99 and 44/100%
Pure: 6th Sunday in Epiphany, Year B
2 Kings 5:1-14; Psalm 30; 1
Corinthians 9:24-27; Mark 1:40-45
The obvious overall theme for this 6th Sunday after Epiphany in Year B
is “healing”; and not just feeling better, or getting over something,
but recovery from major illness and even deliverance from the threat of
death.
In the apparent rush to prove the divinity of Jesus in the short time
between Christmas and Lent, the Elves skim the surface of
what looks like a tranquil lake. Like Elisha, they seem to be
implying, Jesus cures a feared and hated outcast of a feared and hated
disease. Paul’s cherry-picked metaphor about winning the prize
confirms the lesson: “Athletes. . . receive a perishable wreath,” Paul
writes, “but we [will receive] an imperishable one.” Further,
Paul says, “I punish my body and enslave it, so that after proclaiming to others I myself
should not be disqualified” (emphasis added). Purity,
achieved by ritual cleansing and then verified through ritualized,
sacrificial, redemptive gifts is the implied deeper meaning.
Ultimately, of course, Jesus is the purest sacrifice that reconciles
unclean sinners who repent (as in regret) their ways. Even
though, according to Mark, Jesus was forced out of the villages and
into the countryside by the stories told about him [after Jesus
specifically told them not to tell], we know he was saved in the end –
as we will be if we just believe. The Psalmist praises God for
these miracles: “O Lord, you brought up my soul from Sheol, restored me
to life from among those gone down to the Pit.”
Whenever the theme is that easy to determine, you can bet it’s not
what’s really going on. Before diving into that apparently
tranquil lake, we might be wise to be sure there are no undercurrents
or dangers hidden in the weeds at the bottom.
The story told by Mark is not factual. It describes who the
people in Mark’s community thought Jesus was. Mark was laying the
groundwork for the ultimate realization that comes at the end of the
novel: Jesus was the Messiah. The problem is that 21st
Century Christians already know the ending. But imagine hearing
it in successive readings in a clandestine synagogue or private
home. (The readings would likely not have been broken into the
segments the Revised Common
Lectionary does. Dividing Mark’s first episodes of
healing into three or four snippets makes little liturgical or literary
sense.)
First Century Jerusalem has been recently sacked, the Temple destroyed,
and the people have been dispersed. Jews, including the few among
them who had come to accept that Jesus was the longed-for Messiah, are
once again exiled, and in fear for their lives. Secrecy about who
Jesus was would have been paramount, not “because of the Jews,” but
because of the Roman policy that anyone – Jew or gentile – who did not
acknowledge Cesar as Lord was under a death sentence. That Jesus
demanded no one say anything about him would have been seen as normal,
not some kind of trick to determine who is in or out, “saved” or
condemned, nor to demonstrate that God wanted Jesus’s true identity to
be known so that God’s plan for him could be carried out.
Mark’s Jesus does offer proof that he – like Elisha – has the
legitimate power to perform miraculous healings. He sends the
now-cleansed leper to the priest for examination, and suggests strongly
that he bring whatever offering Moses commanded as evidence of the
cure. See Leviticus 14:2-32. The
ritual for cleansing leprosy and the subsequent ritual of offering
demanded of the former leper is so detailed and precise that any priest
should wonder how the person was cleansed in the first place.
Keeping the messianic secret would have been impossible. Sure
enough, Mark says, “after [the leper] went out, he started telling
everyone and spreading the story so that Jesus could no longer enter a
city openly, but had to stay out in the countryside.” Exiles
hearing this might well identify with the necessity of keeping their
activities covert.
For reasons known only to them, the Elves’ favorite Old Testament
“healing” story is the one about the gentile Naaman who bathed in the
Jordan and was cured of leprosy. This story is recommended
reading not only in this current year B, but twice in Year C. In
Proper 9 of Year C the story is paired with Luke 10:1-11, and in Proper 23
it is paired with Luke 17:11-19. In no
instance is the entire story read. If it were, it would not be
used (or mis-used) for some dogmatic purpose, such as the apparent
desire to show that Jesus was even more powerful than the prophet
Elisha. Jesus heals with a command. Elisha relies on seven
rounds of “baptism” in the River Jordan. Perhaps this is also a
swipe at John the Baptist? Who knows? Christians of all
varieties have been reading their own anachronistic significance into
these readings for two thousand years.
The story of the healing of Naaman has nothing to do with Mark’s story
about Jesus’s healing of lepers. Naaman is a gentile, the
commander of the army of the king of Aram (enemy of the Israelites),
who owns a Hebrew slave girl. She tells him that among her people
is a great prophet (Elisha) who can cure his leprosy. The king
promptly sends a letter requesting Elisha’s help (presumably so his
messenger won’t be killed as soon as he gets to the Israelites’ camp),
and the usual oxen, gold, clothing, food, etc. as peace
offerings. Elisha says, don’t be stupid. Send him to
me. Naaman arrives, but Elisha won’t come out to receive
him. (He does have leprosy, after all.) Instead he
sends out word that Naaman should go bathe in the Jordan River seven
times. Naaman gets annoyed and stomps off. His servant
says, don’t be an idiot. Go take a bath (or seven). Naaman
relents and follows the instructions, and ALLA KAZAAM!. He is
healed.
The next part of the story is off-limits for Year B, according to the
Elves (2 Kings 5:15-19). Naaman
is so grateful for the healing that he offers gifts to Elisha.
Elisha won’t accept them. Naaman compromises by taking back with
him a load of earth so he will always have a piece of the land of
Israel and, by association, Israel’s God, with him. He asks that
the Lord pardon him when he has to bow down to the Aramic god
Rimmon. Elisha says, “go in peace.”
As I wrote in my commentary from Proper 9 of Year C, these passages
have been used for too long to reinforce conventional piety and
morality. The radicality of God may be more clear in the story
about the healing of Naaman than it is in Mark’s story, as diced up in
the Revised Common Lectionary.
Mark’s Jesus is establishing the legitimacy of his new “Way,” for Jews
in diaspora. The Old Testament foundational myth teaches that
faith is not belief about God. Faith is trust in God’s
word. Both stories are primary, foundational myths.
Both are equally valid for reasons that are not so clear as Christians
have been led to believe..
But that’s still not the end of the story. What we never read in
any of the three years of the lectionary is the subsequent betrayal of
trust on the part of Elisha’s servant Gehazi (2 Kings 5:19b-27). When
Elisha declines to accept the gentile Naaman’s gifts in exchange for
his miraculous healing, Gehazi is scandalized. “As the Lord
lives, I will run after him and get something out of him,” he
says. When he catches up with Naaman, he makes up a story about
unexpected guests that need silver and clothing. Naaman not only
complies with Elisha’s supposed request, he doubles the amount asked
for. The outsider Naaman is generous to a fault. The
insider Gehazi is corrupted and therefore cursed by Elisha with the
very same leprosy Naaman was cured of.
If (and it is a big IF) Naaman’s story has any relevance to Mark’s
story, it is not in the healing, but in the debate about how to serve
God in a strange land. Gehazi may have been properly scandalized
that the gentile Naaman was not required to comply with the rules for
purification – as Mark’s Jesus demanded. But instead of standing
on principle, and turning the gifts over to Elisha, Gehazi keeps them
for himself. Gehazi has completely corrupted the elaborate
rituals for reinstating the one who had become unable to participate in
Temple worship. Mark’s community may well have found themselves
in that very dilemma.
The point of the rituals is reconciliation, not retribution.
Mark’s Jesus would have agreed. As I wrote for Proper 23, Year C,
the profound truth in the story in 2 Kings and confirmed by Luke
(17:11-19) is that the hated alien turns out to be the one who trusts
in Covenant, non-violent justice-compassion, and peace with the exiled
God. First Century Jewish/Christian exiles may well have
identified with these themes. They certainly would have known the
whole story.
Twenty-first Century exiles from Christianity as it has been defined
since the 4th Century might want to consider that hidden in the weeds
at the bottom of the Elves’ peaceful lake are Christian hegemony,
supercessionism, misappropriation of Jewish sacred writings, and
corruption of Paul’s message to the Corinthians. “Purity” misses
the “Mark” by 0.56%.
BLOG ARCHIVE