Sermon

Mark 1:40-45

Reaching Outside the Circle

By Rev. Amy Butler

Today is the sixth Sunday of Epiphany, the season in which we are following Jesus through the gospel texts hoping for a little light to shine into the darkness of our limited human perspectives. See, we thought we knew this Jesus . . . some of us have been following him for YEARS—decades, even. Surely there’s not too much about him we don’t already know!

But Epiphany is the church season that should rock our comfortable assumptions and shake the very foundations of what we thought we always knew about Jesus.

Remember last week we saw the human side of Jesus, the side of him that was so weighed down by the expectations of the hurting people all around him; the side of him that was so very frustrated with the way people perceived him and the way they seemed to misunderstand his message.

And if that vision of Jesus sneaking off in the middle of the night while a line of sick people waited to be healed didn’t rock your preconceived ideas about him enough, well today Jesus gets political. Yes, if we look hard enough at our gospel text today we can begin to see the truly radical nature of his message. This Jesus was no soft-hearted mediator whose goal was to bring people together, to make people feel good about themselves, to live in peace and harmony. No, we can see starting right here in this story of the healing of the leper in Mark’s gospel that Jesus came out swinging . . . his goal and methodology involved cutting a wide swath across “life as we know it” and challenging every level of accepted understanding.

And don’t think that he was preaching just a religious message. Oh no, today’s gospel illustrates very clearly that Jesus was offensively political; shockingly challenging the social structure in which he lived . . . and when it came to religion, well, the institution didn’t stand a chance in the harsh and revealing light of his message.

It’s hard for us to understand the full impact of today’s gospel lesson without a little bit of background, so here we go.

First of all, the simple explanation of Jesus societal designations in Jesus’ day was that there were people who were holy and people who were not holy. Within that basic delineation there was an unspoken caste system in which everyone fit somewhere. There were those who were basically always holy—priests, Levites, church leaders and teachers or rabbis. Then there were those who were basically holy but had occasional lapses into unholiness—lapses that could be fixed pretty easily through sacrifices and ritual cleansings. Then there were those who were pretty much always unclean because of the nature of their work or the circumstances of who they were. Those would be people like women, tax collectors and shepherds. And then there were those who, for whatever reason, were totally unclean all the time and likely permanently. They were not allowed participation in the community at all. This group includes people with chronic illness, people who were married or related to outsiders, people with physical or mental disabilities.

There were perfectly good reasons for this to have been put into place at the beginning of the nation of Israel, of course. Purity laws were established to protect the community from disease. But by the time Jesus showed up, these laws of purity had exploded into a rigid system of differentiation that was being used by some to gain power and exercise control over others.

See, back in Jesus’ day purity was directly related to physical wholeness. And conversely, physical lack of wholeness was equated with impurity or unholiness. There was no differentiation. Therefore, people who were handicapped, chronically ill, eunuchs, etc., were considered impure. And furthermore, there was no concept of illness randomly afflicting people. If you got sick it was because God was unhappy with you; there was something about you that was unholy, that offended God in some way.

And remember, in Jesus’ day unholy was unholy; you got that way either by circumstances of birth, contraction of illness or certain behavior choices. And, for whatever reason, when you became unholy, well, then, you became unclean. While rich people were not guaranteed holiness, of course, it was likely that you’d have a higher chance of being UNholy if you were from a lower class, forced to work in an unclean or less highly-regarded profession or if you had inadequate food, shelter or medical care, the end result being illness.

In ancient Jewish society, being unclean meant not just that you could not participate in religious rituals like worship in the synagogue, it also meant that you were excluded from any and all social interactions because, you see, nobody wanted to “catch” your uncleanliness, therefore becoming unholy, therefore being isolated from the community. It was a vicious cycle and one that affected every part of a person’s life.

In the 1860s, the same decade Calvary Baptist Church was founded, a young Belgian Catholic priest was assigned to serve as a missionary in the remote Hawaiian Islands. Father Damian de Veuster served as a parish priest for eight years in a populated area until he heard about a colony for people with leprosy located on another island, Molokai.

After visiting the colony, named Kalaupapa, he was horrified at the state of this remote settlement, where people who contracted this feared disease were sent, away from the rest of society, to die. The conditions in which they lived were appalling; they had become outcasts from society and had no options or hope for happy lives. Father Damian felt called to serve the lepers of Molokai so he moved to the settlement and lived out the remainder of his life working to create community in that place, to offer dignity and comfort to those who were suffering and to help them die in comfort. Father Damian lived out his life in the settlement, eventually contracting the disease and dying. His legacy is one of bravery and courage, of reading about the standard-breaking actions of this man Jesus and deciding to do exactly what he did.

A cure for leprosy, which is now called Hansen’s Disease, was discovered in 1946, but as the disease is often spread in remote areas with poor hygiene and inadequate drinking water, there are still cases in which people contract the disease and suffer from its consequences. While diagnosis and treatment are increasingly easy for modern medicine, last year alone over 400,000 new cases of leprosy were discovered in the world. Leprosy is a contagious bacterial disease that affects the nerve endings of the skin. It is particularly terrifying because, run rampant, sufferers of leprosy eventually end up physically disfigured as their extremities fall victim to the disease. This physical disfigurement results in a societal rejection, even as recently as Father Damian’s day. You can imagine how much worse it was when Jesus walked the earth.

The last residents of Kalaupapa moved there in the 1940s. When I was growing up in Hawaii many of them decided to try to leave, to reassimilate into regular society since they were no longer contagious. I recall the stigma and curiosity surrounding these folks, even though I understood the nature of their situation. If we live in a society in which this kind of illness was understood from a scientific point of view and there remains a stigma, can you imagine what it was like back in Jesus’ day?

And the disease had such a vast, far-reaching affect in someone’s life. If you have time this afternoon take a trip through Leviticus chapters 13 and 14 and you’ll be able to see clearly the very detailed and intricate process by which society dealt with lepers. For example, if a person—even a child—was found to have leprosy, he was put out of the community immediately. The law said he was required to wear his hair disheveled and clothes of rags. He could not come within 50 paces of any clean person and when he came near enough to be heard the law says he had to cover the top of his mouth with his hand and cry out loudly, “Unclean, Unclean!”

That cannot have been good for the social life.

A person in Jesus’ day who had the disease of leprosy was a social outcast with no means of survival, alienated from family and forced outside the community, and worse than all of those things put together, a person with leprosy was totally and completely unholy, separated from God, damned.

So all of this background is enough to give us the tools to see our gospel lesson this morning in a much clearer light than we might otherwise. Would you take a look at this shocking turn of events? Jesus was heading out on his merry way when a leper came up to him and asked him if he would heal him. Begged him, in fact. And you and I know, from the historical and cultural background we now have, that what he was begging for was more than physical health; it was restoration to the community; it was the love and acceptance of God.

And, having read the Levitical code on how lepers should be treated we already know that this man shockingly violated the laws of his community. Remember? He was supposed to stay 50 paces away, cover his upper lip and yell, “Unclean!” whenever someone came close enough. We know that rule was broken because in just the next verse Mark reports that Jesus reached out a hand to touch the man—he dared to come within arm’s length of Jesus, breaking the law.

Now Jesus grew up a good Jewish boy. He was considered a learned teacher and rabbi. There was no possibility that he did not know this leprous man was violating the law; and there was no way he did not know that having any interaction with this man at all—even talking with him—would render Jesus and his disciples and his family and his followers . . . unclean. Unholy.

There’s a phrase in the gospel text that is the pivotal point in this text, and here it is, verse 41. Our Bible says, “Moved with compassion, (Jesus) stretched out his hand, and touched him” (v. 41). There are two things to take away from this phrase and they are the light that shines on the message of Jesus this Epiphany Sunday.

First, Jesus was moved with compassion (or pity). This word pity in the Greek is the subject of some controversy within biblical translation circles. You see, in some of the earliest texts this word is not pity but instead, anger. Anger. Scholars think that this earlier version of the text is probably more authentic. So, if Jesus was angry, who was he angry at? The man? No! Right after this Jesus says definitively and with conviction, “I want to. Be made clean” (v. 41b).  Jesus intentionally touches and heals the man. Jesus was not angry at the leper. I think this is where the political radical Jesus comes out. Jesus was angry, you see, at the societal structures that had set up an equation: cleanliness equals holiness and holiness equals acceptance and approval from God.

See, the way things stood in the society in which he lived, there was a certain standard of holiness and if you were going to err, to make a mistake in your actions, it was always better to err on the side of holiness. Not sure if eating a certain thing is okay? Skip it. Questions about doing an activity on the Sabbath? Don’t do it, just to be safe. Not sure if talking to someone would be questioned? Ignore him.

Jesus knew the law of holiness, but his message flew in the face of that kind of holiness. See, in Jesus’ message we begin to see that if we have to err, we err not on the side of holiness . . . but on the side of compassion. It was a radical new standard. Remember in his famous Sermon on the Mount, a compilation of teachings found in Luke chapter 6, Jesus details an alternative way to please God. He says, “Be compassionate—or, be merciful, as I am compassionate.”

Sure God is holy, but the law of compassion and mercy is higher than the law of restriction and alienation. The structures of society had used the law of God to create a system that excluded people when God’s intent all along was radical INclusion.

It was then that the second part of this radical phrase hits home. Jesus stretched out his hand and touched the man. In so doing he did not just express his anger at injustice, he took it one step further, risked the disapproval of his community and the possibility that they might very well consider him, not just a weirdo but definitively unclean . . . unholy. Jesus identified a circle that surrounded him, a circle of holiness and acceptance, of societal approval and religious standing . . . and he reached right outside that circle to pull someone from the outside in.

What happened when Jesus made that bold move? Well, a lot more happened than just a few people sucking in their breaths in disbelief. Jesus’ action instead started a ball rolling that has yet to stop, a ball that pushes us from our positions of comfort and favor with God and into a circle much, much bigger than the one we’d like to draw around ourselves.

Jesus’ anger and Jesus’ reaching out to touch someone who was left out in the cold changed everything about who we know God to be.

It’s easy, so easy for us to soft peddle this passage, to sort of gloss it over and go on our merry ways trying our best to be holy. Back then, after all, people didn’t understand about illness. They didn’t have antibiotics or penicillin. They didn’t know that if you caught a disease it had nothing to do with your personal level of holiness. We know all of that.

Or do we?

Who are the people outside OUR circles? Think, please. There are many in our society whom we dismiss and wish to exclude. Jesus says no. The person who you might consider to be the most unholy, unclean outsider? This is the person Jesus reaches out and welcomes into the circle. Who would Jesus reach out to, from your life, to draw in?

This is a very important question to consider, friends, because there is often a great degree of irony in our lives. See, we might not have leprosy, but there’s no way we’re holy all the time. There are parts of who we are the put us smack OUTSIDE the circle—unholy, unclean, unloved by God.

This is where Jesus reaches out of the circles we draw and reminds us this Epiphany that the law of compassion is the highest law of all, that grace and love and inclusion—these are the real evidence of a living and vital relationship with God.

This part of his message? This is the part that made everyone so very mad. By inviting outsiders in Jesus was turning societal structures on their heads, changing everything, introducing a way that was different. And change, trying something new, living with a different way, well . . . these things are hard . . . offensive even. This holy anger and radical compassion of his led Jesus, after all, straight to the cross.

The light if Epiphany is showing us that the message of Jesus is a hard message. Unpopular, against the status quo. As the light of Epiphany clarifies our visions, you and I are going to have a choice: will we draw the circles tighter . . . or will we reach outside the circles to bring others in?

Amen.

Scripture quotations from the World English Bible.

Copyright 2006 Amy Butler. Used by permission.