6th Sunday after The Epiphany

The Rev. Tommy Thompson

The Sixth Sunday after Epiphany

Mark 1:40-45

12 February 2012

"Ripping Off The Signs"

Our world is full of signs...yield...stop...walk...don’t walk...go...caution, steep grade...or ones like:  hazardous materials: don’t touch.  Danger -- Keep Out!  No Trespassing!  Do not Enter!  We know when we see these signs that we better keep our distance.  There is something we don’t want to be in contact with just beyond those signs...we enter at our own risk...

In our Gospel lesson for today, we get to look in on a story of similar signs that existed in the first century world.  The sign here is more like that second list than the first... hazardous materials: don’t touch.  Danger -- Keep Out!  No Trespassing!  Do not Enter!  Because these are the kinds of signs that you wore in the first century Jewish world if you were understood to have leprosy.  

And I say understood to have leprosy intentionally.  If you had any number of problems with the appearance of your skin, you were a candidate for leprosy and could very possibly be wearing a new sign around your neck in the very near future: hazardous materials: don’t touch.  Danger -- Keep Out!  No Trespassing!  Do not Enter! 

Leprosy was a “catchall” term for a wide variety of diseases or problems with the skin.  If you had any kind of abnormality happening with your skin, you were to present yourself to the priest.  The priest would inspect the skin and let you know whether you should be in confinement for seven days and then be made clean after a good wash of your clothes or if you indeed have what they understood to be one of the many defects of the skin that they labeled a leprous disease.  

That’s enough for right now about the first century catchall disease of leprosy.  Let’s look at the unfolding of the story in Mark’s Gospel.  

Last week Mark left us with Jesus doing what he was called to do: going ‘elsewhere’...to new and challenging places full of vulnerability rather than dwelling in the bliss of past missional success, solid church statistics, fame and popularity...In response to the disciples’ reminding Jesus of what just took place at Simon’s house and how popular he is becoming back there, Jesus stays on task and tells them: “Let us go elsewhere, into the neighboring market towns, so that i may preach there too.  For it is for this very reason that I have come.”  

And just look where “elsewhere” takes them!  It takes them to the fringes of society -- you know that part of town...the dark part of town where you roll those windows up, lock the doors and get through it as quickly as possible...the part of town where you see the most “no trespassing signs...”  the “Do not enter” crime scene tape...”  the “condemned” sign hanging on the doors of a many run-down houses and buildings.  No one likes to go there...yet that’s exactly where we find Jesus in the very next verse. Well, listen to what the text says, “And a leper approaches Jesus, begging him and bowing before him, saying, “If you are willing, you are able to cleanse me.”  Whoa.  Do you see what’s going on here?

Firstly, Jesus obviously isn’t in the ‘good‘ part of town, if you will, because he’s in a place where a leper is approaching him.   Secondly...a leper is approaching him...and did you catch what this leper said to Jesus?!  He didn’t ask for healing did he?  What did he ask for?  And the nerve...did you notice what the leper didn’t say....?   

....Maybe a refresher is in order.  

The book of Leviticus gives the details of all these situations of being ceremonially clean or unclean.  Leviticus 13 and 14 spend many verses laying out the rules for this whole leprosy thing...if you’re interested in learning the ins and outs of it, i recommend you take a look at that later today.  For our purposes this morning, however, we need to be reminded of the consequences of being declared ‘unclean‘ by the priest, and that is laid out in Leviticus 13:38-39:

"The person who has the leprous disease shall wear torn clothes and let the hair of his head be disheveled; and he shall cover his upper lip and cry out, ‘Unclean, unclean.’ He shall remain unclean as long as he has the disease; he is unclean. He shall live alone; his dwelling shall be outside the camp."

Now do you see how having a person with leprosy approaching means you are in the fringes of society?  Do you see the problem with what the leper said to Jesus? But do you also see the marvel in what the leper said to Jesus?  First of all, he didn’t ask for healing...it’s quite possible the actual “disease” wasn’t really even making the person that uncomfortable.  His problem is that he is socially ostracized.  Imagine being driven away from your kin, your friends...all that is familiar...having to keep your hair in disarray, wearing torn clothes, covering your upper lip with while you cry out to those approaching “Unclean!  Unclean!”  Of course he wants to be made clean...and he doesn’t probably really care what his skin looks like after the fact...he just wants to be declared clean so that he can have his life restored.  

I can’t help but to think of the Rascal Flatt’s song, “Backwards.”  

“I was sitting on a wooden stool

In a barbecue joint in Tennessee

When this old boy walked in

And he sat right down next to me

I could tell he'd been through some hard times

There were tear stains on his old shirt

And he said you wanna know what you get

When you play a country song backwards

You get your house back

You get your dog back

You get your best friend Jack back

You get your truck back

You get your hair back

Ya get your first and second wives back

Your front porch swing

Your pretty little thing

Your bling bling bling and a diamond ring

Your get your farm and the barn and the boat and the Harley

First night in jail with Charlie

Sounds a little crazy, a little scattered and absurd

But that's what you get when you play a country song backwards”

The leper wanted to have the country song played backwards -- he wanted his life back!  Wouldn’t you!?  Wouldn’t anyone who ever wrote a country song...well you know what i mean!  This man has lost his dignity...he has literally had his identity transformed.  The signs have been placed all over him...when you look at him the signs speak so loudly:  Hazardous materials: don’t touch.  Danger -- Keep Out!  No Trespassing!  Do not Enter!  He’s tired of the red lights...the caution lights...he wants the green light back into the community of faith he once called home.

So we can understand that...but wow, what risk this “unclean” person takes.  Jesus is obviously a Jewish leader...he had disciples with him...the law tells the leper what he’s supposed to do when others approach...you hide that upper lip and you cry out “unclean, unclean!”  So as to signal to them -- “Danger! Keep Away!  Hazardous Materials!”  What nerve this man has...he does the opposite...he approaches and begs and bows and says “you can make me clean, if you will.”   

Isn’t that amazing...i wonder what it was that signaled to him that this was hopeful action and not action to ostracize him even more?  Was it the look of our Redeemer? His glow?  How’d this one outcast know that this Jesus was worth such a great risk?  Isn’t it amazing in Mark’s Gospel how it’s always the “little ones” who reveal true faith...who reveal to us the heart of what discipleship is really all about?  Just like in the story of Namaan in 2 Kings...it is the servant of Namaan’s wife who reveals that there is hope in a prophet in Samaria named Elisha...it was Namaan’s servants who gave him the nudge to go and do what the prophet said...who knows, it might work and you might be healed!    Something about the greatness of God being revealed through the least of these, huh...

And boy did the risk pay off...Jesus didn’t shun him...he didn’t report him...the text says Jesus’ response was one of anger.  Jesus was incensed, as the Common English Bible puts it...which is likely much closer to the original meaning than what we hear in the NRSV in this text.  This Jesus who has come to proclaim the Gospel of deliverance and restoration -- to bring about new creation -- demonstrates that anger is an appropriate response to everything that stands in the way of His people receiving that which he came to do -- restoration and deliverance.  Jesus’ enemy is evil, the demonic, that which  human sin has caused to run rampant in God’s world...and with every raring of it’s ugly head, the Son of God’s love burns into rage against evil to overcome it once and for all for the sake of the deliverance and restoration of all that is which came into being through Him.  

Jesus responds with anger...anger of the way evil ultimately causes this child of God to wear a sign he was never meant to wear.  So Jesus rips the sign off his neck and throws it away and invites the former leper now made clean to go and present himself to the priest just as Leviticus lays it out so that he might be declared clean and have that country song played backwards -- get his life back!  

Oh but the man couldn’t contain himself...the text doesn’t tell us whether or not the man went to the temple or not...it just reports that even though Jesus told him to keep silent about the nature of how he was made clean, he cannot contain the good news within himself and becomes the picture of what discipleship is all about -- “He went out and began to proclaim openly and everywhere and to spread the word so that Jesus was no longer able to enter publicly into a town, but stayed out in the deserted places.  And people were coming to him from all over the place.”  

We could interpret the consequence of the former leper’s Gospel spreading in many ways and many commentators do interpret it in many ways.  But what I see going on here is Jesus feeling the overwhelming need to stay in the fringes and keep on ripping those keep away! signs off the chests of his precious people.  And in doing this, he reveals the reason of his coming to us.  People hear the good news and they’re coming from all over the place...out into the fringes/the deserted places where the unclean dwell...a revival has done broke out in the bad part of town...uh oh. I bet the disciples never expected that!  They were hoping Jesus would pitch tent at Simon’s house...but now these people won’t stop playing country songs backwards out in the “pad part of society!”  What will the religious authorities think of that!??  The rest of the Gospel of Mark will let us in on that bit of news.

...You know, I wonder...who are those we, the religious community continue to hang signs on?  Who do we tell folks to keep away from?  Who wears the “hazardous materials: don’t touch.  Danger -- Keep Out!  No Trespassing!  Do not Enter!” signs in our own setting in time?  You think leprosy only exists back then in “bible times?” Oh, Leprosy is still alive and well...it just isn’t necessarily a skin disease any longer.  ask your african american brother and sister who lived in the south during the evils of segregation.  Just go and talk with your sister or brother who struggles with homosexuality...go and talk to those who live in this country and are of middle-eastern descent. Ask about the signs we’ve created for them to wear!  I don’t know who the leper is to you and me...but God does...whoever we’ve forced to wear a sign...imagine who that is...

Now look at the front page of your bulletin...that is their outstretched hand...that blurried figure in front of them ... that is you  ... that is me.  You can, if you choose, be the hand of Christ and reach out and embrace your sister, your brother...you can rip the signs off...Will we?

Amen.