A 40-DAY JOURNEY WITH THE KING: Lenten reflections from Mark’s Gospel (5)


“A leper came to him begging him, and kneeling he said to him,

“If you choose, you can make me clean.”  Moved with pity, Jesus stretched out his hand and touched him, and said to him,

“I do choose. Be made clean!” Immediately the leprosy left him,

and he was made clean.  (Mk. 1.40-42)

     Along with exorcisms, Jesus performs many healings of various physical ailments in the early chapters of Mark’s Gospel.  Jesus’ first healing is that of Simon’s mother-in-law (1.29-31).  With the restoration of the leper, we begin to understand the meaning of Jesus’ healings (and exorcisms).  The thrice-repeated word “clean” in the above passage reveals what is truly going on when the King restores the members of the people of God to wholeness.  Leprosy rendered its victim “unclean”, i.e., it proscribed that person from participation in the life of the community, of both civil society and the worship/liturgical life of the people (cf. Lev. 13).  In the Hebrew Scriptures, as well as throughout the history of the people of God, holiness had been a question of separation, distinction, and exclusion.  Clean vs. unclean, in vs. out, us vs. them.  Holiness had been understood as the drawing of clear lines which demarcated the frontiers between, on the one hand, that which was worthy to exist in the presence of God, and that which was abhorrent to Yahweh and must be banished far from his face, on the other.  Holiness was bound up with the fear of being shunned, ostracized, of being condemned to a living hell of solitude and shame.  Holiness was something to be achieved, something to be guarded, something to be proud of – holiness, as understood by Jesus’ contemporaries, was social currency.  Simply put, holiness = status.

     The “unclean” – the lepers (both literal and metaphorical), the sinners, the collaborators with Rome (=tax collectors), the broken, the indebted, the destitute, the beggars, the crippled, the blind, the deaf, those possessed by “unclean” spirits – all these had no status, no place, were ascribed no value and were not only unclean but also unseen.  The multitudes of hurting people whom “the holy” would rather not acknowledge flocked to Jesus, knowing that he had the power to make them “clean”.  These “unwashed masses” were the target of Jesus’ operation of kingdom-building.  The rule of King Jesus is a rule which restores.  Jesus’ approach to wholeness/ holiness is radically different from that of, for example, the Pharisees.  Jesus “crosses the lines” between clean and unclean with seeming recklessness, not because holiness is unimportant, but because holiness is only possible once one has been embraced by unconditional love.  For Jesus, holiness is a gift to be given, not a possession to be hoarded.  Jesus betrays no fear of sin, uncleanliness or contagion.  Jesus “infects” the unclean with his wholeness/holiness.  As far as Jesus is concerned, holiness = healing.

 

“The hands of the king are the hands of a healer” –J.R.R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

GEMS FROM JEREMIAH (38) A Tale of Two Sisters

Image
“I will not punish your daughters when they play the whore,     nor your daughters-in-law when they commit adultery; for the men themselves go aside with whores,     and sacrifice with temple prostitutes; thus a people without understanding comes to ruin. Though you play the whore, O Israel,     do not let Judah become guilty.” (Hosea 4.14-15)   “The Lord said to me in the days of King Josiah: Have you seen what she did, that faithless one, Israel, how she went up on every high hill and under every green tree, and played the whore there? And I thought, “After she has done all this she will return to me”; but she did not return, and her false sister Judah saw it. She saw that for all the adulteries of that faithless one, Israel, I had sent her away with a decree of divorce; yet her false sister Judah did not fear, but she too went and played the whore. Because she took her whoredom so lightly, she polluted the land, committing adultery with stone and tree. Yet for all this he
Read more

Mark's Gospel as sequel: Understanding the Backstory, part IV: David (2)

Image
       To fully understand Mark’s “sequel” to the Scriptures of Israel, we need to look at 7 previous “episodes”, 7 OT characters who shed light on what Mark is saying about John the Baptist and Jesus in chapter 1.   The third character from the “original story” is David .   In 2 Samuel 7.8-16, we have the story of the founding of the Davidic covenant – God’s promise that there would always be a descendant of David on the throne of Jerusalem, forever .   It repeats the key features of God’s covenant with Abraham, which “gave birth to” the people of God (cf. Gn. 12.1-3).   God promises David three things: a great name, that Israel will be “planted” securely (cf. Jer. 1.10) in the Promised Land, and an everlasting line of descendants upon his throne (2 Sam. 7.8-13).   The wider context – and play on words – is that David had recently expressed his desire to the prophet Nathan to construct a “house” (i.e., Temple) for Yahweh (2 Sm. 7.1-3).   God replies that, in fact, he will construct a
Read more