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Matt Johnson
St. Stephen’s
February 12, 2012 (Epiphany 6, Year B)
1 Corinthians 9:24-27
Mark 1:40-45
In the name of God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.
Unfortunately, the Lord hasn’t seen fit to grant me a felicity with languages. I barely
squeaked through German as an undergrad (one of my life’s great ironies is that I almost didn’t
graduate because of German, and now I’m married to a German!) My wife Katharina and I want
to raise our child bilingually. Since I don’t want my child to be able to speak a language I don’t
understand, I’m going to have to improve my German even if it is difficult for me.
In seminary, however, I really enjoyed learning Greek. Translating was like a puzzle—it
was fun trying to figure out how all the pieces fit together. For me, I was satisfied just using
what scholars have decided is the standard Greek text. But those who are really into Biblical
Greek spend a lot of time investigating textual variants. Unfortunately, there’s not one ancient
Greek text—there are several. Most things are the same in these texts, and the things that are
different usually don’t matter much. One scribe may have spelled a word one way while another
used a different spelling and that sort of thing. This part of Greek I didn’t think was much fun—
in fact, I thought it was usually pretty tedious. Today’s gospel, however, has a really interesting
textual variant. Although most of the ancient manuscripts say that when the leper came to Jesus,
Jesus was “moved with pity,” others say “moved with anger.” That’s not just the same word
spelled differently.
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We don’t have many instances of Jesus getting angry, and I have to wonder if maybe
“moved with anger” was the original text and some scribe changed it to “moved with pity” to
soften the portrayal of Jesus. But I actually prefer “moved with anger.” Jesus is passionate.
Jesus gets worked up about things. Jesus was fully human and experienced the full range of
human emotions, including anger. Even if we stick with the translation “moved with pity,” the
Greek here for “pity” also conveys a strong emotion. It’s a pity that literally makes the insides
turn. It’s not a distant, condescending “oh, look at the poor leper” sort of feeling—it’s a pity that
makes Jesus’ stomach churn. Either way, Jesus is deeply “moved” by the leper.
What is it about the leper’s suffering that so affects Jesus that he’s physically moved at the
depth of his being? Very few had an easy life in ancient Palestine, and lepers probably has it the
worst of just about anyone. Lepers had to live apart from society—they weren’t allowed to work
or to visit the marketplace or to enter the temple or do anything else that involved contact with
another. And everyone stayed clear of the lepers since if you touched a leper, you were
considered as unclean as the leper him or herself.
I think it’s enforced separation that that so moves Jesus. From the very first verses of
Genesis, it’s clear that God has made all creation to be in relationship. God longs for us to
experience the real love of relationship with God, with creation, with one another, and with
ourselves. God shuns the walls we erect to separate us from the gift of relationship. Lepers had
more of these walls put around them than just about anyone—since they couldn’t go to the
temple, they felt cut off from God. Since they couldn’t interact with the community, they were
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cut off from others. Since they were treated as outcasts, I suspect that many had difficulty loving
themselves. They were walled into a life of physical, emotional, and spiritual misery and
separateness.
This is why I like the Greek variant that says Jesus was “moved with anger.” The core of
Jesus’ mission was to tear down walls, to destroy what would separate us from the love of God.
When Jesus sees these walls and the cruelty they cause, I think he got angry. If Jesus got angry,
he wasn’t angry at the leper. He was angry that society had forced the leper to live in a way that
was less than the fullness of life in relationship that God intends for all creation.
Paul gets angry about these walls too. The community in Corinth that Paul was writing to
had divided itself into groups based on spiritual maturity. Paul was furious, and one of the
reasons he wrote the First Letter to the Corinthians was to tell them to tear down these walls
between the different groups. Believing in Christ is about coming together, not tearing apart. In
today’s passage Paul uses athletic imagery. As a runner, I’ve always appreciated Paul’s racing
metaphor. One thing I really like about his images here is that they’re physical. Running,
boxing—both focus on bodies. But the really neat thing is that these games—these body-events
draw people together. Like people in Ancient Greece, the Corinthians would have been very
familiar with public, athletic events. Attending competitions like racing and boxing were times
when the whole community came together. Watching the physicality of these events drew
people together physically.
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For Paul and for Jesus, tearing down the barriers that divide isn’t some sort of purely
intellectual pursuit. It’s physical—it involves real bodies. There’s this wonderful image in
today’s gospel where Jesus touches the leper. The word here isn’t just a touch like a poke or a
grasp—it’s more of a caress. This is a brief but tender moment—Jesus stretches out his hand and
touches the leper. In doing so, he not only heals the leper but opens up the potential for him to
have relationships. Jesus’ touch breaks down all sorts of barriers for the leper, and in doing so
Jesus risks being ostracized himself.
Jon Walton, a pastor at First Presbyterian Church in New York city, says about today’s
gospel that:
This is a healing story with passion in it. It is not just any healing story. Jesus is
frustrated and upset when he heals the man; and in the process of healing him, Jesus
breaks down walls that have been carefully built and scrupulously preserved by wellmeaning religious types. When he touches the leper, he dares to do the unconventional,
in fact, the unlawful, so that he may accomplish the unlikely.
Jesus is passionate about breaking down walls and bringing all creation into relationship. And he
expresses this passion in very real, physical, bodily ways. Jesus uses his passion, whether it be
anger or pity, to help the world be as God created it—in relationship.
In one of the youth Sunday school classes we’ve been using some of Rob Bell’s NOOMA
videos. In these videos he explores our world from the perspective of Jesus. I want to leave you
with two questions he asks in the video “Store”:
“Does your anger increase the peace around you?”
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“Does your anger make the world a better place?”