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 is often perceived as something akin to being the red-headed stepchild of the whole New Testament.
For centuries this Gospel narrative was regarded as being of little significance. It suffered a fate not unlike that of Cinderella: languishing in the kitchen, waiting for her prince to rescue her.
There are many reasons for this, not the least of which being that Mark’s Gospel doesn’t contain within it the gorgeous infancy narratives that make up our present-day Christmas story, or the magnificent drama of the final judgment scene, or the dazzling parable of the Prodigal Son, or the astounding story of Lazarus exiting a tomb.
And so, for a long time, Mark became the “forgotten” Gospel.
Until now.
Now we recognize what wasn’t so well understood before:
- That, contrary to popular belief, Mark’s Gospel was the first to be written.
- That both the Gospels of 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 evil forces were those of the brutal Roman Empire and the horrifying tortures they imposed on the earliest members of the Christian community.
In fact, most scholars now believe that this Gospel was written in Rome for the purpose of strengthening the faith of those early Christians who were facing terrible persecution.
The “demons” Mark’s Gospel speaks of were the evil spirits, principally Satan, that people at that time fervently believed ruled the world.
One of the main strategies of Mark’s Gospel, then, 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 the end, Jesus is presented as the Lord of the entire natural world: the wind, the seas, the skies – they are all under his power.
Jesus is also the Lord, the Stronger One, when it comes to the ability to heal all the diseases and all the illnesses that the world at that time had no answer for – especially, leprosy.
This 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 of it being 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 and their religious community.
They were doomed to an existence of being among the “living dead.”
It’s remarkable, then, that the leper in today’s Gospel, desperate to be healed, does three things – none of which were allowed by Jewish law:
He approaches Jesus, kneels in front of him, and begs for him to “make me clean.”
The leper treats Jesus as someone with divine power – a power much greater than Satan and the Emperor combined!
What happens next is a heartrending depiction of one of the most vivid portrayals in all the Gospels of Jesus’ humanity, joined with his divinity.
“Moved with pity,” Jesus, like the leper, also does three things:
Jesus stretches out his hand, touches him, and speaks directly to the leper:
“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.
This is why 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 Jesus followers do the same as our Lord:
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.
