The Popular Message
There was a man in California
who actually read the fine print on a airlines mile giveaway. This was several
years ago, and it is a true story. Anyway, one of the airlines was doing a
tie-in with a food manufacturer. If you sent the airline the proof of purchase
sticker, or the cut off bar code from products from a particular manufacturer,
they would credit you mileage. This guy started thinking about the smallest,
cheapest product he could buy with the bar code on it, and since there was no
limit on what you could buy, he thought he could really rack up some miles.
Turns out that after several different products, he found that each individual
pudding container had its own barcode. He found crates of them at Costco, and
bought all of them. He did this to several Walmarts and Costco’s…ended up with
25 million free miles of airlines tickets. Basically he and his family can fly
wherever they want, for free, for the rest of their lives. They did invest
several thousand dollars in individual puddings, but since he lived them
anyway, it wasn’t a huge loss. And what he gained, the freedom, the value of
being able to travel anywhere in the world, for the rest of his life, quite an
investment. It may have looked silly from the outside, but when you look at the
result, wow, the guy really figured out the system and used it to his
advantage.
I wish I had known him, and he
would have told me about the deal. Of course, as soon as he turned in all his
pudding tops for mileage, the airline understood how other people could do the
same thing and predictably, cancelled the giveaway. They couldn’t have hundreds
of people doing the same thing. So as far as I know, he is the only person who
took advantage of the program, the only person who benefited. I wish he had
told me about the program, then I would have the same great
fly-anywhere-in-the-world options as him. But he didn’t, and I have to pay lots
of money to fly places. Oh well. We all missed the opportunity. But what a
popular message he would have had if they didn’t end the program. He could have
traveled to different cities, and give a seminar on how to get lots of pudding
and free air travel anywhere in the world for the investment of several
thousand dollars. People would have paid a lot of money to hear how to get free
air travel forever. I would have. His message would have been a popular one,
right? I mean, I think most of us would have signed up for that seminar.
When Jesus began teaching
healing, he met a similar passion for His message. It’s a little sad that we
are, and encounter, a world that is vaccinated against Jesus message. His
message was met not with disbelief, but with enthusiasm. Let’s take a look at
Mark 1:40ff…
A man with leprosy came to him and begged him on his knees, “If you are willing,
you can make me clean.”
41 Filled
with compassion, Jesus reached out his hand and touched the man. “I am
willing,” he said. “Be clean!” 42 Immediately
the leprosy left him and he was cured.
43 Jesus sent him away at once with a strong
warning: 44 “See that you
don’t tell this to anyone. But go, show yourself to the priest and offer the
sacrifices that Moses commanded for your cleansing, as a testimony to them.” 45 Instead he went out and began to
talk freely, spreading the news. As a result, Jesus could no longer enter a
town openly but stayed outside in lonely places. Yet the people still came to
him from everywhere. [1]
We are heading through Mark these days. Mark is a great book, one of 4 accounts of Jesus life, that are called the gospels, which literally means the “good news”. Mark is probably the earliest finished gospel. It was written by Mark, of course, most likely with the apostle and early church leader Peter looking over his shoulder. We think this because in Mark Peter doesn’t look very good. The only person in the early church with the license to make Peter look bad was Peter himself. So most scholars feel strongly that Peter was intimately involved in the writing of Mark’s gospel. Mark was likely written about 10 years before Luke and Matthew, which were written at approximately the same time. I’ve always been of the opinion that Mark was not really as good as either Matthew or Luke. Both Luke and Matthew are relatively polished in terms of their content and their form. Mark tends to be more rough. It is also significantly shorter…Mark has 16 chapters while Luke has 24 and Matthew has 28. Matthew and Luke contain Jesus as a baby in helping to orient people to who Jesus is; in Mark Jesus walks onto the scene as a full grown adult.
The end is much the same way. The end of Mark, at least the ending many scholars think is the right one, the shortest ending, doesn’t even have Jesus risen, but leaves the reader with the implication that Jesus had risen. Because it has always seemed less complete to me, and distorts the timing a bit, I’ve always thought Mark was ‘unpolished’ is perhaps a nice way to put it. What I mean about a distortion of time is you’ll notice in Mark 1:14 he starts talking about after John was in prison, but we know from the other gospels that a lot happened while Jesus was beginning His ministry, and John, because of Jesus arrival, was winding his down. But in Mark, that time of months or even years, is condensed. So that’s what I mean when I believed it was a bit rough; that it wasn’t and couldn’t possibly be as deep as the other gospels. I’m beginning to believe I was wrong, and I’m not usually happy to discover my prejudices were wrong, but in this case I’m glad. I’m learning a lot about Mark as I go through it with you, and I find that exciting. I hope you do as well.
Today’s passage is relatively short, but I think it can be pretty deep. The passage can be divided into the healing of a leper, and the results of that healing. Let’s take a look.
A man with leprosy came to him and begged him on his knees, “If you are
willing, you can make me clean.”
41 Filled
with compassion, Jesus reached out his hand and touched the man. “I am
willing,” he said. “Be clean!” 42 Immediately
the leprosy left him and he was cured.
Leprosy, you may know, has been largely eradicated from the planet at this point. This is a very good thing. Leprosy is a terrible disease. People who contract leprosy begin to experience a numbness in their extremities; their toes and fingers. This means that they can stub their toes, or step on something sharp, and not know it. Their fingers can get torn or smashed without them realizing it. It is caused by bacteria that damage nerve cells, and the body’s repeated attempts to rid itself of the bacteria caused the extremities to swell, part of the skin thickens. The nerve damage is responsible for the loss of sensation as well as reduced motor skills and strength. There are still a few leper colonies in the world, mostly in India and the Philippines. It is a treatable disease, but only with a combination of modern medicines, which means it is a disease of the poor.
Lepers back in Jesus day were forced out of their homes and communities to live in wretched communities of the damned with other lepers. They would survive by begging as their bodies would slowly deform, becoming more and more useless. Not only was it an awful disease, but people didn’t know how it could move from person to person, how someone could catch leprosy, so they were isolated. When they would come into town to beg to buy provisions, they would have to call out that the were “unclean”. The streets would clear, mothers would pull their children into the houses, and the village would quickly appear deserted as the lonely walked into town.
So when this leper hears of a healer, maybe from a relative or friend, they seek Jesus out. More than most, they need to be healed. Jesus at this point has healed a specific fever, He has cast out demons, and healed many with various diseases. But Mark wants his readers to know that Jesus is a healer of more than just diseases. Of all the diseases, leprosy was the most isolating. Here we see the first glimpse that Jesus heals souls and soul-pain as well as human bodies.
And also, I know I’ve been talking a lot about chiasms, a Jewish way of writing quite a lot, but this certainly is a quick little chiasm. Can you see it? The passage starts off with a man with leprosy, there is a request for healing, Jesus is moved with compassion, the request for healing is granted and the man no longer has leprosy. Remember, in a chiasm it is the middle pat that is most important. And it points to a fundamental part of who Jesus is, and who God is. God is moved by compassion. Mark wants us all to know what God is like; God is moved by the needs of people. This man needs healing and wholeness, and that is what Jesus can offer. But even more, the truth is we all need healing and wholeness. In Christ we are all offered healing and wholeness. We worship and serve a God of compassion, who has mercy on His disobedient servants over and over. Jesus death on the cross was the ultimate example of Christ’s compassion. The idea that God is compassionate is illustrated most completely on the cross, but that image shift of God as compassionate toward His creation rather than frustrated and angry begins here in the final few verses of chapter 1.
Sometimes I think we forget how compassionate God really has been toward us. We get caught up in our problems, in wondering and worrying about how our needs are going to be met, instead of remembering the promises of God, that we are valuable to Him, more than many sparrows, valuable enough to go to the cross for us so that the purifying blood would come from Him, and not us, even though we deserved to pay that unpayable price. If God can have compassion on the most outcast of peoples, then maybe He can have compassion on us as well.
So what happens after the healing?
43 Jesus sent him away at once with a strong
warning: 44 “See that you
don’t tell this to anyone. But go, show yourself to the priest and offer the
sacrifices that Moses commanded for your cleansing, as a testimony to them.” 45 Instead he went out and began to
talk freely, spreading the news. As a result, Jesus could no longer enter a
town openly but stayed outside in lonely places. Yet the people still came to
him from everywhere.
It’s interesting; leprosy was considered
uncurable by the Jews. Only twice in the OT did God cure leprosy; Numbers 12
and 1Kings 5. But this leper was sure Jesus could cure his disease. What does
that say about who he thought Jesus was? I think it shows that this leper
suspected that Jesus was the Messiah, the Son of God. And the leper was right.
What the Jewish hierarchy will struggle with, what regular folks will argue
about this leper knows to be true because it happened to him. God stepped into
his life, and healed his broken and diseased body. His body healed, it was time
to get restored to the rest of the community. The healing offer by God is
complete, for the leper and for us. Complete healing; our souls most of all
need to be healed, or more accurately, recreated in God’s image. We need a
complete overhaul, not a fresh coat of paint. And that is exactly what we are
offered in Christ, a new life, a new heart, a new creation.
Remember, as part of the protection of the community, the religious
authorities need to okay the leper’s reentrance into society. They have to
check the former leper out, make sure he has really been healed. Which, of
course, he has. And in his joy, the leper disobeys Jesus command. He doesn’t go
to the priests at all, but rejoices through the street proclaiming what Jesus
did for him. I was looking at the structure of this passage as outlined by Dr.
Bailey and I noticed something. There is a parallel structure to the passage;
one detailing Jesus obedience, and the result, and then the leper’s
disobedience and the result. Jesus says go show yourself, and say nothing. The
result is that the leper was able to rejoin the community that has exiled him.
Then if you look at what happened, the leper did go, and instead of saying
nothing, he tells everyone, and the result is that Jesus is almost kicked out
of the community. Jesus was no longer able to enter towns, but had to stay out
in the country. The exile the leper lived is essentially transferred onto
Jesus.
Isn’t that odd? Even something good, like telling people about Jesus and what He had done, even though it was meant to honor Jesus, and probably couldn’t be contained—the truth being I think we all would have acted the same way—even something good like that isn’t if we are told not to do it. Jesus obedience to the Father, that we’ve seen previously in His baptism and His temptation in the desert results, ultimately, in the healing of this leper. The leper’s disobedience resulted in Jesus’ prevention from entering towns. What an odd twist to this event. Our disobedience effects what God can or cannot do. If we now that we are supposed to talk to someone about Jesus, and we don’t, the plan of salvation has to be modified. If we know we are supposed to volunteer for a ministry at church, or to give extra money to the church, and we don’t, in a real way we have negatively effected God’s ministry.
I think in the end we are healed to a life of obedience. We are not healed of our sinful life in order to return to it; rather we are to live a new life, one centered on Jesus. Isn’t it odd, that a message so great as the one the leper carried, wasn’t right for that time. You’ll notice that Jesus continually tells people to not say anything about their healing, at least for a while. Otherwise, I’m convinced, Jesus life would have been completely like the text describes: swarmed with people seeking healing, and unable to go and do the ministry that was most important to God; to preach the coming Kingdom, to be the kingdom of God in our midst.
But ah, what a message that leper could carry to the world; I was a leper, my life was a mess, always begging, scaring little children, and then Jesus touched me, and my life has been completely different. That same message is one we should all be able to carry to the world, and proclaim with passion. We were saved. Every day should be a day of joy. We are completely different than we would have been without Christ. If at the end of the day the best you can say is that I avoided some sin, I’m not sure that was a great day. There should be a proclamation part of each day, where we live out the joy we have been given in Christ. That is obedience now. There is no more disobedience by proclaiming Jesus Christ and His love of us. The time for keeping things hushed up ended on the cross. Since then, it has been our job, our joy to proclaim
End: Like the leper, and Jesus, we carry with us a message from God to the world. We carry a message of hope that there is meaning and purpose to life; we carry the message that people are known by God. And He loves them. In fact, He went so far as to prove His love for us in that while we all were still sinners, Christ died for us. That isn’t a joke; it isn’t a hoax we are playing on other people. Recently I was talking to a man who was being evangelized to by a couple of us. I got the impression he thought the message of Jesus Christ was a little bit of a joke we were trying to play on him; like if he accepted Christ we’d all stand up and say “gotcha!”. He kept trying to play the devils advocate and counter our arguments. After a while I just got tired of messing around. We weren’t trying to fool this guy. We were trying to tell him about something great, even better than free airplane rides for the rest of his life. If he would have accepted Christ, he would have gotten a free ride to Heaven, a free pass and a pardon through the judgement of God that is coming for us all.
We live to spread this message of hope, of healing, of wholeness, of life that is found in Christ and nowhere else.
Let’s pray.