Affirming humane values as witness to the reign of God

{What does the response of Jesus to the leper indicate in the reign of God?
In the reign of God, what did Jesus mean by touching the leper?
What does Jesus’ anger convey to us?}

Mark was addressing a community where the people became divisive and had oppressive boundaries, boundaries on the basis of economic, cultic, political, legal, and ethnic grounds. Mark introduces Jesus in a radical way with the objective of shattering those boundaries, because salvation was for all. Mark starts the gospel by saying ‘The beginning’ in the beginning of the gospel and also talks of God’s reign. The reign of God is visualized as a present reality and a future hope. It values persons over systems, rejects systems that de-humanize people; values like solidarity with victims are given prime importance. The healing of the leper is one of the embodiments of the values in the reign of God.

Let us look into the text more clearly.
What does the response of Jesus to the leper indicate in the reign of God?
Vs. 40 describes the approach of the leper towards Jesus; the law made restrictions to prevent such an approach. The person who became unclean had to live apart and must stay outside the settlement. In approaching Jesus therefore the leper was doing nothing less than defying the existing traditions and rules of conduct. We can see a rebellious attitude in the leper when he comes near Jesus. On the other hand, as we know that according to Jewish law someone who came into contact with a person having leprosy was also called unclean. By touching the leper and healing him, Jesus was breaking barriers because he did not subscribe to the notion embodied in the law. In the words of S Kappen ‘in the act of Jesus, the rebel in the leper met the rebel in Jesus’. We can also see Jesus’ attitude towards the leper. It is not a mere willingness to heal the leper, it is more than that. The pitiful situation of the leper which was caused largely by the society elicited a movement in Jesus. Compassion and love are the backbone of this redeeming act. It is not a mere physical act but something that originated in the inward being of Jesus. Compassion is the nature of Jesus.

In the reign of God, what did Jesus mean by touching the leper?
The suffering experienced by Jewish lepers was primarily social and religious rather than physical. In other words, we can say, in addition to the Physical ravages of the disease, his/her cultic impurity was geographically described in the Leviticus. The leper was socially ostracized from every day of life.

Pollution is the basic reason for the exclusion of a leper from the Jewish society. Through touching and curing the leper, Jesus is underlining an important principle in the reign of God i.,e. the principle of anti-exclusion and anti-pollution. We see this principle being radiated in the first few chapters of the Markan gospel. In Ch 5 Jesus touched the corpse of Jairus’ daughter and he was touched by the hemorrhaging women. The climax of this principle is depicted in Ch 7:15, that is ‘what comes out a person’s heart defiles’. According to the law, Jesus was made unclean in all the above situations in order to restore those excluded from the cult and to raise the dead. This act is filled with affirming humane values. By touching and healing the leper, Jesus is restoring the leper into the community and affirming the life of the leper by negating his own life. Here, Jesus is sharing his humanity and welcoming him into a new humanity. Jesus is giving new dimension to this aspect by emphasizing the purity of the heart, not outward purity. K Berger invites us to see this act of compassion in a different perspective, that is, in his own words “Jesus’ purity was contagious”.
The pain of exclusion from the family, friends and the society, and the fact of being lonely most of the time lead to question of life itself. My friend, Atsung and I are assigned to an organization called ‘ACCEPT’ for the societal concurrent field work. ‘ACCEPT’ accepts the HIV positive patients for treatment and care. One of the deepest wounds we came across in the minds of the HIV positive patients is ostracization (excluding attitude) from their families. In the case of the leper the basic reason for his exclusion is the so-called ‘pollution’ but in the case of HIV stigma or fear plays the major role. How will we respond to a brother or sister who is affected by HIV in our own family? This virus can enter our body in many ways, who knows? We are not very far away from it!

What does Jesus’ anger convey to us?
Jesus is getting angry two times in this passage, once in vs. 43 where Jesus is giving stern warning to the leper. And next in vs. 41 while it reads ‘pity’ in the NRSV, some manuscripts read ‘anger’. Was Jesus angry at the structures which excluded the leper from the society?
Every society has goals which hold legitimate objectives for all. But sometimes the goals are integrated in a kind of hierarchical view of life involving varying degrees of sentiment and significance. When these structures start to regulate and control the modes of reaching out for these goals, there the system falls into institutionalized norms. When the institutionalized norms start to shape the prevailing practices, we find that it many a time dehumanizes people. The act of rejection and acceptance plays a vital role. Look at this passage, the priest decides and declares about leprosy. So the interpretation of the norms was vested on them. The state of leprosy was close to death in the ancient Mediterranean World of face to face culture where one took one’s identity from the eyes of others. We see in Jesus the moral anger which led him to cross barriers. By responding to the need of the leper, Jesus heals this illness of the society. In the words of J D Crossan “Jesus healed the illness by refusing to accept the official quarantine, by refusing to stay separate from the sick person, by touching him and thereby confronting others with a challenge and a choice”. Jesus challenges the attitude of the community towards lepers.

Reflection
When we study the attitude of the leper, we may wonder from where he got the courage to meet Jesus. We can see the same phenomenon in other occasions also where a group of lepers came to him and were healed by him. They understood Jesus not as one of the rabbis or scribes but as a friend and fellow companion with a difference. In Jesus the divine is revealed in a human way. Through sharing his humanity, Jesus has put forward a model to follow, a model of sharing our lives with others. J Moltmann rightly points out that ‘Human life is only authentically human when it occurs in dialogue’. One of the touching questions asked by ACCEPT’s HIV + children is so disturbing and makes us think “Are we also to become like our parents and suffer all our lives? There was pinpoint silence from the counselor before he diverted their attention to the importance of continuous treatment. This basic question works more and more in their minds as they grow older. As a church, what will be our response? It poses a challenge and a choice before us. I believe, when we stretch out our hands with faith to the needs of the people and identify with those whose identity is nullified by the community, there lays the miracle. S Kappen points out that ‘liberation comes only to those who stretch their hands to grasp the divine that reveals in the creative word and deed of their fellow beings’.

When was the last time we got angry? Was it for our personal matters? Or was it as an expression of hate towards a person? Do we become violent when things don’t happen in the way we want them to? When we study the lives of social reformers moral anger was so prominent in their lives against injustice structures. By healing the leper, Jesus questions the dehumanizing attitude and the closed mind set of the community. This act points us to another principle in the reign of God i.e. justice. Perversion of justice is also the imposition of suffering on someone who is unable to defend him/her self against it…Eliezer Berkovits comments “the toleration of injustice is the toleration of human suffering”. “Justice is done not that justice prevail but that life to prevail”. The reign of God invites us to become channels of this transformation, transformation of lives of people will lead to the transformation of human relations, thus to transform the injustice structures in our society. Amen.