Sixth Sunday in Ordinary Time
“’If you wish, you can make me clean.’ Moved with pity, Jesus stretched out his hand, touched him, and said to him, ‘I will do it. Be made clean.’” Mk. 1:40-41
The Gospel of Mark has often been treated as the red-headed step-child of the entire New Testament. For centuries this Gospel narrative was regarded as being of little significance. It suffered a fate much like that of Cinderella’s languishing in the kitchen, waiting for the prince to rescue her.
There are many reasons for this: this Gospel doesn’t contain the lovely infancy narratives that make up our modern Christmas story, or the dazzling parable of the Prodigal Son, or the astounding story of Lazarus exiting a tomb, or the magnificent drama of the final judgment scene.
So, for some nineteen hundred years, Mark became the “forgotten” Gospel.
Until now.
Now we recognize what wasn’t well understood before:
- That Mark’s Gospel was the first to be written, and was closest in time to Jesus’ life and ministry.
- That the Gospels of both Matthew and Luke borrowed the story outline developed by Mark.
- That, unlike the other three Gospels, Mark’s takes us straight into a world inhabited by demons and evil forces with which Jesus is constantly in conflict.
The “demons” Mark’s Gospel speaks of were the evil spirits, principally Satan, that people of that time and place, fervently believed ruled the world.
The “evil forces” were those of the brutal Roman Empire and the horrible tortures they imposed on the earliest members of the Christian community.
In fact, most scholars now believe that Mark’s Gospel was written in Rome for the purpose of strengthening the faith of those early Christians facing terrible persecution.
And one of the main strategies of Mark’s Gospel was to demonstrate two convictions:
- The Emperor of Rome is not the Lord of the Universe. Jesus is.
- Satan is undeniably strong, but Jesus is the “Stronger One.”
From the beginning of Mark’s gospel to its end, Jesus is presented as the Lord of the entire natural world: the wind, the seas, the skies – all under his power.
Jesus is also the Lord, the Stronger One, when it comes to the ability to heal all the diseases and the illnesses that the world at that time had no answer for – especially, leprosy.
This miserable and unsightly disease plunges us head long into today’s Gospel story.
Leprosy was the most dreaded of all illnesses at that time, not only because it was incurable, but also because it meant that people suffering from it were banned from the city and the Temple. They were forced to live utterly cut off from their family, friends, work, and religious community.
They were doomed to be, to exist, only among the “living dead.”
So, it’s incredible that the leper in today’s Gospel, desperate to be healed, does three things – each of which violated strict Jewish law:
He approaches Jesus, kneels down in front of him, and begs for Jesus to “make me clean.”
The leper treats Jesus as someone with divine power – a power much greater than Satan and the Emperor combined!
Then, in one of all four Gospels’ most vivid and heartrending portrayals of Jesus’ humanity, joined with his divinity, Jesus -“moved with pity” – also does three things:
Jesus stretches out his hand, touches the leper, and speaks directly to him:
“Be made clean.”
Jesus, the Stronger One, has ultimate power, even over the most feared of diseases that no one before had been able to conquer.
And yet Jesus does it with the greatest sense of compassion and tenderness, and does it for the “least of these,” the human outcast.
Small wonder Mark closes this stunning story of healing power with these words: “… and people kept coming to him from everywhere.”
And they still do, especially when we followers of Jesus do the same as our Lord:
When with deep compassion, and “moved with pity,” we stretch out our hands to the disadvantaged, touch them, and lead them to a place of hope and healing and great joy – a place where they are “made clean.”
Ted Wolgamot, Psy.D.
11809194.1
2/8/2018
