An Indignant Jesus - 10/09/2016

WARNING PREACHY…

There are many ways that Jesus is endearing to us, but the way that stands out to me is one of his first real one-on-one & face-to-face events with another human where he shows compassion.  Mathew 8, Mark 1, and Luke 5 all tell of one event when a man with leprosy came to Jesus for healing.  I guess my discovery of the event was in my reading through Mark 1 so that’s the text that I work from.

Mark 1:40-42

⁴⁰ A man with leprosy came to him and begged him on his knees, “If you are willing, you can make me clean.”  ⁴¹ Jesus was indignant.  He reached out his hand and touched the man. “I am willing,” he said. “Be clean!” ⁴² Immediately the leprosy left him and he was cleansed.

In Mark’s telling of this event, he is the only one who wrote “Jesus was indignant.” in verse 41.  This single word changes everything for me, because I see in it part of the heart of our savior.  

Was Jesus indignant at this leprous man for kneeling before him?  He could have been.  A person with leprosy was required by the Law to live outside the camp.  When they saw someone from town getting too close they were supposed to shout the warning of “Unclean!”  Doing this warned those who did not have the disease to keep their distance so they would not catch it too.  So the very fact that that this man appeared, seemingly out of no place, and was kneeling before him makes it seem like someone was not doing their job and keeping Jesus safe.  (Isn’t that what the disciples did when the children came to him and shooed them away?)  Jesus could have been indignant because of this but I don’t really think so.

Was he indignant because of the Law, without compassion, required the man to be separated from the community in the first place?  I have very real questions about this “mandate” of the Law and wonder if the Scribes that penned the Old Testament didn’t create and add a statute that wasn’t what God intended in the first place.  But, with nothing more than conjecture, on my part, I tend to hold that the people were just being led by a regulation that dealt with a very bad situation in the best way they could think of, considering the time and the lack of medical understanding.  So no, I don’t think Jesus was indignant because of the Law at this point.

But what I do think is that Jesus was just simply indignant at the situation that was before him.  On the ground before him was a man who used to have a family, a job, a responsibility to his community and who now knelt before our Lord groveling because he was nothing now.  He existed, but he existed without love, without dignity, without any real significance of life, he occupied a place in the world, but he was not really part of the world; not anymore.  And the situation that knelt before Jesus at that moment is quite the same as the situation that is before us today.

When Adam and Eve sinned, the world was plagued with sin and death, and from that point in time man was separated from the Heavenly Father.  Mankind, like the leprous man, had become unclean and cast out of the city.  Because of sin, mankind was alone and simply existed in the world until the time that he would die.  And so when Jesus looked upon the man, I think he looked at the leprous man and saw the theater of the world.  And I believe it is quite possible that this is what made him indignant; the sin that created the situation in the first place.

Then our Lord did something that men never did to a leper, he reached out his hand and touched him and he became well again.

While I may be mistaken in my understanding of the biblical interpretation and situation in this passage, I don’t think it is very hard to see that Jesus reaches out his hand to touch our own situations to make us well, just as he did the leprous man.  But this time we know that Jesus is willing,so the only question now is if we are going to posture ourselves before Jesus.

This morning, I’m going before Jesus to beg him to make me clean.  I’m pretty sure there is a spot open next to me if you want to join me.