The Leprous Chatterbox.
Jesus sent him away at once with a strong warning: “See that you don’t tell this to anyone. But go, show yourself to the priest and offer the sacrifices that Moses commanded for your cleansing, as a testimony to them.”
Instead, he went out and began to talk freely, spreading the news.
Usually, healing stories occur in the open in the presence of crowds. This is an important element when we reflect on the nature of healing. It’s not just about the healer and the healed. There is always a wider circle of people involved and you see this dynamic very clearly in a regional parish like ours. It’s one of the many joys of the connectivity of a community. But, it's reassuring to know that no matter how many people there are around you, Jesus is always present when we call out to him; In the scriptures “the crowd” often seems to denote those drawn by curiosity about the “miracle worker”; they want to “see” a performance. They are not drawn to conversion or repentance, but as with all the preaching and teaching of Jesus and his disciples, the invitation is always offered. The healing story today therefore presents a stark contrast to the norm: Jesus and the leper are alone and it is only as the leper begins his pilgrimage to Jerusalem that others are made aware of the miracle that has happened.
It is easy to understate the power of Jesus’ two simple words to the leper. This is not just some glib, comforting, gooey ‘there there’. Jesus speaks the action – “Be healed”. In saying these two words The Master is personal and He is fully engaged with the leper. It is an intimate action and an intimate phrase. It is God fully engaged with the leper and therefore fully engaged with us. In the suffering and isolation of the leper and in the isolation that our suffering inevitably brings. You can only go so far in empathising with someone who has a headache. At the end of the day, they have to do it themselves.
In The Master's instruction to the Leper, we are reminded that Jesus grew up a faithful, practising Jew. Jesus’ command is to go and “show yourself to the priest”. Priests were only found in the Temple at Jerusalem, quite a distance from the area around Capernaum. Regardless of what Mark knew about the geography of the region, the instruction of Jesus is significant. For the leper to be fully restored to the community and his isolation quashed, his healing must be verified by a priest and the appropriate sacrifice made. The leper’s journey on the way to Jerusalem will foreshadow Jesus’ journey later on in the Gospel. So the journey or ‘the way’ is not just a geographical trip from point A to point B. It is also a journey that happens within. It is ‘the way’ of discipleship, a pattern of life. On our journey to our Jerusalem, there are bumps and rocks and traffic hazards and detours and road works and there are many stumblings and wrong turns. But the “way” always leads to Jerusalem, the Temple, the place where we encounter God himself. It is the place of sacrifice just as surely Jesus' journey to Jerusalem, to the temple will accomplish His own sacrifice.
His Mission and our mission is not just to get to a particular geographical place. His mission and our mission is also to tell and to listen along the way. The journey and what happens along the way was and is, just as important as the destination.
Something to think about and a few questions.
In shrinking and shirking from the ‘leprosy’ of others we become leprous. When we recoil from that which we find confronting in another, or simply that which we don’t like, we are infected. We become short-sighted. Our hearts are hardened and our hearing is dulled to those things that we need to hear; the things that will heal us.
Question 1
Who did the man tell on his way and what was their reaction? By the sounds of it he told pretty much anyone who would listen. “Instead he went out and began to talk freely, spreading the news”
And of course you would, for it is not just the physical healing, the end of the disease, but also the end of his social isolation. A whole new world opens up for our leprous chatterbox. And the reaction from the people he earboxed would have been mixed. Some were delighted, some disbelieving, some not sure what to make of this chatterbox.
Question 2
Are you the one who listens to the leper, or are you the leper, the one who tells?
Perhaps we are both. Perhaps there are times when we listen to the afflicted and certainly there are times when we need to be listened to.
Third and last question
What exactly did the leprous chatterbox say?
‘I was touched’.
Or
‘I was healed.’
Or
Something else.