6th Sunday in Ordinary Time, Cycle B
Notes
Transcript
1st Reading: Lev 13:1-2; 44-46
Intro: This selection is a part of the priestly code which provides instructions for identifying biblical leprosy, which makes a person ritually unclean (the problem is lack of bodily integrity similar to menstrual flow), and tells how to deal with it. Note that it is not talking about modern leprosy, or Hansen’s disease, but many types of virulent skin diseases as you can tell from the description.
2nd Reading: 1 Cor 10:31-11:1
Intro: This short selection, today, has to be taken in context; it is the end of Paul’s answer to the question of whether or not it is ok to eat meat which was sacrificed to idols. The ancient Romans sold this meat at the marketplace and people purchased it for everyday use. His answer is basically don’t participate in the sacrifice but if your eating that which was purchased at the market and is served in the home, go ahead and eat it so as not to offend your hosts, but if eating it would give offense to someone who thinks you shouldn’t, then don’t eat it.
Gospel: Mk 1:40-45
Summary: A leper says “If you wish you can make me clean”. Jesus touches & cures him. (Warning him sternly, he dismissed him.) Jesus says tell no one, show yourself to priests, offer what’s prescribed; that will be proof for them. He goes out and tells everyone.
Homily:
“…he [Jesus] stretched out his hand and touched him [the leper]...”
These are the most significant words in this little story. They tell the whole story. But you would have to be Jewish to know that.
You might think this is similar to the story we heard last week wherein Jesus takes the hand of Simon’s mother-in-law, who lay sick with a fever, and raises her up. It’s not!
In the Simon’s mother-in-law story, the people who heard it probably thought “how tender”. In this story, with the man with leprosy, people would have gasped. Jewish people, in Jesus’ time, didn’t touch lepers. It would have made them ritually unclean.
(As I mentioned before the first reading, ) The leprosy this story is talking about is not the same as modern-day leprosy. It was more than likely a particularly virulent form of psoriasis. Not common psoriasis but one that creates blotchy read sores.
If a person had those blotchy read sores, the priest would declare them a leper which meant they were outcasts, the untouchables. The weren’t allowed to live in the city. They had to carry a bell with them to warn people not to get close. If another person were walking down the street they were on, they had to cross sides so the other person wouldn’t come in contact with them.
They were outcasts like the untouchables in the Indian caste system, the lower rung of their system. They were like people of color in our caste system, particularly, during the days of slavery and Jim Crow.
We all know untouchables in our neighborhoods, our workplaces, our schools or wherever we gather. Do we have the courage to reach out and touch them, like Jesus did, to cure their situation and bring them into our social milieu.
One story to illustrate... I know a young man who, at age 9, purposely chose to make friends with a boy in his class that the other kids ridiculed and bullied. He didn’t care what other kids thought.
They’re still friends. They’re 13 now. Now his friend is not bullied anymore. He has become part to the group. And, the friendship has enhanced both their lives.
If we can muster up the courage of a 9-year-old, the courage of Jesus, we can change lives and put an end to some of the fear and hatred that plagues our world.
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