Word to the Wise
Thursday, January 15, 2009 - Thursday in the First Week of Ordinary Time
[Hebrews 3:7-14 and Mark 1:40-45]The man went away and began to publicize the whole matter. He spread the report abroad so that it was impossible for Jesus to enter a town openly. He remained outside in deserted places, and people kept coming to him from everywhere.
There's a humorous and rueful expression, "No good deed goes unpunished!" We have an example of it in today's gospel scripture! Jesus takes pity on a leper, heals him and then "sternly" warns him not to tell anybody! (That seems a strange thing to do, but it's part of the overall scheme of the way Mark tells the story of Jesus.) Of course, the leper pays no attention to to the warning. After all, as long as he was a leper the poor guy was as good as dead. He couldn't get near anyone. What Jesus does for him is the equivalent of a resurrection! Now that he is "cleansed" one can sympathize with the guy's desire to tell everybody and catch up on hugs! But the result of this is to make Jesus' job a lot harder. Folks then and now have a tendency to focus on the "special effects" to the exclusion of the principal message. In this case, their interest is in getting their own ailments cured. One can be sure there would be some with the attitude, "Skip the sermon, just heal me!" There may be a "sermon" in all of this for us to consider in terms of our expectations of the Lord. Are we more interested in what he can do for us than we are in knowing who he is? Is our belief limited to "performance" that we expect? Perhaps an "attitude of gratitude" should come before a "Hey! Look me over!" when we are the recipient of a special attention from God. AMEN
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