ALL SAINTS MARGARET STREET

THIRD SUNDAY BEFORE LENT, 2006
HIGH MASS, ALL SAINTS MARGARET STREET

Fr Alan Moses


The leaders of the G8 countries meeting in Moscow this weekend are discussing, among other issues, that of controlling the spread of infectious diseases like Avian Flu. Even a society with the medical sophistication of ours can seem powerless in the face of such diseases. They generate fear - not only of the disease but of those who might be carrying it. Such people have to be quarantined, isolated from society to reduce risk.

Scholars tell us that the biblical term leprosy probably referred to a variety of virulent skin complaints for which there was no cure as well as what medicine now know as leprosy - a relatively recent arrival in the Middle East from Asia in Jesus’ time.

The book of Leviticus - the Law of Moses which Jesus refers too in the gospel, contains a code of practice for the treatment of people with such diseases. It required isolation. “Lepers” became social outcasts and we use the term that way still of people who are excluded from society for one reason or another. Not only was the leper condemned to social isolation, but to religious separation too. They were seen as spiritually as well as physically unclean. Leprosy was often seen as a punishment for sin. Sufferers were cut off from the religious life of Israel - they became non-persons.

If we think this is all very primitive and unsophisticated - not the kind of thing we would say in a compassionate, liberal society - we might recall the often irrational and fearful reactions of a good many people during the early years of the AIDS outbreak. For part of that time,. Edinburgh was the AIDS capital of Europe - largely because of a large number of intravenous drug users who shared infected needles. The clergy found themselves having to deal with considerable levels of anxiety about sharing the chalice. You were not likely to encounter many IV drug abusers at Mass - but if you came to a church like mine, the same could not be said of gay men. I recall discussing this problem with my bishop who with refreshing bluntness pointed out that AIDS was only transmitted by two means and we did not administer Holy Communion by either of them.

So, when the leper in today’s gospel approaches Jesus, he is breaking the rules which enforced non-contact. He should have been ringing his bell and calling out “unclean”. Indeed, he should not have been where he was at all.
Hearing of Jesus, he must have glimpsed the possibility of cure and release and been determined to grasp it.

Jesus, we are told was “moved with pity”. The Greek means that he was moved in the depths of his being, in his guts. Some manuscripts speak of him being angry - angry with the disease and its consequences, or perhaps with the religious system which condemned the man and those like him to such isolation.

“Jesus stretched out his hand and touched him and said to him, ‘I do choose. Be made clean!’” A simple gesture but a one which no one in their right mind would have made. Jesus touches a man who is not only physically diseased but ritually impure. Both are contagious. Jesus would now be regarded as unclean too -unable to take part in the worship of Israel.

He tells the man to go and show himself to the priest whose responsibility it was to certify cures but otherwise to “say nothing”. The man would have to go to the priest if he was to be readmitted to society but we aren’t told that he did. Mark does tell us that he told everybody he met - and we can hardly blame him. Which of us would be able to contain our joy in such a situation?
So Jesus is no longer able to go into Capernaum but has to stay out in the country. This may simply be because he was being mobbed, but it may also be because the religious authorities would consider him unclean. In spite of that, people in need came to him from every quarter.

We have already heard in Mark’s Gospel that Jesus was seen as one who “Taught with authority and not as the scribes”- the religious experts of the time. In this story of the healing of a leper early in his ministry, Jesus is being contrasted with the priesthood, the religious hierarchy which excluded people and did not seem to have the power to heal and include. That contrast will deepen into outright hostility and conflict as the gospel story proceeds on its way to the Cross where Jesus will die outside the city, as one accursed by hanging on a tree.

Jesus’ treatment of the leper has been a recurring inspiration to Christians down the ages. It has impelled them to care for those with that terrible disease - and not just through giving money to the Leprosy Mission. In the case of the elegant and sophisticated young man about town, Francesco Bernadone, it was an encounter with a leper which was a part of his conversion. Francis was impelled by Jesus to get down from his horse and kiss the leper he met on the road.
Then there was Fr. Damian of Molokai, the missionary priest who “moved with pity” went to work in the leper colony. His ministry did not seem to bear much fruit until he was able to address his flock from the pulpit saying to them not “you lepers” but “we lepers” because he now had the disease.

The Church has, at least in some places and people, been honest enough to say that it has HIV-AIDS. It is not just other people, outsiders, outcasts, sinners, who are sick.

That leper in the Gospel saw something in Jesus which gave him hope. It is one of the extraordinary truths of our faith, testimonies to the power of the gospel, that all sorts of people who on any rational examination would find the Church as forbidding and unwelcoming an institution as the Jewish priesthood to lepers, have found in Jesus the hope of healing and salvation - words that have the same root.

Last week, the General Synod of the Church of England was talking about the 200th anniversary of the abolition of the Slave Trade. It is an extraordinary testimony to the power of the gospel that people who had been snatched from their homes by Christians and condemned to a life time of slavery, to a living death, often justified by weighty theological arguments, should still find in Jesus the one who reached out and touched them.

The question for us of course is, “Who do we exclude?” and “What must we do about it?”