What I heard at church on Sunday

Mark 1 40-45 Jesus Heals a Man With Leprosy 40 A man with leprosy[h] came to him and begged him on his knees, “If you are willing, you can make me clean.” 41 Jesus was indignant.[i] He reached out his hand and touched the man. “I am willing,” he said. “Be clean!” 42 Immediately the leprosy left him and he was cleansed. 43 Jesus sent him away at once with a strong warning: 44 “See that you don’t tell this to anyone. But go, show yourself to the priest and offer the sacrifices that Moses commanded for your cleansing, as a testimony to them.” 45 Instead he went out and began to talk freely, spreading the news. As a result, Jesus could no longer enter a town openly but stayed outside in lonely places. Yet the people still came to him from everywhere.
This was the passage that the guest speaker was preaching about on Sunday. It was an interesting passage and one that I don’t recall having much teaching on in the past. Truth be told (on a christian blog, what else eh!) I would probably have thought remarkable and moved on leaving it as just another example of the miracles Christ did.
However, the preacher did an awful lot more than that. He started with a particularly graphic description of leprosy and the effects of that dreadful disease. I for one am glad that he did because all too often, I see the little text note in the NIV which says that he word probably meant several skin complaints and think that leprosy was probably not that bad. Maybe in my mind, it was similar to eczema. It isn’t. Two things stood out from the description of leprosy that he shared. Both come from a doctor who used to treat it. Firstly, they used to prescribe those with leprosy a cat. This cat would help keep the rats who would gnaw off fingers and toes under control. Secondly, he went on to describe how the lonliest of all the lepers were the blind ones. These were, he said, not only lepers but denied the comfort that fingers give to the blind because they could not feel. They are truly alone.
That is leprosy today. 2000 years ago, the were cast out of the camp (cue long discussion of some passages in Leviticus) with the dirt and the dung and the dead. It was a horrid life and here was a leper going up to Jesus and begging for a cure.
I took the NIV to church even though they use the ESV there and I love the word indignant. It makes you think of anger but upon investigation, it more closely relates to full of compassion. Here was this desperate man who says that if Christ is willing he can heal him of leprosy. Christ is filled with compassion and he heals him.
There was a little aside about healing that I thought was handled very well. Healing is difficult for the modern church. I often find that when people are not healed, we rush to find excuses. Here we see that it is completely up to God and only when He is wlling is there healing. Nobody knows the mind of God (1 Cor 2:11?) so nobody knows why people are not healed.
There is a wonderful piece of love from Christ here. We know he can heal at a word. He doesn’t have to touch anyone to heal them yet he touches this leper. He reaches out his hand and he touches the leper. This man, who had had no contact with anyone for years, is touched by Christ and he is healed. His main application point was this - who are the modern lepers? Who are we avoiding? Who is outside our camp? These are the people who we need to think about. The drunk, the weirdo, the criminal. This is something that I do need to think about a lot.
As with all good teaching in church, he points to Christ. As it says in Hebrews chapter 11 11 The high priest carries the blood of animals into the Most Holy Place as a sin offering, but the bodies are burned outside the camp. 12 And so Jesus also suffered outside the city gate to make the people holy through his own blood. Christ was crucified outside the camp. He was assigned a place with the dirt, the dung and the death. All in all, some excellent teaching and I was very pleased to have heard it.