Have you ever had head lice in your home? Your children come home from school with a note that a student was found with lice...
When Norio and I were younger, and moved to Michigan, we spent a couple of weeks in a motel before finding a more permanent home. It was only after we moved into our new home that we found out the children, all four of them, had lice.
Makes you itch just thinking about it, doesn’t it?
And look at all the assumptions which come with it - that infected people don’t have good hygiene; that they live in dirty homes; it’s their own fault that they are infected, as if they invited the lice to come and live on their heads. We try to stay away from them, as if somehow lice can jump from head to head, or person to person. [i]
Rev. Nancy Price, in Nova Scotia, tells the story of a young doctor treating a child with AIDS. It was clear this child was suffering, was alone, and because of the child's physical condition would not know love or care. This young doctor hugged and held the child. His family, and even the nurses, chastised him for showing affection and care to this terrified child. [ii]
Now, it is clear that AIDS can’t be contracted by hugging someone - but we still treat those suffering as if they are lepers. Remember the proposals to take all the AIDS sufferers and isolate them on a island? Separate everyone from the mainstream population?
And remember the pictures of Princess Diana, hugging people with AIDS, with sick and dying children on her lap? When commenting about Diana, Nelson Mandela said:
"When she stroked the limbs of someone with leprosy, or sat on the bed of a man with HIV/AIDS and held his hand, she transformed public attitudes and improved the life chances of such people, people felt if a British princess can go to a ward with HIV patients, then there's nothing to be superstitious about."[iii]
The Biblical word for leprosy includes several types of skin disease, including what we call leprosy today, but also including psoriasis, acne, rosacea, liver-coloured birthmarks. Culturally, if the outside was blemished, it was assumed that the “inside” was blemished too. Sin was seen as the root cause of all forms of leprosy.
Remember the stories about sacrifices in the temple? The people believed, because the religious leaders told them, that every animal for sacrifice had to be completely unblemished. Purity laws required it.
A leper approached Jesus - now, we don’t know what the skin condition was, or how long he had it. What seems clear is that he was not willing to remain isolated from human contact or human community. He went to Jesus and issued what was tantamount to a challenge. He said to Jesus “If you choose, you can make me clean.” and Jesus, “filled with compassion, reached out his hand and touched the man.”
There are two things I see in this text - first, that the man does not directly say to Jesus “heal me, make my body whole and unblemished.” I see it more as a challenge to set aside the norm of society which isolated people who were ill, and to accept them into the mainstream despite their disease.
‘Especially if the translation "declare me clean" is used, this leper is approaching Jesus as a priest -- one who had the power and authority to declare lepers clean and thus restore them to normal society.
Myers (Binding the Strong Man) writes about this: "The leper appears aware that his approach to Jesus, a nonpriest, was itself in violation of the symbolic system, which is why he gives Jesus a chance to refuse. It is almost as if he says, "You could declare me clean if only you would dare (1:40)."
Witherington (The Gospel of Mark) also notes: "...the primary concern is with being clean so that he can reenter Jewish society, being a whole person. This is a very Jewish way of looking at disease, by focusing on its ritual effects, whereas a pagan would have simply said, 'If you will, you can make me well.'" [p. 103]’[iv]
But there is something more. Our translation reads “reached out his hand”, but a closer translation says Jesus took the man to him. In other words, he hugged the man.
By hugging the man, even by touching him, Jesus himself then became “unclean”. So Jesus also could not go into the normal places - synagogue, marketplace. He had to remain isolated and outside as well.
Jesus touched the leper. He left the safety of his ‘clean’ world and entered the world of the leper with the simple act of touching him.
In my trip two weeks ago, I took an excursion to the city of Cartagena de Indias, in Colombia. We drove around the old part of the city, investigated the fortifications and walls; the next stop on the trip was the Plaza de Inquisicion - the Palace of the Inquisition, where the Spanish supposedly investigated witchcraft. More than two hundred people were burned as witches and heretics.
Right next to this museum is the Cathedral of Saint Peter Claver, a Jesuit known as the Patron Saint of the slaves. He was canonised in 1888.
Cartagena was a chief centre for the slave trade in the Americas for over 100 years. Ten thousand slaves poured into the port each year after crossing the Atlantic from West Africa under conditions so foul and inhuman that an estimated one-third of the passengers died in transit. Pope Paul III condemned the slave trade, Pius IX called it “supreme villainy" but it continued to flourish. Claver declared himself "the slave of the Negroes forever."
“As soon as a slave ship entered the port, Peter Claver moved into its infested hold to minister to the ill-treated and miserable passengers. After the slaves were herded out of the ship like chained animals and shut up in nearby yards to be gazed at by the crowds, Claver plunged in among them with medicines, food, bread, brandy, lemons and tobacco. With the help of interpreters he gave basic instructions and assured his brothers and sisters of their human dignity and God's saving love...Claver understood that concrete service like the distributing of medicine, food or brandy to his black brothers and sisters could be as effective a communication of the word of God as mere verbal preaching. As Peter Claver often said, "We must speak to them with our hands before we try to speak to them with our lips."[v]
We must speak with our hands before we try to speak with our lips.
What does it mean, in this day and age, to be “clean”? Is cleanliness next to godliness? If we shower every day and make sure we don’t have a bad odour, no pimples or acne, no chapped skin - are we godly people? Is that all it takes to be clean inside? Or is it the other way around? Is it that being loving and generous people (godly people) makes us clean inside? Is outer cleanliness an indication of what kind of people we are?
In the Toronto Star this weekend, there was a story about a native man who allowed his two young children to freeze to death in the midst of winter. In petitioning the judge, one of the elders commented that the man should be restored to health (ie healed) within the circle of the community - that in fact to exclude him from the community would prevent his healing, and hence the community could not be healed either.[vi]
And this is the other part of the story of the leper’s healing. In reaching out, holding him, touching him, Jesus did what the priests in the temple have refused to do - he has restored this man to community - and he sends the man back to the priests to show them. In the same way, in reaching out and touching those who are considered “lepers” today - those lepers are restored to life in community. Healing takes place - perhaps the healing of the disease if that is possible, but certainly the healing of the soul. May it be so.
[i]. Rev. Randy Quinn, from the sermon “Cleanliness is Next to Godliness”.
[ii]. Rev. Nancy Price, from the Midrash discussion list
[iii]. Nelson Mandela, November 2, 2002
[iv]. Brian P. Stoffregen Exegetical Notes, at CrossMarks Christian Resources http://www.crossmarks.com/brian/mark1x40.htm
[v]. St. Peter Claver http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Claver
[vi]. http://www.thestar.com/News/Canada/article/587620
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