Touching the Unclean
Mark 1:40-45
[Imperatives in this sermon:
- Connect people to the cleansing, healing, restoring touch of Jesus so that they may have foretaste of the perfection God plans for us.
- Remove the barriers that keep broken people from God, not by watering down any moral laws, but by bringing broken people further along toward wholeness as children of God.]
Cleanliness Laws
When Israel was in its spiritual kindergarten, God gave them cleanliness laws to help them understand that they must be respectful and intentional in their approach to the holy God and that life in this fallen world is not what God intends it to be. There were almost certainly some public health benefits from the cleanliness laws, but the reason for their existence had to do with the degrees of separation that unclean people must maintain from the holy God in a fallen world.
Some of the cleanliness laws in Leviticus 13 relate to leprosy or perhaps we should translate skin diseases. Jewish scribes held that as many as 72 distinct afflictions were covered by these rules. Most modern scholars are convinced that the problem described in Leviticus 13-14 covers skin diseases such as vitiligo (vit-ill-EYE-go), favus (FAYV-uhss), and psoriasis (sore-EYE-uh-suhss). Modern leprosy or Hansen’s disease may or may not have been included. The cleanliness laws for leprosy were especially strict, calling for the afflicted person to remain outside the community of God’s people.
The cleanliness laws may seem to have been harsh and unfair, but they pointed beyond themselves to the perfect future that God planned. And we should not forget that there was always provision for restoration once the cause of uncleanness was removed.
The cleanliness laws were not directly related to moral laws. There were many perfectly moral things that could render one ceremonially unclean. Even the most moral people among us live in a fallen and broken condition that is not fit for dwelling eternally in the presence of God. Nor were the cleanliness laws directly related to salvation. A person who was ceremonially unclean was not necessarily condemned.
Every one of us must be changed in order to enter the eternal destiny God has planned for us. Think about the positive flip side of that message: for the faithful people of God, all the physical challenges that we have faced in this life—problems with our mental abilities, our five senses, our genetic tendencies, our appearance, our mobility—will be replaced by perfection in our eternal life.
From the time of Moses to the time of Jesus, God’s holy presence among his people had been represented by first the tabernacle and then the Jerusalem temple. These sanctuaries had been intended to show the possibility of atonement and of answers to prayers. The sanctuaries were also designed to remind people that there were degrees of separation that people must maintain from the holy God. The cleanliness laws were simply part of this reminder. God had not intended either the sanctuaries or the cleanliness laws to be a permanent feature of life among his covenant people.
Scripture
And a leper came to him, imploring him, and kneeling said to him, "If you will, you can make me clean." 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.
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." 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.
Jesus the Restorer
With the arrival of Jesus’ ministry, God’s presence was represented in Jesus, and wherever he was, was the new location of divine holiness and cleansing power. Jesus went out of his way to touch and to allow himself to be touched by the unclean. But, when Jesus touched an unclean person, rather than Jesus’ becoming unclean, the person he touched became clean. His actions demonstrated that, through him, people could be restored to the presence of God and could be healed of whatever had disabled them.
Instead of excluding the unfit, Jesus had a different way of testifying to the perfection that God desires, by giving foretaste of it, bringing a bit of the future new creation into the present, replacing the unfitness with fitness. In his earthly ministry, Jesus did not overturn the cleanliness laws, but simply overcame their effects. In today’s text, he insisted that the man he healed go to the priests to be declared clean so that he could be restored to religious fellowship in accord with the law of Moses.
But when Jesus was crucified and raised from the dead, and the church was founded as a new covenant community of faith, the cleanliness laws marking off the people of God from others were no longer binding on believers in Jesus. Jewish believers in Jesus could voluntarily maintain their religious culture, but they were not to impose it on others as a condition for church membership.
Jesus was concerned to restore people to the redemptive presence of God.
How Can We Share Jesus' Restoring Mission?
What can we do that helps people who, for whatever reason, have been separated from the presence of God?
As Christians, we don’t have religiously binding cleanliness laws. But we still have human brokenness that causes people to feel separate from God. Our mission is to connect people to the cleansing, healing, restoring touch of Jesus so that they may have foretaste of the perfection God plans for us. For the broken, Jesus seeks total restoration: spiritual, moral, emotional, social, and physical. He desires to remove the barriers that keep broken people from God, not by watering down any moral laws, but by bringing broken people further along toward wholeness as children of God.
As disciples of Jesus, we have a primary task, to help people connect to the atoning love and healing power of Jesus. Only when that loving, healing, cleansing, restoring task is in the driver’s seat can we minister to people in a healthy way.
Two Wrong Models and the Right One
When we look at the churches of our day, we tend to see two models, a permissive liberalism and a judgmental conservatism, with both the liberalism and the conservatism tending toward self-righteousness.
The liberal churches are inclined to posture as more loving than others, but leave people without the godly wisdom and discipline that they need for fulfilling lives. They seem willing to affirm anything but morality and conviction.
The conservative churches are inclined to posture as more moral than others, but tend to put down and put off the people who most need a word of hope and encouragement. They seem most motivated to campaign and crusade against sinners. There is a better way, the way of Jesus, helping people connect to atoning love and healing power.
Rich Nathan, senior pastor of Vineyard Church of Columbus, Ohio, has written a book setting forth a model for doing just that. The book is titled, “Who Is My Enemy?: Welcoming People the Church Rejects.” Nathan’s church has grown to over 6,000 weekend worshipers while practicing the principles set forth in his book.
By taking care to show love and to practice listening before offering counsel, by avoiding public crusades and focusing instead on ministry, Nathan’s Bible-believing church has succeeded in reaching people normally turned off by true believers. They even have reached people who are caught up in various sinful practices of new age spiritualities, sexual immorality, chemical abuse, and so forth. The Vineyard Church of Columbus does not water down any moral teaching of Jesus. It just makes sure that people know that they love them before they challenge them.
Examples from Who Is My Enemy?
Julie was deeply involved in occult religious practices; to put it plainly, she was a witch. When a Vineyard member first encountered Julie, she wore all black clothes with her long black hair combed over her face. Her speech involved unashamed references to many practices that a Christian could not consider. Nonetheless, the church member befriended Julie and invited her to a Bible study group. For some reason, she came. Her body shook as the leader presented the study. She would not talk to most of the people in the group or even look them in the eyes. But, members who patiently waited for Julie to open the discussion finally found opportunity to share with her about the difference between prayer and magic, between Christian faith and occult practices. Eventually Julie’s hair came out of her face and occasional smiles appeared on her now visible face. In the end, she began to ask for prayer about her relationship with an abusive male live-in and agreed to let the church help her find a new place to live where she could make a new beginning. By then, Julie had prayed the sinner’s prayer for Christ to come into her life, and it seemed that she had in fact begun the journey of discipleship.
Willy was an alcoholic and a rootless drifter who spent three years living under a bridge. A group from the Vineyard Church frequently came to pass out blankets and food. They conversed with Willy often enough that he began to feel that he knew them. One day, when they prayed for him, even though he was drunk and sick at the time, a great change began to work in his life. They first found him a place in a halfway house and then found him an inexpensive apartment. After that they got him started at some independent contracting work. Every Saturday, Willy takes groups from the church to minister to his old homeless friends and to introduce them to Jesus. Several of his old friends have followed his path into more satisfying lives.
Jim had been president of the Ohio State University Society of Humanists, a group dedicated to hindering Christian witness on campus. After he graduated, Lisa, a Vineyard member, showed him great kindness and repeatedly invited him to church. Just to put her off, he said that he would go in two years. In that time, Lisa kept talking about and demonstrating the love of Jesus. In the meantime, Bill, a longtime atheist friend, was converted, and began to share the gospel with Jim. Jim was intrigued but not persuaded. Bill told Jim that he had dreamed that Jim was dying. Jim shrugged it off. A week later, Jim with spinal meningitis was in the hospital where he had a dream that he was trying to shovel filth out of the trunk of his car, but the filth kept slipping off the shovel. He understood that the trunk of the car represented his own uncleanness and that he needed the touch of God in his life. Jim now recognized that he believed in God but was not sure about Jesus. He did some study of other religions and discovered that only Jesus offered an effective way to get the uncleanness out of his life. Jim now prayed for Jesus to come into his life and was overwhelmed with the love of God. After getting out of the hospital, Jim reported his conversion to Lisa and Bill, but still declined Lisa’s invitation to church until she pulled out her calendar and showed him that the two years within which he had promised to visit church were now up. He attended a church outreach event and publicly proclaimed his faith in Jesus. Jim has since become an active and creative church member and has completed training as a future pastor.
Columbus Vineyard has a very active ministry to AIDS victims, Project Compassion. They host a weekly support group and a big Christmas banquet for AIDS victims and their loved ones. They provide help with transportation and dealing with impersonal medical and government institutions.
Eileen was a 40-something woman who had been involved in drugs and sexual promiscuity. She had AIDS. Project Compassion showed her something that she had not seen before. She gave her life to Christ and now is being used to lead others in her family, her neighborhood, and the Project Compassion support group to Christ.
Project Compassion has had other benefits. In preparation for a sermon series on sexual wholeness, Rich Nathan talked to people who had come out of broken sexual lifestyles. They described to him the experiences in their lives that had led them into their tragic choices and the experiences that had led them toward healthier choices. The people Nathan interviewed turn out to be not much different from the rest of us; they make better choices when they know they are loved by people who truly care, who are not just trying to use them. Project Compassion provided the environment that helped even people who did not have AIDS to trust that this was a loving church that would deeply care for them, that would listen to them, and that would honestly communicate God’s counsel to them. These people were then empowered to make healthier choices. It all began with the church’s willingness to reach out and touch our closest modern equivalent to the unclean.
Julie the witch, Willy the homeless alcoholic, Jim the hostile atheist, Eileen the AIDS victim—to the world’s eyes there was not one promising candidate for sainthood or even respectability among them. These were hurting and angry people, easy to find repulsive, easy to reject. But the love of Jesus reached out and touched their uncleanness and brokenness, and somehow they were cleansed, healed, and restored.
Finding the Balance, Finding Restoration
It is a tricky balance to love and welcome sinners, but not the sin, but by the help of the Holy Spirit Jesus managed it and, by that same help, so can we. We just have to find confidence in the transforming power we declare in our good news. That’s what faith is all about!
Perhaps there is a point of brokenness or uncleanness in your life, something that holds you back from the wholeness God plans for you. First, let me assure you that this does not make you different from the people who sit beside you. They too are broken. But that does not mean that you are to fatalistically settle for less than God’s best. You can still ask, seek, and knock for wholeness. Jesus is not afraid to touch your life. His touch makes a vital difference. When he touches, in various ways, cleansing, healing, and restoration follow.
Perhaps you are a church member who has never caught on that you are called into mission for Jesus, that it is indeed through your love and eventually through your speaking the truth in love, that Jesus may provide just what a fellow struggler needs to be cleansed, healed, and restored.
We need to remember when we ask, “What would Jesus do?” that he would likely surprise us, perhaps even shock us. But one thing he would never do is settle than less than the best for us.
You can trust Jesus as your Savior; you can trust him as your Lord.
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