SIXTH SUNDAY OF YEAR "B"

SIXTH SUNDAY OF THE YEAR

Cycle  B: Healing of the leper

There is a marvellous irony in today’s Gospel. Jesus tells the cured man to tell no one of the miracle. Why did Jesus not want this good news to be proclaimed ? One suggested answer is that Jesus did not want to be known as the Messiah of popular expectation, since his way of salvation through suffering was different. However, in today’s gospel, the lucky fellow could not contain himself. He tells everyone.  Yet in Matthew 28,19, the same Jesus tells us to tell everyone about him. And what do we do ? Yes, that’s right. We tell no one. Maybe we should bring back the former leper. He was a better Public Relations man that most of us.

As the scene opens, Jesus is just walking out of the Galilean mountains.  He has just delivered his famous Sermon on the Beatitudes. And he is about to take off the hood and gown of the academic scholar and put on the mantle of the miracle worker. He was being followed by a huge mob. As he approached a small hill town, a desperate man broke through the crowd and painfully got to his knees before Jesus.  The crowd ran away in horror and revulsion, screaming: “Leper, Leper, unclean!” As per the law of the day, lepers were outsiders and treated as such. The desperate man, of course, was our unnamed leper. So you can imagine the courage of our leper fellow. The law stated that if a leper exposed others to his disease, he was to be stoned to death. Lucky for him that the people around Jesus were so anxious to get away from the scene; otherwise they might have stoned him to death. But a puzzling question arises.  How did the leper sense that the Christ would not cover his face and flee in revulsion along with the others?  What quality did he discern in the Master that told him he would hold his ground?  It only goes to show that Jesus was the most approachable of people.  We discover that he has time for those whom others consider the refuse of the world, the physical and moral garbage of humanity.  Sometimes we hear people say: “My sin is too horrible for God to forgive.” This Gospel clearly gives the lie to such a statement.

Our natural fears of contagion and exclusion, dramatized in the ritual treatment of the leper, make us fearful of accepting the consequences of discipleship. So we make all kinds of compromises in order to feel comfortable with this world. But none of this will do. If we are true disciples, we will always be outsiders to some extent, and that is a dangerous position to inhabit. Simon Peter realized the cost in the early hours of Good Friday, and on that occasion, shamefully, he ducked it. By carrying out his mission of healing and forgiveness, Jesus has changed places with the leper. It is now he who is the outsider. Finally, as we well know, he will suffer a felon’s death outside the city’s boundaries. If we throw in our lot with him, our place will be out there where he is. And that is scary.

“If you want to, you can cure me.”  That was the plea coming from his gut. And it was couched in just eight words.  People who are in pain do not speak in pages. They have time only for what is essential. Today’s account tells us that the Healer not only cured the fellow in front of him but, as usual, he did the mad thing  -  he touched his running sores, thereby making himself unclean, as per standing law. Now it was his turn to become the outsider.  Didn’t Isaiah prophesy that the Messiah would take our wounds upon himself ?  Can anyone here imagine what that touch, that positive stroke must have felt like to the leper ?  If one painting is worth a thousand words, one healing touch is worth a thousand paintings. Is there anyone here who can still be frightened of Jesus Christ after that gesture ?

This miracle is called an action miracle. It happened in a millisecond, unlike other miracles in St. Mark’s Gospel. In other miracles Jesus would take the man aside, look up to heaven, heave a sigh, put his spittle on the man’s eyes or ears, etc., etc. (I almost said a rigmarole).  But in this case the Nazarene felt there was no time for preliminaries. This poor fellow’s misery had to be terminated immediately

And so, what does that tell you about the Person you worship ?  Would that you and I could teach ourselves to have just a fraction of that compassion  -  compassion towards all and sundry without distinction.  When you are suffering in body, mind or emotion, how good it is for someone to tell you sincerely, “I know how you feel, I suffered it myself, terribly.  But courage, you’ll be all right.”

One final note.  The cured man taught us how to pray. His prayer needed only eight words. Jesus showed a lot of partiality to short prayers. You can check this out in Matthew Chapter 6, verse 7,” In your prayers, do not use a lot of meaningless words.” It is as though Jesus is e-mailing us the message that brief prayers bring quick answers provided they’re from the heart.

PRAYER (“Prayers of an Irish mother”)

Jesus, lover of souls, give me some of your great love for people. I am so self-centred, so wrapped up in myself and my own small world that I forget the pain and hunger abroad among them. Yet, I must reach out a helping hand to them, and I must have them realise your love for them, and the love of all your earthly friends for them.  Enable me to touch the aching heart and to speak the words that strengthen. And help me make them know that you will never forget them, that “Somebody” cares.