Choosing the good

“…and he was with the wild beasts” (Mark 1:13)

Mark 1:12-15 (Year B: First Sunday of Lent, 18 February 2018)

Trials can bring out the best and the worst in people.  Alone with the ‘wild beasts’ in a lonely desert place, Jesus the child of the earth or the Son of Man was confronted with the rawness of nature. But, he was confronted, as a full human being with the realities of hunger, thirst, danger and temptation.  He went into a place that we, all of us, will have to face sooner or later as our bodies wear out and our time beckons. Some are fortunate to avoid much sickness and material poverty in the course of a long life. Others are less fortunate.

Lent gives us a time and an opportunity to reflect on and re-focus our lives.  Focus comes with difficulty for us as we juggle many things and surround ourselves with lots and lots of things.  Staying still and focussed even with the ‘wild beasts’ of negative people, situations and inner feelings is an art. Great peace and great inner empowering is the fruit of a masterly stillness. God keeps those in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on him (Isaiah 26:3). But, what if we have received troubling news or what if we are surrounded by much evil?

In our times, there is much that is very wrong and even evil – even in our supposedly enlightened and inclusive democracies.  People are subjected to huge pressures – financial, emotional and spiritual.  Major choices face people as we debate matters of life and death. Complex moral dilemmas confront us on all sides. Nothing is every simple or straightforward. And yet, the call to turn back to God is ever simple, ever fresh and ever life-giving.

How does Mark 1:12-15 speak to us on this first Sunday of Lent 2018?

The Kingdom of God…

The phrase ‘kingdom of God’ had deep resonance in Jesus’ milieu. It may be a little lost on the world today, unfamiliar or unfriendly to human notions, metaphors and institutions of royalty. But, the idea of the Kingdom still has currency and relevance if we understand it as a spiritual reign or ruling over minds and hearts freely accepting of this. It signifies a reign of personal and social freedom and justice. The two go hand in hand. It implies that those who are poor, oppressed, excluded are brought into the centre of our communities and listened to and empowered. There, peace and love are established where, before, suspicion, resentment and factionalism prevailed.

And the kingdom belongs to those who received it with childlike simplicity, trust and openness (Luke 18:17). It is a common practice to associate the term and the idea of the kingdom of heaven with the world that it is to come, or, simply that which is after death. But, it is clear from most usages of the term in the Gospels that the kingdom is also in the here and now in our midst – very near and about to break into our little world.

In the life of the Christian community there are times when Jesus’ followers over-identified or reduced the Kingdom of God to the ‘Church’ (and that very often in strictly party denominational sense). Others over-identified or reduced the Kingdom of God to some interior, subjective state of feeling or reasoning. The truth is that both perspectives are valid and needed!

It is near to us ….

It may be a question of time or place. In truth, we can say that our lives are short and the day we anticipate is nearer now than was the case yesterday.

Repent…

Lent is very much about repentance.  To repent is to turn away from something. It means turning away from all that is harmful, poisoned, destructive within us and around us. This is difficult because we seek refuge, sometimes, in falsehoods, riches and comfort – the comfort of our systems of thinking and association that surrounds us all the time. We are invited to return or turn back to the basics of

• Doing what is right 
• Believing in what is true 
• And avoiding what is evil for ourselves and others.

Our role is not to go about confronting people with the language and a system of ideas that means nothing to them. Rather, we are invited to gently lead others to where they are ready and willing to go in their own time at their own pace. Ultimately, we are called not to announce the word so much as to live it and thereby draw others into the family of trust, belonging and purpose which is the community founded on the example, teaching, death and resurrection of the Jesus who continues to live in our midst.

And so….

This lent let’s take that prayer, Our Father, seriously and practically meaning what we say and putting it into practice day by day. And ‘Your Kingdom Come’ will be a reality more and more as we walk towards Easter. And we will be amazed to find that it is indeed true that ‘For the Kingdom, the Power and the Glory are yours’. Put another way it means:

• Power is everywhere
• Change if possible
• Hope is vital

May Lent 2018 be a special time for each of us as we move from winter to spring and as we prepare, hopefully, for other winters and springs on this earthly journey. For the kingdom of God has come nearer to us this year. We must make haste, focus on the Gospel, change what needs changing in our lives now and trust and believe in the good news that Jesus announced 2,000 years ago and still announces to each of us and all of us together today.

If we are willing

“…If you choose, you can make me clean” (Mark 1:40)

Mark 1:40-45 (Year B: Sunday before Lent, 11th February 2018)

[In some traditions and places the chosen Gospel reading for this Sunday may be from Mark 9:2-9 – the Gospel account of the Transfiguration. For a blog on Mark 9:9-29 see Basking in Sunshine  - 1 March 2015]

‘I do choose’ was the curt answer from Jesus to an earnest request by someone with leprosy who ‘came to him and begged him on his knees’ (v. 40). Some versions report that Jesus was ‘moved with pity’ (v. 41) while other translations state that ‘Jesus was indignant’. I prefer ‘moved with pity’. Perhaps the leper, in breaking social norms, approached someone who was clean. Was Jesus taken by complete surprise and reacted angrily in the first instance? Or, perhaps, his ‘anger’ was more to do with fear? Who would touch a leper? Would you or I touch someone with a highly contagious disease?

Whatever was felt by him, Jesus was moved to act and to respond to what was a bold request and, surely, a risky one for Jesus who risked deadly infection as well as social disapproval for associating with someone who was ritually impure.

In today’s ‘advanced economies’ leprosy has been abolished.  However, a few centuries ago leper hospitals and colonies were common.  Here, in Dublin, Townsend Street just south of the River Liffey is translated from the original of ‘Sráid na Lobhar’ where, there was a hospice for lepers (lobhair).  Note that when the new arrivals took over from the 12^th century onwards they just named the place ‘Town’s End’. That sounds better, you see. Further to the east of Sráid na Lobhar were the natives pushed, literally, to ‘Irishtown’, or Baile Gaelach, beside An Rinn – land’s end in around the year 1454 in line with the Statutes of Kilkenny.  Rather like the inmates of a West Bank Palestinian camp, the Gaeil had freedom to trade by day in medieval Dublin and to get back to Baile Gaelach at night passing by the Leper hospice just south of modern-day TCD and then down by ‘Misery Hill’ (just beside the headquarters of Facebook in Ireland today!) where lepers, who did not have the medieval equivalent of private health insurance and could not afford the hospice closer to Dublin, hung out (there being a medieval pecking order of social and physical leprosy at the time). Only some things have changed since those days.

(According to one source, the name Misery Hill ‘derives its name from an age when the corpses of those executed at Gallows Hill near Upper Baggot Street were carted here and strung up to rot as a warning to other would-be troublemakers’).

All societies, tribes and in-groups know how to include and to exclude.

One of the tragic aspects of leprosy in those far off times must have been the sense of loneliness, isolation and social exclusion. When this was reinforced by false religious notions that, in some way, the condition was due to the sinfulness of the victims (either directly or indirectly) the sense of brutality is heightened. In our modern, sophisticated and supposedly enlightened world is ‘social leprosy’ a thing of the past?  Change the medical details and the face of the sufferers and we might find disturbing cases of 21^st century social leprosy (including modern-day traditional leprosy in many parts of the world). Persons by reason of their ethnic status, colour, religion, sexual orientation, marital or relationship status or political persuasion are placed in situations of exclusion, disrespect, mistrust and oppression. If we think that this is something of an exaggeration in our little slice of the world try considering some of the following:

If a family from ‘that group’ moved in next door how would our enlightened socio-liberal principles stand up?

Have we ever been at a wedding in a church where the happily married couple and their families of mixed Christian backgrounds as well as friends are not, all, allowed to share at the one Table of the Chief Host at the banquet? (and here one is referring to the 21^st century and not the 16^th century where, instead, the guests might have killed each other before arriving at the ceremony).

Is someone’s sexual orientation or relationship status something to be best ‘not told and not asked’ about? Conveniently swept under the carpet when, in fact, everyone knows but can’t talk about it or deal with the issue honestly?

And the list could go on.

Healing for others may not just be an exercise in compassion where illness of one sort or another is concerned. It might also involve healing for the healer (us) because we treat others – healthy and wholesome people – as if it were they who need healing and not us. Roles can be reversed and healing happens in us as we learn to let go of our own prejudices, wounds and fears.

What this passage from the Gospel of St Mark shows is that Jesus’s approach and values were utterly ‘sacramental’ to use a theologically loaded term. One way of understanding sacramentalism is that it concerns outward visible signs of inward spiritual grace. Touching and being touched in ways that are entirely appropriate and healing is a type of sacramental action. In the established sacraments of Western catholic Christianity touching can happen at Baptism, the Eucharist, Reconciliation (Penance), Ordination, Anointing, Marriage and Confirmation. It’s all taken for granted. But, ‘sacramentalism’ does not stop there. Ministries of healing have developed in the Christian community and many have been touched deeply in their souls. Outward signs are important. But, the inner healing is something powerful, real and lasting. Many miracles are still happening today but they are not readily visible. One of the greatest miracles is the grace people may receive along with incurable diseases to accept their situation and grow in love and trust. This does not necessarily lessen the suffering or grief in which they find themselves. But, they find a deeper level of meaning, purpose and peace that is lacking where trust has been abandoned.

If a leper in 1^st century Palestine could not be touched by another person (other than another leper) – especially when most needed such as in the moments someone is slipping away from this life (as anyone will know who has journeyed with some to the ‘farewell point’) – then we have many types of social leprosy in modern-day Western economically ‘advanced’ societies. We just change the language and the detail and turn it into clinical and linguistically sanitised terminology.

Much of what we strive for is the result of forces and desires deep within us. We may not even be aware of some of these forces and may ascribe our actions to motivations and influences outside our control. However, if we are more honest with ourselves we must acknowledge that our own will power is an important factor. It is always conditioned by circumstances but it is never eclipsed. If we are willing, we can rise to extraordinary heights. ‘Where there is a will there is a way’ as the saying goes. Was Jesus moved with astonishment, emotion and pity as a result of the desperate, humbling and faith-full pleas of the leper? It is plausible to think that Jesus was cornered and his compassion triggered as a result?. Let’s say that it was not on the agenda for that day. Someone crossed his path who was an outcast, ‘a sinner’ in regards to the thought systems of the time and someone who was dangerously ill.

In responding to this situation Jesus ‘reached out his hand and touched the man’. In doing so he declare ‘I am willing’.  God in Jesus is willing to reach out to us and to touch us in the very depths of our despair, our worries and our fragility. In healing the leper Jesus does not omit to instruct the healed one to present himself to the priests in accordance with the Torah – the religious law (as laid out, for example, in the Book of Leviticus (3:1-2)).

And the healed one ‘went out and began to talk freely, spreading the news’. But there was a price: ‘As a result, Jesus could no longer enter a town openly but stayed outside in lonely places.’  In short, he was never far from the excluded and the outcasts. Maybe he even hung out with them in different places and times? For us mortals, extending the hand of healing to others could trigger our own inner healing.

Are there among us, today, those with an inner wound of some sort? Society treats various forms of mental illness as a form of stigma, for example. This isolates those who are affected and builds walls of separation and shame. If we are willing we can become channels of healing for others. But those who experience healing in this way, in their turn, become sources of healing in us.‘ Yet the people still came to him from everywhere.’ (v. 45)

It never stops and it shouldn’t.

(words above = 1,452)

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Further reading: notes and questions, verse by verse

Preliminaries

Here is a leper outside the Mosaic Law. Jesus does not overturn that Law but shows the Power and Love of God.  The results are striking. The unclean has been made clean and the prescribed response before the Priests is carried out (refer to Leviticus 14:1-32)

1:40: Pleading

A leper came to him begging him, and kneeling he said to him, ‘If you choose, you can make me clean.’ 

Begging has mixed connotations and not something used, generally, in regards to prayer. But we can be sure that God speaking through David will not leave us down - ‘I am here and I call, you will hear me, O God. Turn your ear to me; hear my words.’ (Psalm 16:6). We may note that again and again across the Gospel stories it is an attitude of humble trusting that characterises those healed by Jesus. From the healing of the leper to the words of forgiveness on the cross addressed to the ‘good thief’ God is open to those who seek with a humble and trusting heart.

1:41-42: Welcoming and healing

Moved with pity, Jesus stretched out his hand and touched him, and said to him, ‘I do choose. Be made clean!’  Immediately the leprosy left him, and he was made clean. 

Jesus listened. Jesus saw. Jesus was ‘moved with pity’. We can learn from this. However, some translations translate as Jesus was indignant or angry. We should not miss the critical point, here, that Jesus physically touched the leper. By doing so, Jesus made himself ritually impure in the sight of the Law. Hence, there is a subtle point: Jesus did not come to disregard the Law but to complete it by showing its true and overarching purpose – namely the loving kindness or hessed of God. In this sense, Jesus the Son of God was above the Mosaic Law. The world would never be the same again.

1:43-44: Sending forth 

After sternly warning him he sent him away at once,  saying to him, ‘See that you say nothing to anyone; but go, show yourself to the priest, and offer for your cleansing what Moses commanded, as a testimony to them.’ 

Religious rituals and protocols had to be followed. The evangelists are careful to situate the story of Jesus in the concrete religious mores of his time.

1:45: The healed one can’t stay quiet

But he went out and began to proclaim it freely, and to spread the word, so that Jesus could no longer go into a town openly, but stayed out in the country; and people came to him from every quarter.

There are times when we just cannot stay quiet! We need to tell someone what God has done in our soul. And the healing may be physical and psychological. Why not?