“To Heal Or Not To Heal”

Mark 1:40-45

February 15, 2009

 

Dave Russell, First Baptist Church of Ames, Iowa USA

 

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Have you ever had to make a decision, and after having some difficulty in making a choice, you sat down and made a pro and con list?  You know, list the reasons this would be a good idea and the reasons this would be a bad idea and use this to help you in coming to a decision.

 

Like whether to buy a new red 2009 Jaguar XKR convertible.  The retail price, with all of the available options, is about $109,000 but in today’s economy you could probably get one for only $95,000.  On the pro side, it is an awesome car.  Men would admire you, women would turn to look as you drove by, it would bring instant status, it could do wonders for your self-esteem.  On the down side, the gas mileage isn’t that great, your auto insurance would go up, especially if you have been driving a ’94 Corolla, and you would have to sell your house to make the payments.  And as expensive as the car might be, the cost at home for making such a decision would be even higher.  So, while there are pros and cons, the scales tilt slightly toward not purchasing the car.

 

Our scripture today, continuing in Mark’s gospel, has Jesus healing a leper.  Now, at first glance, this may not seem like a tough decision – I mean this is Jesus, and this is what he does.  Of course he healed the man.  He didn’t even have to give it a second thought.

 

Except that there are some clues in the story that tell us this was not so easy.  There were actually some good reasons NOT to heal this man.

 

The story begins with the man begging Jesus to heal him.  Begging.  In other places, Jesus will ask someone, “Do you want to be healed?” or “What do you want me to do?”  Not here.  It is obvious.  The man is very proactive and begs for healing.  He says to Jesus, “If you choose, you can make me clean.”  He has no doubts.  If you choose, you can heal me.  The man had faith – if not exactly faith in Jesus, at least faith in what Jesus could do for him.

 

Verse 41 says, “Moved with pity, Jesus stretched out his hand and touched him, and said, “I do choose.  Be made clean!”

 

Jesus was moved with pity.  Except that you might read in the footnotes for verse 41 something like, “other ancient authorities read anger.”  Jesus was move with pity – or maybe, moved with anger.

 

One of my favorite classes in seminary was Textual Criticism.  No, that doesn’t mean you criticize the text -- “Well, I think that text is pretty slopppy and lacks dramatic interest.”  When the New Testament is translated from the Greek – it didn’t just fall from heaven in King James English, as some people seem to believe – you have to first decide which Greek text to translate.  We do not have any of the original autographs.  We don’t have the original copy of Mark.  Textual Criticism deals with the fact that the many early Greek copies we have are not all alike. 

 

Since some of you are into school here, I think I’ll do a little Textual Criticism 101 this morning.  When dealing with an instance in which there are differences among early copies of the Bible, how do you decide which is the more original reading?

 

Well, there are two kinds of evidence: external evidence and internal evidence.  External evidence is looking at which manuscripts have a given reading.  It’s not a matter of counting – 1000 manuscripts from the tenth century do not necessarily have the same weight as a few manuscripts from the 3^rd or 4^th century.

 

Why would early copies of scripture have differences?  Usually, these are not major differences.  Don’t panic, there are no differences that would mean big changes in theology or belief.  But think about how these early Bibles were copied.  It was by hand.  There were no printing presses, and no one thought to save the Gospel of Mark on disk.  Imagine making copies of the Bible by hand.  This is your job.  You would either copy directly from another Bible, or maybe you are a monk working in a monastery and one monk reads the text while several others in the room are writing.  Sometimes you make a mistake.  Sometimes you hear wrong.  If you are the only one of ten in the room who made the error, it would be easy to see which copy has the mistake, except that maybe your copy is copied hundreds of times while the other 9 copies were confiscated and destroyed.

 

Lots of things happen in making copies.  Maybe somebody wrote a note in the margin, and a person comes along later and thinks it is part of the actual text.  This happens.

 

Anyway, looking at which manuscripts contain which readings helps in determining which is the better reading – if the earliest manuscripts known to be most accurate have a given reading, that is likely the more original reading. 

 

There is also internal evidence.  Sometimes, a change cannot be explained by a letter or two that is miscopied or by similar sounding words that were misunderstood.  What we have in Mark 1:42 is one of these cases.  The convention is that the more difficult reading is likely the more original.  It seems a lot more likely that someone thought “Jesus was filled with anger” was too hard, and made it “Jesus was filled with compassion,” than the other way around.  Unless it is just way out there, the more difficult reading is likely the more original.  Another dictum is that the shorter reading is likely to be more original – sometimes a copyist might add a word or two of explanation or to make the sentence flow a bit more smoothly.  Along with things like considering the vocabulary and context, this is the internal evidence.

 

The question we are dealing with here, of whether Jesus is moved with pity or anger, is one where the external evidence and internal evidence are at odds.  The best early manuscripts have “pity,” but there is also some support for anger.  On the other hand, it is a lot easier to see why someone would change “anger” to “pity” than the other way around.

 

Scholars are almost at a tossup on this.  The NRSV reads “pity” and NIV has “compassion,” but the New English Bible has “indignation.”

 

OK, those of you who are not into school can wake up now.  A man with leprosy comes to Jesus, falls to his knees, and begs Jesus to heal him.  What would Jesus feel?  It’s not hard to imagine that he might feel both compassion and anger.

 

Why anger?  Well, it’s just the first chapter of Mark and already there have been countless healings.  He healed a man with an unclean spirit, and his fame began to spread.  He healed Simon’s mother-in-law, and pretty soon everybody in Capernaum is there.  They bring many who are sick or possessed by demons, and Jesus healed and cast out demons late into the night.  The next morning, he tries to get away to a quiet place for a time of prayer, and his disciples tell him that everyone is looking for him.  Jesus says that he is going to other towns so he can proclaim the message there as well, and he goes through Galilee preaching and casting out demons.  And now, this man with leprosy comes along.

 

Does the word “tired” come to mind?  Jesus could not get away from needy people.  He wanted to spread his message, but his message of the coming Kingdom of God was getting lost with all of the healings and the hoopla that came with it.  The paparazzi were there at every turn. 

 

Jesus was human, after all.  The circus atmosphere that was surrounding him was keeping him from his first mission, of spreading his message, of preaching the Good News.

 

It is interesting that after healing the man, he tells him to go to the priest and follow the instructions of the law for one who has been healed of leprosy.  And then he tells him not to tell anybody about what had happened.  In fact, he sternly warned him to say nothing to anyone – and there is no textual disagreement about that.  Now it is a little ridiculous of Jesus to expect someone who has been healed of leprosy not to say anything to anybody about being healed.  How could you not say anything?  But that is what he tells the man.

 

Why would he say that?  Perhaps because Jesus was already getting a reputation as a miracle worker, a healer.  And this may have been true, but it wasn’t the whole story.  He wanted people to hear his message, not just come to see the show.

 

Jesus had good reason for not wanting word of the healing to get out.  Because we read at the end of this passage that the man went out and spread the word, and it got to the point where Jesus could no longer go into a town openly.  He had to stay out in the country, and still people came to him from everywhere.

 

Should Jesus heal this man, or not?  There were actually good reasons not to.  To heal him would add to the fame and celebrity surrounding Jesus and make it more difficult for him to attend to his calling of sharing the Good News of God’s kingdom.  There was another very big reason not to heal the man: he was unclean.  He had leprosy.

 

Nobody would want to be near anyone with leprosy.  He was ritually unclean, and there was great fear of the disease.  It was a terrible disease that kills pain sensation, rendering the patient insensitive and unaware of injury and infection.  Beyond the physical devastation was the mental and social and spiritual pain.  You had to live apart from the rest of society because you were unclean.  You had to leave your family.  There was an enormous social stigma.  You couldn’t go to the temple because you were unclean.  In fact, if you were near other people you had to yell out, “Unclean” as a warning to them.  It’s hard to underestimate what this could do to a person’s psyche.

 

So the man’s actions in going to Jesus, falling on his knees, begging him for healing, and saying, “I know you can do it if you will – if you choose” – is amazing.  It is the audaciousness born of desperation.

 

The man with leprosy puts is right to Jesus – you can heal me, if you choose.  Jesus has a choice.

 

Why not heal?  Because it would mean being identified with a leper.  It would mean promoting the view of himself as a miracle worker and increasing the sideshow atmosphere.  It would mean more crowds who listened to less of his message.  There were plenty of lepers, plenty of sick people, plenty of folks whose spirits were troubled, plenty of people in need of healing, and he certainly couldn’t heal all of them.  The demands on him and the way his message and ministry seemed to be getting sidetracked were an aggravation.

 

Why heal?  Just one reason, really.  Here was another human being, a child of God, who was in pain, and he could help.  He could heal him.

 

And so he did.  “I do choose,” said Jesus.  “Be made clean!”  And what really strikes me is the way he goes about it.  Jesus stretched out his arm and touched him.

 

He didn’t have to do this.  He could have healed from a distance.  We even have the story of a centurion who came to Jesus with a servant who was paralyzed.  He said to Jesus, “Just say the word and he will be healed.”  Jesus was amazed at the centurion’s faith, and the servant was healed.  In this instance, Jesus did not even see the person he healed – he just said the word.  He certainly did not have to touch this leper.  So why did he?

 

Perhaps because the mean was not only in need of physical healing.  He had been ostracized.  For no telling how long no one would touch him, or even get near him.  But Jesus reached out and touched this man – breaking social taboos and in fact making himself ritually unclean, if only temporarily - unless he became infected with leprosy, in which he would be permanently unclean.  Jesus not only risked making his future ministry more difficult, he took a big personal risk and paid a personal cost, but he did this to bring healing of both body and spirit.

 

Jesus had reason to be angry, and I don’t doubt that he was.  Some commentators go with the “angry” reading and argue that Jesus was angry at the power of evil, angry at sickness, angry at the disease, and angry at the way society would treat someone who was suffering in this way.  I wouldn’t argue with any of that either.  But while he may have been angry, Jesus also showed great compassion.  He set aside his own need, his own reputation, his own comfort, for the sake of this man.

 

This is a great story if you like things like textual criticism.  It is a great story about the humanity of Jesus and the compassion of Jesus and the power of Jesus to heal.  It is a great story of Jesus breaking boundaries and reaching out to the outcast.  But if we just leave it at any of these things, we are missing the bigger point. 

 

Because how often do we have the power to bring healing?  And how often must we decide whether to put ourselves on the line, as Jesus did, to bring healing to another?

 

Nancy Price remembered when her son was an intern at a children’s hospital.  He was treating a young boy in the earlier days of the AIDS crisis.  This boy was 12 years old and had contracted the disease from a blood transfusion.  This intern recognized how lonely and afraid the child was, and he reached out and hugged this boy.

 

And he was berated for it.  The nurses got on to him.  Even his wife was angry at him.  What was he thinking?  How could he take such a risk?

 

How many people are in the place of that 12 year old boy?  Hurting, afraid, longing for love and acceptance.  While that young doctor worked to bring healing to that 12-year old boy’s body, through his action she also worked to bring healing to his spirit.

 

I wouldn’t be surprised if every one of us knows someone in need of healing – the kind of healing that we have the opportunity to help bring about. 

 

Who are the people we know in need of acceptance and belonging?  Who are the people others look down on whom we have the opportunity to show love and understanding?  Who are the folks we shy away from because we are guarding our reputation?  And how must we reach out and touch them? 

 

It’s our choice to make.

 

 

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