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Fear Buster

Blog / Produced by The High Calling
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A leper came to him begging him, and kneeling he said to him, "If you choose, you can make me clean." Moved with pity, Jesus stretched out his hand and touched him, and said to him, "I do choose. Be made clean!" Immediately the leprosy left him, and he was made clean. After sternly warning him he sent him away at once, saying to him, "See that you say nothing to anyone; but go, show yourself to the priest, and offer for your cleansing what Moses commanded, as a testimony to them." But he went out and began to proclaim it freely, and to spread the word, so that Jesus could no longer go into a town openly, but stayed out in the country; and people came to him from every quarter.
Mark 1:40-45, NSRV

What are you most afraid of? I don't think I need to mention out loud all of the unspoken fears that are present with us in the inner sanctuaries of our lives. Just a few months ago, we were all afraid of the swine flu. I heard stories of people who sneezed and entire grocery store aisles cleared out.

This gospel passage speaks about what fear does to us and how God responds to our fear. Imagine for a moment what it would've been like to have leprosy in the first century. The man in the first chapter of Mark has lost his job, family, community, security, everything. He is desperate.

The Old Testament law was quite clear—any person with leprosy was to wear torn clothing, keep their hair unkempt, cover their upper lip and cry, "Unclean, Unclean!" Even worse, they were to live alone as outsiders, away from the camp of the Israelites. By coming to see Jesus, this man is breaking the law and could be stoned if caught by the religious zealots.

In this context of deathly fear, Jesus speaks grace and truth. The man approaches Jesus, kneels, and says, "If you choose, you can make me clean." Notice what fear and loss expose in the leper—any illusion of control is broken, gone.

Then Jesus chooses. Love and mercy meet in a great action statement of compassion: "I do choose," Jesus says—demonstrating that God is trustworthy, beyond all our loss and fear—"be clean."

Jesus then tells the man to go to a priest for a ceremonial cleansing, making a clear distinction between being healed from a disease and being made whole. Through the ritual of cleansing, this man would be restored back into the community of faith. According to the law, even though he had been healed, he would be ceremonially unclean until it happened. Jesus didn't just want to heal this man physically. He offered spiritual, social, and communal wholeness. God knows that people can be healed from sickness and go right back to their ways of living in fear. Our fears of rejection, isolation, and loss distort our sense of wholeness, driving us into destructive behavior that makes our fears come true. It is a vicious cycle, and it isolates us.

This gospel story reminds me of the 2008 movie Gran Torino. Clint Eastwood plays Walt Kowalski, a Korean War veteran who lives in a changing Michigan neighborhood that increasingly is dominated by Asian immigrants. In one scene, Kowalski's neighbor says to him, "You are a good man." He blows it off with a gruff, "some people would say otherwise" or something to that effect—he sounded just like my father.

But these words of love and grace speak to Walt's fear and self-hatred for killing innocent Asians in the Korean War. His relationship with his neighbors, previously limited by his own prejudice and hatred, deepens. Walt couldn't reach his own children, and he feels terrible about that. But he ends up a player in God's goodness and reaches out to save an entire neighborhood. It is an incredibly redemptive story of the gospel.

God is with us in our fear and loss of control. In the grace and truth of Jesus, God chooses to make us whole so that we might live beyond all fear in our daily lives.

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