Compassion and indignation

 

Reflection 14th February 2021

Mark 1: 40 - 45

We’ve been watching the drama series on Channel 4 called “It’s a sin”. It tells the story of a group of gay men over a 10-year period from the early 1980s to the early 1990s as AIDS takes its toll. It is not an easy watch, but it is an excellent drama. And for Anne it has stirred up some sad memories.

My wife started her nursing career on 8^th December 1980 as a student nurse at the Middlesex Hospital in Central London. (Just off Oxford Street, close to the BT Tower.) Sadly, the Middlesex is no longer there. But during my wife’s time it became one of the places specialising in the treatment of AIDS, as more and more was learned about the disease. However, my wife’s recollection was of young men coming into hospital with a mystery illness and, them being put into side wards and watching them slowly die.

Looking back, what my wife found most difficult was the way many of these young men were ostracised. Not by hospital staff, but in many cases by their families. Or even if the families were there, then partners (and friends) were excluded and not treated as next of kin. These are themes that are picked up in the drama series.

What “It’s a sin” conveys most strongly is the sense that those who were gay, and especially those who were gay with HIV / AIDS, were outcasts.

Maybe things are better now. (I hope so.) Certainly, the disease can be managed if not cured. And those with AIDS are not as stigmatised as they once were.

The passage from Mark finds Jesus being confronted by a leper. As you probably know, in the ancient world lepers were ostracised and made to live in colonies outside the town. (Though in parts of the world where leprosy is still a common disease, lepers are still ostracised and discriminated against.)

⁴⁰ A leper^[o] came to him begging him, and kneeling^[p] he said to him, ‘If you choose, you can make me clean.’ ⁴¹ Moved with pity,^[q] Jesus^[r] stretched out his hand and touched him, and said to him, ‘I do choose. Be made clean!’ Mark 1: 40 – 41 NRSV

You will notice how the New Revised Standard Version of the Bible says that Jesus acted out of pity for the plight of the leper. Whereas it is possible for Mark’s Greek to be translated as

⁴¹ Jesus was indignant. Mark 1:41 NIV

We perhaps understand why Jesus was “moved with pity” Whereas Jesus being “indignant” does not sit well. But Jesus was not indignant for being called upon by the leper. Jesus wasn’t angry with the leper. Rather Jesus was indignant, angry, about the way the leper was treated. It is perfectly possible to see why Jesus experienced both pity / compassion and indignation / anger. Jesus’ compassion heals the man while at the same time he feels indignant that this man, and others like him, were pushed to the margins of society by disease.

Jesus is demonstrating to us how we should feel and act. For example, it seems to me we should be moved by compassion for those needing foodbanks but equally we should feel indignant that in one of the richest countries in the world, people are made to rely on foodbanks to get by.

To go back to the TV series “It’s a sin” for a moment. A central character in the drama is a young woman called Jill. She becomes good friends with several of the gay men and her compassion is shown by the way she cares for several of them as they die from AIDS. But her compassion turns into indignation and anger at the way the men are stigmatised, and she is arrested on a demonstration trying to get drug companies to make treatments for AIDS available on the NHS.

Jesus’ indignation is shown by what he tells the leper to do after he has been healed

⁴³ Jesus sent him away at once with a strong warning: ⁴⁴ ‘See that you don’t tell this to anyone. But go, show yourself to the priest and offer the sacrifices that Moses commanded for your cleansing, as a testimony to them.’ Mark 1 43 – 44 NIV

Jesus is telling the man to confront the priest, to demonstrate to the priest what the priest should have done. Ched Myers in “Binding the strong man:  a political reading of Mark’s gospel” says

“Jesus’ instruction to the leper only makes sense if the man had already been to the priest who had rejected him…. The cleansed leper’s task is not to publicise a miracle. He is to make an offering for the purpose of witnessing against the priests”

It is doubtful that the priests could have healed the man, but they could have cared for him and had pity for him. They could have looked beyond the disease to the person before them.

Jesus always met men and women on the level of their need, regardless of who they were or what they had done. He met everyone as human beings, never as stereotypes.  Stereotypes were as powerful then as they are now. Once a label is placed on a person the human being vanishes. Many labels were given to people in the New Testament. Labels as tax collector, Samaritan, Roman soldier, prostitute, rich young man, Pharisee, sinner, publican, and of course leper. They all appear in the gospel story, and every time Jesus completely ignores the label and deals with the person.

David H.C. Read points out that "Jesus knew the ugly side of society: the brutality of the occupation, the corruption of the tax system, the racial prejudices, the economic injustice, the religious hypocrisy, and the sexual degradation. But never once did these factors blind him to the reality of the human being, the unique son or daughter of God he saw before him."