christ.

Jesus told the leper, “I want to. Be made clean.”  May we invite Jesus to make us clean today.

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.  Amen.

Copyright 2009, Philip McLarty.  Used by permission.

Scripture quotations are from the World English Bible (WEB), a public domain (no copyright) modern English translation of the Holy Bible.