Sixth Sunday of Year B 15 February 2009

Homily for Sixth Sunday of the Year B 15 February 2009

Sometimes when we look at the readings given for a certain Sunday, it is hard for us to see the connection between them, why that Old Testament reading has been chosen and so on. But today the connection is very clear- the ancient laws by which the Jews had to try and live describe in our first reading how anyone with leprosy (that is, not the modern disease we call leprosy, but any one of a number of possible skin diseases) must be kept apart from everyone else and live outside the camp, outside normal society. And in today’s Gospel Jesus is dealing with a leper, who begs him to cure him, to let him regain his place in normal society, to belong again, to come in from the outside. What is the reaction of Jesus?
We need hardly ask! Our Lord’s ministry in Mark’s Gospel is shown above all as one of healing, healing not only of all the bodily ailments that afflict us and hold us back from any sort of physical perfection, but also of the demons, the demons within us, the stresses and phobias, the feelings of guilt and inadequacy, all the mental torments that hold us back too and obscure the person we could be in our full potential. And so Our Lord is very moved when he looks upon this suffering outcast- the translation we have here is hopeless, “feeling sorry for him” does not have any of the force of the Greek word, which means “became extremely emotional”, with a mixture of pity and anger. And he does what no one else would have risked doing- he “stretched out his hand and touched him”. That alone would have sent a frisson round the onlookers- gosh, did you see that, he actually touched him! Do you recall the effect that Princess Diana had back in the mid 80s when AIDS was a new and frightening thing, when she was photographed holding the hand of an AIDS sufferer in hospital? That gesture broke through a lot of the taboos that were building up fast at that time. Our Lord being prepared to touch the leper was already a huge statement, of acceptance, of the renewal of human contact, a sign of the possibility of a return to ordinary society, of belonging again. “If you want to, you can cure me” is the leper’s humble prayer, his hesitant request, which he hardly dares to hope will be answered. There is nothing hesitant, however, about Our Lord’s emphatic reply – “Of course I want to!” But of course this is precisely what Jesus has started his ministry to do- to cure people, to make them well and whole again, to free them from the shackles of disease and sin. “Be cured!” he says “and the leprosy left him at once and he was cured”.
But there is far more in this Gospel passage for us to consider, for what we actually have here is one of the first hints – we are still only in chapter 1 after all!- that Mark gives us of what Jesus’s ministry is really about, and where, with a terrible logic of its own, it will inevitably lead him. Here we see Our Lord gladly, one might even say enthusiastically, curing a leper of his uncleanness. But let us look what happens then to Jesus. What is the result of this welcoming of the outcast back into the fold, this touching of the leper, this healing of the unclean for Our Lord himself? Ironically, the situation is suddenly reversed, for now that the leper is back in society, in a strange way it is Our Lord who is out in the cold- we read “Jesus could no longer go openly into any town, but had to stay outside”. Our Lord has taken the uncleanness away from this poor leper, and as a result finds himself in the leper’s position, unable to go into the towns and having to keep away from people – it is as if he has taken on the burden of the man he has cured. All this of course resonates with our understanding of Our Lord’s death and resurrection, doesn’t it. Our Lord, taking on the burden of our sins, being “the lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world.” Do you remember what Isaiah prophesised about Our Lord? It is part of the readings we have every Good Friday: “the crowds were appalled on seeing him, so disfigured did he look….and yet ours were the sufferings he bore, ours the sorrows he carried…..Yes, he was torn away from the land of the living, for our faults struck down to death”. We have in today’s Gospel reading a hint of what is to come, of the other side of the coin if you like of the healing and the curing: it all comes at a price, all this healing, all this sorting out of the ills of humanity, all this putting of mankind straight with God once and for all – Jesus will suffer for us, he will be the scapegoat that is turned away into the desert to bear away the sins of the people and die. For where does Jesus eventually meet his death? Where is Calvary? It is “the green hill far away, without a city wall” as the hymn says- it is outside the city, outside the security and order of the city, beyond the walls, where people throw their rubbish and bury their dead, where all the uncleanness is. It is there, beyond the limits of normal society, in the very heart of the uncleanness and impurity of mankind, in the detritus and the wreckage of fallen humanity, that our Lord is driven to his death- driven of course by the Roman soldiers and the authorities who have connived at his death, but driven there ultimately as the inevitable consequence of his life’s work, the impetus of all the healings and of all the saving of souls. This is what lies ahead for Jesus, but we see him today in the very first days of his ministry, full of energy for his work, as Mark depicts him, dashing from one healing to another, full of eagerness to cure whoever presents himself before him.
He is eager still, Our Lord, eager to cure us, to free us from whatever demons torment us and from whatever sins hold us back from becoming our true selves. And we are like that leper, aren’t we: we know our uncleanness, we know our failures, we know the mess we make of things, we know what our own private leprosy is. We too are longing to come in from the cold, to experience the warmth of God’s love, we too are tired of being an outsider, an outcast, we too want to belong, to belong to God, to feel his healing touch in our lives. We too need acceptance. Let us approach Our Lord this morning, and say with that leper “If you want to, you can cure me” and may the Lord in his mercy and love look upon us, stretch out his hand to touch us, and say to us “Be cured!” Amen.