Sixth Sunday in Ordinary Time YrB - 11 Feb 2018
Sixth Sunday in Ordinary Time YrB
11 Feb 2018
Homily
You will notice that Mark once again includes the “messianic secret” in today’s passage. One wonders how realistic it actually is to expect the cured leper from describing how he was cured?
What was called leprosy, was one of the most feared diseases in history, right up to the mid-20th Century. For those old enough to remember the hysteria which followed the first recognition of HIV/Aids, it was regarded very similarly.
For the protection of the wider community, those suffering it had to be set apart. In some times and places, once diagnosed with leprosy, the sufferer was regarded as legally dead, if they were married, their spouse could remarry. In some cases, they even had funeral ceremonies for them!
Something I never noticed until preparing this homily was that in the passage we hear from Leviticus, the sufferers are not completely excluded from the community. They have to inhabit the outskirts of the camp ( remembering that at this time, the People of Israel were still nomads, not yet farming the land of Israel), but they are not forced totally away. They are still, to a very limited degree, part of the community.
We need to remember the widespread idea of that time & place ( and some people even now!) that any kind of suffering or illness was the result of sin. For the protection of the wider community, they had to be excluded. Thus, this leper could not approach Jesus, or be brought to him by friends; he had to come on his own.
Imagine the courage it would take to do so, the risk of rejection by Jesus or the wider community as he did so. By the standards of the day, Jesus had to reject him to prevent being himself being defiled.
Yet we see Jesus totally rejecting this. Rather than him being defiled by touch, the leper is cleansed by his touch! In every one of his healing miracles, Jesus returns the healed to the community by touching them. This is one reason why in the reception of the Sacraments, touch is involved!
As we see here, God does not seek to punish, but to love, to heal wounds and end seperations.
The question for ourselves is – who do we exclude? Who do we marginalise?