Secret Agenda: Mark 1: 40-45

Rev. Dr. Fritz Ritsch, Preacher
February 12, 2012

St. Stephen Presbyterian Church
Fort Worth, TX

Our friend Sharon Curry, who went in December to serve as a missionary in the South Sudan, had to be evacuated almost as soon as she arrived because of ethnic violence. She has been frustrated by this, obviously—not only because she has been interrupted in the mission work she intended to do, but even more because she’s been in her placement in Akobo just long enough to get to know people. Now she is in a major city, Malakal, far from the fighting, hearing second-hand how overwhelmed her friend the local doctor is, and how all the families she’d just gotten to know are experiencing deaths and hiding in the forest, afraid to go to the hospital for fear that they’ll be killed by guerilla fighters.

While she’s stuck in Malakal, she’s finding her own way to do ministry—reaching out to the homeless, as she has done for years here in Fort Worth, and finding a Sudanese church that’s glad to welcome her, scheming with another displaced missionary about other ways they can serve the community. Sharon’s very resourceful that way. She just blooms where she’s planted—rather than get frustrated that her plans have been thwarted, she just figures out what God needs her to do in the place God has put her. My personal suspicion is that Sharon is able to do that because she’s always been quite clear on what’s important: she seeks first the Kingdom of God. She puts being a disciple of Christ before anything else. If that’s what’s important to us, we’ll discover that no matter what happens, there’s always some way to serve Christ in any situation, even the most unpredictable and unexpected.

In our Gospel today, Jesus has big plans. He and his disciples have set out from their base in Capernaum and begun a mission to preach the Gospel to the major cities in Galilee. But just as he’s off on this major mission, it gets interrupted. Jesus is confronted by a leper in the road. The leper begs Jesus to heal him. “If you choose, you can make me clean,” he says.

The Scripture says, Jesus “was filled with compassion.” But take a look at the footnote at the bottom: some texts say Jesus was “angry.”

Whenever translators run across a serious variation in text like that, they have a tough call to make. Which was the original word, angry or compassion? In this case, they’d have several rules of translation to weigh and consider. One would be: how many ancient texts say “compassion” versus “anger”? Another would be: how old are those texts? It’s a general rule that the older the text, the more reliable it is as a source.

But there’s another that comes into play: What’s the most embarrassing translation? That’s actually a very important rule that scholars use. Many of the stories of scripture show the apostles or other heroes of the Bible in an embarrassing light. Scholars generally consider those more authoritative because, Why would the biblical authors tell embarrassing stories about themselves, or about biblical heroes, or about Jesus himself, unless they were true?

Apparently, scholars have decided that the best texts say ‘compassion,’ not ‘anger’—but there’s strong enough evidence in favor of “angry” that it can’t be ruled out, so they leave it as a footnote.

It’s embarrassing to admit that Jesus might have been angry. We don’t like to think of Jesus as angry, or for that matter having any “negative” emotions. But Scripture shows Jesus in an abundance of embarrassing situations. In a couple of cases it takes him a few times to heal someone. We catch him displaying a very prejudiced perspective toward Gentiles when he calls a Syro-Phoenician woman a dog. He is verbally abusive of scribes and Pharisees. He seems fearful about his fate as He prays right before his arrest in the Garden of Gethsemane, and he says, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” while on the cross. So sure, Jesus could be angry.

Why would Jesus have been angry about the leper asking to be cleansed?

Actually, the reason is quite practical. If Jesus cleanses the leper, he has to abort his plan to visit the cities in Galilee. In order to heal the leper, Jesus has to touch him, which will make him ceremonially unclean. If word gets out that He’s touched a leper, then he won’t be allowed to visit the cities. He’ll have to stay out of public places for a set period of time to make sure He has not contracted leprosy. His plan will be thwarted.

What’s a messiah to do?

This is hardly a rare situation for Jesus, by the way. We often find him in the middle of attempting to do something, only to be interrupted by some particular person needing a miraculous intervention. Jesus has to make a choice, and note how important Jesus’ ability to choose is to this story. The leper says, “If you choose, you can make me clean.” Jesus replies, “I do choose. Be made clean!” In all the situations in which Jesus is interrupted, no matter how he may feel either about the interruption, the person who interrupts, or the importance of what He has been doing, Jesus almost always chooses to help the person in need, even if it means that his other plans are thwarted. Why is that?

Ultimately, because Jesus has a secret agenda. His secret agenda is to display God’s compassionate love so that the wounded and the sick may be healed and the lost may be rescued. Because of that, he has chosen never turn away anyone who is in need, no matter how much it frustrates his own plans or personal needs. So Jesus may be frustrated or angry; he may have had an exhausting day; he may feel sidetracked by the need of someone who comes to him out of the blue while he’s doing something else. Certainly we have the impression his entourage of disciples felt like there were people who were wasting Jesus’ time, like beggars who demand his attention, or parents bringing their children for a blessing, or the Samaritan woman at the well. These are all people who his disciples try to turn away. But Jesus chooses to welcomes them. He chooses to reach out to them. He chooses to show God’s love for them.

This is, I suspect, one reason the translators chose “compassion” over “anger” for this passage. Because sometimes Jesus was angry, frustrated, tired, or impatient with the people who constantly demanded his attention and caused him to put aside all his best-laid plans. But he didn’t choose to act out of his anger, frustration, exhaustion, or impatience. He chose to act out of compassion. Jesus was just like all of us—he had needs, he had personal problems, he had strong emotions. He didn’t like to get sidetracked. But He knew what was important. What mattered most was serving the Kingdom of God, showing God’s love and compassion. He could put aside his personal agenda because he knew what was important: He sought first the Kingdom of God. No matter what the situation, Jesus could choose the Kingdom of God.

And so can we.

There’s a lesson here for all of us Christians about knowing what’s important. Most of us are pretty ambivalent about our feelings. Sometimes we feel like emotions are bad and need to be controlled. Other times we say, “Hey, I can’t control how I feel!” and so we just act out of whatever we’re feeling.

Jesus felt how He felt. He’d sometimes even say it out loud, much to the embarrassment of His disciples. But He never let his feelings control Him. He knew what was important, and He always chose that over all the other things that He was tempted to choose instead. He knew that what came first was his calling to serve God, and to serve the Kingdom of God. He knew His calling was to “seek and save the Lost, and to give His life as a ransom for many.” With that clear priority, Jesus could rise above His own personal feelings, which might just as easily be the result of what he ate for breakfast or a bad night’s sleep, as anything else.

But here’s what’s really amazing. Here is a guy with an even bigger secret agenda: he is the messiah, the Son of God, sent to save the world! Jesus is “the Most Important Man in the World”! Here’s the one person who apparently has a completely justified messiah complex! He could easily justify saying to the leper, “Listen, buddy, sorry, my first priority is to save the world! If I save you, I won’t be able to save all the people in those cities I’m planning to visit! So, sorry, man, but my plans are too important–I’m too important for this!”

He doesn’t.

It’s a witness to all of us who believe our great plans are all-important. This is a personality trait to which those who feel called by God are especially prone: we feel like God’s anointment has made us all-important, and that our plans are therefore God’s plans. We become impatient, emphatic, narrow-minded, and insistent on our own way.

Really, if the Son of God was willing to allow His plans to be thwarted by a nameless homeless leper, who do we think we are?

What it finally came down to for Jesus—and for us all—is our willingness to trust that God is present in the unpredictable and the uncontrollable–that, as Scripture says, Our ways are not God’s ways, and our plans are not God’s plans. God has a secret agenda, a big plan to which we are not privy. We can plan as best we can, and as faithfully as we can; but things can change at the drop of a hat.

And when they do, the important thing is to have it clear what’s important: Christ’s compassion, love and healing.

Christ’s mission: seek and save the lost.

Christ’s top priority: Seek ye first the Kingdom of God.

If that’s what’s important to us, we’ll discover that no matter what happens, there’s always some way to serve Christ in any situation, even the most unpredictable and unexpected.