A god compromised with the cursed (Marco 1,40-45)
Return* by Mariella Colosimo of the enclosure of biblical reflection of WORD… AND WORDS group** of 18 January 2025
In this episode of healing of the leper (Marco 1,40-45) I am striking the determination with which Jesus tells the leper "I want it!". The lepers in Israel and in the logic of the Old Testament were excluded from society and religious sphere. Impurious par excellence, considered "chastised by God" for their sins, of which leprosy was proof and visible demonstration. The book of numbers speaks of the leper as "a child born a dead" and "as one to which his father spit in his face" (numbers 12,12-14).
Since the leprosy was considered a religious disease, it was the task of the priest to diagnose, order segregation and possibly verify healing and readmission in the community.
What does he feel, says and does Jesus do when the leper throws himself to his knees and asks him to be "purified"? He tries compassion, tends his hand, touches him and says "I want it". He proves compassion because he cannot admit that in the name of a human law, cloaked that he can keep someone out of the community, separated and condemned. He tends his hand and touches: he comes into contact with people's flesh, he does not consider them impure. He wants it: God only wants that all his sons and his daughters have healed, reject, enjoy a full life. In his to spread his hand and touch there is all the power of God. For Jesus there are no categories: pure/impure, sacred/profane, inside/outside. We are all brothers and sisters.
The sacredness belongs to religion not to the faith, the purity of the Gospel does not seem aimed at indicating the border between lawful and illicit, but willingness to let us cross by light. When we need to use categories we are far from the logic of the Gospel and close to that of the law, which separates and distinguishes. And my daughter's words come back to me: "I wouldn't want to be defined, mom!". Even today there are people who, like lepers, feel excluded, remain on the church door. To them the good news of Jesus, of which they are the first recipients, is not announced.
I feel like my lips like my shadow areas, the part of me of which I feel ashamed, instead perhaps it is precisely through fragility, that part of me that I am called to recognize, that I can get to a full life.
Love heals, brings closer, seeks the beauty and strength present in each and each to make it bloom.
In the song there is also the courage of the leper who, in turn, overcoming barriers and guilt, transgresses the rules of the religion of the time to get closer to Jesus: if you want - it begs it on its knees - you can heal me! A plea, which can also be imagined screamed, which reveals in addition to the suffering for the marginalization and loneliness also suffered the great faith in the power of Jesus. Both, therefore, with a very strong determination decide to transgress the rules of the society of the time in the name of a higher force that seems invincible at that moment.
The leper approaches Jesus with a strong demand for healing. And I wonder: I taught my daughters to get closer to Jesus, to rely on him? I feel that Jesus touched me through the gaze of others. Perhaps it is through my gaze that my daughters will feel touched by Jesus.
Our boys are not welcomed by the Church, there is a great responsibility of the Church in this refusal. Only with love can a bridge be built to dialogue. I feel I feel of God, I wish they too felt children of God.
The leper, disobeying how much Jesus had told him, began to disseminate the news to the point that Jesus could no longer publicly enter the city and was out of deserted places. Jesus respects his will, let him make his choices.
In the passage of the numbers, Maria and Aaron, perhaps jealous of the prestigious position of his brother Moses, contest him by taking as a pretext his marriage to an Ethiopian woman, non -Jewish. The wrath of God lights up against them - reads the text - and Mary is hit by leprosy. He will have to remain isolated out of the camp for seven days, then he will be admitted to you again. In what God does, even in a punishment, there is always a hidden opportunity. If I hadn't had a gay son, I wouldn't have developed those skills and sensitivity that I didn't and what now I feel I have. Perhaps those seven days to spend outside in the desert also served for me, to mature the sensitivity that belongs to me today. Perhaps it is also up to me to reflect in the desert instead of my son who at the moment seems far from the Church.
But why only Maria is hit by leprosy if both, Aaron and Maria, had they stained the same fault?
Is it the male chauvinist mentality of the time that transfers a male chauvinist attitude to God? Or is it God who is wrong and repent after the intervention of Moses who asks him to heal his sister, limiting the punishment to seven days? There are many texts of the Old Testament where the intervention of men changes his mind to God, he changes his behavior or purpose, reconciling it with mankind, despite his sin.
God chooses situations of fragility, the Bible tells us, and that's where his wonders perform. But in front of a disease that does not heal, destined to worsen, how to recognize the prodigy of God? I refuse the idea of the disease as of a cross to be accepted resigned, as Jesus accepted his. Jesus did not choose the cross, he chose to remain consistent until the end, not to deny what he had spent his life, he had contaminated with the scraps of the company and this brought him to the cross.
The cross is a tool of torture, not something to be worshiped. I am not on the side of the crosses, I'm on the side of the crucifixes to be freed from their crosses. But when do you deal with a disease from which you don't get rid? When the future is afraid and the only possible defense is not to think about it, immersing itself in the present, is there no risk of being taken by a deep loss? Yet I did not meet that loss; Despite the inability to shout a prayer of request, like the one who leans, I feel the closeness of God and I feel strong. What if this was the miracle? If it were the serenity that in spite of everything I carry inside me?
If God chooses fragility I think of it on the side of my children. During their childhood and adolescence I tried to make them reflect on the evangelical message, on the constant attention of Jesus to human fragility in all its forms, beyond the religious conventions imposed. I keep asking me about the way to help them live an authentic dimension of spirituality. Even today I find myself suggesting to him: "Do not always look on the ground looking for the acorns, as pigs do, get your eyes to the sky. Leave your wings to fly".
With Jesus there is a reversal of the categories: eat with sinners, touches the sick, risking that their exclusion has to contact it. They are not the healthy who need the doctor, but the sick. They are the sick, the excluded that needs the overturning of the dominant logic, an indispensable reversal to radically renew human relationships.
Categories serve to give security. I struggle to overthrow them, but it turned out to be indispensable for me that I had to cross the shadow area of the sense of guilt, of the shame in front of the coming out of my children before I could bring me closer to the Lord: a painful journey from shame to a more mature and vital faith. It is precisely through pain, the shame that I got closer to God and I let myself be touched by him.
I have never accepted the categories. I am not touched by what others may think.
Il rovesciamento delle categorie a cui ci invita Gesù rimanda per contrasto al nostro bisogno di definire, di classificare eventi e comportamenti delle persone nel tentativo di non lasciare nulla al caso, di dare ordine al mondo, di spiegarlo. Un tentativo di fare luce nell’oscurità del mondo. C’è la difficoltà a sospendere il giudizio, a rinunciare alla semplificazione degli schemi. È difficile pensare in modo complesso perché ci devi mettere dentro cose diverse, contraddittorie. Tentiamo di avere ragione sull’infinita complessità della vita sintetizzandola in un’etichetta, in una categoria. Le categorie non bastano, ci possono portare fuori strada, ma ci fanno vivere bene. O così ci sembra. Ma intanto ci allontanano da Gesù e ci fanno rischiare di non cogliere i segni. Forse la ricerca di una identità per noi e per tutte le persone che amiamo è un modo per definire l’infinita imprevedibilità degli eventi, in particolare quelli inquietanti, o addirittura drammatici. Di fronte all’orrore delle macerie di Gaza un segno di speranza proviene da alcuni versi di un poeta palestinese. Mentre con i piedi calpesta le macerie, alza lo sguardo e vede il cielo di Gaza: “Non si allontani il cielo / ora è giunto luminoso / lavato nel sangue bambino / in campi di rossi papaveri / soffocati sotto carri cingolati. / Non si allontani il cielo / è giunto finalmente /…/ è venuto pulito”. Forse per cogliere i segni bisogna allargare lo sguardo.
Jesus does the only thing he should not have done: he touches the leper, as he had let himself be touched by the sinner, and he does it intentionally, then retires to deserted places, making his condition of the leper who could not approach the inhabited ones. A prophetic gesture: Jesus will die outside, condemned to the crucifixion as a cursed, a blasphemous. God becomes close to those who experience situations of marginality, take over the condition of exclusion, does not keep shelter, even from what is not commendable, and invites us to do the same, to compromise ourselves with the brothers and sisters. This seems to me just a good God.
Marco 1,40-45
Then a leper came to him: he begged him on his knees and said to him: "If you want, you can heal me!". Moved to compassion, he spread his hand, touched him and said to him, "I want him, heal!" The leprosy immediately disappeared and he healed. And, warning him severely, he postponed him and said to him: "Look to not say anything to anyone, but go to the priest, and offer for your purification what Moses ordered, testifying for them". But those, moving away, began to proclaim and disseminate the fact, to the point that Jesus could no longer publicly enter a city, but he was out, in deserted places, and came to him from all sides.
Numbers 12.1-16
Mary and Aronne spoke against Moses because of the Ethiopian woman who had married; In fact he had married an Ethiopian. Did they say, "did the Lord spoke only by means of Moses? Didn't he also talk to us too? ». The Lord heard. Now Moses was much more meek than every man who is on Earth.
The Lord immediately told Moses, to Aaron and Maria: "Exit all three and go to the conference tent". All three came out. The Lord then went down to a column of cloud, stopped at the entrance of the tent and called Aaron and Maria. The two went on. The Lord said, "Listen to my words! If there will be your prophet, I, the Lord, in vision I will reveal to him, in a dream I will speak with him. Not so for my servant Moses: he is the trusted man throughout my home. Mouth mouth I speak with him, in vision and not with puzzles and he looks at the image of the Lord. Why didn't you fear to speak against my servant Moses? ».
The wrath of the Lord came on against them and he left; The cloud retired above the curtain and here is Maria was lebbrosa, white as snow; Aronne looked at Maria and here was lepers. Aronne said to Moses: "My lord, do not take the penalty of sin that we have foolishly committed, it is not like the child born dead, whose meat is already half consumed when it comes out of the mother's breast". Moses shouted to the Lord: "Heal, God!" The Lord replied to Moses: "If her father had spit in the face, wouldn't it be ashamed for seven days? Is therefore isolated outside the seven -day camp; Then it will be admitted to you again ». Mary therefore remained isolated, outside the seven -day camp; The people did not resume the journey, until Mary was readmitted to the camp. Then the people left Caserot and camp in the Paran desert.
*The return is a sort of report of what has been said during the meeting. As in a collage, significant fragments of the interventions of the individual participants, words and thoughts expressed by each and each one are placed together.
** WORD… AND WORDSIt is a Christian experiential meeting group for parents of LGBT people and LGBT parents from Rome. We meet to travel and trace the journey together towards an inclusive society and church, where nobody is put on the edge. We do it following in the footsteps of that Jesus of Nazareth, who, on the streets of Palestine, shared his life with the excluded and excluded of his time. We meet once a month, normally the first Friday, at 8 pm at a place adjacent to the church of Sant'Ignazio. Those who are interested can contact us in these contact details: Alessandra Bialetti Cell. 346 221 4143 -alessandra.bialetti@gmail.com; DEA SANTONICO CELL.338 629 8894 -dea.santonico@gmail.com
