Sermon at St Thomas by Lynn E. Cunningham

February 12, 2006

Epiphany 6: 2 Kings 5:1‑15; I Cor 9:24‑27; Mk  1:40‑45

1.                A few Sundays ago, I expressed hope about getting to know Jesus better in Mark=s Gospel this year.  I have been exploring in my sermons some of the parallels between human and divine love,

a.                how the disciples have experienced a sudden moment in time when Jesus comes into their lives, a kind of epiphany happens to them, the disciple falls in love with the Holy One, with Jesus, and then wants to follow him.  Discipleship follows epiphany, as I put it. 

b.                In today=s Gospel story, it seems to me as if Mark the Gospel writer is trying to reach right off the page and out to readers to pull them into an encounter with Jesus that will lead to the reader=s own epiphany and discipleship.  How does Mark do this?

2.                Jesus says to the leper who comes forward to ask to be made clean: AI do choose. Be made clean@. 

a.                An odd way of speaking, is it not, I do choose. Be made clean.  What has Mark captured about Jesus in these odd phrases?

3.                The exchange between Jesus and the leper, here in Chapter 1 of Mark=s Gospel might come across in several ways.

4.                First, one reading is that Jesus experiences a very human, down to earth response to a cry for help from a sick person.  One person, Jesus, acts to help another person, the leper. 

5.                Second, some have suggested that Jesus learns something new about who he is as a human being.  His response to a cry for help is made with some sense of Jesus= own surprise, surprise that he does indeed choose to heal that person. 

6.                Third, you may have watched science fiction shows on TV, where futuristic doctors come up with instant healing whenever a patient has just about any illness.  Maybe Jesus behaves somewhat like these healing agents of the future.  Someone could find something fictional and even unreal about the ease with which the healing is provided.

7.                Fourth, along the same lines, the story might encourage someone to engage in magical thinking, as if this person Jesus had magical healing powers that are unrecognized by modern science.

8.                Perhaps these approaches work for different people at different times.  But each is unsatisfying for me.  Why bother to provide a simplisitic story here in the opening chapter of Mark=s Gospel?

9.                I suggest Mark is up to more than just telling a simple miracle story.  I suggest looking at Jesus= action with the leper against the long history of Yahweh as the God of Israel, as Mark=s own readers would have done.  This history shows Yahweh responding over and over again in the Hebrew scriptures to cries of distress from Yahweh=s Chosen People.  These ancient holy writings would have been as familiar to Mark and his audience as the Dubois Frontier is to us.

10.             With the resonance of this sacred history echoing in mind, Mark=s audience can see that Jesus is responding to the cry for help from the leper in the way Yahweh has responded over and over again to the people of Israel when they cried out in distress. 

11.             Think of: 

a.                The cry of distress from the Israelites while they were in slavery in Egypt.

b.                The cry of distress of the Israelites suffering in captivity under a foreign empire during the Exile period in Babylon.

c.                The cry of distress of the peoples of Palestine under the rule of the Roman Empire in Jesus= own time.

12.             I see behind the plain, down to earth, human meaning of Jesus= statement to the leper, AI do choose: Be made clean@, an echo, a numinous echo, of the whole of the history of Yahweh=s and Yahweh=s people.  Has not Yahweh said over and over again to the people, I do choose to heal you.  For example, think of that intimate tenderness during the encounter between Yahweh and Moses at the burning bush. Yahweh tells Moses that he has heard the cry of the people in their anguish under slavery in Egypt

13.             The story of the healing of Naaman could also be read as a kind of miracle healing story from that history.  It can be read, as Naaman himself seems to have viewed it, as a kind of proof of who is the real God of the Universe.  But underlying the story is the reality, that Yahweh is a God who cares and heals those who seek healing. 

14.             In fact, coming to the aid and succor of the people who are suffering is what this God, who is our God, is fundamentally all about.  Mark is clear that Jesus is intimately connected with this God.  We have just heard a few verses earlier that the Father says at Jesus= baptism that AYour are my beloved@.  A few chapters later, in chapter 9 verse 1, Jesus says to his disciples, AThe truth is, some of you standing here will not taste death before you see God=s reign established in power.@

15.              That little turn of phrase captured by Mark here, AI do choose@, is highly significant. 

a.                Jesus could have said nothing and simply performed the healing.

b.                Jesus could have asked the leper to tell him more about what needed healing. 

c.                Jesus could have said simply, ABe clean@.

d.                But he did not.

16.             When Mark captures Jesus= statement to the leper, AI do choose to heal you@, Mark to me manages to capture and convey the full weight of the significance of God=s action in the world in Christ Jesus.  The addition of the AI do choose@... to make you clean=, I think opens up a whole new depth of power in the story. This story is written to bring readers like you and me, who are willing, closer to Jesus and to God.

17.             What power is opened up here that would not found in a plain healing story?

18.             Most people will have experienced severe illness and distress, like leprosy, probably in their own lives, and certainly in the lives of persons close to them.  By centering the passage on illness, on leprosy, a common illness of the time, Mark invites you to identify with the leper in the story, and then to ask, how can I too be healed, like the leper was healed?  So, remember what you know already you have experienced in your own illness and injury, your own distress.

19.             For example, whenever I have injured one of my knees, I can not walk or run without pain.  But not just my knee hurts somehow.  Instead, my whole world suddenly shifts and centers on the pain and inconvenience of having my knee painful and not working.

20.             All of us, I suspect have had experiences like this.  Suddenly an injury or illness comes to define who we are.  It is said that the patient usually identifies with his or her illness or symptom. 

21.             A person is commonly identified by their form of distress.  Terms like, AAlcoholic, drug addict, cancer patient, cancer survivor@: and endless list.  Illness or injury seems to take over the whole of a person=s life.

22.             In fact, in this story, the person whom Jesus encounters is not described as AJoshua the tent maker@, or AIbrahim the shop keeper@, but Aa leper@, a name that all but expresses the idea that no more need be said about this person: this person is a leper, defined by disease.

23.             If one=s personhood has become defined by one=s health status, this story offers a path in the midst of illness, to change that way of being, that negative way of understanding one-self.

24.             But if the story teaches transformation by the presence of the power of God in one=s life, then something much more interesting, much more transformative is presented   A story that tells us how we too can be healed and transformed by God=s action is much more satisfying.......and maybe, more frightening?

25.             Like Jesus asking us to get out of the boat?

26.             Like the disciples dropping everything at the first hello to get up and follow Jesus?

27.             I suspect you can see yourself in that leper.  I know I can.  I have been labeled and defined from time to time by my own suffering.  Haven=t you?

28.             By capturing God in Christ the story draws on our own knowledge that there is a God in our lives, and says: that God who is in your life profoundly desires your healing, even in the midst of your suffering and sense of loss.  By capturing God in Christ, Mark=s version of the story can teach a reader who has some sense of the Holy in their own life that there is a Holy Person who can and does choose to heal them, to make them whole, break them out of confining negative definitions.  Mark captures for the reader that that Person is Jesus, who, as God, says, AI do choose. Be made clean.@

29.             Mark does not say in so many words in this passage, in what way Jesus is present in the lives of his audience, offering genuine healing. Instead, Mark invites you to learn that the God that you do know is really the God of profound healing.