The Introvert and the Leper - Mark 1: 40 - 45

I am, by nature and temperament, an introvert.  When I tell people this they very often react with surprise, or by saying, “no you’re not.”  But it’s true.

I am not one that enjoys being with crowds of people.  After a few hours of interaction with others I’m ready to spend some time by myself.  I’ll go into my “man-cave” and close the door.  Don’t let me see you or hear you for a while and I’ll be okay.  Some are charged up by interaction with people. After a couple of hours of chatting with people about the weather and their grandkids and what happened last night on that-show-that-everybody’s-watching they are full of energy and ready to go right on talking for another several hours.  Not me. I am energized in my thoughts and in my thinking.  I like to be alone sometimes.  Sometimes I need to be alone.

And, based on reading the first chapter of Mark’s gospel, I’d be willing to be that Jesus was a bit of an introvert.  Look at how often he’s trying to get away by himself, trying to leave the crowds.  He sneaks out of the house in the still dark hours of the morning; he leaves the metropolis of Capernaum for the smaller backwater villages.  He’s trying to get away from the crowds.  He’s trying to limit his interaction to small, manageable sized groups.

But it isn’t that introverts want to be alone all the time.  As God said, “it’s not good for the man to be alone.”  Introverts need alone, quiet time to recharge and to think and to be whole – but we introverts need people too.  There’s a challenge in finding the balance.  Too much interaction and activity and noise ruins the introvert’s creativity and joy and ability to function.  Too little interaction and he becomes a recluse, a hermit. 
Jesus went to the smaller towns because he needed to speak to the people there as well.  It seems to me that he was balancing his personal needs with those of his mission.

After leaving the crowds of Capernaum for the outlaying villages, Jesus encountered a man with leprosy who came to him, pleading on his knees, “if you are willing you can make me clean.”

Leprosy, we should point out, was a diagnostic catch all for various skin diseases – and not what we commonly understand as leprosy today.  The disease that causes body parts to rot and fall off (not really) is more accurately Hanson’s Disease and is actually a disease that affects the human nervous system.  Biblical “leprosy” is an affliction of the skin (and sometimes clothing and the walls of houses).  It could include excessive dry and scaly skin or fungal growth or other ailment of the skin.[i]

People with leprosy were to be separated from the rest of the community.  They were to be quarantined.  And this was to limit the spread of the infection.  If you limit the exposure you can control the outbreak.  Lepers were to separate themselves until they could prove to an inspector (one of the priests) that the infection had fully and completely gone away.

But while Beauty may only be skin deep, Leperous contamination went all the way to the core.  People diagnosed with leprosy were generally thought to have been cursed or punished by God.  Moses’ sister, Miriam, was afflicted with leprosy after she challenged her brother.  King Hezikiah was given leprosy when he overstepped his privileges as king and tried to act as a priest in the temple.  The military general Namaan was only cured of his leprosy after he humbled himself.  The scheming servant Gehazi cused with it when he tried to set aside a little something extra for himself…

Leprosy showed itself on the surface – in red patches and inflammation and dry, scaly skin and white lesions – but the uncleanliness was thought to go all the way to the soul.  Lepers were kept apart, not only because they might spread the skin disease, but because they might also spread God’s disfavor and God’s curse.  The Leper, with his dry ashy skin not only looked like death, he was thought to have been afflicted with a sort of “living death” and was in all ways unclean. 

They were to rend their clothes, and to leave their hair unkempt.  They were to cover the lower half of their face and if approached by others were to shout out “Unclean! Unclean!”  They would remain unclean as long as they had the disease and were forced to remain alone outside the camp.[i]

This enforced isolation is very different than the introvert’s need for alone time. This was a complete removal from human contact and interaction.  It was, as the rabbis of that time called it, a “living death.”  It was lonely. 

In his novel, The Plague, Albert Camus described the emotional state of those forced to endure a lengthy quarantine from the rest of the world.  They came to know the “incorrigible sorrow of all prisoners and exiles, which is to live in company with a memory that serves no purpose.”  They could remember the good and pleasant things that had happened, but they could no longer enjoy them and so they became “hostile to the past, impatient of the present, and cheated of the future.”  Each one had to be content to “live only for the day, alone under the vast indifference of the sky.”[ii]

We don’t know how long this man with leprosy had endured this enforced isolation, but we can certainly sense his desperation.  How long had it been since he had sat with his family for a meal, or hugged his wife, wrestled with his children?  How long had it been since he’d joined his brothers at the synagogue for prayer?  How long had it been since he had walked through the streets of town, waving hello to those that he met?  How long had he been forced to endure that vast indifference?   He fell on his knees at Jesus’ feet and begged him, “If you are willing, you can make me clean.”  [iii]

And Jesus, moved with compassion[iv] stretched out his hand and touched the man and said, “I am willing.  Be clean.” 

He actually touched the man.  Rabbinic law demanded that no less than six feet be kept from a leper.  “Rabbi Meir would not eat an egg purchased in a street where had been a leper. Another rabbi boasted that he always threw stones at them to keep them far off.”[v] But Jesus reaches out his hand and touches the man.  Purposefully.  He touched him. 

The contamination of the leper was such that if he even stood at the door of your house you were defiled by his uncleanliness.  But Jesus touched the man.  Jesus broke through that vast indifference under the sky and touched the man who had been isolated by disease.

And what was communicated in this exchange wasn’t the disease but the purity.  Jesus wasn’t contaminated by the man’s disease.  Jesus wasn’t cursed with the man’s defilement. The man was made clean.  Jesus sent the man away[vi] and warned him to keep quiet about it.  The man was to show himself to the priest for inspection, and to make the necessary sacrifices to reenter society, but he was not to tell anyone what Jesus had done.  

But the man went away and began to spread the news freely, telling everyone what Jesus had done – and how can we blame him? After being released from his exile, after being restored to his community – after being brought back to life, as it were, how could he not share this great story? 

But look what happens as the result.  Jesus could no longer openly enter a town but was forced, by the crowds and their fervor and their crazed excitement, to remain out in the countryside and lonely places.  Jesus, as the result of curing the leper, becomes almost a leper – unable to enter into public places -though not quite for the same reasons. 

This introverted Jesus, who has been seeking a bit of quite alone time and an escape from the crowds, cures a man who has been forcibly isolated from community the crowds, and as a result the crowds are even more drawn to him.  They came to him from every quarter with their clamor and their noise, and their questions, and their demands and needs. 

And Jesus moved with compassion[vii] reached out to them.

---

[i] Leviticus 13 - 14

[ii] Leviticus 13: 45-46

[iii] Camus, Albert - The Plague

[iv] Mark 1: 40

[v]  Some of the earliest copies of Mark’s gospel say Jesus was moved with “Indignation.”  This is strange and difficult to understand.  But it might fit.  After healing the man, Jesus gives him a “stern” warning to keep silent about it.  And throughout Mark’s gospel we find a Jesus who is tired and angry.  Perhaps Jesus was moved with “indignation” as well as “compassion.”

[vi] Edersheim, Alfred The Life and Times of Jesus the Messiah, vol 1, page 495

[vii] More accurately, he “cast” the man away – perhaps another indicator that he was moved with “indignation”

[viii] Or “Indignation” or both