As he’s described in the Gospels, Jesus is what my loved ones would call a “really chill guy.” That is, he does his best to meet people where they are, has patience with them in (almost) every encounter (although the Temple incident where he flips the tables in Matthew 21:12-13 describes his passion for righting wrongs rather vividly!), and he does his best to offer to others what God really wants for them. In the short post that follows, I want to describe one specific passage in Mark where Jesus gives someone the real desire of their hearts. I’ll quote the text in full because it does the story greater justice than a paraphrase.

A leper came to him begging him, and kneeling he said to him, “If you choose, you can make me clean.” Moved with pity, Jesus stretched out his hand and touched him, and said to him, “I do choose. Be made clean!” Immediately the leprosy left him, and he was made clean. (Mark 1:40-42)

This short healing story from the beginning of Mark’s Gospel shows the depth of Jesus’ compassion, and his real desire to offer people with disabilities the desires of our hearts. The Greek word translated “moved with pity” in this text, splagchnizomai, means that Jesus’ bowels were moved dramatically with compassion, a very poignant metaphor. We might say that Jesus was seething with rage at the injustices done to the person with leprosy!

In her profound book A Healing Homiletic: Preaching and Disability, liturgist and disability advocate Kathy Black analyzes Jesus’ healings of people with disabilities and chronic illnesses at length. Black observes some differences between healing and curing: cure signifies the removal of symptoms of a physical disease, while healing denotes a “sense of peace and well-being” that reintegrates the person into their community. Black argues that Jesus’ meetings with people with disabilities signified healing rather than cure. 

In particular, Black redefines Jesus’ interaction with the single leper in Mark 1 as a healing encounter. Referring to the “purity codes” of Leviticus, Black describes a number of ostracizing behaviours that people with leprosy (or “Hansen’s disease”) had to practise, such as shouting, “Unclean, unclean,” in public places. Black points out that the man offers Jesus a choice, rather than demanding cure or healing, because by healing him Jesus risks ritual impurity. As Black notes, Jesus’ healing of the man with leprosy upsets his culture’s “purity codes” and begins the man’s reintegration into the wider community. 

Moreover, Jesus asks the formerly leprous fellow to offer the appropriate ritual sacrifice after the healing (see Leviticus 14:4-33 for further details). In this passage, Jesus absorbs the shame of the man’s impurity, becoming unclean for his sake, and puts his body on the line to resist the hidebound religious system that’s oppressing his neighbour. Jesus offers his neighbour dignity. Implicitly, I think that Black is challenging her audience to be like Jesus by transforming the ableist “purity codes” of North American churches.

What else can the encounter between Jesus and this person with leprosy mean for people with disabilities, in light of God’s yearning to offer us the desires of our hearts? I have two thoughts. First, I think that Black’s definition of healing as a social as well as physical phenomenon is really helpful. In my own research, I see healing as a gradual, and sometimes painful, growth towards well-being, which involves both relating to others and a movement towards wholeness and integrity. Indeed, personal and communal integrity like that shown in this passage can help create communities where people of diverse abilities have access to the support and belonging we need.

Second, I can add to Black’s definition of healing with my own experience. Throughout my remarkable life, I have encountered the healing that takes place in the Church. Although I’m not yet perfect (Philippians 3:12, NIV), I’m more whole now than I was when I met Jesus. I bled from my brain when I was born. I believe that, in that moment, the Lord marked me for his service. My experience of weakness from my haemorrhage made me a creative and “right-brained” person, while my intimate encounters with other people have engendered in me a great desire for shalom—for equity, dignity, and joy. Happily, the Presbyterian church that raised me in Prince Edward Island, Canada, and numerous other churches along my journey, have affirmed me in these gifts and empowered me through coffee, communal and connective prayer, theological and biblical study, and some activism and advocacy. Like the guy with leprosy in Mark 1, I’ve been healed. Although it would likely be a stretch to call my accessibility advocacy an “appropriate sacrifice”—it’s simply part of what I do here in the world—I’ve been given an opportunity to give a gift back to God.

Thus, I want to contend, however briefly, that Mark 1:40-45 offers believers with disabilities, and all believers, a glimpse of the wholeness that God promises to all of us. The integrity and faithfulness that God promises doesn’t just uphold the status quo; rather, it points to the radical relationship that Jesus calls us to. We—all of us friends of Jesus—are meant to befriend other people in these ways, so that they can see God’s desires for them.