January 29, 2012

Mark 1:40-45


Florida United Methodist Children's Home 5th Sunday special offering

Message series: Good News according to Mark
Sunday’s message: Don't say anything

Skin disease is something I have close personal experience with. Many of you noticed Sunday that my face was red, as if I had been sunburned. Actually I’d had a PDT – a “blue light special” at the dermatologist’s. I have frequent precancerous spots on my face, and the PDT takes care of most of them. It also shrinks the squamous cell on my right temple that I’m having removed in February. I see a dermatologist every six months for a full body scan.

“Skin disease” as CEB translates it was “leprosy” in older translations. That’s not the same thing as Hansen’s disease, what today’s medicine calls leprosy. The CEB footnote says of the word, “The precise meaning is uncertain; traditionally leprosy —a term used for several different skin diseases.”

If you want a full description of what the Bible is talking about – and I mean a full description – read Leviticus 13. I can imagine Dr. Richardson, my dermatologist, reading this chapter and identifying various types of skin conditions he knows by modern names.

After that full description of a condition or conditions that make one unclean and unable to participate in the community, Leviticus 14 gives a thorough description of what one must do to become clean again once the priest certifies that the skin disease is gone. There are sacrifices to be made:

The priest will then perform the purification offering and make reconciliation for the person needing purification from their uncleanness. After that, the entirely burned offering will be slaughtered. The priest will offer up the entirely burned offering and the grain offering on the altar. In this way, the priest will make reconciliation for the person, and they will be clean again. (Leviticus 14:19-20 CEB)

All of this background walks up to Jesus in Sunday’s story. A man with a skin disease approaches. “If you want to, you can make me clean.” How does he know this? Mark tells us that Jesus is incensed. Because of the condition of the man and the demands made on him because of a simple skin problem? Because the man has implied that Jesus might not want to help? In any case, Jesus is willing: “I do want to; be clean.” And, instantly, the man is clean.

Sort of. According to Leviticus 14 the man still has a lot of hoops to jump in order to be declared clean. The priest must examine him and certify that the disease is gone. There may be a quarantine to endure. There are sacrifices to be made.

Jesus orders the man to go get all this done, but says, “This will be a testimony to them.” A testimony to what? That Jesus has authority to heal? That indeed “Now is the time! Here comes God's kingdom!”? (Mark 1:15 CEB) The man is to tell no one what has happened. (Why?)

But the man doesn’t do as he is told. “Instead, he went out and started talking freely and spreading the news so that Jesus wasn't able to enter a town openly.” Did the man not even go to the priest to be certified, so that he could go back to his village and his family?

In the gospel stories Jesus is disruptive in many ways. But in this story Jesus himself is disrupted. In last week’s story he set out “to the nearby villages, so that [he could] preach there too.” That, he said, was why he came. But now according to Mark Jesus cannot even enter a town openly, but must remain outside in deserted places and wait for people to come to him.

There are some things in Mark’s story of Jesus that folks (including scholars) have found puzzling. Why does Jesus forbid demons to call him by name? Why does he forbid this man and others to tell about the good things he has done for them? We’ll talk about that on Sunday. I’ll see you there.