Jesus at work: trading places

From the Sola Panel

Here’s something really interesting in Mark’s Gospel that my lovely wife Bronwyn noticed when she was reading the Bible the other day. Close to the beginning of Mark, in chapter 1, Jesus meets a man with a skin disease:

And a leper came to him, imploring him, and kneeling said to him, “If you will, you can make me clean.” (Mark 1:40)

The word ‘leper’ actually refers to people with a wide range of skin diseases, not just to people with the modern disease of leprosy. This man’s condition would have been pretty miserable. You might be aware from reading the Old Testament that he would have suffered from far more than a bad complexion and low self-esteem. He would have been a social outcast, condemned to a solitary life outside the main centres of population. That’s because his skin disease was an example of ‘uncleanliness’—a bodily condition that symbolized sin and death, and which excluded ancient Israelites from worshipping God in the temple and from associating with others. God told Moses:

The leprous person who has the disease shall wear torn clothes and let the hair of his head hang loose, and he shall cover his upper lip and cry out, ‘Unclean, unclean.’ He shall remain unclean as long as he has the disease. He is unclean. He shall live alone. His dwelling shall be outside the camp. (Leviticus 13:45-46)

Jesus, however, is powerful enough to deal with this ‘uncleanliness’. He is not contaminated by touching the man with the disease; instead, he has a kind of ‘contagious cleanliness’ which heals the man:

Moved with pity, he stretched out his hand and touched him and said to him, “I will; be clean.” And immediately the leprosy left him, and he was made clean. (Mark 1:41-42).

Great stuff! But then, the story takes a slightly unexpected twist:

And Jesus sternly charged him and sent him away at once, and said to him, “See that you say nothing to anyone, but go, show yourself to the priest and offer for your cleansing what Moses commanded, for a proof to them.” (Mark 1:43-44)

We can understand why Jesus wanted the man to show himself to the priest; after all, it was the priest’s job to pronounce people ‘clean’ once their uncleanness had left them (e.g. Lev 13:47-59). In that way, he could be restored to God’s worshipping people. It’s a bit more difficult to understand why Jesus didn’t want the man to talk about it; but we haven’t got time to go into detail about that question here. Instead, I want to show you the interesting bit that Bronwyn noticed:

But he went out and began to talk freely about it, and to spread the news, so that Jesus could no longer openly enter a town, but was out in desolate places, and people were coming to him from every quarter. (Mark 1:45)

What’s happened to Jesus as a result of this healing? He’s traded places with the diseased man! He hasn’t actually caught the disease itself—but he’s suffering in the same way that the diseased man would have suffered before he was healed. Previously, it was the diseased man who had to live outside the populated areas and stay in the lonely places by himself. But now, Jesus himself is the excluded one: excluded as a result of his own saving action.

We wondered if Mark is giving us a little hint, early in the story of Jesus’ life, of the much greater and perfect substitution that Jesus accomplishes at the end of his earthly life. By his death on the cross, Jesus came “to give his life as a ransom for many” (Mark 10:45). Jesus deliberately suffers in our place; he dies the death we deserve; he is forsaken so that sinners like you and me can be accepted, and so worship and serve God freely. Is this story of the diseased man a little foretaste of that great truth?

What do you reckon?

Comments on the Sola Panel
14th October, 2010 | Category: Atonement, Mark |

The Syrophoenician woman

From the Sola Panel:

One of Jesus’ most jarring statements occurs in the story of the Syrophoenician woman, Mark 7:24-27:

And from there [Jesus] arose and went away to the region of Tyre and Sidon. And he entered a house and did not want anyone to know, yet he could not be hidden. But immediately a woman whose little daughter had an unclean spirit heard of him and came and fell down at his feet. Now the woman was a Gentile, a Syrophoenician by birth. And she begged him to cast the demon out of her daughter. And he said to her, “Let the children be fed first, for it is not right to take the children’s bread and throw it to the dogs.”

This saying of Jesus, spoken as it is to a poor, vulnerable woman with a suffering, oppressed little girl, sounds uncharacteristically harsh. Not only does it seem to reflect a nationalistic, even racist, attitude to God’s blessing (God’s blessing is for his children, not for Syrophoenicians), it’s couched in the most derogatory terms imaginable. (When Jesus mentions “dogs”, he means dirty little mongrels, not adorable Labrador puppies.)

Jesus is, of course, reflecting a biblical pattern. The gospel is for the Jew first and then for the Greek (Rom 1:16), and at this stage in the unfolding plan of God before Jesus’ death and resurrection, the gospel had not yet been sent out to all nations (Matt 28:19-20). But not even that fact explains the severity of Jesus’ initial answer. At the very least, Jesus could have been a bit more sensitive! Isn’t Jesus’ Father the one who cares for the oppressed, the outsider and the vulnerable? What’s going on?

Some people have pointed out that there is an important Old Testament background element to this story. The woman isn’t just described as a Gentile; Mark is careful to tell us that she is a Syrophoenician, a resident of Tyre and Sidon. This should remind us of the time when the great prophet Elijah visited this very same area, provided bread for a desperately poor widow and then brought her son to life from the dead (1 Kgs 17:8-24). But if you compare Jesus with Elijah, it actually makes the problem worse: Jesus’ initial response to his Syrophoenician acquaintance is much more severe and insensitive than Elijah’s unhesitated willingness to provide bread for the widow and heal her son.

However, there was another very significant Syrophoenician woman in the life of Elijah: Jezebel. Jezebel was a Sidonian woman who had married Ahab, king of Israel. Ahab’s marriage to Jezebel was a significant factor in the apostasy and eventual downfall of his own royal house, and indeed, the entire nation of Israel. Through Jezebel, Baal worship was introduced to Israel (1 Kgs 16:31-33, 21:25-26). Jezebel was the driving force behind the wholesale slaughter of the prophets of God (1 Kgs 18:4, 13). Indeed, Jezebel tried to assassinate Elijah himself (1 Kgs 19:2). Jezebel arranged the cold-blooded murder of a man just to get hold of his property (1 Kgs 21:1-16). Finally, God’s word came through Elijah and predicted that dogs would come and eat Jezebel’s flesh (1 Kgs 21:23-24). Jezebel remained forevermore an object lesson for Israel of the disastrous consequences of consorting with the surrounding nations—especially those corrupt Sidonian Baal-worshippers.

So here in Mark 7, with these Old Testament stories in mind, what are we to think when this Syrophoenician woman approaches the king and teacher of Israel for help with a demon? Are we to recall immediately the vulnerable, poverty-stricken Sidonian widow of Elijah’s day, who was in desperate need of bread and life for her child? Or should we remember the oppressive, murderous, proud Sidonian woman Jezebel, who was committed to worshipping false gods, who was an enemy of God’s word, and who turned Israel and her king away from God?

Jesus’ answer is indeed harsh, but he is reflecting, in a nutshell, the tumultuous and ambiguous relationship between Israel and her idolatrous Syrophoenician neighbours. Bread and dogs: perhaps there is a question behind his statement—something like, “Well, your daughter has a demon, so what kind of Syrophoenician are you? Are you like the humble, desperate widow, or are you like the proud idol-worshipping Jezebel?”

In one sense, Jesus’ answer to the Syrophoenician woman is a way of righting the wrongs of Israel’s history. Through Jesus, we can see that God is blessing his people; no longer will Israel’s Sidonian enemies take the kingdom away from God’s children.

Yet there is more than that. For when we see the depth of the enmity between Israel and the Sidonians, which forms the backdrop to Jesus’ initial statement, we can understand the depth of the radical and gracious nature of God’s blessings through Jesus. When the Syrophoenician woman demonstrates that she is no Jezebel—when she admits her humility before Israel’s king and teacher—when she begs for mercy—we see that even a former enemy can receive the deliverance and blessing that belongs to God’s children:

But she answered him, “Yes, Lord; yet even the dogs under the table eat the children’s crumbs.” And he said to her, “For this statement you may go your way; the demon has left your daughter.” And she went home and found the child lying in bed and the demon gone. (Mark 7:28-30)

Comments on the Sola Panel
6th November, 2009 | Category: Mark, Matthew, The Briefing |