So, we begin a new section of the gospel, which features Jesus' healing miracles just as the previous section (Matt. 5-7) featured his teachings. The compiler/author begins this section with what can only be called a strange healing, a head-scratcher of sorts. The story has Jesus coming down from the hills with a large crowd following him and then, without any transition in the story a man "with a dreaded skin disease" kneels before him and tells Jesus that if Jesus wants to he can heal this guy. Jesus said he did want and then did. And then, Jesus tells him to go to a priest, get himself certified as clean, and then sponsor a sacrifice—but, says Jesus, don't tell anyone. Don't tell anyone? What happened to the crowd? And, why not tell anyone? Isn't the whole point of Jesus' ministry to communicate good news of liberation by word and deed?Scholars struggle to answer these questions, but at the end of the day there's something a little unsatisfying about this story whatever their explanations. There is just one loose end too many however we cut it. It helps, I think, to check out the earlier version of the story in Mark 1:40-45. There the tale is much the same except for the ending. In Mark, the guy who is healed went off and, having been ordered to be silent, proceeds to tell everyone and their uncle about Jesus. In fact, he talked so much to so many that Jesus couldn't walk through town without being swamped by the crowd. Instead, he had to go out into the country-side, and even then large crowds flocked to him.
Some scholars argue that Matthew drops Mark's ending because it is disrespectful of Jesus, a kind of undercutting of his authority. The healed guy is more or less shown to be the star of the story, praiseworthy for his faith in Jesus and for his enthusiastic evangelistic endeavours in spite of the fact that he failed to do what Jesus instructed him to do. The compiler of Matthew, so this argument goes, simply couldn't accept this diminishing of Jesus,' authority. We don't know if this speculation is correct, of course, but if it is it only serves to underscore a point I made in a previous post (here) that Matthew reflects the thinking of a particular party within the early Jesus Movement. It was a party that was already moving toward a more exalted view of the person of Christ.
But I like Mark. Jesus' sanctity didn't need defending; and what is impressive in the story is the kind of fearless, open faith he excited in the man. And Mark's story makes more sense. The reason it has Jesus admonishing the guy not to tell anyone he's been healed is to highlight the extent of his subsequent elation. Being healed of a "dreaded skin disease" was a big deal. He had been exiled from home, family, and community and forced to live a degraded existence. Suddenly, he could go home. He was free! Amazing! Awesome! He was so fired-up, so elated that he just couldn't keep what happened to him to himself. He had to tell the story.
Piety isn't all it is cracked up to be. It can be so straight-laced, so worried about right thinking, and so protective of its doctrines that it quashes things that matter because they don't seem to be pious enough. Mark is ambiguous. Matthew isn't. And it is in Mark we get a happy, almost hilarious description of true faith in Jesus—a faith so exuberant that it won't let even the Rabbi himself silence it. That seems contradictory. It is counter-intuitive. It is so typically human. Mark thus celebrates what Matthew frowns on as wrong, bad, un-Christian. Spoil-sport! Mark's version is better. Amen.
