Sermon Title: "Less Pity; More Anger"
Date: February 15, 2009
Minister: Rev. Charles E. Ensley, Jr.

Lesson:  Mark 1:40-45

Three vignettes which may help to set the stage for delving into today’s lesson:

First:  A few weeks ago, one of my favorite advice columnists, either Abby or Amy, had a column which I didn’t save, because I didn’t know then I was going to want to quote it, but it went something like this:  Three couples, who had traveled together before, planned to take a cruise.  Then one couple had both husband and wife laid off from their jobs.  The other two couples wondered what they should do.  Cancel the cruise in sympathy with the unemployed couple?  Express their regret, go anyway; and if so, should they send a postcard saying they missed them?  What was the compassionate response?

Second:  One of my sisters and her husband are dealing with a couple with whom they have been friends for decades.  Went to each other’s weddings, lots of holiday, birthday, anniversary dinners, parties and vacations together.  Now one party has filed for divorce.  My sister and brother-in-law are placed in the awkward position of still trying to be friends with both.  They’ve experienced one party being angry if they socialize with the other.

Third:  Any number of widows, especially widows more than widowers, have told me that after the death of their spouse, couples they’ve socialized with in the past begin to drop them from their circle of friendships.  Invitations dwindle, if they’ve even offered at all.  It seems the couples are threatened by their widow friend’s new status.

In each case, there is a place for compassionate outreach, for a caring response to an awkward, uncomfortable, hurting situation.  But what is it?

That same sense of compassionate outreach seems evident in today’s lesson, as a leper came before Jesus.  It is quite probable that the skin disease he suffered from was not the leprosy, more properly called Hansen’s disease, that was conquered in the 20th century.  Nevertheless, he suffered from some sort of visible and disfiguring disease, and would be considered a cast-off, an undesirable, an untouchable person in the Biblical era.

He comes to Jesus not asking for healing, but for “cleansing.”  There is a distinction between the two.  Even if he had been healed by Jesus, he must still appear before the religious authorities to conform to regulations concerning purity, found in Leviticus 13-14.  The leper’s interactions with others would have been severely restricted because of the contagious nature of the disease, and its impurity.  Thus, he sought cleansing from Jesus, not just healing, so that he may enter into polite society again.

Once we get a sense of the shame, the isolation, the longing to be accepted in society again that the leper surely must have felt, we have to deal with Jesus’ reaction to his plea.  “Moved with pity” sounds very nice, until we see the footnote that other ancient texts read “with anger.”  Some early texts used the Greek word we translate as “pity”; other texts used the Greek word we translate as “anger.”  While the thought of Jesus being angry at a leper who asks to be made clean may disturb us, there’s reason to believe it may be an accurate translation.  As texts were copied over and over, scribes sometimes substituted a more palatable word for any that might not fit with their image of Jesus.  Every copy then made from that edited version would preserve that change, but those made from unedited copies would preserve the earlier word.  So scholars tend to go with the more difficult translation when there’s a conflict between texts, and then try to understand why it was used. 

We commonly say that a person’s pain touches our heart.  So Jesus felt something powerful, something physical, when he looked at this man. That this was no gentle healing, no “balm in Gilead,” is indicated by other phrases in the text translated as “sternly warning” him not to tell anyone, and “sent him away at once” to offer himself to the priests for cleansing.  Perhaps Jesus is angry at the interruption, or maybe at the added suffering of the man’s isolation.  Since none of us were there, and we cannot ask now, we will never know whether Jesus had more pity or more anger.

If Jesus were not so angry with the man, except possibly for the interruption, could he not have been more angry with a society that would not accept him as he was, even disfigured?  Pheme Perkins, professor of New Testament at Boston College, writes of the social isolation and reintegration that are evident in the case of the leper:

“He cannot resume normal associations with other people until a priest has inspected his condition and he has performed the required purification rites.  Today, we react in a similar way to AIDS patients or even to persons with cancer.  Many persons battling such illnesses report that their family and friends become timid about touching them.  When they need most the human contact of a hug, a hand to hold, or a pat on the back, they find others drawing back.  Dying persons suffer even more acute forms of isolation.  When they begin to look too ill, even their closest friends stop visiting them.  We may no longer confine persons with highly communicable diseases to isolation, but the subtle forms of social isolation we practice can be just as devastating.  Jesus did not cut himself off from the leper.  Instead, he healed the man by reaching out to touch him.”  (The New Interpreter’s Bible, Abingdon Press, 1995.  Vol. VIII, p. 546.)

Twenty years ago, I received word that one of my seminary classmates was dying.  William McLinn had an entertainment career in which he donned a white suit and, with his bushy mustache, went around the U.S. and abroad impersonating Mark Twain.  Much as Hal Holbrook did, Bill had hours of Samuel Clemens’ material memorized, and you felt as if you were in the presence of Mark Twain himself when Bill performed.

Bill had contracted AIDS; how, we never asked.  A clergy friend in Orange County had Bill perform at his church, and invited some of us to his home afterwards for a reception.  Bill stood there, now in his street clothes, layer upon layer, as he was thin and cold, and spoke to us of his career and the effects of the disease which would ultimately take his life.  Then he removed his sport coat, took off his sweater, unbuttoned his flannel shirt, and showed us the Kaposi’s lesions that were visible evidence of his disease.  The memory of this came to my mind when I read of the disfigured leper approaching Jesus.

After a while, the dozen or so of us stood in a circle, holding hands, and prayed for Bill.  As I got ready to leave, realizing I would probably not see Bill again, I went up to this talented classmate of mine, put my arms around him and hugged him.  This was 1989, and fear of AIDS was still rampant.  I figured he had layers of clothes on, and I wasn’t going to contract the disease from hugging him.  It just seemed the decent thing to do.

We must ask how the church hears the story of the leper or the story of Bill McLinn today, and how it shapes our understanding of ministry, our understanding of ourselves as a compassionate community.  If we’re tempted to keep our faith personal, that is, a private relationship with Jesus that changes our lives, at least on the inside, then Fred Craddock says that’s not enough:  “To reduce the ministry of Jesus and the ministry of the church to some inner change in the soul is just that, a reduction.”  Another commentator on the Mark story agrees:  “It is not enough to relate personally to Jesus and then live off a moment of healing or connection.  Instead, we must return again and again to Jesus’ word and to the company of other followers and walk the way together.” (Megan McLenna, On Your Mark:  Reading Mark in the Shadow of the Cross) 

I know that not everyone here is enthused when I occasionally invite you to turn around and greet those sitting near you.  But do you know that there are single people here who have told me that no one had touched them in a day or two?  Or the widow who told me she comes to church to talk to someone, because it is so lonely living alone.

We need one another, a community of faith, in which we can better understand who Jesus is, and what that means in our lives; that is, what it will mean to follow Jesus faithfully.  We’re called to serve and heal and make whole, to restore and rebuild and reach out to others both like us and unlike us, perhaps not with pity, but with compassion.