6th Sunday in
Ordinary Time
Cycle B
Lv
13:1-2,44-46
1
Cor 10:31-11:1
Mk
1:40-45
Imagine for a moment that
you wake up tomorrow, lift yourself out of bed, and trudge into the bathroom to
brush your teeth. You peer bleary eyed into the mirror and see something truly horrible.
Overnight, in bold colors, the name of a sin you had committed the day before
had appeared written on your forearm, sort of like a tattoo. No amount of soap
and water or hard scrubbing would remove it. Horrified, you put on a long-sleeved
shirt to cover it up.
But that’s not the worst
of it. Every day afterwards, when you wake up another sin you had committed
appears tattooed somewhere else on your body. The little sins are little
tattoos and the big ones are big tattoos. Some are in inconspicuous places that
are easy to cover up, but one morning after a particularly fun night out, a
large red tattoo appears right in the middle of your forehead. And this sin is
a doozy, a particularly embarrassing one. There’s no easy way to cover that one
up, so you decide to stay inside until you can figure out just what’s going on.
Each day your sins are
always before you. You can’t escape them and the guilt you feel. They are
constant reminders of your failures. You are desperate to wash them away, to
remove them from your sight. And finally, you have to leave the house. You have
to go out into the world, and now everyone can see your sin. It has physically
altered you and you no longer look like other people. Just like Hester Prynne
in the Scarlet Letter, you are shunned and mocked by everyone you meet. You
will do anything, anything at all, to be rid of them. You vow that if they are
removed you will never sin again. Ever.
What if your sin was as
visible to you as leprosy? What if your sin was always before you? How would it
make you feel? To what lengths would you go to remove it?
What if your sin was as
visible to the world as leprosy? What if everyone you meet knows exactly how
you have sinned? How would they treat you? How would it make you feel? To what
lengths would you go to remove it?
We hear today Moses’
prescription for the treatment of lepers, and it seems pretty harsh. Lepers
were to be treated as outcasts from the community. Even the suspicion of
leprosy meant exile. There were two reasons for this; first, it was a public
health issue. Leprosy is extremely contagious, so it made sense to isolate
those suffering from it. However, it was also a question of morality. The
ancient Jews believed that the sick suffered because they were sinners. If you
pleased the Lord He would bless you with good health, wealth, long life and
children. If you were poor, sickly or barren it was because you or your parents
had done something sinful, and God was punishing you for it.
Lepers had to actually
take the posture of the penitent - rending their clothes and uncovering their
heads – not because they were sick but because their sin had made them impure.
They were unclean and to have contact with them not only exposed you to their
illness but to their sin. Sin was just as contagious as leprosy, so sinners
were shunned and ostracized. To touch the unclean made you unclean. To consort
with sinners made you a sinner. People accused Jesus of being a sinner all the
time because of who he associated with.
And people would be very
cruel to the unclean. They would drive them away, throw rocks at them, and cut
them off from everything they loved. They would be publicly humiliated and
shunned. They would lose everything and live in desperation.
The only way the leper,
the sinner, could return to the community was to prove that the ailment no
longer existed. If the outward signs of the illness were gone, that indicated
that the inner sinfulness was gone, too. That is why the healed had to show
themselves to the priests. The priests were the representatives of the faith
community. They had to verify that the person had turned from their sin and
could then be reconciled to the community.
Jesus came into contact with lepers because he went to
where they were. He went to the peripheries, where he wasn’t supposed to go,
knowing who and what he would encounter there. He wouldn’t have easily come
into contact with lepers in the towns and cities, or even on the roads, because
Jewish law forced lepers to live away from those places. And we know that Jesus
could easily heal people with just a word, even from a distance, yet he chose
to touch this man. By doing so in the presence of his disciples he was making
himself ritually unclean. They must have been scandalized. Here he was again
going against the law. But he was showing the disciples what mercy was really
like, and he proved to them that the sick had value. He did not shun them. And
he was showing them his authority and power, even over the law.
The leper didn’t come to
Jesus because he believed he was the son of God. He had just heard that Jesus
was a powerful healer, and believed that he could be healed himself. He would
do anything, try anything, to remove the stain and the pain of his disease. He
also believed, like everyone else did, that he was suffering physically because
he was a sinner. He fell at Jesus’ feet and groveled in the dirt. And he said
basically, “You are the only one who can make me clean. You are the only one I
trust not to judge me. You are the last person I can turn to and I desperately
hope you won’t turn me away. Please make me clean. Please remove these outward
signs of my sinfulness. Please see me as a person of value. Please don’t join
in the shaming but accept me. Forgive me.”
And Jesus did. What else
could he do? He didn’t see before him a sinner being punished for what he had
done. He saw him as a complete human being. He returned his dignity to him. He
forgave him his sins. And he made him feel that he was free from the effects of
his sin. It’s as if all had been wiped clean.
We are the same. All we
need to be cleansed of our sin is to turn to Jesus and believe that we can be
forgiven. For some that is really hard to believe. Sin makes us feel dirty, cut
off from those we love, unworthy. We have to believe that there is hope. I
think that today most people do not have a sense of sin. They have moved away
from God and so have lost hope in forgiveness. They feel those feelings of
being unworthy but do not know the reason why. They cannot name their sin and
therefore cannot hope to be cured of it. It would almost be better if we could
see our sins tatooed right between our eyes.
We can also turn to Jesus
and be healed. It was no coincidence that Jesus tells the man to show himself
to the priest. He calls us to do the same so the priest can declare us clean.
The man could not contain
his joy at being healed. He went and told everyone he could about what had
happened to him. Whereas before he cowered before others, now he stood tall. What
if we felt that same way when our sins are forgiven? What if we left the
confessional and went out and proclaimed to everyone that our sins have been
forgiven and we are now clean. What if instead of a big red tattoo on our
foreheads there was a shining light surrounding our faces, a glow of deep joy
that everyone could see? How would that make you feel? How would that affect
the people around you?
The season of Lent is
upon us. What better time to be healed? Why not take a good, close look at yourself
in the mirror every evening and take stock of how you had lived that day? See
all the blemishes for what they are, even the ones that are hard to find? Why
not sit down with those closest to you, the ones who can also see your sins as
if they were tattooed on your forehead, and ask for forgiveness and
reconciliation? Why not go see Jesus, throw yourself down before him in the
confessional and say, “If you will to do so, you can make me clean”.
I assure you, he wills to
do so. And I guarantee you, your joy will be great and your joy will be
contagious.