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Kent Crawford 
“No human ever made more trouble than this ‘gentle Jesus, meek and mild’.”
I have this quote, by James M Gillis, written in a file on my computer I call "my little book of wisdom". Whenever I come across an idea I really want to make sure I remember, I write it down in this file. I have no idea now where it came from, and I still have no idea who James M Gillis is or was, although I’m sure Google – the font of all wisdom – would be able to tell me in a millisecond. For me, that’s not really the point. The point is to remember the idea: Jesus was a trouble-maker.
Unpack the issues...
At the opening of Mark’s Gospel (1: 40), a leper comes to Jesus, “begging him, and kneeling he said to him, ‘If you choose, you can make me clean’.” Sounds fair enough, doesn’t it? Yet what the leper is asking is not possible following the deep tradition of the Levitical code. In Leviticus 13 and 14 we read of the specific way in which the community sought to deal with this illness. (Grab a Bible and check it out – the instructions are very specific!). For a desperate man to claim that Jesus can make him clean, he is not just asking Jesus to wash him, or even just heal him of his skin disease, he is asking to be restored into the community, which is the full meaning and consequence of being designated ‘clean’. It would be perhaps like an asylum seeker saying to a citizen visiting them in a detention centre, ‘If you choose, you can fight for my right to asylum until I am also able to become a citizen in this nation’. Or a desperately poor mother in a developing country saying to your average Australian, ‘If you choose, you can make it that I no longer have to starve in order for your level of prosperity to be maintained’. In these two parallels there is a long history of individuals attempting to transform systems of injustice or oppression being labelled ‘trouble-makers’. It takes immense courage to open yourself to the charge of being called a ‘trouble-maker’. Those with power might label you a ‘pest’ or an ‘agitator’. Commentators might call you a ‘rabble-rouser’ or a ‘menace to society’. Friends might grow uncomfortable around you and think of you as a ‘stirrer’ or a ‘crusader’. Jesus is therefore being asked by the nameless leper to make trouble, to break the rules, to risk himself in order to make the leper’s re-entry into the life of the community possible. The leper asks Jesus to take the situation into his own unlicensed and unauthorised hands. The leper virtually dares him to take on ‘the powers that be’ in order to stand beside the outcast, the sick and the lonely. Some translations of Mark 1:41 say that in response to this challenge Jesus was ‘moved with pity’ (New Revised Standard Version: NRSV) or ‘moved with compassion’ (New American Standard Bible: NASB). These translations may soften Jesus’ experience which in the original Greek conveyed a compassion that wells up from the bowels — it is a deep feeling, touched with anger, fuelling determination. It is the midwife of conviction. The rest of Mark 1:41 tells us that, “Jesus stretched out his hand and touched him, and said to him, ‘I do choose. Be made clean!’” Jesus risks his own place in the community; after all, touching an unclean person makes you also unclean. From the outset, Jesus will be seen as a nuisance, a subversive to those interested in maintaining the status quo. We could rush to romanticise this, but let’s not.  Let’s remember that the story of Jesus starts with a confrontation against long-accepted patterns of how things should be done. Let’s recall that Jesus continued his mission and ministry even after those with power in the community, the Pharisees and Herodians, conspire to destroy him (see Mark 3:6). And then, if we’re still not convinced that Jesus was the very embodiment of courage, the ultimate risk-taker, let’s not forget that he called normal people like Simon and Andrew (Mark 1:16–17) and influential people like Levi (Mark 2: 14–17) — both the downtrodden and the powerful — people just like you and I to follow him and to continue his work. Just as he entrusted this to the disciples in Mark 16, so he entrusts to us the very future of the movement he inaugurated. Now that’s what I call taking a risk!
Rev Kent Crawford is a husband, father, ministry team member at West Epping Uniting Church, amateur chef, point guard on his basketball team and, still to this day, an avid West Wing fan.
Unpack the issues...Discussion points - What other stories can you recall of Jesus embodying courage?
- Has following Jesus led you or someone you know to take big risks? What were they?
- How often do you experience the church as a place of risk? A place of courage?
Further Reading
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