6th Sunday OTB

6^th Sunday in Ordinary Time B

Readings: Leviticus 13:1-2,44-46  1 Corinthians 10:31-11:1  

Mark 1:40-45

This Sunday’s Gospel recounts Jesus’ healing of an outcast leper and restoring him to the community of God’s people.  Let us join the leper who kneels before Jesus and prays: “If you will do so, you can cure me.”  With that humble spirit, we can pray this Sunday’s psalm: “I turn to you, Lord, in time of trouble, and you fill me with the joy of salvation” (Ps 32).

The Leviticus reading sets the religious and social background for Jesus’ healing and restoration of the leper in the Gospel.  It is part of a long section treating “leprosy” which rendered persons “unclean” and forced them to dwell apart, outside the Israelite community.  As is clear from the description, “leprosy” is a term for various skin blemishes and fungi (scabs, pustules or blotches), and not Hansen’s disease.  In Israel the priests, the descendants of Aaron, had the responsibility of diagnosing the leprosy, declaring persons unclean, and then pronouncing them clean when the leprosy was healed.  Until the leprosy was healed and the proper sacrificial rituals were performed, the leper must “keep his garments rent and his head bare, and . . . muffle his beard,” and, as long as the sore is on him, he almost must “cry out, ‘Unclean, unclean!’”.  This, then, is the ostracized condition of the leper in our Gospel reading. 

The second reading is the conclusion of Paul’s long exhortation in 1 Corinthians on the problem of whether Christians were free to eat meat that had been “offered to idols” and to attend pagan banquets (see 1 Cor 8:1-11:1).  Paul’s treatment of these issues is a good illustration of how his ethical teaching is based on the Christian command to love rather than on “knowledge” and “rights” as in a philosophical ethics.  For Paul, love “builds up” the community by being concerned with the physical and spiritual welfare of others.  But “knowledge” only “puffs up” the individual and has no regard for the needs of others.  While sarcastically agreeing with the knowledgeable that the idols have no real existence, Paul asks that they, out of consideration for the weaker brethren who are recent converts, not eat the food that has been offered to idols in their presence (10:23-28).  In the matter of the pagan banquets, Paul forbids participation because the Christian Eucharistic meal is a participation in the body and blood of Christ which precludes participation in pagan sacrifices (10:14-22).  In the midst of this section, Paul offers his own behavior as an example to the Corinthians (9:1-27).  As an apostle he has certain rights, for example, the right to support from his communities and to take a wife in marriage.  But he has freely given them up in order to be of service to those to whom he preaches the gospel.  In the same manner he asks the Corinthians to be willing to give up their liberties and privileges in matters of food for “the glory of God” and their brethren’s spiritual needs. “Whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do everything for the glory of God.  Avoid giving offense, whether to the Jews or Greeks or the church of God, just as I try to please everyone in every way, not seeking my own benefit but that of the many, that they may be saved.  Be imitators of me, as I am of Christ.”

In his story of Jesus’ healing a leper, Mark continues his twin themes of Jesus opening the kingdom of God to the diseased and outcast in Israel and his desire for secrecy about the miracles. At the same time Mark is preparing for the hostility of the scribes and Pharisees in the next section (see 2:1-3:5) because Jesus’ actions imply God-like power and override the authority of the priests and Temple.  In Mark the simple faith of outsiders brings them into God’s kingdom, while the Temple-bound legalism of the scribes and Pharisees keeps them out.  In contrast to the scribes who claim that Jesus has blasphemously usurped God’s power to forgive sins (2:6-12), the leper humbly recognizes the divine power operative in Jesus and begs for healing and restoration to a state of cleanness.  “A leper came to Jesus and kneeling down begged him and said, ‘If you wish, you can make me clean.’”  Moved with pity, Jesus, with God-like power, simply stretches out his hand, touches the leper, and says, “I do will it. Be made clean.”  As often happens in Mark, the cure is “immediately” accomplished.  In the concluding dialogue Jesus continues to command secrecy about his miracle working (see Mk 1:25,34), but tells the cleansed leper to show himself to priest and offer the sacrifices prescribed in Leviticus for restoration to the community (see Leviticus 14).  But, in typical Marcan fashion, the man goes away and begins to publicize the whole matter.  Despite Jesus’ attempt to avoid the crush of the crowds by remaining outside the towns in deserted places, the people keep coming to him from everywhere.  Mark gives us the impression that, although Jesus wants to wait for the full revelation of the kingdom (see Mk 8:27ff), his healing ministry has thrown open the gates to the kingdom, and long rejected outcasts have coming streaming in, as the prophets had prophesied (cf. Isaiah 35).