In maybe the first few
weeks of his ministry, Jesus has found four key disciples, set up
base in Capernaum, preached the good news of God's kingdom, and even
“cured many who were sick with various diseases, and cast out many
demons” (Mark 1:34). Needless to say, he wasn't just
controversial; he was wildly popular in any place he went. Crowds
gathered at the doors of the house where he stayed (Mark 1:32-33),
his fame spread far and wide (Mark 1:28), and everyone was looking
for Jesus (Mark 1:37). Wouldn't that be a wonderful way to be able
to describe a country: everyone was looking for Jesus? Whether for
him or against him, whether self-serving or self-giving, at least no
one was lukewarm? And why had Jesus come? To “preach,” to
“proclaim the message” in all the towns, missing not a one (Mark 1:38). And so “he went through Galilee, proclaiming the message in
their synagogues and casting out demons” (Mark 1:39).
Between that announcement
and his return to Capernaum, the Gospel of Mark tells us just one
story offering specifics of that preaching tour. Jesus has healed
plenty of diseases, but you can be a respectable citizen and have a
flu or a fever, cancer or a cold. But what about if you've got
something much more serious, something that makes people keep their
distance and look at you with fear in their eyes? What if you're
falling apart, what if children shriek impolitely when they see you?
If you've spent your years internalizing that shame, would you dare
to draw near to Jesus and beg for help? One man did. He had a
lepra, some kind of skin
disease that could well have been a dreadful sight – maybe leprosy
as we know it, maybe vitiligo or alopecia or psoriasis or any number
of conditions. Serious leprosy was the AIDS of the first century.
But this leper drew near to Jesus anyway, and when he expressed his
faith, Jesus did something incredible.
One semester in college –
what a wild place that was – I had a roommate, and you could say
the two of us had our disagreements. One night, sitting on our beds
across from one another, I pointedly asked him what he thought the
most important truth of Christianity is. For my part, I said that
it's that Christ has died; Christ is risen; and Christ will come
again; and that he saves us by grace through faith that works in
love. My roommate begged to differ. His answer was miracles,
healings, everything pretty and flashy. It isn't that he disbelieved
that Jesus died and rose again, but he said that those were the
basics and no longer needed to be preached, because in our churches,
everyone already grasps those. What really matters, he said, is
miracles in our day and age, and that should be the constant theme of
our preaching – not Jesus. Jesus is just the means to an end;
miracles are the end. Where in the Bible he read, “I decided to
know nothing among you except signs and wonders for our modern day,”
I honestly couldn't tell you, because it's not there. The verse
actually reads, “I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus
Christ, and him crucified” (1 Corinthians 2:2). My roommate would
have said that was fine for Paul, but we've moved past the need for
that now.
This man was obsessed
with miracles: he went on miracle-themed mission trips, he claimed to
regularly see angels flying around his head, he complained that no
one else on campus was as “spiritual” as he. I don't say this to
hold him up to ridicule, he had a lot of great virtues, but this mentality does exist in the
church. He had great zeal for faith-healing: he believed that it is
the responsibility of any Christian to be absolutely convinced that
God is going to heal someone, whether that's true or not, because
that's what faith meant to him. I always said to him that faith is a
conviction in the truth of what God promises, not in what God hasn't
promised; and that God has not promised to heal each and every person
for whom we pray; and that God isn't pleased when we deliberately
believe what just ain't so. He disagreed, and he said that it was a sign of
faithlessness to hedge our prayers by conditioning them on what God
wills. There are a lot of Christians today who agree with my old
roommate – Christians who think that faith is just believing
something intensely enough, and that anything that provides balance
to our prayers is contrary to faith. Many people believe that! Yet even Paul, a man of the
utmost faith, was denied his continual request to be rid of his “thorn in the
flesh” (2 Corinthians 12:7-8).
But look at this leper
here in the Gospel. His prayer isn't, “Jesus, I know
for a fact that you're going to heal me, so just hurry up and do it
already.” His prayer isn't, “Jesus, you owe
me a healing.” The leper absolutely does not “name it and claim
it.” But neither does the leper say, “I wish healing were for
today, but I know that ended with the time of Elijah and Elisha.”
Nor does the leper say, “It would be nice if you could heal, but I
don't know if you can, Jesus. I'm sure your intentions are nice.”
What does the leper say? “If you will, you can make me clean”
(Mark 1:40). He doesn't come to Jesus with arrogance – the leper
kneels before Jesus and begs. The leper doesn't come to Jesus with
the attitude of entitlement – he submits his wishes to Christ's
will. The leper doesn't come to Jesus with any hesitation at all
about who Jesus is or what Jesus is capable of doing. This leper
knows for sure that Jesus is capable of healing him – that, if
that's what Jesus wants to do, it's a done deal.
Think
about this leper's faith! The leper has a bold faith, but not a
presumptuous faith. He has a carefully considered faith, but not a
weak and anemic faith. He desperately wants to be healed, and he is
completely and utterly convinced that Jesus can do it! Knowing who
Jesus is, if Jesus had walked up to him on the side of the road and
snapped his fingers and said, “Hey, you're healed,” this leper
would not be caught by surprise to find no sign of leprosy left in
his body. He has absolute conviction of Christ's power and of
Christ's goodness – but that doesn't mean he presumes upon being
promised healing just because he's an Israelite, just because he's a
son of Abraham and an inheritor of Abraham's covenant. No: he knows
that God remains supreme, ready and eager to heal but also wisely
choosing what's best.
That's
the attitude this leper brings to Jesus. Why should our attitude be
any less? Why should we divorce humility from boldness? This leper
is bold enough to trust that Jesus can,
and humble enough to leave it to Jesus to choose if he will.
If Jesus had turned him down, if Jesus had chosen to make his power
known perfectly in the leper's leprous weakness (cf. 2 Corinthians 12:9), can there be any doubt that this leper wouldn't have grumbled,
wouldn't have complained, wouldn't have lost faith? That's the kind
of faith Jesus is looking for: faith enough to be healed by one
mighty word from his holy lips, and also faith enough to not
be healed – to bear this illness as a lasting mark of the conflict
between God's grace and a fallen world. Do we have faith to be
healed, and
faith to not be healed?
But
look at how Jesus felt when the leper dropped to his knees and spoke
those words of bold, humble faith. Mark tells us: Jesus was “moved
with pity,” or “moved with compassion” (Mark 1:41). That's not
really a strong enough translation, though. More literally,
compassion wrenched Jesus in the gut, pulled at his innards, grabbed
hold of his spleen. From the deepest and most visceral core of his
body, Jesus was flooded with intense yearning to answer the man's
heartfelt prayer. It's the same word used to describe a father's
first reaction on realizing, after years and years of waiting, that
his lost son's face is visible on the horizon and coming his way
(Luke 15:20). In the face of that overwhelming jolt, nothing else
matters; everything else pales in insignificance. Beyond a calm and
sedate attitude of affection, beyond sincere condolences, Jesus isn't
just “moved,” he isn't just “touched” – it's a powerful
sensation like being torn open from the inside and having your every
thought and feeling hang totally on the reality that confronts you.
In our words, Jesus is absolutely heartsick over what he sees in
front of him. That's real compassion, real “suffering-with.”
Wrenched
in the gut by lavish love and overflowing compassion, feeling the
leper's woes as keenly as his own, Jesus does the unthinkable: he
“stretched out his hand and touched him” (Mark 1:41). Mark wants
us to picture this vividly. If there's one thing you don't do with a
leper, it's touch him. The Law said to expel lepers from the camp of
Israel, to exclude them as carriers of impurity (Numbers 5:2). A
leper was under strict guidelines as to how to live: he had to wear
torn clothes, keep his hair uncombed, cover his upper lip – all
signs of mourning and grief – and warn everyone around not to risk
touching him and becoming tainted by his own impurity. A leper
“shall live alone; his dwelling shall be outside the camp”
(Leviticus 13:45-46). The rabbis spoke of leprosy as consistently a
punishment for sin, with the seven causes including pride, theft,
gossip, even murder. Touching a leper can be frightful business –
but it was the business of Jesus.
Over
a century ago, a Belgian-born priest chose to do the business of
Jesus. When he became a monk, he took the name “Damien” after a
third-century saint who, with his twin brother Cosmas, both of them
doctors, won many to Jesus through their ministry of free healthcare.
Not that they were loved by all; Cosmas and Damien were then
tortured, crucified, stoned, shot, and finally, for good measure,
beheaded. Following their example, this later Damien was sent as a
missionary to the Kingdom of Hawaii, where thousands of Hawaiian
lepers were being forcibly removed to and quarantined in remote
colonies. Damien was the first priest to volunteer to serve them
there, writing six months later, “I make myself a leper with the
lepers to gain all to Jesus Christ.” He revolutionized their
lives, caring for their physical and spiritual needs until his own
death in 1889 – from leprosy. St. Damien, Apostle of the Lepers,
gave his life to touch them in the name of that same Jesus who
fearlessly touched lepers long ago. No wonder many charities that
serve modern lepers or clinics that serve AIDS patients now bear St.
Damien's name.
But
where the scribes and Pharisees would never have touched a leper,
fearing to catch their impurity, Jesus had a greater sense of daring.
Jesus didn't act in fear. The Spirit of God dwelling in the Son of
God is greater than any presence out there in the world, including
impurity (cf. 1 John 4:4). The leper doesn't make Jesus unclean
through touch, because the contagiousness of Christ is greater than
the contagiousness of the leper! So Jesus “touched him,” and the
health of Christ's holiness overcame all the sickness, all the
disease, that the leper bore. The leper said to Jesus, “If you
will, you can make me clean.” Jesus replied, “I will; be thou
clean” (Mark 1:41). With a touch and a word, it was a done deal,
as immediate as all the action in Mark's story (Mark 1:42).
Jesus
healed then. Does he heal today? We often say he does miracles,
sure. I recover from a cold – we call that a miracle. Someone
makes it through surgery, or their cancer goes into remission – we
call that a miracle. In biblical language, a miracle is a “wonder,”
something marvelous and awe-inspiring that points to God's power
working in it, and a “sign,” something that expresses the nature
of God's kingdom and the rhythms by which it operates. One of the
professors at my seminary, Craig Keener, put together a fabulous
two-volume work – it was meant to be a single footnote in one of
his other books, but you know how professors can be – all about
miracles. Christianity
Today
gave the book an Award of Merit. In it, he summarizes stories of
healings in the name of Christ done all across the world – plenty
with multiple eyewitness accounts, some with conclusive medical
documentation, even in America, though he also suggests that God
might “answer prayers regarding health through medical means in
medical cultures.”
I
can't speak to the many accounts this professor has put together,
though Dr. Keener's not a man given to gullibility or grandiosity –
I've scarce met anyone so humble and so meticulous. But I believe my
college roommate was half-right. We do serve a God who is “mighty
to save” the body as well as the spirit (Isaiah 63:1). Still he is
“the LORD
who heals you” (Exodus 15:26), a God “who forgives all your
iniquity, who heals all your diseases” (Psalm 103:3). I've seen
the proof. After college, I went to seminary, a place where I
mingled with pastor's kids and redeemed drug dealers, where I studied
alongside Americans and Koreans and Indians and Kenyans. I made some
of the greatest friends of my life at seminary.
I hope one of those especially close friends won't mind if I mention
a part of his wonderful testimony. See, for years he suffered a
condition – somewhat enigmatic to his doctors – that produced
nerve damage affecting the right side of his face. He couldn't fully
smile, couldn't shut his right eye, not even when sleeping. Looking
back on it, his half-expressions were apparent. So the first time I
saw him in a full-on grin, awash in the joy of the Lord, I had to
hear the story. He'd just come back from a trip to South Korea, a
place where Christianity is thriving in ways we can only dream here.
And while he was there, he ascended a prayer mountain tended by one
of the local churches. Wonders happen in the solitary places when
the grace of God bursts through, as it turns out. Confronted by
God's presence unearthing all the hidden things of his soul and
transforming him in the refiner's fire, he pressed on past a statue
of Jesus praying in Gethsemane, past the crucifixion, past Emmaus to
an empty grave. And as he descended the mountain again, burning with
the Holy Spirit, he laughed and smiled; his face, once numb, was
sensitive to touch. When I saw him again after his return to the
United States, the change was visible – not just one opinion among
many, not just wishful thinking, but literally as evident as the
smile on his face. It was clear and drastic – just like when Jesus
cured that leper two thousand years ago.
In touching the leper,
the leper was made clean – just as Jesus offers to cleanse our
souls with one touch of his grace, and just as he may also choose to
purge our bodies of ill health. He has the power, but may his will
be done, and not our own. But for an Israelite, leprosy wasn't just
a physical condition; it was a social standing. And the only way to
resolve it fully was to get a bill of clean health from a priest
through the proper procedures. So Jesus immediately sent the leper
to finish the process: “Go, show yourself to the priest, and offer
for your cleansing what Moses has commanded, as a testimony to them”
(Mark 1:44).
Jesus was not asking the
leper to rebel against the Law. Jesus was not attacking the Old
Testament. That wasn't why he came. No, he wanted the leper to go
do exactly what the Law prescribed for the situation at hand. Why?
As a testimony. It's one thing to say that Jesus has done a mighty
work in you. It's another thing to be able to wave around the proof,
to display it for the sake of his glory! Jesus came to preach and
live the gospel of the kingdom – that the life-changing power of
God had come to shake things up, to inject the peace and wholeness of
God into our war-torn and diseased world. The leper was excited –
almost too excited – and it isn't clear he even bothered to go get
the priestly exam the Law mandated. In the Gospel of Mark, this
ex-leper could be called the first evangelist: before any other
specific figure in the story other than Jesus himself, he's the one
who goes forth to preach and “spread the word,” so much so that
Jesus is thronged by crowds and can't even walk through the town
gates without causing a traffic jam (Mark 1:45). What an effective
evangelist! Just as the one leper came to him, so now people come
from all around. So Jesus sticks to “solitary places,” the
places he goes to pray (Mark 1:35).
This story – Jesus and
one brave leper – confronts us with some powerful questions. Are
we ready to have the faith that Jesus could still heal, can heal,
does heal? For many American Christians, we don't take the
prospect all that seriously. We give it lip-service, but to see a
man shout hallelujah and toss his cane to the wind – that would
stop us in our tracks. There's plenty we can learn about openness to
the wonder-working Spirit of Jesus from our friends at Pequea Presbyterian and other charismatic churches in our area and across
the globe. Let's dare to seriously and persistently pray big, bold
prayers, knowing that to restore sight to the blind or health to the
ill is no heavier a thing for God than to make water be wet. When we
give God our biggest prayers and treat their fulfillment as a live
possibility, God may just take us up on that. “Increase our
faith!” (Luke 17:5).
Second, with this faith,
are we also humble enough to have the faith to not be healed?
My old roommate wasn't quite right on this front: we need the faith
to not be healed. We need the faith to live in a complex and broken
world. We need a faith like the faith Jesus himself had: “Father,
if you are willing, remove this cup from me; yet, not my will but
yours be done” (Luke 22:42). God didn't ignore that prayer: “Jesus
offered up prayers and supplications with loud cries and tears …
and he was heard because of his reverent submission” (Hebrews 5:7).
But God delivered Jesus, not in avoidance of death, but through
suffering and death and out the other side. Jesus “has borne our
infirmities and carried our diseases” (Isaiah 53:4), yet we're
called to “suffer with him so that we may also be glorified with
him” (Romans 8:17).
Plenty of famous
Christians suffered from medical conditions: Pope Pelagius II died of
the plague, as did Luther's friend Andreas Karlstadt; Fanny Crosby
was blind; Joni Eareckson Tada is a quadriplegic; Charles Haddon Spurgeon
had rheumatism and kidney disease; Mother Teresa had heart problems
and a bout with malaria; David Livingstone died of malaria and
dysentery; John Newton, the author of Amazing Grace and Oft As the Leper's Case I Read, was often sick in his later years; Martin
Luther had arthritis, a cataract, an inner-ear disorder, and plenty
else; we've already mentioned St. Damien's leprosy; Billy Graham has
Parkinson's disease and has dealt with pneumonia and cancer; and
our very own Jacob Albright died early in his life partly because of tuberculosis. Jesus' own
parable of the sheep and the goats implies that God's servants will
at times be sick, just as they'll at times be in prison (Matthew 25:36). In illness as in opposition and persecution, “let those
suffering in accordance with God's will entrust themselves to a
faithful Creator, while continuing to do good” (1 Peter 4:19).
Don't trust God only when
it satisfies your wants, only when it seems to benefit you. Trust in
God's wisdom to withhold for the sake of purposes of which we've
scarcely scratched the surface. That means withholding physical
healing, it means withholding physical safety, it means withholding
physical security in finances. Trust like the leper trusted: “If
you will, you can make me clean; yet not my will but yours be done,
even if it means leaving me in leprosy until you make all things
new.” Have a faith that knows how to wait upon the LORD.
Have the humble faith that can stand to not get what you most want
out of God.
Third, empowered by a
bold and humble faith, are we willing be like Damien, imitating Jesus
in touching the lepers of our world? For too long, the church has
been afraid to get outside of itself, afraid that mingling with
“sinners” will contaminate us. While Christian fellowship is
limited to faithful disciples (Matthew 18:17; 1 Corinthians 5:11-13),
we were never told not to associate with “the immoral of this world
… since you would then need to go out of the world” (1 Corinthians 5:10). But we're “sent into the world,” Jesus said
(John 17:18), and he prayed to his Father, “I'm not asking you to
take them out of the world, but I ask you to protect them from the
Evil One” (John 17:15) – precisely because, under God's watchful
care, we're meant to go find people and touch them with the finger of
God, the Holy Spirit who dwells in us. Are we ready to go to the
pubs, go to the prisons, go to the pride parades – or, less
dramatically, just go into town and get involved in the lives of
those who need the Jesus we know? Or are we living by fear instead
of by faith?
And finally, are we eager
to spread the good news, excited to share what Jesus has done in us?
We may not all have been rescued from some specific ailment you'll
find in a medical textbook. But we're all sick and in need of a
Great Physician (cf. Mark 2:17). And if you've met Jesus, if you've
entered his soul-healing care, if you've been scrubbed down in
baptism and gone to his table for the “medicine of immortality,”
if you still devote your life to the diet of the Word and to the
exercise of carrying your cross, then “go in peace; your faith has
made you well” (Mark 5:34). “Go in peace” – that is, “go
and make disciples” (Matthew 28:19), “go into all the world and
proclaim the good news to the whole creation” (Mark 16:15). If
we've really grasped the depths of our own sickness and the healing
that Jesus gives, how can we rest in the knowledge that others don't
know where to turn for the wellness they so desperately need? We
have one powerful imperative: to go out and “proclaim it freely,
and to spread the word” so that people come to Jesus from every
quarter (Mark 1:45)! Go spread the word!
