HOMILY Sixth Sunday in Ordinary Time Cycle B February 11, 2024

 HOMILY    Sixth Sunday in Ordinary Time   Cycle B                                February 11, 2024

           LEPROSY held special terror and horror for people in the ancient world.  Not only was this disease disfiguring and fatal, worse, it cut its victims off from community, from family support and human interaction.  As we heard in the first reading from Leviticus, lepers had to rent their garments, they must cry out, "Unclean, unclean" and dwell apart ("outside the camp").   Ben Hur?

In this section of Mark’s Gospel we see Jesus performing a lot of healing miracles. We saw that in last Sunday’s Gospel.  St. Mark is showing us Jesus’ POWER.  And now Jesus tackles the difficult case of leprosy. 

          Our Gospel is somewhat confusing.  Scripture scholars believe that today’s passage from St Mark is a combination of two different stories that may have circulated about the same event.  At first in our Gospel Jesus is very gentle.  When the leper approaches and makes his request, Jesus is filled with pity.  The compassion of Jesus shows forth.  “Moved with pity, he stretched out his hand, touched him, and said to him, "I do will it. Be made clean."    

          But then Jesus suddenly becomes rather stern and abrupt.  We hear “Then, warning him sternly, he dismissed him at once.“  The poor guy just got healed of a terrible disease.  Why is Jesus so stern and impatient?   //   Scholars think this was part of an exorcism story, and Jesus is addressing, not the poor man who had leprosy, but rather the evil demon of leprosy, and casting it out.  In the Greek, to dismiss is to cast out.  This is exorcism language.  The order Jesus gives to keep silent is just like what Jesus tells the demons he casts out to not speak, to keep quiet.  So scholars believe it is with the demon of leprosy that Jesus is stern and abrupt.

The word translated as “warned him sternly” literally means to snort, like a warhorse in a battle.  It means to grunt with exertion.  The imagery is one of a fight.  Jesus groans, or grunts, in His struggle with the demon.  This is not a sham fight but a real struggle.  Jesus fights and overpowers the demon.  It sounds strange to our ears.  //

          God is angry at evil.  This is not a milk-toast God, but a champion who fights against oppression, death and evil.  God in Jesus is powerful.  As it is said of Aslan the lion in the wonderful book, The Chronicles of Narnia, “He is not a tame lion.”  

 

          The same is true for us.  Sin is very like leprosy.  It separates us from other people, puts us at conflict with others.  Sin destroys harmony and community.  Pride, greed, lying, selfishness, envy, licentiousness are all destructive of community.  Sin also eats away at us, destroying us.  Therefore, often in the Gospels leprosy is a symbol for sin.

 

          Just as Jesus approaches the leper in the Gospel today with compassion and pity, so Jesus also approaches us when we come to Him seeking healing, seeking forgiveness.  Jesus is also powerful enough to overcome the evil, to dismiss it, to cast it out.  Jesus both desires to heal us, and is strong enough to do so.  We sinners are the leper in the Gospel today.  

          Finally, there is a strange reversal of roles in the Gospel.  The leper begins the story separated from community.  He is condemned to “live apart”, outside of the towns.  

Jesus takes pity on him and heals him.  Now the leper is re-integrated into community.  He no longer has to live apart.  But Jesus, because of this healing, now is Himself forced apart.  St. Mark states: “ it was impossible for Jesus to enter a town openly.  He remained outside in deserted places,…”   The roles are reversed.  Jesus must now dwell apart. 

          What had been the situation of the leper has now fallen on Jesus.  Is Mark alluding to the fact that Jesus saves us by taking on Himself our guilt?  I am not sure, but the shadow of the cross is always present, always lurking nearby in Mark’s Gospel. 

 

          What does all this say to us?  Well, the result of all this is: “God does not fit into our little categories.”  God is God, we are not. 

          However, unlike the evil demon of leprosy, we have not been told to keep silent.  Quite the opposite.  Jesus has now completed His salvific work and risen from the dead.  He has commissioned us to evangelize, to spread the Good News which is the Gospel.  By our words, and more importantly by our works, we are “to publicize the whole matter” of what God has done for us in Jesus Christ.  AMEN.