Leviticus 13:1-2.44-46 First Corinthians 10:31-11:1 Mark 1:40-45
“If you want to, you can cure me” or “If you will, you can make me clean”? Today's Gospel passage is one of these instances where the translation provided by the lectionary fails us a little. Whenever leprosy comes up in Mass readings, most preachers, and often the Liturgy itself, will remind the congregation that much more than a disease is at stake. In fact, the condition referred to as leprosy could be anything from the actual Hansen's disease to something quite benign, yet clearly visible, perhaps spreading and refusing to go away. We don't know what exactly affected our lepper. The point is rather that, as a result, he became both an outcast from his community and someone ritually impure, cut off from religious worship. He was excommunicated, if you like, or permanently quarantined.
This sounds bad enough to us today, but would have been much worse two thousand years ago. There is no exact modern equivalent. To imagine what it was like, quite apart from the possible physical suffering, we would have to combine aspects of several conditions, a little bit of homelessness maybe, of being an illegal immigrant, some sort of isolating mental problem like depression perhaps, and several other things. In any case, imagine that there was a single label for it all, and that the label was officially attached, and therefore could only be officially removed, by the Temple priesthood in Jerusalem. It was health care, state security and established religion strictly combined, and it was bad news from all sides – your body is failing, you lose your job, your family and your life as you know it, plus there is something not quite right between you and God Almighty. And so this man labelled as a lepper approaches Jesus, breaking all the rules in doing so, and says: “If you will, you can make me clean”.
First of all, he is clearly looking for something more than a cure. He sees in Jesus the combined authority to take it all away at once, as it were, authority to give him his home back, his job, his family, his citizenship and social security, his good looks and his self-esteem, but more importantly the authority to put him at rights with God again – and that seemingly bypassing the priesthood in Jerusalem. And the man gets it all at once, with a single touch from Jesus, which incidentally also seems to break the rules. But neither the priesthood in Jerusalem nor the Law is ignored here. The King, the Anointed One has arrived, the Kingdom of God is close at hand, the priesthood and the Law are simply His, they work on his behalf.
Secondly, the lepper's words are a straightforward statement: “if you want to, you can make me clean”! This never fails to amaze me. It's almost on a par with Peter's “You are the Christ”. True, his whole body is pleading, yet still there is something very powerful about this simple statement of fact. I've always imagined the man himself astounded at what he suddenly saw in Jesus, surprised by his own courage and by his own confession of faith. Wide-eyed, breathless, hardly believing his own words and actions, delivering this one line in a flat, matter-of-fact voice. And it so happens that this is the first time in the Gospel of Mark when we see Jesus displaying human emotions. Jesus was deeply moved with compassion, we read. If there is any truth in what I've just said about the lepper, then Jesus was moved not only by the man's leprosy and all that went with it, but also by the man's faith, or rather by this mixture of faith and sheer disbelief. Long periods of suffering, waiting and longing can do this to us. Faith in God and in His limitless powers remains intact, but will He stoop down to me, is He truly willing, does He even notice? If that was the case with our lepper, then he becomes a quintessential “lost sheep” of the House of Israel, waiting to be saved. He has faith, he recognizes God's power when he sees it, but does not presume God's personal attention. Someone like this would certainly move Jesus to tears: “a bruised reed he will not break, and a faintly burning wick he will not quench” (Isaiah 42).
Finally, it is fitting that this episode, or maybe specifically the lepper's confession of faith, should mark another stage in Jesus's career. Forgive me the metaphor, but Jesus's rise to fame and influence as a preacher, healer and an exorcist was truly meteoric. We are still in the first chapter of Mark's Gospel, and Jesus has already completed a very successful tour of Galilee. But seriously, we read that from then on he “could no longer openly enter a town, but was out in desolate places, and people were coming to him from every quarter”. So Jesus used to be an itinerant preacher for a brief while, but now his travels look more like a medieval Royal Progress. The court has to move from place to place in order not to overwhelm the towns, not to strip the countryside of provisions. The happy ones who attend the King, the courtiers, are described in the Beatitudes: the poor, those who mourn, the humble, those who hunger for righteousness, the merciful, the pure of heart. And the mention of desolate places, which the King is forced to visit because of the size and grandeur of his court, strikes a chord with us monks, because that's one way of looking at a monastery, one way of understanding what a monastery is meant to be.
DSP