Moved with Pity, Moved with Anger
by the Very Rev. Peter DeVeau, Dean
For years a two-frame cartoon was displayed on the door of our refrigerator. The first frame had a line drawing of a dorky middle-age man with a caption underneath that read, “Parent of eighth grader.” The second frame had a drawing of a dopey, smiling clown. It bore the caption, “Parent as seen by eighth-grader.”
We took that cartoon along with us when we moved from Kansas City to Seattle with a thirteen year old eighth grader in tow. As good humor can do, the cartoon gave some insight into life at that moment and kept us from getting too serious about ourselves.
During those first few months of adjusting to a new city, my son Matt and I would get up early on Saturday mornings and head down to the Pike Place Market. We’d hit up the French bakery for a croissant, stop in for a latte at what is said to be the very first Starbucks store, and maybe shop for some local vegetables and fish.
On one of our first Saturday morning market expeditions Matt and I became acquainted with the Seattle homeless population. We had come to the market early enough that the normal hoard of tourists had not yet jammed the narrow aisles between stalls. That morning I think just about every street person came by to greet us with an open hand. We must have looked newly minted from the Midwest- we were not yet clothed in the local grungy style that favors drab colors and well-worn polar fleece.
As panhandlers called out to us and followed after us that morning, I reverted to my native New Yorker tapes that deliver repeated messages to “keep moving and don’t engage.” Each time I sped up Matt shot me a look as if to say, “Dad, what’s wrong with you?” Things reached a head when right after we passed a very sad looking individual who asked for money, I stopped to buy some flowers to take home to Mary. That did it. I got a heated mini-lecture about foolish spending when people are hungry. The impassioned speech ended with “Don’t you care?” “You? The minister!” With the swiftness of his youth, Matt snatched the bills I clutched in my hand and marched back to the man we had just seen and placed the money in his hand.
“Moved with pity, Jesus stretched out his hand and touched him, and said to him, ‘I do choose. Be made clean!’”
“Moved with anger, Jesus stretched out his hand and touched him, and said to him, ‘I do choose. Be made clean!’”
What a difference one word makes! Jesus is moved with pity, or, Jesus is moved with anger, depending on which of the original language manuscripts are used in translating Mark’s gospel into English from Koine Greek. The manuscripts using “anger” instead of “pity” are fewer and are considered to carry the more difficult or obscure version of this gospel story. Typically scholars tend to consider such readings to be more authentic.
Moved with pity. . . Moved with anger. . . Perhaps we need each of these renderings in order to have this story come to life for us. God knows, each of us has our own framework for making sense of Jesus.
But, before we talk about that and ask our questions about what this can mean to us, there are other things to talk about and question.
The man in the story is healed. Why is that when we run to Jesus and get down on our knees and beg for healing from disease that it still wastes away until it takes away life itself? Why do addictions or abuse only get worse, and too many lives dragged into the mess? Or, the child or the servicewoman, whom we ask God to keep safe, succumbs in the line of fire, figuratively or literally? Where is the pity, the compassion, the life saving miracle? Why aren’t my requests met with a healing? What didn’t I do right? At one in the same time our line of reasoning can be both childlike and a matter for deep, ongoing thought.
The leper says to Jesus, “If you choose, you can make me clean.” Moved with pity (literally, moved with compassion right in his guts), Jesus stretched out his hand and touched him, and said to him, “I do choose. Be made clean!”
Jesus is moved to pity. A man with leprosy kneels before him and Jesus hears the man’s plea. The one whom Jesus heals has up to this point has been a total outcast. He has a disease like leprosy or perhaps some other skin disorder. This has made the leper untouchable, ritually unclean- but Jesus stretches out his hand and touches him. In the transaction Jesus puts himself in the same place as the leper. He becomes unclean. Pity, compassion, a stirring in the gut causes Jesus to reach out. There is a different way of approach in this gesture. Jesus puts his own purity on the line.
The approach is indeed different when we read “Moved with anger” and not “Moved with pity.” What is Jesus angry about? He may be mad because the man is getting in the way of his work. This can happen. We know about that. Perhaps Jesus is angry at the wasting away of the disease. We can understand that. Or, he is annoyed at the waste that comes when people are cut out from full participation. We notice that, too, especially when we’re the ones on the down side of the equation. Jesus may be so steamed up by what he sees in need of repair in the world that he does what he can. He acts defiantly and deliberately, “I do choose. Be made clean!” Gospel begins to take shape as it confronts the world. Here’s power that sometimes we like, and sometimes don’t like. This is power that changes the world.
It gets better. Jesus orders the man sternly (literally, he snorts at him, as in, “Dude, get moving. Go!”). He sends him away saying not to tell anyone but to go and show the priest. Show the priest that you are now ready to re-enter the company of the ritually clean. Jesus may simply be having the man fulfill the law of Moses- to do what is right. Then again, he may be sending the man to the priest in a kind of protest. “See, he’s clean now!”
More than once I have been aware of how a cancer diagnosis can shrink a circle of friends faster than radiation therapy can shrink a tumor. That kind of behavior is changing, but it is far from over. In communities like churches the odd thing is that people who are going through difficulties seem to disappear. At a time when it makes most sense to have support, there is a withdrawal. It happens not just because an individual chooses to make him or herself scarce: a divorce, loss of a job, an illness, all kinds of things, can alter the rules for being part of the group. There are any number situations where people are cut off due to a perception of uncleanness (though we wouldn’t call it that). In American society alone with its obscenely high rate of incarceration, a whole society of ex-cons lives at the margins and is branded with a kind of “societal uncleanness.” It’s not much better for drug addicts, or the barely educated and generationally poor.
This past week we watched and perhaps engaged in the debate over who pays the health care bill when it comes to reproductive services or birth control. A workable compromise has been proposed to settle this issue, allowing for people of good conscience and motive on either side to move ahead. As the issue unfolded I was saddened at that human ability to vilify and discount the “other” from one’s own standpoint, in both blatant and subtle ways. In particular I groaned once again as some referred to this nation’s imperfect attempt to bring health care to all people as, “Obamacare.” The sad part of all that is, that I wouldn’t be surprised if a good number of the people opposing universal health care provision may actually have pretty good health care themselves. The bottom line, I believe, is that a strong nation is built on providing for the welfare of all people, not just some.
The political debates are bound to go on. The challenges we face both in our national and personal lives are not going to go away. A world of need and of expectation awaits a word of hope, a healing hand that crosses boundaries of “dis”ease.
You and I are given a word today: Jesus moved with compassion — Jesus moved with indignation — stretched out his hand and touched the leper. What was once cast out and rendered unclean is restored. You and I are called and commissioned to do this very thing with God’ s help. The world is very different when it is framed by the gospel and seen through a believer’s eyes.
