Sunday, February 15, 2015

The Jesus, Leper and You Switcheroo

In today's Gospel from Mark, a leper approaches Jesus and asks to be made clean.

Jesus, as we know, agrees and cleanses the poor man.  

At that point, Jesus and the leper pull the old switcheroo.  The leper, who previously could not be part of his community because of his disease, was now free to rejoin society.  Jesus, on the other hand, who previously went from town to town, now had to remain in deserted areas because of His popularity.

Why is Jesus so popular?  Because despite telling the leper to "tell no one anything", the now-clean man cannot contain himself.  He preaches about Christ so well, that Jesus could not enter towns anymore.  And people still sought Him and found Him where He stayed.  

But in another reversal, Jesus tells you, and me, the exact opposite.  He asks us to spread His word to everyone.  The question is ... have we had the same effect that the leper had?  

Or is it another switcheroo?

God Bless you.

3 comments:

Shirley said...

Methinks our words fall on deaf ears these days.
This is a great gospel reading to reflect on the need for the Sacrament of Confession, where we acknowledge the leprosy within us and ask Jesus to heal us.

Victor S E Moubarak said...

This is a good throught-provoking post Michael. Thank you.

I read somewhere that Jesus often said to those He healed not to announce it far and wide because "His time" was not yet there. He was on a Mission to spread the Word of God first, which He did, and then eventually to make known who He was.

Today, nothing should stop us from proclaiming His good news. Even if all we do is write the odd Blog post every now and then.

God bless.

Michael said...

Shirley - excellent point, thank you for sharing that.

Victor - I'm pretty sure my posts count as "odd Blog posts" so hopefully I am doing the Lords work here :)

Thank you both for stopping by! god Bless you.