In a time of such isolation, confusion, and rampant reminders of the brokenness of the world, I've found this story of Jesus (Mark 1:40-45) a deep encouragement because it is an invitation to Jesus to not just solve a problem, but to transform our very existence and make us whole.
A man with leprosy came to him and begged him on his knees, “If you are willing, you can make me clean.”
Jesus was indignant. He reached out his hand and touched the man. “I am willing,” he said. “Be clean!” Immediately the leprosy left him and he was cleansed.
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. As a result, Jesus could no longer enter a town openly but stayed outside in lonely places. Yet the people still came to him from everywhere.
Jesus received a visit from a begging man overcome with a vicious, contagious disease that left him banished to a life in caves while his skin oozed at welts covering his body. This man doesn’t plead for healing. Instead he makes this appeal: “If you’re willing, you can make me clean.”
The Old Testament laws and traditions adjacent to them are littered with the concept of cleanliness. Objects, food, and people could all be clean or unclean. It wasn’t a moral code, it was a cultural one and, in a few cases, a health code for the good of society. Anything that didn’t fit the parameters of the cultural contract was to be excluded until they were made clean. In many ways, these codes pointed to the pervasive and transitive properties of sin and brokenness onto every life. This code also revealed the brokenness of life that comes from the results of sin. The exclusion of the unclean is a tearing of not just a physical presence but of communal and relational presence. The effects of sin not only breaks a person, but excludes them.
For many areas of uncleanliness there was a path to inclusion. You could be made clean through rituals, through waiting it out, through perfect performance, and through sacrifices. However, there is a whole rolodex of unclean realities for anyone with a blemish, sores, or disease where the only way toward inclusion was through transformation.
As this man cries out, he isn’t settling for healing, he wants full and holistic inclusion. He wasn’t advocating for a few rights, he was pleading for the entire package. He’s protesting to the power. Like a crowd gathered outside the gates of the White House demanding human rights, he says, “Jesus, I know you can! So, if you desire, will you make me clean?”
"Can you do what it takes to make me whole?" This man had people he was destined to serve. He had a role to play in the kingdom. He had songs to sing in the temple, children to raise, businesses to run, relationships to build. He had a life to live, but he was entangled in the effects of a sinful world and everything he might do would have to be done through the filter of disease. The cry for cleanliness is not a cry for healing but for a life unhindered. He wants abundant life free from the entanglements of sin’s residue.
No amount of washing, worship, or work could usher him into his house again without the powerful restorative work of another. In each of our stories: someone must do something in us, around us, and for us to be made whole, too.
The man cries out to Jesus in a moment of clarity: “You, and you alone can do this if you want to!” This declaration of faith is unlike anything so far in the ministry of Jesus. People had dropped nets and followed him. People had demons pulled out of them and sickness removed. Here, this man comes knowing what Jesus can do and knowing what Jesus needed to do to him. He comes wanting more than healing. He wants wholeness.
Do we come to Jesus that way? Are we unsure of his capabilities? Do we hide? Do we belittle our need? Do we sugarcoat the deformity of our lives? This is repentance and faith: “Jesus you can make me clean?!”
Jesus’ response is shocking. Mark says Jesus is indignant. He bellows anger and wrath toward what he sees before him. Jesus sees life as it was never intended. He sees human flesh covered in a disease that demonstrates a human existence consumed with sin. He sees broken humanity. Jesus is moved. What follows is Good News for us, too.
This is a comfort to us, Jesus sees the effects of sin and feels something deep inside: this is not who you are supposed to be. He doesn’t accept a universe in which humanity and creation are supposed to be this way: broken, isolated, banished. This is compassion.
Later in Mark, Jesus get’s frustrated with a fig tree. He approaches the tree to find fruit, but it is barren. Mark gives us non middle-eastern agrarians a nod when he whispers to us: “that’s because figs were not in season.” Jesus, knowing the reality of seasonal fruit, remains upset because it was intended to produce fruit. The tree was created for fruit. In the same way we were create for abundant life, and anything less angers Jesus. A life of sin-caused brokenness so motivates Jesus, he entered our shattered existence to restore us to true existence.
Jesus stretched out his hand and touched the man while he was still categorically unclean. This means Jesus, according to the cultural code, was now unclean. Jesus, in the touch, enters the exiled space of this man. Oh, the grace of Jesus to move toward us, even in our confession of sickening sin, to become sin for us! How deep is the love of Jesus that he would enter our neediness and become our neediness.
Jesus gets to work. It isn’t a removal of warts through the swipe of a magical wand. Jesus does more. Jesus comes to him, hears him, sees him, touches him, speaks to him, and sends him.
Healing is not only of the sores on his skin, but of his place in the world: from broken to belonging in the holiest of places. Upon being made clean, Jesus sends him to the holy site of the temple to walk right up to the priest. To present himself without hindrance. Jesus sends him into the world to be clean and to get to work in the praise of God and within the purpose of His Kingdom.
Jesus hasn’t changed. Jesus operates with us in the same way. He sees what sin has done to us and our world and is moved. He doesn’t accept the current state of life as true life. He enters our world and he enters our stories. He comes not just to wipe away our problems, but to make us whole. He comes not to perform a trick of therapy, but to hear us, see us, and send us.
The abundant inclusive life Jesus transforms The-Man-With-Leprosy into The-Man-Praising-God. May this be true of us as we live inside the hope of Jesus.
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