A
leper came to Jesus and kneeling down begged him and said, "If you wish,
you can make me clean." Moved with pity, he stretched out his hand, touched
him, and said to him, "I do will it. Be made clean." The leprosy left
him immediately, and he was made clean. Then, warning him sternly, he dismissed
him at once. He said to him, "See that you tell no one anything, but
go, show yourself to the priest and offer for your cleansing what Moses
prescribed; that will be proof for them." The man went away and began to
publicize the whole matter. He spread the report abroad so that it was
impossible for Jesus to enter a town openly. He remained outside in deserted
places, and people kept coming to him from everywhere.
Mark
1
In
Jesus’s time, misfortune was a sign of God’s disfavor. It was assumed that if bad things happened to
you, you deserved it. That was the
message of Job’s friends last week; the same message that was so vehemently
rejected by God. Nonetheless, centuries later
it was still the accepted theology. Read
Chapter Nine of The Gospel of John to see just how ingrained it was – even late
in his ministry Jesus’s disciples couldn’t see past it.
By
healing the leper, Jesus is doing more than performing a miracle. He is pronouncing the leper the beloved of God. The man’s leprosy was not a sign of God’s
disfavor, his leprosy has attracted the loving concern of God.
This
is the oft-overlooked point of the Beatitudes too. When Jesus said the poor are blessed, he was
not saying it was a good thing to be poor and that we should all live in
poverty. He was rejecting the Pharisees’
theology that the poor were poor because they had done something bad and were
being punished by God. No! Jesus was
saying their poverty is bad luck, and far from being the accursed of God, the poor attract
God’s loving concern all the more. Blessed are the poor.
Popular
(and institutional) theology in our day still envisions us as being here to
accomplish some purpose, prove ourselves, develop our talents, be of
service - to be capable of earning God's love or rebuke. It all sounds good, and its social
utility can’t be denied, but it is contrary to Scripture.