From Shame to Honor
Mark 1:39-45
As Jesus moves throughout Galilee, sharing who He is, He comes across a man covered from head to toes with a fatal disease. Mark provides an encounter with a social outsider–a leper. Remember Jesus’ commitment to the disciples? He was going to make them into fishers of men. Therefore, Mark includes Jesus’ encounter with the leper in order to train the disciples on how to connect with a social outsider and reinforce His divine authority.
In the Old Testament, in Leviticus 13:1-49, God gives the official test for leprosy. It is a very detailed and long process to determine if someone had leprosy. It is a sentence, the purpose of which was to protect the health of the community from a dreaded contagion. The priests, who were the keepers of the public health of the community, had the responsibility to protect the people from the spread of this disease. Leprosy was then as now a subject of superstition and fear.
A year ago, we may not have been able to conceptualize the reality of living with leprosy. However, the effects of COVID-19 through the requirements of quarantine and telling others if you have been exposed bring us closer to understanding this reality.
Shame has been weaponized in our culture in an attempt to get people to act a certain way. Mask. No mask. Get COVID-19. Don’t get COVID-19. Social distance. Don’t social distance. Wherever one stands on these issues, what remains unchanged is how Jesus does not create distance between you and those who may stand opposite of you. In an era of fear, people utilize both law and liberty to distance themselves from others in order to shame.
The leper risks everything, breaking both law and custom, on the chance of being healed and restored by Jesus. What Jesus restores is the man’s honor and dignity as a human being by not distancing himself from him, and ultimately healing him.
Jesus wants the right power to be recognized for the healing that had taken place. Jesus’ statement then means that if the priests establish that healing has taken place and accept the sacrifice for cleansing but fail to recognize the person and power through whom healing has come, they will stand condemned by the very evidence which they have supplied.
William Lane in his commentary on Mark says, “The healing of the leper demonstrated that God had done something new. If they neglect this sign or deliberately refer this gracious act to an evil origin, the accomplished sacrifice will testify against them on the day of judgment. It was, therefore, imperative that the man complies with Jesus’ instruction. It was necessary on his own behalf, but more important, he was to provide the evidence of the new thing God was doing, which if met with unbelief would serve as incriminating evidence against the priests.” Jesus does not ignore the channels by which the man needs to communicate his cleansing, if anything it’s to help him display the removal of shame.
The cleansing of the leper indicates the new character of God’s action in bringing Jesus among men. Salvation transcends cultic and ritual regulations, which were powerless to arrest the hold that death had upon the living, and issues in radical healing.
We all have some aspect of our story that causes us to be placed on the outside. You are a leper for some other person. That’s right. However, you do not need to fear this, nor embrace it as a badge of honor. Both keep people at a distance from you. Mark’s goal is to help us understand how we pursue people by living under Jesus’ authority. Therefore, we will not seek to weaponize shame, nor its ensuing division.
We must be people who break down the walls of hostility between ourselves and others that have been erected by social shame. Through the power of Jesus, we can be cleansed of social shame. We were all lepers at one time to god, yet he loved us, touched us, and paid the ultimate sacrifice to make us clean.
Jesus can cleanse those you shame. Jesus can cleanse your shame.