On Cleansing and Shame - Left-Overs
Last week as I was preparing for yesterday's sermon I knew I would be using the story of the law-breaking leper found in Mark 1:40-45. The only real challenge I had with such a remarkable text was isolating just one theme for the upcoming message.
Last Tuesday, as I worked through the passage with some friends, I quickly realized it was overflowing with more insight and inspiration than one sermon could contain. From these six verses we identified several sermon-worthy ideas. Let me give you a couple of the sermon themes that you almost heard:
1) Perhaps the most intriguing one grew out of the leprous man's plaintive appeal to Jesus found in verse 40: ''If you want to, you can make me well again.'' Verse 41 says, ''Moved with pity, Jesus touched him and said, 'I want to, be healed!''' Instantly the desperate man was healed and the leprosy disappeared.
What makes this incident so compelling to me are the first four words of the man's petition: ''If you want to...'' Regarding those words, my mind is filled with some inescapable questions. Questions like: Does God want to heal us? Always? Is there ever a time when He doesn't want to? Why? When we ask God to heal us and we aren't, does that mean He didn't want to? Are there other possible reasons for our entreaties not being positively answered? What could some of those be?
Suffering with illness is bad enough without having the added trauma of thinking God doesn't care or Divine indifference. This story from Mark's gospel is especially comforting to me because of the first three words of Christ's response, ''I want to...'' He said. I deeply believe those words are indicative of the Father's heart, of a God who is anything but indifferent. Why we don't always get the desired outcome from our prayers is, admittedly, a mystery fraught with complexities we may never fully understand.
2) The next point of interest stems from Jesus' interaction with the Mosaic Law. It is often and correctly pointed out that Christ, by receiving and touching the leprous man, broke the Law. It must also be noted, though, that after healing the man, Jesus then observed the same Law he had just broken. By sending the man to the priest for the official sanction of his newfound cleanness, Jesus was joining the healed one in submission to the Mosaic Code.
Jesus would later speak to the possible confusion caused by this type of perceived contradiction, saying, ''Don't think that I came to destroy the Law, rather I came to fulfill it.''(Matthew 5) By Christ's estimation, breaking the law did not constitute destroying it and even in certain situations would be necessary to fulfill it! Jesus knew that there was a spirit or intent undergirding every individual law in the Law. He also knew that strict adherence to the technical details of the law did not necessarily indicate a transformed, purely motivated heart.
While the above is indeed true, it must also be noted that Jesus did not come as a raging iconoclast tearing down Moses teaching. As a matter of fact, He always was careful to observe the law, that is, until He saw it in opposition to human need. In those moments, He repeatedly seized the opportunity to teach a new Law - one that fulfilled all of the old.
That Law, the Apostle Paul later called, ''The Law of Christ.''(Galatians 6) A new standard ''written not on tablets of stone but on the fleshly tablets of the heart.'' A law of love, born out of a relationship, one that would not come merely from black letters on a white page, but would be conveyed by the whispers of God's promised Holy Spirit in the heart of the believer.
Whew! I could write all night on that one but you better get back to your Tuesday and every one in my house is asleep on this cold Monday night so I think I'm going to join them and send this out in the morning.
Peace,
Stan
Last Tuesday, as I worked through the passage with some friends, I quickly realized it was overflowing with more insight and inspiration than one sermon could contain. From these six verses we identified several sermon-worthy ideas. Let me give you a couple of the sermon themes that you almost heard:
1) Perhaps the most intriguing one grew out of the leprous man's plaintive appeal to Jesus found in verse 40: ''If you want to, you can make me well again.'' Verse 41 says, ''Moved with pity, Jesus touched him and said, 'I want to, be healed!''' Instantly the desperate man was healed and the leprosy disappeared.
What makes this incident so compelling to me are the first four words of the man's petition: ''If you want to...'' Regarding those words, my mind is filled with some inescapable questions. Questions like: Does God want to heal us? Always? Is there ever a time when He doesn't want to? Why? When we ask God to heal us and we aren't, does that mean He didn't want to? Are there other possible reasons for our entreaties not being positively answered? What could some of those be?
Suffering with illness is bad enough without having the added trauma of thinking God doesn't care or Divine indifference. This story from Mark's gospel is especially comforting to me because of the first three words of Christ's response, ''I want to...'' He said. I deeply believe those words are indicative of the Father's heart, of a God who is anything but indifferent. Why we don't always get the desired outcome from our prayers is, admittedly, a mystery fraught with complexities we may never fully understand.
2) The next point of interest stems from Jesus' interaction with the Mosaic Law. It is often and correctly pointed out that Christ, by receiving and touching the leprous man, broke the Law. It must also be noted, though, that after healing the man, Jesus then observed the same Law he had just broken. By sending the man to the priest for the official sanction of his newfound cleanness, Jesus was joining the healed one in submission to the Mosaic Code.
Jesus would later speak to the possible confusion caused by this type of perceived contradiction, saying, ''Don't think that I came to destroy the Law, rather I came to fulfill it.''(Matthew 5) By Christ's estimation, breaking the law did not constitute destroying it and even in certain situations would be necessary to fulfill it! Jesus knew that there was a spirit or intent undergirding every individual law in the Law. He also knew that strict adherence to the technical details of the law did not necessarily indicate a transformed, purely motivated heart.
While the above is indeed true, it must also be noted that Jesus did not come as a raging iconoclast tearing down Moses teaching. As a matter of fact, He always was careful to observe the law, that is, until He saw it in opposition to human need. In those moments, He repeatedly seized the opportunity to teach a new Law - one that fulfilled all of the old.
That Law, the Apostle Paul later called, ''The Law of Christ.''(Galatians 6) A new standard ''written not on tablets of stone but on the fleshly tablets of the heart.'' A law of love, born out of a relationship, one that would not come merely from black letters on a white page, but would be conveyed by the whispers of God's promised Holy Spirit in the heart of the believer.
Whew! I could write all night on that one but you better get back to your Tuesday and every one in my house is asleep on this cold Monday night so I think I'm going to join them and send this out in the morning.
Peace,
Stan
posted by Clear Head Space | 10:04 AM
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