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Mark 1: 40-45
What
was Jesus thinking? How could He possibly think that this man, this leper,
having been cured by Jesus could possibly keep that act secret. Imagine trying
to hide a healed leper in a small community: Jesus must have been out of his
mind! Was
the leper wrong to go “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”? Jesus
succeeded in his compassion to heal the leper of his awful disease, but the
leper failed to keep the news quiet. The news, once out, became part of the
great pile of causes for Jesus' death and eventual resurrection. Jesus
understood human nature; he knew that there are always people who can snatch
defeat out of the jaws of success. There are always people who don't want good
things to happen, especially if they can't take the credit for them. That's why
he tried to keep the leper's good news quiet. Fortunately, he failed. Here we
can look at both his success and his failure. Both are mysteries. Mystery
is not the absence of meaning but the presence of more meaning than we can
comprehend. Who knows why this one leper got healed? Yes, there are others, even
today. Who knows why this one leper "talked?" There are others who
would have been glad, if healed, to disappear into the woodwork. If we
know Jesus at all, we know him as one who spilled over with compassion, so much
so that sometimes he did things that were not prudent. Healing the leper was not
prudent: it would only draw more. Gabriel
Marcel speaks often in his work of the difference between approaching life as a
problem or as a mystery. When we approach our charity as a problem, we are
always counting. Always calculating, always watching for where and when the
empire will strike back. When we approach our charity as a mystery, we forget a
little about cause and effect. We do what we have to do because we just did it. The
wife of the clergyman who took in hundreds of Jews during the Second World War
was asked why she took in the first one when her husband was away. "Because
he was standing there," she said. Jesus
probably healed that leper because he was there. He might have healed others who
came to him. This one he healed because he was there. Jesus
success came from mystery; his failure came from the problems in our world.
Jesus lived more comfortably with mystery than most of us. He was able to do so
because of his close relationship with God.
When we have that relationship, we aren't so bothered by the empire's
inevitable strike back. We are still with God. Faith, in Evelyn Underhill's
famous words, “is that confidence in God which no circumstance can alter”.
Imagine that; something so large that no circumstance can alter it. On a
Sam's discount store one Ester, a sign read, "Jesus is Risen but Sam's
price remains the same." Here we have a mixture of the world of mystery and
the world of problem. Sam's is a problem solving kind of place; good stuff,
cheap. Mystery is the Risen one. Jesus lived in the world of mystery -- no
circumstance could alter his relationship with God, including his murder and
death. Jesus wasn't looking for a bargain life -- he was looking for a life with
God. We
too can have this kind of relationship with God. We can become more,
mysteriously, than we are. We may not have leprosy but only the rare among us
don't need healing. We need to be healed of our stuck-ness or our fears; we need
to be healed for charity, not from charity. When we live in the world of
mysterious healings, something keeps making more of us. When
we make more of ourselves by way of relationship with God, when we practice
mysterious healings and get in trouble for them, we learn what it means to be a
renegade. We learn what it means to be "off the reservation." The
reservation is a place where problems, by God, are solved, or at least kept in a
state of magnificent equilibrium. Off the reservation, there are miracles. Hey,
don’t take my word for it. Ask Harry Potter. Ask the Muggles, those who don't
understand magic. They'll tell you. Jesus
and his disciples were a collective band of renegades. They did things that
weren't supposed to be done. They hoped for more than people thought it safe to
hope for. They were problems that needed to be solved. What
gave Jesus the permission to heal the leper was his relationship with God. He
didn't have a hard heart. He had a soft heart due to this relationship. We are
to renounce hard and sectarian views that are not large enough fro God's
mystery. The classic sign of God's mystery is welcoming and making room for
something other, the surprising, the unlooked for and the unwanted. Sounds like
a leper to me. Sounds like the leper heals those of us whose heart has grown
hard from insufficient mystery as well. The
capacity for healing mystery comes from knowing God. Even
though Jesus must have known terrible fear after he cured the blabbermouth
leper, he also felt clear, like in that song, "I can see clearly now, the
day has come. Going to be a bright, bright, bright, un-cloudy day." He was
in the density but he was also clear. God was not far. Many
of us need to get to this clear, dense place ourselves. We need to embrace the
mystery. We
are not powerless. We are instead mysterious. All the lepers may not be healed,
but some will be. All the children who live on the street may not get a hand but
some will. The empire will also strike back. But we will remain clear and glad.
For we are not powerless. Nor are we problem-solvers. We are children of God. If we
use the master's tools, of treating people as problems, of doing everything
ourselves, of staying far away from God and God's transforming power, then even
renegades will not heal lepers or house children who live on the street. But if
we use the true master's tools, those of love inside the mystery, of staying
close to God, there is nothing we cannot do. Lepers
will be healed--and if not that, something even more mysterious and wonderful
will happen. God can use either success or failure and often uses both. That having been said, would you keep a secret?
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