The “If” and The “I do”
Mark 1:40-45
James Tissot, French, 1836-1902
A leper came to him begging him, and kneeling he said to him, “If you choose, you can make me clean.” 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. 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.” 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.
Everybody knows that Jesus had conflicts, especially with the various kinds of religious leaders of his day. Probably the most famous scene in the gospels, besides the crucifixion, is the cleansing of the temple, in which Jesus drove out the money-changers.
The picture of Jesus as a soft person, always either smiling or mystically day-dreaming, who never got angry, may be popular, but it does not come from the gospels. There were reasons for getting angry, and Jesus sometimes got angry. He was angry, remember, when the disciples tried to prevent the little children from coming to him for a blessing (Mark 10), and in this text that we read today, he is angry as well.
Puzzling Anger
The reason for Jesus’ anger in this text is puzzling; who is he angry with and what did they do wrong? Because it’s puzzling, from the beginning, the natural impulse was to soften the emotional tone of this story. People who copied Mark’s gospel started to substitute words that made more sense to them, perhaps believing that the copy they were working from had mistakes that needed to be corrected.
So, in our printed bibles we read that Jesus was “moved with pity” (1:41) by the plight of the leper before him. We would expect that of Jesus. Several times Mark tells us that the plight of the crowds that came out to Jesus moved him to pity; to have compassion on them.
But the word Mark used to describe Jesus’ emotions was not “pity” but rather it originally said that when the leper asked to be made clean “he became incensed”. (see Ched Myers, p. 153, Craig Evans, p. 75, and Joel Marcus p. 206)
There are two other sharp words that also show anger in this story. After pronouncing him clean, Mark tells us that Jesus “sternly warned him” to go show himself to the priest without saying anything to anyone else. That word “sternly warned” could be translated “silenced him” – but even that is too mild. There was anger in Jesus’ voice. But why?
The last word that clues us into the anger is the one that means “he sent him away” which Jesus did after the “stern warning.” Sometimes the word is translated “cast him out” as in “cast out” a demon. Here, it is so odd that some suggest it means “sent him back.” (Myers)
Angry at whom? Why?
Why would Jesus be angry? Who was he angry with? And if he was so angry, why did he do what the leper requested? I believe that when we understand
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what is happening in this story, we will also understand Jesus’ anger – probably we will be angry too – and we will see what this story has to do with us today, and how much we need its emotionally charged message. So let’s look at the text together.
All three of the Synoptic Gospels, Matthew, Mark and Luke have this same story. I’m sure most of us here know that the gospel writers felt free to arrange the story of Jesus’ life and deeds as they thought was best suited for their purposes. We believe that the Spirit guided them, of course, but that they were free to be creative in the way they told the story.
Matthew put this story after the Sermon on the Mount. But Mark puts it at the earliest point in Jesus’ ministry. Nothing has happened yet to make Jesus mad at the religious leaders, but it soon will. This story functions as a preview of what is coming.
The Priests
Soon in Mark’s gospel we will see Jesus in conflict with the priests who ran the temple. Why? Because it was not working the way it was intended at all. Back in the days of Moses, the tribe of Levi was supposed to be the tribe of priests. They were the tribe that received no territory in the promised land. How would they survive? They were to live from the income of the tithes and sacrificial offerings collected at the temple.
That was hundreds of years earlier. By the time of Jesus, the men of the high-priestly family that was controlling the temple were the elite class. They were wealthy. Many were large estate owners.
The Peasants
By contrast, many of the common people had lost their inheritance of land. They typically worked as day-laborers for the landed gentry, like the priests. Poverty was rampant, and severe.
In the old tribal days, if you were a small farmer in Israel, raising goats, sheep, wheat and other crops, paying a tithe to the temple, that is, ten percent of your income, was not burdensome. And if you had a skin disease that healed, you could afford to give the required lamb for sacrificing when your cleansing ritual was complete, as the Law of Moses required (Lev. 13-14).
But, things had radically changed. In the time of Jesus, if you were a landless day-laborer, working for wages, and having to exchange your currency at the
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temple for temple-dollars with which to buy a whole lamb to sacrifice in order to be pronounced clean by the priest – well it was simply out of the question. And who benefitted from the exchange rates, and who got part of the sacrificial lamb to eat for supper? The wealthy land-owning priests did!
The tithe had become a temple tax. The whole system kept enriching the priests at the expense of the peasants, whose daily life continually exposed them to things that made them ritually impure. Even when they stayed healthy they were indebted to the temple to bring purification sacrifices. Getting sick, especially with what they called “leprosy” – made matters even worse.
The Sense of Anger
So, with the knowledge of how the temple system worked, and who was benefitting from it, knowing that there will be conflicts ahead in the gospel of Mark, we are now prepared to understand how this story of Jesus’ anger makes sense.
A man comes to Jesus who has a skin disease that, in those days, they called leprosy, which made him religiously impure and isolated him from society. He could not work as a day-laborer; he had to stay away from people. Probably he had barely enough nutrition, on a daily basis, to keep himself alive. Who knows how his family is surviving?
He comes to Jesus, humbly, and says,
1:40 ““If you choose, you can make me clean.””
Notice, he doesn’t say “if you choose you can heal me” (which he could have said) rather, he says “If you choose, you can make me clean.”
“Clean” means ritually, ceremonially pure. If you were Jewish, this would mean he was asking Jesus to make the pronouncement that he had finished his cleansing rituals and sacrifices, and was now ready to re-enter the society of friends, family, and the working world.
But only a priest could make such a pronouncement. This means when he says, “if you choose” he is almost saying, “if you dare to.” If you dare to assume you have authority that only a priest has, you can make the pronouncement yourself.” It’s a huge “if”.
“I do choose”
Jesus says, “I do choose.” In effect, saying “I choose to engage in the “war of myths.” “I choose to take on the whole system that has now become a source of pain rather than a source of healing.” And he did.
1:41 “Being incensed, Jesus stretched out his hand and touched him, and said to him, “I do choose. Be made clean!”
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Not only has Jesus challenged the temple-system by making the priest’s pronouncement, he has also challenged the purity-system by touching an un-touchable leper. According to that system, now Jesus too should be considered “unclean.”
But Jesus has broken those systems. The leper is now clean of his leprosy and has no ritual uncleanness to spread to Jesus or to anybody else.
Sending him back
So Jesus, still burning with anger, it says, “casts him out” – unless it means “sent him back.” Which is exactly what Jesus does. Back to whom? Jesus sends the man, who is now clean, back to the priests (“priests” is plural – all the priests) as a witnesses. Not as a witness to them, but rather it says literally, “as a witness against them.” (This is exactly what the grammar means, cf. Evans, p. 77)
The leper has already been to the priests. But he is poor; he could not pay the huge price of the lamb for his cleansing ritual. So they sent him way, unclean, unable to work, unable to associate with people, even with family.
Of course the whole thing made Jesus angry. He was angry at the injustice. He was angry at the inhumanity. He was angry at the pretentious, self-righteous hypocrisy that was going on at the temple. Angry at the suffering it was causing.
The Trajectory of Torah and Prophets
Jesus was angry because he had absorbed the message of Torah, and the trajectory of the message of the prophets. He knew what was important to God and what wasn’t. He knew, as Micah said, that no amount of sacrifices – not even thousands – could compensate for injustice and oppression. Jesus believed and practiced what the prophet Micah had said:
“With what shall I come before the Lord?… Will the LORD be pleased with thousands of rams?… He has shown you, O mortal what is good and what does the LORD require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?” (Micah 6:6-8)
Meaning For us
What does this mean for us?
Fact number one for Christians is that we believe Jesus shows us God. Jesus shows us what God cares about, what he values, and what God wants done.
We see first that Jesus shows us that God cares deeply about human suffering. This is constant and undeniable. It shows up on every page of the gospels. If you are suffering today, Jesus shows us that God cares.
If you are suffering as the result of other people’s actions, God cares deeply. You can come to him, like that leper, and you can know that he is there to reach out his hand to you and touch you with his healing love. Jesus shows us that God cares about suffering.
Jesus shows us that God hates injustice. Jesus shows us how God feels about systems that keep people alienated, structures that keep people discriminated against, institutional inhumanity and oppression. Jesus shows us that God hates it when people are made to be and to feel excluded, even when the whole society accepts it as simply “the way things are.”
Go, Tell, Do
Now, we are not like the clean leper in one way. Mark used this story in this place also to show why Jesus stayed out of cities, sticking to the country-side. After word got out that Jesus had intentionally subverted the priest’s control of the purity system and its debt structure, he was a marked man. Announcing what Jesus was all about was not something that the leper was supposed to do.
But that moment is long gone. Jesus has died and has risen again, showing us God’s vindication of his “beloved Son.” So now, we are indeed charged with the mandate to go and tell the good news of the gospel! The time is fulfilled. Repent – change your thinking; the Kingdom of God is here.
And God is calling us all to be his agents of justice, mercy and cleansing. The world is still making certain groups of people lepers and keeping them down. We are called to take up where Jesus left off, extending our touch to every leper, ever situation of injustice, every system of oppression, every victim of inhumanity!
We will fight against unjust laws that humans make for the sake of their own advantage or their own prejudices. We will join in solidarity with those who have been excluded as modern lepers, be they poor, or gay, or Hispanics or ex-cons, or addicted, or by someone’s definition, “disabled.” And we will be the hands of Jesus, the hands of God, reaching out in healing love.
