“Lost in Translations”
February 12, 2012
Scripture: Mark 1: 40-45
A man came to Jesus with a bad skin disease. This man got down on his knees and begged Jesus, saying, “If you want to, you can heal me.” Jesus put his hand on him with loving-pity. He said, “I want to. Be healed.” At once the disease was gone and the man was healed. Jesus spoke strong words to the man before He sent him away. He said to him, “Tell no one about this. Go and let the religious leader of the Jews see you. Give the gifts Moses has told you to give when a man is healed of a disease. Let the leaders know you have been healed.” But the man went out and talked about it everywhere. After this Jesus could not go to any town if people knew he was there. He had to stay in the desert. People came to him from everywhere.
Sermon: Lost in Translations
Rev. Doreen Oughton
Has anyone ever communicated by text message? There is a feature called auto correct. The phone tries to anticipate what you are saying, and supplies words. My brother texted me to ask if I was going to be around the next day. I typed, “What time?” but the message he got said “Shaft time?” When I think about today’s gospel passage, I wonder if there was some sort of auto correct in recording the bible. And it’s not just me. As I was doing my research this week on this passage, I found a variety of interpretations, and questions about translations.
The language most debated is the word Mark uses to describe Jesus’ emotional state in his interaction with the man who requested healing, but there’s a lot in this passage to wonder about. And it seems to me that it matters. I’m not sure how to resolve it. Each week I try to help us see or understand something about Jesus, but I feel at a loss about what we are to see in this passage.
So I invite you today to work it through with me. We may not reach a conclusion we all agree on, or even come to clarity within your own mind about what it means, but somehow I think that is true to the mission of the bible. I think it is less a “divine reference book” and more a tool to engage us in pondering who Christ is, who God is, and what they mean in our lives.
Your pew bible says that Jesus was moved with pity, and I went with a translation from a different bible that used the word loving-pity. But others say that Jesus was indignant or angry in his response to the diseased man. The issue is not about subtleties or variations of meaning of a word, like “bad.” Two different words are used in different Greek manuscripts, and there is no certainty about which came first. And the words are not similar in spelling or appearance, not even close. The one translated as compassion, pity or loving-pity indicates intense feeling. Translations include, “moved within the core of his being,” and “yearning of the bowels.” So that’s puzzle number one. Was Jesus responding out of anger, or out of compassion? Some say since it is a more challenging passage when going with anger, that is probably where we should go. It would make sense for someone transcribing the manuscript to dislike the characterization of Jesus as angry and change it to compassionate, but much less likely that someone would want to change compassion to anger. On the other hand, transcribers don’t make this change in other places where Jesus was described as angry in Mark’s Gospel. And it is possible that there was word similarity in Jesus’ language, Aramaic, that Mark himself or the early Greek transcribers got confused about.
If he was angry, who or what was he angry at? The pew bible says that the man who approached him was a leper, (and we sang about lepers), but there is widespread agreement among the scholars that the term leper was a catch-all phrase for skin diseases. Whatever skin issues he had, the man had been declared ritually unclean, unable to be part of the worshipping community. The Book of Leviticus dedicates 113 verses to skin issues – describing them, discerning what is to be declared unclean, what the unclean person should wear to distinguish them, how they should warn others of their uncleanness, and live alone away from others, and the ritual sacrifices and actions they must take to be declared clean again once the skin issue is gone.
The man is already breaking the rules for the unclean. Instead of calling out a warning to Jesus, he calls Jesus to him. Uncleanness was contagious even if the skin disease was not. Anyone touching an unclean person was declared unclean themselves and had to go through the cleansing sacrifices and rituals described in Leviticus before they could be part of the worshipping and living community again. Was Jesus angry at the threat this man posed to him? He just set off on his mission to bring his message all around Galilee, and now he could be banned from synagogues because of this one leper? But what was he supposed to do when confronted face to face by someone in need? I remember years ago when I was asked to preach on Easter Sunday when my pastor went on maternity leave. Of course I waited til the last minute to work on my sermon, and as I was working I got a call from a friend in crisis. She really, really needed me to go to her and be with her. I admit I was annoyed, but not really at her, just at the situation. Or imagine you are rushing to go pick up your child or grandchild, and there is an accident tying up traffic, ambulances trying to get through. You might be frustrated
Or was Jesus angry, not about the delay of his own mission, but about the system that shunned this man, that declared him unclean and made him an outcast? Or was he angry at how people might have judged this man because of his affliction even beyond the threat of his uncleanness? According to Todd Weir, it was common to believe that such overt afflictions were spiritual diseases caused by immoral behavior. They were thought of as punishment for a number of sins, including malicious gossip, illicit sex, excessive pride, miserly ways, or even murder. Was he angry at the way people blamed the victims of illness? Or could he have been angry at the illness itself, as one might be angry at Alzheimer’s disease or cancer or alcoholism or diabetes, angry at what they take from a person or family, angry at the unfairness of it all?
Angry or compassionate, Jesus heals the man. Some say the man may have engaged Jesus’ anger intentionally, his anger at the system, which the man shared. His words were almost a dare. He wasn’t following the rules because they were unfair rules. Would Jesus join him in breaking these rules? Why should he keep having to deal with those so-called holy men? Aren’t you a different kind of holy man, Jesus? Perhaps you see, too, how corrupt their system is. If so, the man wouldn’t have felt attacked or uncomfortable by Jesus’ anger, but validated by it. Perhaps this is an instance of Jesus growing in his understanding of his mission, as he did in his exchange with the Syrophoenician woman. Perhaps before this challenge from the leper, Jesus had not questioned the rules and rituals surrounding skin afflictions. But once he lets the challenge in, he is struck by the inhumanity of it. “I do choose,” says Jesus. “I choose to operate in a different kind of system, one based on love and healing and reconciliation.” But is there any ambivalence that remains, even with this choice? My friend in bible study sees the Book of Leviticus with all its detailed rules about cleanliness as an incredible gift that helped the ancient Israelites survive and flourish when other cultures were being wiped out by all kinds of contaminations. Was it really a good idea to just ignore these rules? I mean it is great to heal that individual, but isn’t it misguided to be angry about these rules that may be protecting people?
One commentator speculates that the man himself was obnoxious, and that Jesus’ anger might be about having to deal with someone with an attitude problem, someone who can’t, or won’t follow directions. He’s almost taunting in his dare. He’s just trying to find a way around his obligations to the priests, he’s putting Jesus on the spot. And then even after Jesus heals him he won’t follow Jesus’ directions to keep quiet and go to the priests. This person believes the message is that Jesus came to share God’s love and healing even with these types of people, and so churches and Christians are called to do likewise, even when someone just doesn’t get it and makes life hard for others.
The idea of an obnoxious leper might help us understand what happens after the healing. Deacon Ann read that “Jesus spoke strong words to the man.” The pew bible says that Jesus “sternly charged him.” The Greek word can also be translated as “thundered at him” or “snorted at him” – it originally referred to the snorting noise that horses make. One scholar says it expresses great distaste or anger. And the words translated as “sent him away” might better be translated as “cast him out.” It’s the same verb used to describe what Jesus does with demons in other stories in Mark’s gospel. But if we go with the idea that Jesus was angry at the unjust system, how do we understand this snorting or thundering? Jesus snorts or thunders at the man to keep quiet about what happened, but to go to the priest and do the ritual sacrifices and actions to be officially declared clean again. If Jesus was so angry at the rituals, at the system, why would he send the man back? Some say the man must have already been to the priests to try to be cleansed and was refused. His return, with offerings, would be a witness against the priests. Maybe like going to the RMV to pay a ticket for an expired meter and bringing a picture of your car at the meter with a tree fallen on top of it. It’s doing the “right” thing while making a point of the “wrongness” of the person requiring you to. Or perhaps Jesus was just moved with compassion, healed the man, and was passionate in his belief that the man must do whatever he had to to be fully restored to the community.
And then, finally, we have the man completely ignoring Jesus’s instructions. Was he just rebelling against the snorting and thundering – “you can’t talk to me like that. I’ll do what I want.” Was he just, as one commentator suggested, effervescent in his joy, so happy and excited that he just couldn’t keep it to himself? Or was he just an obnoxious guy who didn’t get it? Whatever the case, his actions had consequences for Jesus, making it difficult to openly enter a town. Was it because he had been declared unclean, or because his fame spread, or because he was afraid of backlash from the priests? Mark doesn’t tell us.
Hopefully you found this somewhat interesting, a means of pondering what you believe about Jesus, a chance to hear this story in light of whatever is happening in your own life. As I said in the beginning of this sermon, my hope is to help you see or understand something about Jesus each week. But I actually want even more for you. I want you to be moved by Jesus, to be touched and inspired by him on a deep level – moved within the core of your being, even to have a deep yearning in your bowels.
Things touch people in different ways, but what moved me deeply about this morning’s reading was that last part, where Jesus, as a result of this man’s actions, was unable to do what he meant to do in the way he meant to do it. His healing of the man cost him. In a way, he traded places with the man. Jesus had been part of the community, and the man had been outcast. Jesus made it so that the man was restored to the community, and Jesus was on the outs. Even if the man didn’t intend for this to happen, even if he thought he was helping Jesus by telling of his greatness, that was the result. What moves me is that Jesus didn’t stop. Jesus knew he would continue to pay a cost for bringing God’s love and healing touch to people everywhere. He knew at some point that he would pay with his very life. And he didn’t start trying to negotiate with us, saying he would heal, teach, save us as long as we did x, y or z. He always healed, touched and saved without condition. He might ask us for something after, to sin no more, to repent, to give all we have to the poor, to love our neighbors as ourselves, to love God with all our heart and soul and might, but he doesn’t make that a condition for receiving his grace. He didn’t stop then, no matter what the cost, and he won’t stop now, no matter what. And if that doesn’t move you in the core of your very being, I don’t know what will. Could you love like that, willing to pay a price? Would you?
