Today’s readings: Leviticus 13, 1-2.45-46; 1 Corinthians 10, 31 - 11, 1; Mark 1, 40-45.
The purity regulations laid down in Leviticus regarding leprosy were the prevailing purity code meant to protect the community from a contagious disease but also to safeguard the ideological hegemony of priest and scribe over society.
This order is overturned in today’s reading from St Mark where Jesus is clearly defying the Torah by touching the leper and assuming the priestly prerogative.
As author Ched Myers writes in his political reading of Mark’s story of Jesus: “The cleansed leper’s task is not to publicise a miracle but to help confront an ideological system”. Jesus never tolerates that people should become victims of any system whatsoever, be it political, cultural or even religious.
The fact that against Jesus’ warning the cleansed leper goes public forces Jesus into hiding. Some commentators attribute this to his desire to contain his popularity. Others insist that Jesus, having touched the leper, is now himself considered unclean.
Liberation always provokes conflict. We cannot become absorbed by a culture that perpetuates mechanisms of division and exclusion. That is why the Church is called in this day and age to be a critical voice of that same social order which it itself upheld in the past.
The story of the leper puts forward mostly the conflictual relationship Jesus had with any system that instead of enhancing people’s dignity, shattered it. Leprosy, being a plague in itself, stands here for the many other evils that plague society and Church alike and that in many ways justify the exclusion of so many.
Even within the walls of our churches, we still today live haunted with divisions and hierarchies that label people as first- or second-class citizens. Harsh as Leviticus may sound, we still use similar methods to keep people away from participating with dignity in what they authentically thirst for. In the name of legality, we long to defend ourselves and our identity as Christians by keeping abay those whom we judge unworthy.
It is always the same story. From Jesus 2,000 years ago to Pope Francis in our days, many sought to dismantle all that ideologically enslaves rather than liberates. This has always provoked conflict between those upholding the status quo and those who in the power of the Spirit have the capacity to discern the kairos, the grace of the moment.
Unfortunately, religion has always been used to label, judge, divide and exclude. But religion, by nature, is meant to bring about a totally different order in society.
When religion is not lived in the wake of the gospel conversion, we are better off without it. Lacking the dimension of the gospel, religion very easily transforms itself into different forms of fundamentalism.
Our times call the Church to let go of all the securities that to date sort of guaranteed its identity, place and role in society and in the lives of people. The Church can no longer claim to be a society within a society. Its mission is not primarily to bring people to belong to it, but to be a voice in the world so that the dignity of so many excluded can be restored.
That is the precise mission of the Church: not to fabricate Christians but to be a catalyst in today’s world for a more humane society.
Jesus’ dealing with the leper was not in disrespect towards the Torah. He was simply bringing to the people’s attention that in the name of the Torah and to safeguard the collectivity, injustice was being perpetuated.
The gospel of Jesus Christ traces for us a different path that puts human dignity at the centre.
This was what revolutionised in the Second Vatican Council the Church’s new approach to other religions, to the issues of religious liberty and freedom of conscience, and towards politics and culture as they shape the fabric of society.