Year B: Sixth Sunday After Epiphany
He Sent Him to the Priest
This is the special grace of Epiphany. In view of his divine dignity and power, the Son of God gathers into himself the entire human family past, present and future. The moment that the Eternal Word is uttered outside the bosom of the Trinity and steps forth into the human condition, the Word gives himself to all creatures. - Thomas Keating1
Over the next few weeks, we will be contemplating the revelation of Jesus to several groups of people: the apostles, those afflicted with demons, and many who were sick and in need of a Savior. As we celebrate the Epiphany of Jesus to these blessed few, may Jesus appear in our lives in new ways and with a new intensity.
Year B, Sixth Sunday After Epiphany, February 11th, 2024
Today is supposed to be Transfiguration Sunday from Mark 9, but I’m going to continue in Mark 1 because I can, and because I don’t want to miss out on the rest of Mark 1 because we don’t enough Sundays for the rest of Epiphany.
First Reading: 2 Kings 5:5-14
Psalm: Psalm 30
Second Reading: 1 Corinthians 10:31-11:1
Gospel: Mark 1:40-45
Sermon - He Sent Him to the Priest
If you want some really interesting reading, I recommend Leviticus 12-15. You’ll read all about bodily discharges, childbirth, and skin diseases. It’s a blast.
But it also serves as good background for today’s reading, and since I’m already drawing outside of the lectionary lines, I think you’ll appreciate the subtle thing happening in Mark 1-3 with this section of Leviticus in mind.
A man with a skin disease came to him begging him, and kneeling he said to him, “If you are willing, you can make me clean.” Moved with pity, Jesus stretched out his hand and touched him and said to him, “I am willing. Be made clean!”
Immediately the skin disease left him, and he was made clean. After sternly warning him he sent him away at once, saying to him, “See that you say nothing to anyone, but go, show yourself to the priest, and offer for your cleansing what Moses commanded as a testimony to them.”
But he went 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. Mark 1:40–45
If you’ve read, skimmed through, or even glanced at the Leviticus reading above, you can appreciate Jesus’s attention to detail. By sending this man to the priest to be inspected, Jesus is abiding by a very detailed, somewhat complicated code in the center of Leviticus.
At the same time, Jesus toes the edge of what is lawful (what we might call ‘scriptural’) because he leads, not with a healing word, but with human touch. Leviticus 5:3 warns against touching someone who is unclean; Jesus, while keeping the Law, also seems to prefer love, care for the outcast, and strengthening the weak to a rigid ritual purity.
He sent him to a priest, but he also touched him before the priest cleared him. He submitted himself to the institutions but followed the law of love more closely than the law of clean and unclean things.
This short story of healing paves the way for a series of stories about Jesus’s “unscriptural” behavior in the name of love.
Before we get there, though, let’s think about how this might apply to us. How often have we upheld the supposed letter of the law even if it meant neglecting the law of love? How often have we put our own interpretations of passages, beloved traditions, or doctrines over care and love for someone on the margins?
Jesus chooses love over strict interpretation of the Law five times over the next two chapters, but it didn't begin here. All the way back in Mark 1:15, Jesus started his ministry with one word: repent. While we typically associate repentance with rigorous moral demands and getting our life in mind, repentance simply means change.
The very first words of Jesus in Mark, then, are, “The time is fulfilled! The kingdom is here! So change your minds.”
As Richard Rohr says in his book Falling Upward, “The resistance to change is so common, in fact, that it is almost what we expect from religious people, who tend to love the past more than the future or present.”
This reminds me of Jesus’s challenging words about the past traditions, the present need for change, and the human tendency to not want to change. New wine causes the old wineskins to burst. We have to accept Jesus’s words, “You have heard it been said, but I say unto you…”
In Mark 2 and 3, the religious leaders critiqued Jesus for breaking or toeing the line of several customs:
In Mark 2:1-12, Jesus forgives a man’s sins because of the actions of his friends (v. 5), and the scribes question why he would blaspheme God since only God can forgive sins.
In Mark 2:13-17, Jesus associates with tax collectors and sinners. He reclined at the table with them, and the Pharisees questioned why he would associate with such people.
In Mark 2:18-22, Jesus’s disciples run into trouble because they do not fast like the disciples of the Pharisees or John the Baptist.
In Mark 2:23-27, Jesus’s disciples draw further critique by enabling his disciples to pick grain on the Sabbath.
In Mark 3:1-6, Jesus heals a man on the Sabbath, but he turns the tables on the religious leaders.
This last entry makes for a good ending to this series of conflicts between Jesus and the religious leaders. Instead of being questioned by them first, he proposes a question: “Is it lawful to do good or to do harm on the Sabbath, to save life or to kill?”
The usual talkative religious leaders, Mark tells us, were silent.
So Jesus healed the man, and they immediately began to conspire to kill him.
So much for changing their minds!
These stories recall Jesus’s (1) radical forgiveness, (2) tendency to draw circles, not lines, (3) call for radical change instead of routine, socially acceptable and expected visible religious action, (4) understanding of the place of the Law, and (5) insistence on mercy over judgment, love over tradition.
If you take on these challenging convictions and habits yourself, you will undoubtedly draw attention to yourself and probably not in a “good” way. This kind of change agent attitude is not welcome in churches that have been set in their ways for a long time, especially if their ways safeguard them from outside contamination and give their members’ confidence in their eternal salvation and equal confidence in everyone else’s lack of said salvation.
We must be radical like Jesus. It is past time to change.
Second Reading - “Be Imitators of Me”
Corinth had a problem. Some members felt comfortable eating meat sacrificed to idols because, after all, idols aren’t real, so why pass up on a good deal on ribeye because some people offered it up to some fantasy? On the other hand, there were some who were very offended by the idea. They knew of the sacred nature of the meal, and they wanted to stay far away from it. As some of us might have heard, “Abstain from every appearance of evil!” Which I was told meant that if your car breaks down and the only place to call someone from was a bar or tattoo parlor (this was before cellphones), you better walk somewhere else so you abstain from every appearance of evil.
Paul’s response to this problem over the course of several chapters, but he ends in this way: “So, whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do everything for the glory of God. Give no offense to Jews or to Greeks or to the church of God, just as I try to please everyone in everything I do, not seeking my own advantage but that of many, so that they may be saved. Be imitators of me, as I am of Christ” (1 Corinthians 10:31–11:1).
How would they imitate Paul who imitated Christ? It wasn’t through eating or not eating but through how they ate or not ate. Through humbling themselves, they could walk either path and find satisfaction in bringing glory to God and honoring their brother or sister. True Christian maturity doesn’t come through winning a battle of wills but through laying down your own life to see the joy of your brothers and sisters.
Imitating Christ means not seeking your own advantage, looking to others needs more than you look to your own, and giving all the glory to God along the way.
Reflections
This week was so much better for me. I closed all of my move, exercise, and stand rings in Apple health, and I ran, walked, hiked, and paddled about 27.27 miles over the last seven days. This week, we have a guest speaker, but I plan on writing a sermon anyway.
Thanks so much for keeping up with this blog. If you have any suggestions, recommendations, or critiques, you can always comment here or reach out through my website: https://danielr.net.
Keating, Thomas. The Mystery of Christ: The Liturgy as Spiritual Experience. New York: Continuum, 2008. Print.