Everyone Is Looking for Jesus (Mark 1:1, 35~45)

A desperate leper throws himself at Jesus (vv. 40-41)

Mark is the shortest Gospel, written for a broad Gentile audience, and the movie director of the Gospels, full of action and miracles. In Mark 1 a leper comes to Jesus, kneels, and implores him. Leprosy, under Leviticus 13, meant isolation, and in that day it was seen as a sign of God's curse. Lepers had to cry out "unclean, unclean." The leper is desperate, yet he does not demand: "If you are willing." This is how anyone becomes a Christian. When you are desperate enough, you drop all inhibitions and conditions, as the first disciples left their nets and their father."},{"title":"Jesus is moved with compassion and touches him","verses":"vv. 40-41","body":"Verse 41 says Jesus was moved with compassion, meaning to suffer with. He stops, sees, and is never in a rush. In Mark 5 he gives his full attention to a woman who had bled for twelve years, even while the synagogue ruler Jairus waited and his daughter died. Then he raised the girl. No one has more compassion than Jesus, and no one matters more to him than the person in front of him. Jennifer Coe's account of being despised in her wheelchair shows how the world treats the sick. Jesus crossed every cultural, religious, and medical barrier to touch the leper, though a word would have been enough. The touch was for the leper and the watching community."},{"title":"His compassion is comprehensive","verses":"vv. 44","body":"After the healing Jesus tells the man to show himself to the priest and offer what Moses commanded. He wanted the leper to have medical, religious, social, and cultural clearance. With the priest's report the whole town could restore him and accept him back. Jesus is not in the business of just getting you to heaven. He is in the business of making you whole and bringing heaven down to earth. His care reaches every part of life."},{"title":"His compassion is countercultural","verses":"vv. 35-39","body":"The book Disability and the Gospel says religious institutions teach you to be good without being good to people. Some churches only preach how to be good with God. Others pursue only the social gospel, being good to people but not telling how to be right with God. Jesus did both. He preached and he healed. When the crowds wanted healing, he said they must go to other towns to preach. He had gone to a desolate place to pray and was never controlled by the crowds. If you serve the world without coming to God as your Father, compassion fatigue will set in."},{"title":"His cleanness is contagious: he trades places","verses":null,"body":"Normally the clean becomes unclean when mixed with the unclean, like one drop of sewage in clear water. But Jesus' cleansing power is stronger than any disease. The healed leper goes into town and boasts, social for the first time, while Jesus withdraws to a desolate place. Jesus trades places with us. He was accused of having an unclean spirit in Mark 3, and in Mark 15 he was spat on, mocked, and crucified outside the city where garbage is dumped. He was cast out so that we could be welcomed in. He says, My cleanness passes to you, and your uncleanness passes to me."},{"title":"Everyone is looking for Jesus, and he came for you","verses":"vv. 37","body":"The disciples tell Jesus, \"Everyone is looking for you.\" Everyone here is too, whether people come to Seoul for success, community, or a fresh start. Wanting these things is not wrong, but even if every wish came true you would find it was never what you were looking for. The preacher quotes someone saying Jesus will not play the rotten practical joke of giving you your deepest wish until he has shown you it was for him all along. After 24 years of marriage, the speaker and his wife are still looking for Jesus. Turning anyone else into Jesus leaves you drained or disappointed. Jesus came looking for us, and 1 John 1:6-7 says his blood cleanses us from all sin. Come to him and be cleansed."}],"applications":["Let us come to Jesus in desperation, dropping our inhibitions and conditions.","Let us stop and see people with compassion, as Jesus did, rather than dismissing them.","Let us be good with God and good to people, not one without the other.","Let us seek God as our Father first, so that our compassion does not run out.","Let us stop asking people and things to be Jesus for us, and confess our sins in the light so his blood may cleanse us."]}