Mark 1:40-45; 6th Sunday in Ordinary Time

If Jesus was a devout Jew, an dhe was—why did he obey some rules but violated others? He observed feasts and fasts. He attended synagogue and taught there every day. He prayed a whole lot. And in today’s Gospel, he even told the leper to go to the priest and to do the week-long purification rites the Law prescribed.

But then, we also read that Jesus violated the Law, and in plain view of the religious authorities. He didn’t stop his friends from picking grain on a Sabbath. He didn’t wash his hands the right way before eating. He talked to women in public, including prostitutes. And in today’s Gospel, he touched a leper. That was like, number two of the most defiling actions for a Jew. What was number one? Touching a dead body. Or touching someone/something a dead body was in contact with. In fact, everything in a house was completely defiled if someone died in it. In fact, if your own house shared a wall with that house, and the wall had a crevice you could pass your hand through (the law said three inches and wider, and crevices they had because houses were made of clay), then, the defilement passed from the house of the dead into yours. Grabe ‘no? They had a name for that: tumat ohel, defilement by overshadowing. The rule on dealing with lepers was also very precise and based on the same principle. Keep a distance of 100 cubits (150 ft) from lepers if the wind was blowing up from them. If the wind blew down from you, four cubits lang (six ft). Imagine? The rabbis had it all down to a math. So, how did one know someone was a leper? Well, the Law required lepers to tear their tunics open in public for their sores to show. They must yell, “Unclean, unclean,” or ring a bell or strike a home-made cymbal of some sort (I don’t know, like, takip ng Fita biskwit). Oh, sisters and brothers, centuries after Moses, the rabbis just piled on rule upon rule after rule they believed were pursuant to the Ten Commandments; to make absolutely sure people kept them.

But if you remember, the Ten Commandments were for the sake of runaway slaves, pitiful nobodies, bedraggled poor. The Law was for those who were never given a day of rest, for example (commandment three); or whose parents were dishonored (commandment four); or killed, stolen from, or framed, (commandments five, six, seven, eight), or whose wives and daughters were coveted and violated by abusive masters (commandments six and ten). In other words, once upon a time, the Law was good news! When the Temple was built, however, religion came down to one and only big thing: purity versus defilement. And it governed what they touched, what they ate, what they looked at and spoke (looking at a pig or saying the word was defiling, for example). Kaya naging sobrang individualistic ang religion nila, at matatakutin. Iwas, iwas, iwas. Sanitize, sanitize, sanitize. What originally were God’s humanitarian Ten Commandments, were now a rabbi’s manifesto of religious hypochondriasis.

Well, Jesus would have none of that. So, to answer the question we asked earlier: Jesus violated rules on purity because purity versus defilement was never God’s concern for the Law. God’s concern was people. He meant his Law to save people: people in dire straits, victims, nobodies, poor. But the rabbis reduced God’s Law into a simplistic binary: purity versus defilement. Bad news for the poor. They had neither the time nor the luxury to check every single box on purity, unlike the comfortable and wealthy of the Temple who were “squeaky clean.”

This is usually the problem, sisters brothers, of binary thinking, this black and white, either-or mindset, this dualistic mentality, like purity versus defilement. When it comes to religion, a binary, black and white, either-or, dualistic mindset, especially by a handful of influencers who think that way—this often reduces religion into an us versus them, righteous versus sinners, insiders versus outliers, heaven-bound us versus hell-bound whoever’s not like us.

“But Father, thank God we don’t have that mentality anymore.” Umm, yes and no, sisters and brothers. Yes and no. We no longer think that disease, food, lepers, dead bodies, etc, are defiling, thank God. But many still think of our doctrines as a roster of sins to condemn and sinners to shun. Well, that’s still very much the purity versus defilement DNA of the rabbis. I’m not saying we shouldn’t be concerned about sin. But we’re missing a whole depth and breadth about salvation if we believe that all Jesus’ eyes ever wanted to spot were sins and sinners versus pure and holy. If that were true, he should’ve just gunned for a position as a priest in the Temple and stayed there all his life, sin-proof and sinner-averse. But the Temple was just too small for his God and the people there too self-assured to need any more saving. So, off Jesus went to the unclean, the unwashed for a show and tell. Today, he showed and told a leper that God was near, touching him into healing despite his yells and bells. He told and showed the leper that he and his kind counted for something precious to God.

Sisters and brothers, if there was one of many things Jesus loved about his Father, it was that God was never black-or-white, either-or, dualistic, binary. Nagmana siya sa Ama niya. No matter how thick the walls people built around God, Jesus showed and told that his Father would always crack those darn walls, so he can push his hand through the crevices and show us he was near and close enough to hold, safe enough to touch.

Sisters and brothers, if God’s will were black-or-white, either-or, dualistic, binary, you think we’d have survived and lasted this long?