Friday, February 17, 2012

Mark 1:40-45 Risky Love and Anger

The tension continues to build as we continue to work our way through the first chapter of Mark’s gospel.  Yes – we are still on the first chapter!  But, hey, this is the Gospel of Mark, and one of the narrative’s most obvious characteristics is its immediacy, that sense of the rising crescendo of events:  And then...and then… and then. 
            
The tension builds.  Plans are adjusted.  Changes are made.  Exorcisms – like the demon-possessed man in the temple – and dramatic healings – like Simon’s mother-in-law with her fever – those sorts of events just do not fit into the mold of a gentle rabbi and a nice, quiet preaching ministry.   What is Jesus to do?
            
As we saw last week, the crowds in Capernaum insisted upon following Jesus expectantly – craving more miraculous healings and more dramatic exorcisms – more and more and more - until he said, “Enough, enough, enough, moving right along, moving right along, moving right along.           

As United Church of Christ pastor Kate Huey writes, “Perhaps (Jesus) doesn't want to be seen as a magician, or even to be known as a worker of miracles if that keeps people from hearing the message he proclaims, from coming to understand who he is.”
            
And so Jesus and the Twelve left Capernaum, the town that had almost begun to seem like home (what with those meals that Simon’s mother-in-law insisted upon preparing for them – what a good cook she was) – and they moved out into the countryside – down the dusty dirt road toward whatever it is that would come next.
            
I picture Jesus in my mind - heaving a great sigh of relief when the last hut on the outskirts of Capernaum disappeared over the rise of the road behind them.  Surely now the crowds would be gone.  Surely now the cries of the crippled, the blind, the oddballs, the doomed would be replaced by an almost blessed silence.  Surely now, they would be alone – just the rabbi and his little group of devotees.
           
And so it was.  But not for along.  Nothing in the Gospel of Mark is for long.  You see, down the road a piece, a man was walking their way – a man quite obviously not doing well. 
            
Patrick Oden describes the wretched fellow this way:  He is extremely gaunt, and wearing what can only barely be called clothes.  These tatters are wrapped all around him, trying to cover seemingly every part of his body.  But the wind and their raggedness keep that an impossible task…White splotches cover what (the skin) underneath the rags.  Scabs and sores are everywhere.” 
            
It cannot be – but lo and behold it is - this man is a leper - in those ancient times, one known to be cursed by God, one whose sin is clearly shown for the world to see.”
            
It is perhaps instructive at this point for us to understand that the ailment that afflicted the unnamed man approaching Jesus was most likely not our modern day disease of leprosy.  You see, leprosy, as we know it, was practically non-existent in Palestine in Jesus’ day. 
            
Armed with that knowledge, this tale becomes a bit more nuanced when we realize that the man’s ailment might better be described as simply rough or scaly skin – less than perfect – perhaps pock-marked, acne-ed,  Runaway psoriasis maybe? 
Or untreated eczema?  Like your grandfather or uncle.  Like the friend of your teenaged son. 
            
Describe it as you will.  The man who brashly approached Jesus and his followers was, by social convention and religious dogma, a pariah, an outcast.  Here is how Presbyterian pastor Robert Elder describes the situation.
           
The social taboos for lepers in Israel were powerful and frightening in their comprehensiveness. No leper, under any circumstances, was to approach a non-leper. Any time a person who was clean came near them, lepers were to stand off at a distance and shout, if they still had voices to shout with, "Unclean! Unclean!"
            
… Lepers were excluded from the general population and from any contact with the people of God. Participation in the religious life of the community was forbidden, any approach to the temple in Jerusalem was entirely out of the question. Rabbis of the time are known to have expressed opinions on the status of lepers, calling them living corpses whose cure was as difficult as resurrection of the dead.”
            
And yet, this dead man walking continued to approach Jesus.  And as he did, those close followers of the rabbi did something they would continue to do right up until the end.  They backed away.  They melted into the scenery even as Jesus took a step closer to the disfigured man. 
            
It was then that the man asked Jesus a most serious question.  He asked Jesus not to heal him but rather to make him clean – and therein lies a huge difference.  You see, only a Jewish priest can make someone clean.  After all, there are 32 verses in the Torah book of Leviticus explaining the only acceptable process that can lead to being clean.  Check it out – Leviticus 14. 
            
Now Jesus must make a decision.  Does he fly in the face of not only social convention but also religious laws regarding purity?  Some translations of this story tell us that pity showed on Jesus’ face at this point.  However, many Biblical scholars believe that the more accurate translation from the Greek is anger. 
            
And so, even as a flash of anger glimmered in Jesus’ eyes, he does what he has been called to do.  He steps right over those 32 verses in Leviticus into reimagining a social order where the rough and scaly skinned people – your grandfather or uncle, the friend of your teenaged son - the outcasts, the pariahs are no longer excluded.  
            
In fact, Jesus embraces that new world even as he embraces the leper before him.  Yes - Jesus touches the man – making himself unclean in the eyes of the temple hotshots in order that the lost may be found, the marginalized welcomed, the unclean clean. 
           
Of course, Jesus knows that a sudden healing of this sort will seem very suspicious and so with the best interest of the leper in mind, he urges him to go to the priest for confirmation.  Remember that only a priest could declare someone to be clean.  Remember those 32 verses in Leviticus 14. 
            
Realize, however, that the priests were not a cold-hearted lot determined to make life miserable and difficult for the Jewish people.  The priests were the ones who were ultimately responsible for keeping the community together and safe, for making it work in the midst of the pagan Roman Empire. 
            
No wonder Jesus the Jew sternly directed the man to go to the temple priests in order to be officially reinstated in the community.  However, instead the leper dances off joyfully, his glee something he could not keep inside.  And, really, do we blame him?
            
That is the essence of this little story.  However,  I want to briefly talk about two ideas that leap out at me as I ponder it.  The first is this anger business.  Why would Jesus have been angry?  And was he angry at the leper, or did something else get his dander up?
            
I suppose one could say that his anger was directed at the leper.  After all, the guy should have kept his distance and obeyed the rules.  By approaching Jesus, all he was doing was stirring up a lot of trouble and putting Jesus into a very difficult position.  It was almost surreal – the tattered sunken-eyed man coming closer and closer.  What was Jesus supposed to do – turn tail and run?
            
However, I am not so sure that it was the leper that made Jesus angry.  I have a feeling that if we had been there and had watched closely, we would have seen a flash of compassion in Jesus’ eyes before we saw the anger. 
            
You see, I think that Jesus’ anger was not directed at the leper, but was rather focused on the powers that had been created (and that we still create) that ultimately hold back all of creation – the values, the systems, the things we feel forced to do to one another to cope with and survive in this crazy world. 
            
And so in both risky love and anger, Jesus reached out and touched the man.  And that is the second thing I want to ponder.  Jesus begins to break the rules when he continues to walk toward an obviously ritually unclean, impure person.  And he smashes those rules to bits when he reaches out and touches the man. 
            
Jesus’ followers must have been aghast, horrified, so tied to their culture were they, to the way things are, have always been, and will forever be.  Yikes!  Imagine!  In contrast to all the social and religious mores, Jesus gives that leper a bear hug. 
            
What an act of faith – to not only re-imagine the world, but to take one small step to make it so.  What an act of courage – to build and rebuild relationships in radical ways, relationships between the clean and the unclean, between those who are in and those who are out.  What an act of blessed defiance – to jump right over all 32 verses in Leviticus 14 in order to welcome an outcast home, home to the community, in order to do what is right instead of what is easy.  What an act of risky love and anger.

Rev. Nancy Foran
Raymond Village Community Church
Raymond, ME
www.rvccme.org
           

            And so for us, there is a nagging symbolism in these five little verses in the earliest Gospel we have, in this story of Jesus and a nameless leper which has made its way into Holy Scripture, the Book on which we say we base our lives.  
            Jesus openly commits an act of risky love and anger.  He does not turn his back on a hurting world, but rather faithfully, courageously, and defiantly steps right into it and embraces it – in all its brokenness, in all its dirtiness, in all its pain.  May we as his followers be faithful enough, courageous enough, and defiant enough to do likewise.

            

Mark 1:29-39 Moving Right Along



            Once there was a man who went to his doctor because he really needed help with his snoring problem.  The doctor questioned him closely about it.
            “As soon as I go to sleep,” the man explained, “I begin to snore. It happens all the time.”  He was really quite desperate.  “What can I do, doctor, to cure myself?”
            The doctor then asked him, “Does it bother your wife?”
            “Oh,” the man answered, “it not only bothers her, but it disturbs the whole congregation.”
            
I guess this little story points out that one person’s behavior can indeed have a great impact on those around him or her.   And so it is in our Gospel story this morning – on two levels.  First, Jesus’ actions have an immediate and profound impact on the other characters in the tale – from Simon’s mother-in-law to the persistent crowds of people who followed him and his disciples.  And second, Jesus’ actions ought also to also have a profound impact on us as his latter day followers.

These verses from the Gospel of Mark are really two stories linked together in our lectionary, that is, in the verses assigned to us to read each Sunday.  There is first the healing story, which then leads into an account of Jesus trying to capture a few moments alone to pray – in a sense to re-calibrate or re-center himself – after all the activity of starting up his ministry.
            
“And then…and then….and then.”  You see, there is a certain immediacy about this particular Gospel, a rising crescendo of events.  We have not even completed the first chapter of this narrative, and already Jesus has been baptized, spent forty days in the wilderness dueling with his own temptations, called his disciples, exorcised an evil spirit in the midst of a presumably whiz bang sermon in the synagogue, healed Simon’s mother-in-law as well as all those who were sick and possessed of demons who were brought to him in the aftermath.  No wonder he yearned for a little time alone.
            
It was right after the incident in the synagogue with the possessed man ranting and railing that Jesus and his disciples hightailed it to Simon’s home – and that is where our story today picks up. 
Oh, they must have been surprised when the usual welcoming dinner table was not set and no fragrant odors of matzo ball soup and lamb ragout wafted out from the kitchen.
            
This is unusual!  What’s going on? Oh, no!  The woman of the house – Simon’s mother-in-law - was sick in bed with a fever – not a good thing in first century Capernaum – what with no aspirin and only a cool wet rag to bring down the body’s heat and sooth the anxious twisting and turning, the moaning and crying. 
            
Jesus, of course, went to her bedside.  Perhaps his mere presence calmed her a bit.  That we do not know, but what the Gospel writer does tell us is that Jesus reached out and took her hand.  “Precious Lord, take my hand, lead me on, help me stand.” 
            
And stand she did, her fever gone.  She was healed.  And just so we know that it really happened that way, that the Gospel writer was not making the story up to bolster Jesus’ already burgeoning reputation, Mark provides us with a wonderful detail, a joy-filled aside. 
            
The old mother-in-law not only gets up, but then she goes about her first century womanly business – serving the men a full course meal – from soup to nuts. 
For some of us, that may be almost as much of a miracle as the healing itself.  But then again, maybe, as United Church of Christ pastor Kate Huey notes, Jesus and this unnamed woman give us a glimpse of what Jesus is really all about: wholeness, healing, service, humility.
            
However, moving right along….moving right along.  Word spreads fast in this first century town.  Texting and Facebook aside, when the sun had set and the Sabbath was officially concluded, people lined up outside Simon’s home – pushing, pulling, carrying, and offering an arm to the lame and the sick, the depressed, the oddballs, and the crazies. 
            
“Oh, Jesus, it is my head, my back, my knees, my feet.”  “Oh, Jesus, help me.  When it is morning, I want the night to come, and when the night comes, I only want it to be morning once again.  Jesus, help me.”
            
And Jesus began and then continued to heal the assembled motley crew sporting all sorts of ailments and diseases far into the night.  And when the last cripple had gone home and Jesus had no sooner shut his tired eyes, the first rosy inkling of dawn began to color the Eastern sky. 
            
Our rabbi raised his own tired body from the mat where he had caught just a couple of winks, quickly snuck out the back door and (moving right along….moving right along) walked briskly in the morning dew down the road that wound outside of town, there to find a lonely place, a quiet place, a place to breath deeply of the fresh air of a new day – and to pray.
            
It is a lovely scene – an introvert’s dream – but it does not last.  Simon and the others, heady with yesterday’s experience of massive and crowd-pleasing healings find Jesus and proclaim:  “Everyone is looking for you.  They love us here.  Up and at ‘em, so we can do it again.”  They are like modern day political handlers.
            
However, Jesus sighs, prays a quick Amen, and takes the reins himself.  As Roman Catholic scholar and professor, Dianne Bergant, writes, “Jesus realizes that the crowds are coming because they want miracles. He, on the other hand, wants crowds to come to hear the gospel he will preach”
            
“Moving right along,” he says.  “Moving right along.  We have places to go and people to meet.  We have good news to proclaim.” And so they left Capernaum that morning and traveled to other towns and villages in Galilee, preaching in the synagogues, healing the sick, and driving out demons.
            
No doubt about it.  Jesus’ actions certainly had a profound effect on those around him.  After all, he healed Simon’s mother-in-law from what could have been a life-threatening illness.  And word of that unusual occurrence was apparently enough to bring others from their sickbeds and mental prisons to find relief. 
            
Lives were changed that day.  Even the disciples were brought up short when they realized that their mission was not about fame and glory and people saluting them as miracle workers there in Capernaum, but rather it was about long miles to be walked, meals on the road, other places to go and people to see.  Moving right along….moving right along.
            
Moving right along down through the ages to us latter day disciples sitting here this morning pondering these stories.  Do these two little linked tales of healings and prayers say anything to us, all these centuries later?  Do they offer us wisdom or direction?
           
I think these two stories offer us an important lesson.  You see, when you come right down to it, they are a paradigm for sustaining ministry.  They illustrate for us that if we are to be effective disciples or followers of Jesus, then we need a balance between doing ministry and centering ourselves in order to be able to continue doing that ministry. 
            
Using these two little stories as a backdrop, I would say that we need a balance between healing or service and the lonely places of prayer.  We need a balance between a certain inwardness and our outward action.  We need a balance between doing outreach and serving others and coming to worship, which is where we re-center ourselves, re-calibrate ourselves, reconnect with the God who sends us forth in that God’s name.
            
You see, one without the other leaves us compromised.  One without the other leaves us little better than the broken and the lame that came to Jesus for healing in the first place. 
            
On the one hand, all outreach and service with no worship, no time to re-center ourselves and rebuild our energy eventually leaves us burnt out and probably quite resentful about it all. 
On the other hand, all worship and inward centering with no outreach into the broken world around us leaves us little better than those who bask in the false presumption that all you need to get by is a personal relationship with Jesus and forget about the world around you.
            
A sustaining Christian ministry  - and I am not talking just about the ordained clergy here - calls for a balance between outward action and rejuvenating prayer.  That is why serving at Monday meals and putting our change in a Heifer Project ark bank is only part of the story.  Being here at worship is the other equally important part. 
            
Now I know that I am preaching to the choir, so to speak.  And so, I would really appreciate your reminding folks who are not here that this is what worship is about.  It is not about whether or not the congregation or the choir should sing the responses.  It is not about whether we praise God with the organ or with an African drum.  It is not about the size – or even the thickness - of the bulletin.      
           
Worship is so much more than its structure.   Worship is where we are re-calibrated.  It is where we are re-centered.  It is where we are reconnected – both to God and to one another.  Worship is where we are rejuvenated so that our Christian ministry – our taking the hands of those in need, our being the hands of our Lord in the world - can be sustained.  Why?  So that we, like the disciples, can find ourselves moving right along, moving right along.

Rev. Nancy Foran
Raymond VIllage Community Church
Raymond, Maine
www.rvccme.org