“Compassionate Indignation”
Mark 1:40-45
Anger isn’t always a bad thing.
Jesus got angry. When he drove
the moneylenders out of the
It doesn’t
come across immediately, but in today’s text from Mark Jesus was angry. Some translations say that Jesus had
pity. Some of the ancient Greek texts
use the word anger instead of pity.
Today’s reading from the New International Version gets it right. Jesus had compassion.
Various
translations try to capture the essence of compassion with terms like “deeply
moved” or “heart-sorry.” Jesus was moved
to the very core of his being by the leper’s plight. He had a holy fire burning in his gut. Leprosy was an affront to God. It was destroying that man physically,
spiritually, and emotionally. It cut him
off from all human contact. He couldn’t
even worship in the
But
there was more going on. Leprosy was a
symptom of something much deeper and darker: evil. Once again Jesus was confronted with the
hateful power of Satan. Once again Jesus
responded. Evil in all its forms was
contrary to God’s will for creation. It
was at war with God’s purposes. Evil
makes God angry.
It
made Jesus, the incarnation of God, angry.
His was a righteous anger, a righteous indignation. His compassion for that leper contained a component
of anger. Jesus wasn’t just dealing with
a disease. He was dealing with the
fruits of evil. His anger, his
indignation, was compassionate in that it led to healing. It was also righteous in that it once again
moved him to drive out evil.
There
was another level of anger at work here.
The traditions, laws, and even piety of the day prevented that leper
from living a full life just as much as did his leprosy. He was untouchable. He was ritually unclean. But Jesus touched him, but not because he took
delight in breaking the religious laws of his day. Jesus himself had declared that he had come
to fulfill the law not abolish it. After
the healing Jesus ordered the man to go do what the law required in order to
authenticate his healing.
In
touching him, however, Jesus broke the letter of the law. Jesus was more concerned with the spirit of
the law. As one commentator put it Jesus
wasn’t attacking the Torah; he was upholding it. It was God’s will that the man be
healed. God’s will is God’s
law. Jesus had no patience with the
overzealous enforcement of piety. Such
self-righteous, paint-by-the-numbers enforcement was what really broke God’s
law. Why? Because it was contrary to God’s will. We do not contradict God’s will without
risking God’s wrath. Jesus’ anger was
aimed at the evil in men’s hearts that led them to impose that kind of a
spirit-killing, legalistic piety.
Backing
up. That leper knew that Jesus was his
only hope. He dared approach him, which
was in itself taboo, because he fully trusted in Jesus’ power to heal him. Risking rejection he placed his entire future
in the hands of Jesus. He bet it all on
the incarnate power of God.
Then
he went and did a silly thing. Instead
of quietly going to the priest to have his healing authenticated, what did he
do? In direct disobedience of Jesus’
command he went and told everybody what Jesus had done. That’s not such a bad thing in itself. It’s natural to want to publicly praise God
for his wondrous acts of grace and mercy.
But by going public the man made Jesus’ life and ministry more
difficult. Crowds of people, seeking not
so much a Messiah as a wonder worker, hounded him. They forced him into a self-imposed
isolation.
There
are some lessons to be learned. One,
when it is obvious that following Jesus requires us to go against our own
natural inclinations, we do what Jesus says.
If he says be quiet about what just happened, then we stay quiet. We might feel the need to sing God’s praises
to the rooftops. But obedience trumps
feelings every time.
Lesson
two: there is evil in the world and in our hearts. It
manifests itself in many ways. Every
culture is saturated with evil, as is every political and economic system on
Earth. Neither democracy nor capitalism,
as we exercise them, represents an ultimate expression of God’s will. Any Christian who believes that one political
party or another is really interested in the cause of Christ is naïve.
The
church, the Body of Christ, is infected with evil. Those who seek to protect its purity in the
name of orthodoxy are not totally pure in their motivations. Neither are those who rant and rave about
justice delayed being justice denied. Orthodoxy
can harden into a rigid legalism that gets in the way of the Gospel message. Justice that isn’t tempered with God’s
righteousness and governed by the boundaries set by Scripture is not really
justice. It is a form of permissiveness
that is itself defined that other form of legalism we call political
correctness.
We
cannot trust anything of this Earth to faithfully represent the will of
God. This side of Judgment Day the Devil
will always make his inroads into even the best of who and what humanity
is. That’s not cynicism; that’s a
biblical and theological reality. We
Calvinists refer to it as total depravity.
Lesson
three: imperfect followers of Jesus that we are, it is still incumbent on us to
do all we can to root evil out of our lives, out of the church, and out of our
culture. We can’t do this on our
own. Only as we are guided and empowered
by the Holy Spirit, and then only after prayerfully seeking discernment, dare
we speak or act for God. Just as Jesus
exercised the power and authority of his Father, so must we prayerfully
exercise that power and authority in his name.
Doing
so will often involve the exercise of compassionate indignation. There is evil going on in the world that
should make us angry. There is suffering
in the world that requires both a healing touch and the expression of righteous
anger. There are some injustices – real
injustices – which should deeply move us to work for God’s righteousness. Sometimes systems, governments, and institutions
need to be confronted, even those systems, governments, and institutions that
we hold sacred.
And
then there’s the other side of this compassion business, healing the hurts of
humanity. We have our own cultural
lepers in this time and place. Some of
them are dirty and smelly. Some of them
have diseases of which we’re deathly afraid.
Some of them live on the wrong side of the tracks and even the wrong
side of the law. Some are junkies,
addicts, and alcoholics. We have our
modern versions of the prostitutes and tax collectors with whom Jesus
mingled. There are those, sometimes in
our own families, who are engaged in behaviors or lifestyles that the church
cannot sanction. Conventional wisdom,
cultural taboos, and ingrained piety tell us that we cannot touch them, hug
them, welcome them into our churches, or involve ourselves in their lives.
Whoever
they are, whatever they’ve become, they are creations of God, people for whom
our Lord and Savior bled and died. Jesus
touched lepers. Jesus ate and drank with
sinners. Jesus conversed with shady
ladies whom no one else dared approach.
Jesus broke the ungodly religious rules of his day. Was he a troublemaker or rabble-rouser? No. He
was simply being who he was, doing what he was called to do. He was proclaiming the Good News of God. He was living out and teaching the will of
God. He was fulfilling the spirit of God’s
law in terms of its original purposes.
He was healing people and casting out demons. He was exercising the compassionate
indignation of God. He was standing
against all that was evil in the world.
Ultimately, he was seeking and saving the lost.
Who
are the lepers of our lives? Who are our
untouchables? Whoever they are we can
have only one legitimate response to them and their plight: a compassionate indignation
that leads us to offer them healing in the name of Jesus. Amen.