After sternly warning him he sent him away at once, saying to him, "See that you say nothing to anyone; but go, show yourself to the priest, and offer for your cleansing what Moses commanded, as a testimony to them." But he went out and began to proclaim it freely, and to spread the word, so that Jesus could no longer go into a town openly, but stayed out in the country; and people came to him from every quarter.
I want to start at the end. Silence and proclamation - which one do we choose, and why? it is fascinating to consider why Jesus asks him to say nothing until he has fulfilled the law. There is a line in the Psalm appointed for today (Psalm 30) which highlights this: "You have turned my mourning into dancing; you have taken off my sackcloth and clothed me with joy, so that my soul may praise you and not be silent." It seems to me that our final response is one of expression, not silence.
But now back to the beginning: I think the leper showed either great desperation or great courage, or perhaps a combination of the two. The leper comes close enough (we are not told how close) to be heard and seen by Jesus. Like some of the other healings and exorcisms early in Mark's Gospel, the one being healed does not question whether Jesus can heal. It is a question of what Jesus will do. Those are tough kinds of prayers: I believe you can do it, God; but will you choose to do it?
(insert lunch break here...)
Lunch has been accomplished. Now, the OT reading is about another leper - Naaman. What really strikes me abou these two lepers (Naaman and the leper in the gospel) is just this: It takes Naaman forever to make up his mind and act, while it takes the leper in the gospel all of about 10 seconds to decide what to do. Simple as that. Here's some thoughts: The story of Naaman takes a great deal of space, probably one of the longer readings we have had in church. It takes Naaman quite a while to decide what to do – what choice to make. Naaman had a particular problem that he wanted fixed – he had leprosy. He sent and found out from the prophet Elisha what he needed to do: Go and wash seven times in the Jordan, and he would be made clean. Simple enough; but look at Naaman’s response:
First, he became angry and he went away. After all that, he decides to get angry and leave. Why? Because he had decided beforehand how God should heal him, and he doesn’t like the news he has received. Naaman starts to give an explanation of why he got so angry. Notice Naaman’s objection “I thought for me he would surely….” And that is the first part of his problem. Naaman thought to himself – “Surely for ME this God would do something special – something different, something big and impressive!!!” Second, Naaman thought that God should treat him differently – that there should be some recognition of what an important person he was. It’s as if he were saying to God “Don’t you know who I am? I am Naaman the commander – a very important person.” Thirdly, Naaman thinks he could improve on God’s methods of curing him. After all, he says, aren’t all these rivers of Damascus better than that polluted old Jordan River? And couldn’t I just go there instead?
But his servants approached and said to him, "Father, if the prophet had commanded you to do something difficult, would you not have done it? How much more, when all he said to you was, 'Wash, and be clean'?" So he went down and immersed himself seven times in the Jordan, according to the word of the man of God; his flesh was restored like the flesh of a young boy, and he was clean.
It took Naaman a long time to make his choice, and it was the right choice in the end, because how else could he be cured? Some might say that Naaman took the hard way rather tan the easy way.
“ Moved with pity, Jesus stretched out his hand and touched him, and said to him, "I do choose. Be made clean!"
Now that story really takes all of about 10 seconds to read out, and about that same amount of time for the leper to be healed. First we had Naaman, now we have this leper. You tell me who picked the easy way and who picked the hard way to get better. The nameless leper did something which Naaman was not wiling to do – to leave the choice up to Jesus – leave the choice up to God. This leper is not interested in making any decisions on his own. Listen to what he says to Jesus: “If you choose, you can make me clean.” And the emphasis here is on “YOU CHOOSE”. The leper thinks to himself – “If I leave the choice up to God, if I let Jesus in on my decisions, if I trust HIS choices, maybe things will go better for me.”
We weigh a lot of things when we make decisions. And the bigger the decision, the more we try to take time in order to take in everything that we can. You make a major purchase, like a car or a house, and you probably spend at least a little bit of time thinking about it. People decide on careers, relationships, all sorts of things. And we have our own ways of making decisions. Very few, if any of us, would be like the leper. Very few of us would simply look at Jesus and say “YOU CHOOSE”.
Naaman takes a long and roundabout way to get to his goal, because he does not like God’s choices. The leper in the gospel simply leaves all the choosing up to God. And most of us probably fall somewhere in between most of the time.
When we make our choices in life – whether big or small, we need to be more like the leper in the Gospel. We need to invite Jesus into our decisions. We do that through prayer, through reading the Scriptures to get insight into how he views life, and through being humble enough to accept good advice when it differs from what we ourselves think is best.
If the decision is important (and most of them actually are) Jesus will make himself just as clear to us as he did to the leper. Jesus is interested in all our choices – big and the small. He says “I do choose – be made clean”.
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