Won’t Stay in His Lane

Mark 1:40-45
February 4, 2024

William G. Carter  

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.

My friend’s name was Tony. We met on the school bus. I think it was second grade. The big yellow bus picked up me and my sister first. We bounced down about a quarter mile, then took the sharp left turn onto Bodle Hill Road. From there, it was a straight shot to our elementary school.

Tony stood at the last stop before the school. We were the same age, same grade, same homeroom. There were differences. He was short and Italian. I grew too fast for my blue jeans and a Celt. Tony loved to play sports. I was usually the last to get picked for the kickball team. He was a Lutheran; one day, he was carrying a Bible to school and showed me the pictures between Old and New Testaments. I said I was a Presbyterian, and confessed we didn’t have a lot of pictures in our Bibles.

The friendship continued for a while. There’s a snapshot of the two of us standing on the sidewalk outside my parent’s house. We were getting ready for our first Boy Scout camp out. Big grins on our faces, boots laced up, backpacks loaded with candy bars. The truck dropped us off at the edge of the forest. As we hiked in, my long legs carrying me faster than his, another Scout a few years older came alongside and said something just loud enough for me to hear. He said, “How come you’re bunking with that kid? Doesn’t the smell turn your stomach?”

He didn’t say this to be mean. He was being descriptive. Tony’s body had a strong odor. Sometimes it was stronger than others. I had tried to ignore it because he was my friend. We liked the same baseball team. We got along easily. He was often at my side in Scout meetings, and sometimes took pity on me and picked me for his kickball team.

That was the moment I realized that Tony stood by my side because nobody else ever stood by his side. It probably had to do with the odor. The odor came from a terrible rash that covered the back of his neck. I am no dermatologist and can’t tell you what it was. Yet it persisted. It was there for years. People stayed away from him. And at this point in my ministerial career, I would declare if Tony had lived in the first century, he would have been diagnosed with leprosy.

Did you see the footnote at the bottom of the Bible page? “The terms leper and leprosy can refer to several diseases.” All of them were visible on the skin. Each was inexplicable, happening without prediction or cause. The effects were disfiguring. They held the threat of contagion. Neighbors were frightened. Families were separated, all because of an unknown disease.

A thousand years before Jesus, Moses had laid down the law. If you are bored next week after the football season concludes, you can read all of that in the 13th and 14th chapters of Leviticus. We learn a lot of things: leprosy was a catch-all word for skin infections, ulcers, psoriasis, eczema, dermatitis, and what we now call “Hansen’s Disease.” Leviticus declares they are signs of impurity. You are considered unclean. You are cast out of the community, forced into isolation, and segregated to live with strangers with whom you have absolutely nothing in common except the same diagnosis. Leviticus also says, that in ancient days, the religious leaders were the gatekeepers for health or sickness. They alone could declare someone was getting well. Or they could say, “Go away, you smell.” “Go away, your appearance scares us.” Go away, we don’t want to catch what you have.”

We don’t have to survey our recent past to see what the threat of contagion will do. We know the stories of loved ones separated from us by covid-19. These days, they might be banished to the guest room. Before the vaccines were created, they may have spent weeks in the hospital. And it’s only the latest of a litany of diseases through the ages. Each illness invades a human body, often unrelated to prior behavior.

In prior days, it was presumed you got sick because you did something wrong, the same way some parents exhorted their kids to zip up their winter coats, so they didn’t catch a cold. I think of the old fable of Job, the tragic man who lost it all. In his misery, three friends descended on him to say, “What did you do wrong, to end up so low?” Or as the twelve disciples asked Jesus about a man born blind: did he sin or did his parents sin? What went wrong with him?

But listen to what the man with leprosy says to Jesus: “If you will, you can make me clean.” He responds, “I will.” Not merely, “I can,” but “I will.” Because it is God’s will. God wants us to be healed, restored, purified, and uninvaded by disease. That is the holy will of God. Jesus comes to make known the will of God. Sometimes we call him “the Great Physician,” not only because he healed so many people in first-century Palestine, but because he is the patron of every physician, nurse, PA, psychologist, dietician, and dermatologist who works out rhe healing work of God. Wellness is God’s will. God doesn’t want us to be sick, much less separated by our sickness.

But there are some curious details in the healing story for today, details that suggest even more about the will of God. Here’s one: Jesus isn’t very happy about the situation. There’s a variant manuscript, early in New Testament days, suggesting that he healed the man out of “anger,” not “compassion.” That’s also mentioned in the footnotes. “Anger” is a curious motivation for healing somebody.

It gets clearer a verse or two later when Mark says, “he sternly warned” the man. That’s another moment where the English translation vastly softens what Mark is saying. No, it was harsher than a “stern warning.” Jesus was “boiling with indignation.” Why?

The scholar Ched Myers reads the text closely. He finds a hint that the man with the disease already been to see the priest, that he has made the three-day trek from the outskirts of Capernaum to Jerusalem, that he tried to get an audience with one of the holy men, that he was refused and sent away. So here he is, denied the health care that his own scriptures promised, and all he can do in desperation is to throw himself at the feet of Jesus. Jesus sees all of this, and he “snorts with rage.”

As Jesus heals the man, he judges a religious system that was spiritually bankrupt. The leaders professed to love God and love neighbor, but the truth is, they ignore God and push away neighbor. It’s as if, in the parlance of our own day, the religious establishment off and says, “You’re on your own, so handle your own medical care.” Something like having to wait three months after a heart attack to get a cardiologist appointment.

Jesus will not let this stand. He heals the man with the disease and says, “Go back down there to Jerusalem, show yourself to that priest, and demand he restores you to complete fellowship.” Why? Jesus says, “Let this be your testimony to them.” OR to put it another way, let this be a testimony against them.

A second detail: the man doesn’t go. Doesn’t feel he needs to go. Sure, Jesus is honoring the old rules in Leviticus 13 and 14, saying, “Show your body to the priest. Get your card punched. Get the official release.” Yet why does he need to be seen by a priest when he has been seen by Jesus. Jesus has made him well, and therefore clean. He has been restored.

In effect, Jesus is far better than a cumbersome system of health care that has no regard for the sick. An unconcerned system sends the unhealthy back out to the waiting room to say, “Let us know if you’re feeling better.” By contrast, Jesus affirms the person is more valuable than any broken system. He makes it known there is no illness that separates the person from the love of God.

And then, this third and most inflammatory detail: how does Jesus heal the man? By his powerful word, of course, and through his holy intention, “I will” – and also by his touch. He touches the man with the skin disease. He clasps him with his hands. He attaches himself to him. He risks catching what that guy had. He takes on systemic impurity to release a man from systemic impurity.

Which is to say, he steps over the old rules of Leviticus:

He steps over the invisible barrier between illness and wellness.
He steps over the wall between sterility and infection.
He steps over the fear that separates clean and unclean.
He steps over the distinction of religious hierarchy and neighborly care.
He steps over the division between religious rules and the power of God.
He steps over the breach between hopeless despair and the possibility of health.
He steps over the separation between isolation and connection.

Which is to say, Jesus refuses to stay in his lane and merely be a nice preacher. Mark said this was going to happen. On the very first day, the sky was ripped open from the other side. God came down in power, like a dove that settled on Jesus, this Jesus, who works tirelessly to claim this world as God’s dominion. Some think God is staying up in heaven. Some believe God ought to stay up in heaven. Some think God is never coming down. But what do you do if you discover Jesus has really come – and God is here?

You live. That’s what you do. You live as if God rules heaven and earth. Like my old friend Tony. He’s gone now. He slipped away two years ago from a long bout of cancer. That illness did not keep him from returning from high school reunions, where he was affirmed as the kindest person in our reunion class. I do not grieve but celebrate how a childhood illness cracked opened his own heart in compassion. Tony kept going to his Lutheran churches wherever he lived. He served as a youth group leader, and a volunteer visitor to men in prison. He trained as a Stephen Minister to visit the sick and troubled of the congregations to which he belonged.

Obviously, he kept reading that Bible that he sneaked onto the school bus and looked at more than the pictures. His faith completed him as a human being. And he lived that chapter where it is written that nothing shall separate from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. Nothing, not illness, not persecution, not anything at all.

Such is the will of the God who, in the fullest sense, wants us to be well. Thanks be to Christ, who reaches out to us.


(c) William G. Carter. All rights reserved.