“If you wish, you can…”

The Gospel of Mark continues the little stories of Jesus the Healer. According to the Levitical practice, this diseased man should not have been approaching Jesus. They are both outside the town, the leper by law, Jesus by choice. The man “came” to Jesus and made a profound act of faith. “If you wish you can make me clean.” Jesus then, “touched” (imagine that) touched the unclean human while saying, “I do will it. Be made clean.” The leprosy left him immediately! The humanity remained with its fallen uncleanness, but the work of Jesus is the embrace of and not the angelizing of the human.

The cleansed man fulfills the ritual prescriptions and goes off into the town to find the priest and present proof of his healing. He began spreading the good news, instead of spreading leprosy. He had been told to say nothing except to the priests. Jesus on the other hand, remained outside which is where He could encounter those who were also cast-outs and unwanted.   

Lady Macbeth remains washing the spot from her hand after more than four centuries. Most of us relate with her by our reaching for similar spot removers ourselves. Jesus did not take away the memory of the leper’s having been a disgrace and outsider. The man had to live, perhaps, with a nickname,”leppy” or “Skin-man”. Perhaps he had to live with some shame or regrets about his having been ill or this terrible thing having been done to him.  

Jesus touches us in the very condition we wish we were not. Wincing is a reaction we have to past stupidities, mistakes, embarrassments and other hard human things. I squinch my eyebrows and try to wish this or that away. I have great memories about my personal ungreatnesses. It is helpful to both remember them, because they are real, but also to remember that Jesus’ “I will it. Be clean”, is still his basic stance and he doesn’t wince. The leper can never pretend he wasn’t unclean. Our belief in Jesus removes the spots of darkness and the pretenses of our being angelic. Jesus continues standing next to us when we choose to go outside, because we cannot stand ourselves. That, right there, is our twenty-first century form of leprosy and he still waits to grace it.