Mark 1:40-45 NRSVue

⁴⁰A man with a skin disease came to him begging him, and kneeling he said to him, “If you are willing, you can make me clean.” ⁴¹Moved with pity, Jesus stretched out his hand and touched him and said to him, “I am willing. Be made clean!” ⁴²Immediately the skin disease left him, and he was made clean. ⁴³After sternly warning him he sent him away at once, ⁴⁴saying to him, “See that you say nothing to anyone, but go, show yourself to the priest, and offer for your cleansing what Moses commanded as a testimony to them.” ⁴⁵But he went out and began to proclaim it freely and to spread the word, so that Jesus could no longer go into a town openly but stayed out in the country, and people came to him from every quarter.

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Some thoughts on this scripture

Reflection
Jesus affirms the desire of the man with leprosy: his ‘Certainly I want to,’ is his response to our desire for what is truly for our growth and wellbeing.

Reflection
The leper knew his need and trusted that Jesus could help him. I pray with the same attitude, not hiding my neediness, not hesitant about bringing it before Jesus, listening for Jesus’ encouraging response.

Reflection
In several passages of Mark's Gospel, Jesus warns people not to talk about him as the Messiah; he did not want to be stereotyped as the military hero saving Israel from the Romans. He was shy of acquiring what is now called an image, a public mask that does no justice to the truth underneath. Jean Vanier said: /When you become important, it is easy to fall from a true prophet into a false one./

Reflection
Lord, save me from worrying about my image. I am better without one. Let people know me from what I do and how I behave, not from slogans or advertisements. What matters is how you know me, looking into my heart with the eye of a lover.

Reflection
Jesus takes on the limitations of a leprosy sufferer. Having cured the man, he then would be suspected of being contaminated, so he himself could no longer go into the town, but must stay outside like the person suffering from leprosy. This is another time that Jesus fully inserts himself into the flaws of the people and their culture. In the incarnation he really becomes one of us, is 'made flesh'. He knows and feels for us from the inside, and particularly knows now what it's like to be the outsider, the one nobody wants, the one others look down on. Who are outsiders in my small world? In prayer can I let them come to mind and feel with them what it must be like to be treated as scum, poor, different? Maybe my prayer will soften my attitudes to those rejected by society?

Reflection
To touch a leper was unthinkable at the time of Jesus. A physical danger of contagion had become a religious taboo. Again Jesus cuts through religious taboo and harsh judgments on people with his own loving healing. What can be more personal than touch? Surely the leper was cleansed from more than physical illness by this touch - he was assured of personal human dignity.