Mark connects the story with our Lord's first journey through Galilee,
which was signalised by many miracles, and had excited much stir and
talk. The news of the Healer had reached the isolated huts where the
lepers herded, and had kindled a spark of hope in one poor wretch,
which emboldened him to break through all regulations, and thrust his
tainted and unwelcome presence into the shrinking crowd. He seems to
have appeared there suddenly, having forced or stolen his way somehow
into Christ's presence. And there he was, with his horrible white
face, with his tightened, glistening skin, with some frowsy rag over
his mouth, and a hunted look as of a wild beast in his eyes. The crowd
shrank back from him; he had no difficulty in making his way to where
Christ is sitting, calmly teaching. And Mark's vivid narrative shows
him to us, flinging himself down before the Lord, and, without waiting
for question or pause, interrupting whatever was going on, with his
piteous cry. Misery and wretchedness make short work of conventional
politeness.
Note the keen sense of misery that impels to the passionate desire for
relief. A leper with the flesh dropping off his bones could not
suppose that there was nothing the matter with him. His disease was
too gross and palpable not to be felt; and the depth of misery
measured the earnestness of desire. The parallel fails us there. The
emblem is all insufficient, for here is the very misery of our deepest
misery, that we are unconscious of it, and sometimes even come to love
it. There are forms of sickness in which the man goes about, and to
each inquiry says, 'I am perfectly well,' though everybody else can
see death written on his face. And so it is with this terrible malady
that has laid its corrupting and putrefying finger upon us all. The
worse we are, the less we know that there is anything the matter with
us; and the deeper the leprosy has struck its filthy fangs into us,
the more ready we are to say that we are sound. We preachers have it
for one of our first duties to try to rouse men to the recognition of
the facts of their spiritual condition, and all our efforts are too
often--as I, for my part, sometimes half despairingly feel when I
stand in the pulpit--like a firebrand dropped into a pond, which
hisses for a moment and then is extinguished. Men and women sit in
pews listening contentedly and quietly, who, if they saw themselves, I
do not say even as God sees them, but as others see them, would know
that the leprosy is deep in them, and the taint patent to every eye. I
do not charge you, my brother, with gross transgressions of plain
moralities; I know nothing about that. I know this: 'As face answereth
to face in a glass,' so doth the heart of man to man, and I bring this
message, verified to me by my own consciousness, that we have all gone
astray, and 'wounds and bruises and putrefying sores' mark us all. If
the best of us could see himself for once, in the light of God, as the
worst of us will see himself one day, the cry would come from the
purest lips, 'Oh! wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from
the body of this death?'--this life in death that I carry, rotting and
smelling foul to Heaven, about with me, wheresoever I go.
Note, further, this man's confidence in Christ's power: 'Thou canst
make me clean.' He had heard all about the miracles that were being
wrought up and down over the country, and he came to the Worker, with
nothing of the nature of religious faith in Him, but with entire
confidence, based upon the report of previous miracles, in Christ's
ability to heal. I do not suppose that in its nature it was very
different from the trust with which savages will crowd round a
traveller who has a medicine-chest with him, and expect to be cured of
their diseases. But still it was real confidence in our Lord's power
to heal. As a rule, though not without exceptions, He required (we may
perhaps say He needed) such confidence as a condition of His
miracle-working power.
If we turn from the emblem to the thing signified, from the leprosy of
the body to that of the spirit, we may be sure of Christ's omnipotent
ability to cleanse from the extremest severity of the disease, however
inveterate and chronic it may have become. Sin dominates men by two
opposite lies. I have said how hard it is to get people's consciences
awakened to see the facts of their moral and religious condition; but
then, when they are waked up, it is almost as hard to keep them from
the other extreme. The devil, first of all, says to a man, 'It is only
a little sin. Do it; you will be none the worse. You can give it up
when you like, you know. That is the language before the act.
Afterwards, his language is, first, 'You have done no harm, never mind
what people say about sin. Make yourself comfortable,' and then, when
that lie wears itself out, the mask is dropped, and this is what is
said: 'I have got you now, and you cannot get away. Done is done! What
thou hast written thou hast written; and neither thou nor anybody else
can blot it out.' Hence the despair into which awakened consciences
are apt to drop, and the feeling, which dogs the sense of evil like a
spectre, of the hopelessness of all attempts to make oneself better.
Brethren, they are both lies; the lie that we are pure is the first;
the lie that we are too black to be purified is the second. 'If we say
that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves and make God a liar,' but if
we say, as some of us, when once our consciences are stirred, are but
too apt to say, 'We have sinned, and it cleaves to us for ever,' we
deceive ourselves still worse, and still more darkly and doggedly
contradict the sure word of God. Christ's blood atones for all past
sin, and has power to bring forgiveness to every one. Christ's vital
Spirit will enter into any heart, and, abiding there, has power to
make the foulest clean.
Note, again, the leper's hesitation. 'If Thou wilt'--he had no right
to presume on Christ's good will. He knew nothing about the principles
upon which His miracles were wrought and His mercy extended. He
supposed, no doubt, as he was bound to suppose, in the absence of any
plain knowledge, that it was a mere matter of accident, of caprice, of
momentary inclination and good nature, to whom the gift of healing
should come. And so he draws near with the modest 'If Thou wilt'; not
pretending to know more than he knew, or to have a claim which he had
not. But his hesitation is quite as much entreaty as hesitation. What
do we mean when we say about a man, 'He can do it, if he likes,' but
to imply that it is so easy to do it, that it would be cruel not to do
it? And so, when the leper said, 'If Thou wilt, Thou canst,' he meant,
'There is no obstacle standing between me and health but Thy will, and
surely it cannot be Thy will to leave me in this life in death.' He,
as it were, throws the responsibility for his health or disease upon
Christ's shoulders, and thereby makes the strongest appeal to that
loving heart.
We stand on another level. The leper's hesitation is our certainty. We
know the principle upon which His mercy is dispensed; we know that it
is a universal, all-embracing love; we know that no caprice nor
passing spasm of good nature lies at the bottom of it. We know that if
any men are not healed, it is not because Christ will not, but because
they will not. If ever there springs in our hearts the dark doubt 'If
Thou wilt,' which was innocent in this man in the twilight of his
knowledge, but is wrong in us in the full noontide of ours, we ought
to be able to banish it at once, and to lay none of the responsibility
of our continuing unhealed on Christ, but all on ourselves. He has
laid it there, when He lamented, 'How often would I--and ye would
not!' Nothing can be more in accordance with the will of God, of which
Jesus Christ is the embodiment, than to deliver men from sin, which is
the opposite of His will.