If you were here last week, Pastor Jane let you in on a secret. It’s a secret that we’re going to continually run up against in the Gospel of Mark. Let me give you a few examples:
Mark 3:11-12: “Whenever the unclean spirits saw him, they fell down before him and shouted, ‘You are the Son of God!’ But he sternly ordered them not to make him known.”
After raising a young girl from the dead, Mark 5:43: “He strictly ordered them that no one should know this…”
After healing a blind a deaf man, Mark 7:36: He ordered them to tell no one…
After healing another blind man, Mark 8:26: “Then he sent him away to his home saying, ‘Do not even go into the village.’”
Again in Mark 8:29-30: “He asked them, ‘but who do you say that I am?’ Peter answered him, ‘You are the Messiah.’ And he sternly ordered them not to tell anyone about him.”
After the Transfiguration, Mark 9:9: “As they were coming down the mountain, he ordered them to tell no one about what they had seen, until after the Son of Man had risen from the dead.”
This secret that Pastor Jane let you in on, what people who have spent much more time dissecting Mark than most of us have call the “Messianic secret,” is hard to wrap our heads around. Jesus, if you are the Son of God, why weren’t you letting everyone shout your presence? Jesus, did you really expect that people would keep their mouths shut after you raised their daughters from the dead or gave them sight again or had a mountaintop conversation with Moses and Elijah?
Today’s leper certainly didn’t keep this secret to himself, even after he was “sternly warned” by Jesus. Make no mistake, though, Jesus probably should have known this wasn’t a man who was going to go away quietly. He was a leper, a person cast out of society because of some sort of skin disease. But, we shouldn’t blame the towns and cities for throwing him out. This was a move of self-preservation. If lepers were let into the community, there was a good chance that whatever condition they had would spread through the community. They may not have known germs and viruses, but they certainly understood communicability. This is “please don’t come into work or send your kid to school if they’re sick” taken the extreme.
This was apparently common enough to warrant a full chapter in the Old Testament Book of Leviticus. Here’s what Leviticus says about it: “The person who has the leprous disease shall wear torn clothes and let the hair of his head be disheveled; and he shall cover his upper lip and cry out, ‘Unclean, unclean.’ He shall remain unclean as long as he has the disease; he is unclean. He shall live alone; his dwelling shall be outside the camp” (13:45-46). But, there was also a way back into the community, by showing yourself to the priests, who functioned also as doctors-of-sorts at the time, and having them declare that the person had been healed.
Again, this wasn’t a leper that Jesus should have expected to go away quietly and keep the Jesus secret, well, secret. This leper was willing to walk up to a man who had just healed Simon Peter’s mother, look him full in the face, upper lip covered, and instead of crying out, “Unclean! Unclean!” he says the plaintive and faith-filled words: “Lord, if you choose, you can make me clean.”
And Jesus responds with some of the most beautiful words to ever leave his lips: “I do choose. Be made clean.”
But no sooner had these words left his mouth and the man was healed, he followed it up with a stern warning, a command as powerful as his first command to “be made clean.” “Tell no one about this, not even the priest when he asks you what happened. Make something up, but don’t utter a single word about how this came to happen in your life.”
And the man goes out and tells everyone who is willing to listen. And while the message of Jesus’ healing power spreads over the country, Jesus pays the heavy price. This man, who was once a leper, who was once forced to live outside of town, who was once only surrounded by other lepers, was now a welcome member of the people again. He could go into town and leave town freely. He could sit at the same table, worship in the same place, and talk with an uncovered face to everyone.
And Jesus, who came to proclaim the Good News that “the time is fulfilled, and the Kingdom of God has come near,” can no longer step into town but is forced into the barren countryside, another exile in the wilderness. While the former leper is reveling in his return, Jesus can only put his message on hold and, “while it was still very dark, go out to a lonely place, and pray.”
Why this cost? Why is Jesus left on the outskirts of town while the man enters in triumph? Why did Jesus tell this man to keep his mouth shut? First of all, there’s the obvious reason that if Jesus was the healer of this man, he would have reached out to touch him, making himself unclean, and possibly ill, at the same time. Jesus was now by law not allowed to enter the town until a period of waiting had taken place to make sure he wasn’t ill as well. He’ll learn this the next time when he heals lepers and only calls out to them instead of healing with a touch.
But, is there more? Each time a healing like this takes place, Jesus asks people to keep quiet until after his work is complete. It’s almost as though Jesus doesn’t want to be known for his healings. The Gospel readings seem to be far more interested in miracles and healings than Jesus ever was. After all, while miracles are special, they aren’t that special, and they certainly aren’t reserved for Jesus. Jesus raises people from the dead, sure, but so did Peter. Jesus wasn’t the only one who could heal people. Other disciples, and even others outside of Jesus’ small circle of friends could do it. If people see Jesus’ ministry as only built on healings and miracles, he is, at best, one more in a long line of other healers, and at worst, a simple party trick or sideshow, drawing crowds to see healings who never hear the word that God had just stepped into our lives in a very big way.
Doug Pagitt, the pastor of Solomon’s Porch in south Minneapolis has been talking quite a bit recently about how we can best be church in the world today. Here’s his profound statement: The church, and Christians, for the most part, really do love people. It’s just that we don’t like them that much. We’re willing, for the most part, to recognize people’s humanity and to wish well-being and health for others, we just don’t want to be interrupted and have to step into their lives, always at some cost to ourselves and our wants and needs. What the church can look like, what Jesus looks like is about evangelism, about fellowship, about worship, all centered around engagement with other people… about our willingness to be interrupted by other peoples’ lives and put ours on hold for the sake of the lepers in our world, which include more than those with a skin condition.
As most of you know, every weekday afternoon, our quiet little office space becomes a mess of kids, tutors, smells, and sounds. I have a love/hate relationship with going in to the office on weekday afternoons. While I love seeing the kids hanging around, doing homework, playing games, and frustrating tutors, I find it impossible sometimes and difficult all the time to focus. I often lock myself in Joan’s office to finish e-mails, letters, sermons, and classwork. I don’t like my work being interrupted.
But, I count myself as one tremendously blessed to have a teacher like my co-worker, office mate, and dear friend, Alyson. You see, Alyson is easily interrupted. Alyson encourages interruption. Alyson’s ability to drop everything to read a book or look at a drawing or talk with kids is both condemnation and encouragement for me.
Alyson doesn’t just love the kids; she actually likes them.
Jesus didn’t just love the leper; he was actually willing to be interrupted from his mission, at great cost to himself and his own work, to heal the leper.
Jesus’ ministry took a profound hit because he was interrupted. Jesus may well have wanted to keep his focus on proclaiming his message in every town, but even Jesus couldn’t get away from the interruptions of those who most needed him. The ministry of Christ to proclaim the good news that the Kingdom of God was here was put on hold because he did choose to heal the man, whether that Jesus secret was kept or not. Not long after, the great interruption to Jesus’ ministry, the cross, became the very message that Jesus proclaimed: “I do choose. Be made clean.”
Amen.
