Overflowing Joy
Mark 1:40-45
February 15, 2009
Rev. Nancy Pfaltzgraf
"Can you spare a quarter?" the disheveled man said with his hand outstretched.
Janine looked away and walked a little faster down the sidewalk. Sally stopped in front of him.
"Why do you need change?" she asked.
"I'm hungry. I haven't eaten in two days," he answered, running a hand through his unkempt beard.
She tilted her head to one side. "A quarter won't buy you much."
The man shrugged and wiped some dried mud off his tattered jacket. "If I ask for more people don't give me anything."
"No one has stopped to help you yet today?" Sally asked, looking around at the people passing by them. Most had their eyes averted from the man. A few stared at him as they quickly walked past.
The man shook his head. "Not today. I'm awfully hungry. You have a quarter I could have?"
"Where do you live?" Sally asked.
"In the shelter most nights now. When it's warmer I sleep in the park.
"Sally," Janine said sharply from a distance down the sidewalk.
"I'll be right back," Sally said to the man.
"Sure," he replied. "You have a good day anyway, ma'am." He turned his back on her and went back to asking people for spare change.
As we pick up Mark's story, Jesus is traveling throughout
45"Any person with a serious skin disease must wear torn clothes, leave his hair loose and unbrushed, cover his upper lip, and cry out, "Unclean! Unclean!' 46As long as anyone has the sores, that one continues to be ritually unclean. That person must live alone; he or she must live outside the camp. [Leviticus 13:45-6]
Can you imagine what it would have been like? Forcibly exiled from family and friends; blocked from any form of work; forced to scavenge the garbage dumps for food; viewed with fear, suspicion, hatred and disdain; not even allowed to enter the synagogue to seek the solace and comfort of God. Fred Craddock points to this man's loneliness and sense of alienation when he says that he was living as "a corpse haunting the edges of the community he could no longer enter".[1] And if someone did happen to touch one so diseased, that person also became unclean, an outcast until the proper rituals were performed and the proper penalties paid. No wonder this seeker was uncertain how Jesus would react to his approach. Perhaps he had gone to other healers; perhaps he had sought other cures, only to be turned away.
Seeing this leper, knowing full well the brokenness, the hatred, the ignorance and the fear that demeaned this child of God and reduced him to something less than a fully alive human being, our text says Jesus was "deeply moved." The actual literal meaning of the word Mark uses here is "his guts turned within him." Some translations capture this deeper sense by saying Jesus was "angry" -not at the leper, but at the alienation, not at the physical condition but at the barrier that had been erected between this man and God. "Jesus put out his hand, touched him, and said, 'I want to. Be clean.'"[Mark 1:41] In one swift move Jesus crossed the line, tore down the barrier, dismantled the wall, identified himself with this outcast. Jesus who many times healed simply with a word; Jesus who didn't even need to be in the same physical location as the one who needed healing, Jesus reached out and touched this untouchable one and in so doing restored his dignity, his life and his relationship with God, himself and his community.
So it's little wonder that this man with leprosy who came to Jesus for healing that day responded by broadcasting his joy to anyone and everyone who would listen -even though Jesus had issued the strange order for him to keep silent. In fact there are some commentators who assert that he was the first preacher to give witness to the good news of God's love made visible in the one from
If we are honest with ourselves we know that we live with all kinds of walls and barriers too. Perhaps they don't have the force of written code behind them but they are real. We shut out those we fear. We exclude those who are different. There are people we look at with fear and suspicion just because of the clothes they wear, the body parts they have pierced or the religion they practice. A long, long time ago I read a quote in a magazine article. I don't remember who said it or what the article was about, but that quote has deeply impacted my life. It said, "What we don't understand we fear; what we fear we hate; and what we hate eventually destroys us."
"You shouldn't be talking to him," Janine whispered when Sally was close enough to hear. "That's crazy Steve Leroy."
"You know him?"
"Everyone knows about him in this town. He's a disappointment to his family and a blight on this community. He'll drink anything you give him."
"He said he is hungry," Sally said.
"Thirsty is more like it. Come on, I want to go to get a good seat at the movies." Janine took Sally's arm and started forward.
Sally shook herself free from Janine. "We've got lots of time. I've got to pick something up in the donut shop. I'll be back in a minute."
"Oh come on, Sally, we're going to be late," Janine protested, but Sally was already heading inside the nearby store.
Janine tapped her foot and stared at the sidewalk until Sally reappeared empty-handed.
"I thought you were getting something."
"I did," Sally said, walking past her to where Steve was still begging for change.
"Here," she said reaching into her pocket to pull something out. "This should get you something to eat."
"Thank you, ma'am," he said as he shook her hand. "God bless you, ma'am."
"God bless you too," Sally said as he headed off into the donut shop.
"You gave him money?" Janine said. "That was stupid. He's just going to spend it on booze or drugs."
Sally shook her head. "That was a gift card to the donut shop. He'll get himself a meal."
"Sally, you are such a sap. You can't help people like Steve Leroy. He had so much potential in his life and he wasted it. He doesn't deserve your kindness or your mercy."
"Everyone deserves kindness and mercy," Sally said.
Janine shook her head again. "You know what an attitude like that makes you?"
"Yes I do," Sally said, "a follower of Jesus."
Now as then, Christ the Healer wants to dismantle the barriers we erect and restore our relationships. Beginning with our relationship with God, moving to our relationship with our own truest self, then finally extending to the relationships we have with others, Christ desires to bring healing and restoration. With a word and a touch Jesus healed this man with leprosy and restored him to his community. Christ still meets us where we are bringing healing for us and our relationships as well. Oh, that it would happen with the clarity and the speed we see in this story from Mark!
In our mission statement we affirm that God is calling us to be "a community that lives Christ's compassion and promotes justice, healing and wholeness of life..." because we know that each and every one of us is in the process of being healed that we might be healers and loved that we might love. We have and will make mistakes. But step by step, moment by moment, touch by touch, challenge by challenge Christ the Healer stands ready to bring us healing and fill our lives with joy -overflowing joy! Amen.
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