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| Andre-Rublev's Saviour |
SIXTH SUNDAY AFTER EPIPHANY. YEAR B.
Gospel:
Mark 1:40-45
A
leper came to Jesus and kneeling down begged him and said, “If you wish, you
can make me clean.” Moved with pity, Jesus stretched out his hand, touched him,
and said to him, “I do will it. Be made clean.”
In
the Name of the Father, and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen
What
comes to mind when you think of the word “clean”?
Clean
house; clean up;
clean
water; cleanliness is next to godliness; clean sweep; come clean; Mr. Clean;
clean burning; clean oven; clean title; and so we can all think of many other
examples of “clean”.
Well,
today we’re talking about a different kind of clean. Today we’re talking about
what it means to be clean inside and outside; clean not because we’ve rubbed
and scrubbed but because God acting in Christ has chosen to make us so.
Our
gospel lesson contains the short but powerful story of a leper coming to Jesus
and making an unusual statement. The leper says to Jesus, “If you want to, you
can make me clean.” Now what’s so unusual about this statement is that, for
starters, it’s not really a request. The leper doesn’t “ask” Jesus to be
“healed.” Instead, he announces what he believes — that, if Jesus chooses,
Jesus can make him “clean.”
The
cleansing of the leper is a climactic moment in Mark’s Gospel. By just touching
the leper Jesus challenges one of the strictest proscriptions in Jewish society
(today’s first reading provides the context for understanding the social and
religious revulsion of lepers).
The
leper is one of the heroic characters of Mark’s Gospel (along with such figures
as the poor widow who gives her only penny to the temple and the blind
Bartimaeus). The leper places his entire trust in Jesus. For him, there is no
doubt: this Jesus is the Messiah of hope, the Lord of life. His request for
healing is more than a cry for help -- it is a profession of faith: “You can
make me clean.”
Jesus’
curing of the leper shocked those who witnessed it. Jesus did not drive the
leper away, as would be the norm (the leper, according to the Mosaic Law, had
no right to even address Jesus); instead, Jesus stretched out his hand and
touched him. Jesus did not see an unclean leper but a human soul in desperate
need.
Consider
what Jesus does after healing the leper. He sends the cleansed leper to show
himself to the priest “and offer for your cure what Moses prescribed.” This
leper’s healing is a message for the Jewish establishment, represented by the
priest: that the Messiah has come and is present among you.
We
often reduce others to “lepers”—those we fear, those who don’t “fit” our image
of sophistication and culture, those whose religion or race or class or culture
threaten our own. We exile these lepers to the margins of society outside our
gates; we reduce these lepers to simple stereotypes and demeaning labels; we
reject these lepers as too “unclean” to be part of our lives and our world. The
Christ who healed lepers comes to perform a much greater miracle – to heal us
of our debilitating sense of self that fails to realise the sacred dignity of
those we demean as “lepers.”
In
today’s Gospel, the leper approaches Jesus with the words, “If you wish, you
can make me clean.” The leper’s challenge is addressed to all of us, who seek
to imitate Jesus. We possess the means and abilities to transform our lives and
world — what is required are the desire, the will, the determination to do so:
to heal the broken, to restore lepers to wholeness, to reconcile with those
from whom we are estranged.
Jesus
works his wonders not to solicit acclaim for himself but to awaken faith in
God’s providence, to restore God’s vision of a world where humanity is united
as brothers and sisters in the love of God. Jesus calls us who would be his
disciples to let our own “miracles” of charity and mercy, of forgiveness and
justice, be “proof” of our committed discipleship to the Gospel and our trust
in the God who is the real worker of wonders in our midst.
Amen.
