“Living With Christ’s Expectations (And Not Vice Versa)”
Belmont UMC—February 2-12-12, early service
Nick Chrisohon, preaching

*Maybe a quick introduction

When I was young, I really liked Peanuts cartoons.  I liked reading the comics in the funny papers as well as watching the specials on TV.  Although my favorite character was Snoopy – the beloved dog with imagination and attitude – I also really liked Pig-Pen.  I remember thinking how funny he was as a character.  In schoolyard terminology, he was the smelly kid, and no one wants to be the smelly kid.  The most amazing thing about Peanuts was that Pig-Pen was accepted as one of the gang regardless of his accompanying cloud of dust.  He could not help his condition, as he once famously exclaimed, “You know what I am? I’m a dust magnet!” Some storylines involved him trying to get clean, but the dust remained a part of him and his story.  It did not define him to his friends, as it was just something that came with being Pig-Pen.  

This illustration provides us with an ideal that is rarely met.   History tells us many stories about those who are mistreated for being different.   In today’s gospel reading, we find a mistreated person who suffers from disease and is thus neglected by his community.  He is not treated with dignity and respect in the manner the Peanuts gang treats Pig-Pen.  Instead, he is a victim in a story about expectations.  Expectations of Christ and the world: constantly at odds with one another.

This text in Mark is one of the shortest, yet in my opinion, most difficult passages to understand in modern contexts.  People often hold images of Jesus as being the rockstar of the Galilee.  He preaches to thousands from mountaintops to the middle of a lake, seemingly putting on the “Greatest Show on Earth” rivaling Barnum and Bailey’s circus and wowing more people than The Rolling Stones, but in this passage, he seems down to earth and surprisingly secretive.  Mark provides the reader with a different, more subdued, Christ that feels more understated than in other gospels.  His humanity is very present in this reading, and we learn much from his actions and concerns regarding others.

A man hoping to be healed of a skin disease moves Jesus to sympathy.  The man lives as an alien, because those with skin disease and other infirmities were cast out of the city as unclean.  These people were constantly looking for help from others, because they did not have the capability to help themselves.  They were left vulnerable outside the city with little assistance to ease an already difficult condition. For those inside the safety of city walls, difference was emphasized and exploited as reasoning to send away those who were not ‘like’ them.  This man shows the desperation of the ones outside the walls – he falls to his knees and begs for help.  He lays down what little dignity he may have had in hopes that this traveling rabbi is as special as others have claimed.

In some older translations, it says Jesus was “indignant.” Indignance here seems to signify annoyance with something that is unfair or wrong.  In the NRSV translation, it says Jesus was “moved by pity” (a sign of sympathy). His response to the man’s pleading is “I do choose. Be clean.”  Be clean?  As if the poor guy had gone years with disease because it was the thing to do and he could just switch back when he got tired of the pain and sores?  This statement belies the notion this is disease at all.  Instead, we notice Jesus healing a man and sending him to be reconciled to the community that neglected him in the first place.  

Jesus makes a powerful statement by not only healing the man but touching him.  The man had been cast out, because religious code of the time demanded those with disease be separated from those who have no disease as a precaution against contamination, but the intention of quarantining the sick for the sake of the well was distorted to a system that oppressed the sick as sub-human.  Jesus broke religious and political mores by becoming “unclean” himself.  He could have upheld the expectations placed upon him by maintaining ritual purity, but as we know, Jesus rejects ritual if it forsakes a person’s wellbeing.

After the man is healed, Jesus offers a peculiar command.  First, he tells the man to go show himself to the priest and offer sacrifice.  This tells us of the value of the temple community.   Persons suffering from recognizable disease were often cast out of the community, and that disownment was justified by saying the person’s ailments were the product of sinful living.  In the ninth chapter of John’s gospel, the disciples ask Jesus whose sin caused a person to be blind.  Jesus tells them the matter is not about sin at all.  So here, we see the same prevailing mistreatment of those who may need love and grace the most is what upsets Jesus.  The pity felt is an indictment of the lack of response of the community caring for its member by emphasizing difference rather than embracing similarity.

Jesus could have told the man, “Yeah, you’re healed now, but don’t go back to them.   They’re terrible people and you shouldn’t be friends with them anymore.”  Instead, he commands what I would consider to be the harder option – go back and be with those who were against you.  Transform the negligent into the caring.  By being placed back into the community and given the opportunity to make a sacrifice in thanksgiving, the man was no longer defined by his disease but by membership as a child of God.

This task would not come easy.  The man would have to reunite with the oppressors – those neglecting him of his humanity – and look through years of being shamed.  Imagine eating, praying, and spending time with people who used to hurt you.  No number of “bless your hearts” would suffice.  This would be hard work.  But that is one of many expectations Christ has put upon us.  The people of Israel were looking for a warrior messiah to rescue them from oppression of conquering nations, just as many today expect Christ to come to quash the world and uplift the truly religious.  We like to hold quiet (and sometimes not-so-quiet) resentment against others, because we hold onto a pride that says “I’m better than them.”  In today’s world, many would say the healed man had every right to take his healing and go elsewhere now that he was strong enough.  Jesus said otherwise – “I do choose to heal you.  Now be cleansed and go heal them.”

Sadly, the man did not live into the command given to him.  He disobeyed the command to “go back” and instead went out to tell others that belief was all one needed to be healed.  Many people came looking for the miracle worker Jesus rather than the rabbi stressing a renewed commitment to God.  That same characterization is why so many people turn away from the church.  Bad publicity has caused the masses to come looking for the quick-fix God in a one-stop-shop service.  People hear televangelists and trendy Christianity offer a Christ who is out to change the world by fixing personal prayer problems.  When folks come, they realize they were misguided, because they expected Christ to live up to their expectations rather than giving up themselves to live into Christ’s expectations.

The people looking for Jesus stop him from entering towns openly, because his humanity dictates he rest.  The hope behind sending the man back to the temple was to integrate he who had been healed into the community to remind others of the implicit connection between all people.  He was to be part of the transformation of bringing about God’s kindom.  Jesus could not do all of that work alone, and so, he was forced to be an outsider so he could afford to rest.  Christ expects others to do his work, so that we do not inundate the kingdom with our desires and thus choke out God’s original intentions.  This is the function of the church body: to offer God’s grace to others in hopes of bringing about the kindom of God into the world.

Have hope, my friends.  Christ lives in and through the church in its mission to commit good in this world now.  You, Belmont, have demonstrated that living with Christ’s expectations can and will bring about beautiful things.  You offer a worship space in this very room for our friends of the Golden Triangle Fellowship.  You offer sanctuary and care to today’s victims of society casting out of the helpless with Room in the Inn.  You go to God’s beloved in Malawi.  You give real opportunity to our dear friends in Homeplace.  These examples are real testaments to the power of Christ in the world today – that doing the work of God takes time and patience but also brings about the community of faith responsible for changing the world.  Jesus told the man to be clean and return to make a difference for others.  You have made that difference to so many.

We are connected intrinsically through each other and God, and we should be willing to assist in the healing and cleansing of the ills that plague the world, so go out and do good works in faith.  Be bold in love; be patient and graceful.  You are called as God’s holy church to bring about something beautiful.  Christ expects it.

Amen.