Reverend Ina Bork
Congregational Community Church, Sunnyvale, CA
Focus Scripture: Mark 1:40-45
Love and Compassion...
I broke off with my first boy friend when I was 17. He was - and still is - a very gentle, kindhearted person, very intellectual and a very deep thinker. We had been together for almost a year. I had examined myself and our relationship closely, and I had found that my best girl friend at school and the youth leader of our church youth group were actually closer to my heart than him.
So I told him I did not love him enough to be in a relationship. I told him I just did not feel enough love for him to continue our relationship. He was upset but took it gracefully. And then he surprised me with a question: couldn’t I, he asked, couldn’t I choose to love him more? -- No, I did not think I could choose to love him more. Love was a feeling, and feelings you have or you do not, but you cannot choose them, I thought. That was my first encounter with the concept that love maybe is something more than a feeling, that love maybe is an attitude.
Later on I learned the distinction of three kinds of love. I learned that the Ancient Greek language had three words for love:
eros - sexual love
filia - love for family and friends
agape - love for neighbor or 'charity'
Com-passion is derived from Latin and means 'with' and 'suffer' (and, as an interesting aside, so does 'sym-pathy' - derived from the Greek words for 'with' and 'suffer').
Let us look at the biblical story that is given us today - like last week we are in the Gospel of Mark, still in the very first chapter. The outline is simple - one of many stories of healing: the leper comes to Jesus, Jesus takes pity on him and heals him, and this results in the word about this Jesus being spread further, increasing his popularity with the crowds.
Taking a closer look, it is much less straight forward. Let us look at the persons involved: the leper - Jesus - the community.
First the leper:
We know that skin disease was a terrible ordeal way back when: anyone with that skin condition was considered "unclean" because their physical imperfection violated the Holiness Code of their people - we can find those strict laws in the Book of Leviticus. You had to live removed from the clean folks and were required to ring a bell or make some sort of distinctive sound to announce your presence whenever you came close to a village, so no one came near you accidentally. The life of an outcast - very lonely and desperate.
Secondly Jesus:
"Moved with pity" - other ancient texts read "with anger." Why would Jesus be angry at a leper who asks to be made clean? And yet, there is reason to believe that this is the accurate translation. As texts were copied over and over, scribes sometimes substituted a more palatable word for any that might not fit with their image of Jesus. Every copy then made from that edited version would preserve that change, but those copies made from unedited copies would preserve the earlier word. So mostly scholars tend to go with the more difficult translation when there is a conflict between texts, and then try to understand why that more difficult expression was used.
At any rate, the way it is described it was a powerful emotion that swept through Jesus upon seeing this man. While we commonly say that a person's pain touches our heart, in Hebrew thought compassion comes from the guts. So Jesus felt something powerful, something physical, when he looked at this man, an emotion better translated maybe as "Jesus felt his stomach turn". And the story continues to use words that ring unpleasant: In verse 43 the Greek text reads: Jesus snorted and cast him out - to cast out - 'ekballein' - that is the same verb that is also used for expelling demons. Harsh language that depicts Jesus as angry. And leaves us speculating what Jesus was angry with - the man himself, the interruption, the laws as they were? And yet Jesus says: I do choose - be clean.
Lastly: the community:
The priests in their own day, in their own way, were key to holding the community together, to making it work and keeping it safe. Their task was to tend to the rituals that communities establish to balance the world and to make life as comprehensible as it can be in the middle of ordinary chaos. In that sense they were much more than the public health authority of the time - which they were also, undisputedly, even by Jesus. So with regards to the leper, the priest had an important function for the sake of the whole community: the priest had to tend to the ritual of reincorporation, the rejoining of his cleansed body to the body of the community. This is why Jesus sends the cleaned man off to the priest: to clear him officially of his stigma, to reintegrate him into the community. We don’t know if the man actually went and showed himself to the priest - but we do know that he went off and started to spread the word about Jesus - which was, according tho the Gospel of Mark, strictly not what Jesus had intended...
And yet, what Jesus says (maybe he can’t help himself?) is “I do choose”. Somehow that is the sentence that sticks with me from this Gospel.
Jesus chooses. - Do I?
Talking about love and compassion: Love is more than looking each other lovingly in the eyes - it means to look into the same direction.
I do choose - the way the story is conveyed it appears as if Jesus was somehow somewhat reluctant regarding this healing. But he chose to do it.
Choosing to heal --- Choosing to love - is that really a choice? I still don’t think that I could have chosen to love my fist boyfriend more.
But I do think that we can choose to be more compassionate. Compassion - that kind of love that is agape, the neighborly love, is - at least initially - much more a love that you do than a love that you feel. So it is a choice.
Compassion as an attitude - love as something you do.
I do choose. Let us go forth into this week thinking: I do choose.
