“Of Faith and Fame”     

                                      Rev. Sharon James Fazel      

                                               Mark 1:40-45   

Some of you may remember Fredie Prinze, a young comic and actor who rose to fame and fortune as a very young man, in the late 1970’s. He had trouble dealing with his quick rise to fame and sudden fortune, and took his own life while under the influence of qualuudes. More recently, there was Heath Ledger, another twenty something star nominated for a posthumous Academy Award in next month’s Oscars.  Princess Di of England regularly fled the paparazzi, and is said to never have really been able to deal with her own very public life once her marriage to Prince Philip thrust her into sudden fame. And then there’s Lindsey Lohan, who doesn’t turn 23 years old till this June. Her child modeling and acting career has kept her in bright lights all her life, shining just as brightly on troubled parents and a series of ups and downs in her personal life. Gifted individuals, all of them. This is an inexhaustive list of people whose very gifts thrust them into a spotlight where others seeking to grab a piece of them for their own benefit became much more difficult than probably any of us can imagine.

And so, I wonder what it was like for Jesus? Jesus the teacher, the pedantic young man who sat in synagogues speaking of some spiritual kin-dom that allowed room for even the marginalized people of the world to be in full and loving relationship with God.

Mark’s Jesus cleansed the marginalized. He walked among lepers and those cast out from society, and touched them with love and healing; and something about that experience made them whole.  If he were here today, whom would he touch first?          Who are the marginalized of today?

              Well, when are we marginalized? – There are obvious answers and examples – they are those of difference, the “other” – other races, other cultures, other religions, other gender identifications, other patterns of public behavior.

Yet, we might say that the 20th into the 21st century “others” we keep at a distance, are those with HIV/AIDS; or those struggling with serious mental illness. And yet, even within much narrower homogenous groupings of people, there are those of us who ourselves begin to feel like “the other” in our own communities: those of us who’ve lost jobs; those who’ve lost or may be losing homes; or those of us who’ve  lost a spouse or a partner, or a child; or any among us whose loved one has died suddenly of tragic means, “before his/her time.” Or what about those of us who experience one tragic situation after another, until not only those around us, but we ourselves ask “what’s next? What more could possibly happen now?” – that’s when people around us literally don’t know what to say to us!   But Jesus doesn’t say a lot to those “others” whom he heals. He lays his hands on them, and they are “made clean.”

It’s interesting to note here that the word “clean” comes up a total of 4 times in this short passage from Mark for this morning. “Clean” in the Greek originates in the same word we know as catharsis. Catharsis was a major concept in the world of the Greeks. Ancient Greece in particular clearly identified catharsis as the desired effect of its ancient theatrical productions, especially its tragedies. In this use of the term, the amplification of its meaning comes to us through Aristotle, whose poetics defined the parameters for creative expression on the Greek stage, where theatre and religion were one in the same.  For Aristotle, catharsis was “a release of emotional tension after an overwhelming vicarious experience, resulting in the purging or purification of the emotions.”  This was the desired effect on the audience who watched Greek tragedy.

Catharsis also means “any release of emotional tension to the same effect;” or “a purification or cleansing, especially an emotional one;” or literally, as in medicine, “a purging of the digestive system.”

But back to the issue that brought Freddie Prinze and Lindsey Lohan and so many other celebrities of our day, to mind: Jesus’ behavior after he has healed the man with leprosy. Jesus admonishes the man not to make a big deal out of this  successful  “treatment.” Rather, Jesus instructs the man not to tell the world about it, but to keep quiet about it, and to do simply what is necessary to reintegrate himself back into his own community once again. Go to the priest, perform the appropriate rituals of cleansing and thanksgiving, become identified as one of your own flock once more, and leave it at that.

              But, of course, in our story in Mark, the man with leprosy spreads the story far and wide anyway, and Jesus is immediately besieged with people asking him for healing. They seek him out, track him down in the countryside. With the paparazzi on his trail, Jesus experiences the consequences of sudden fame.

              Scholars and theologians have come to refer to this instruction of Jesus to this man healed of leprosy, and to similar instructions in other parts of the Gospel of Mark, as the “messianic secret.” Quite frankly, I think talking too much about that gets confusing, and I’m not sure it really takes you, or me, anywhere productive. It is a recurring theme in Mark, so I guess we’re compelled to give it a name, and “messianic secret” is as good as any. “Messianic” is a derivative of “Messiah,” of course. And Hebrew religion taught of the messiah to come. But I’m more inclined, at least this morning, to talk about this recurring theme not as the “messianic secret” but rather as the “what price fame syndrome.”

              You see, Jesus had only just begun his ministry, and already he was besieged with throngs of people pawing at him for attention to their particular ailments. He came to teach, he came to spread the good news, his intended focus was on spiritual guidance for real world application. No magic formulas for escaping human pain or burdens. But a message that assured people that wherever there was pain, God was there.

              Yet his sudden catapult into crowds who had little interest in his words and teachings, who wanted only the miraculous healing he had suddenly become famous for, is the reality he dealt with. He tried to keep it under control, but there seemed to be an aspect of randomness here. In Mark’s stories, Jesus repeatedly asked others not to spread fantastic stories of miraculous healing. And yet, it’s human nature to do just that.  And so they did.

              That kind of pressure on Jesus to “deliver” every time is not without its pitfalls, and perhaps Jesus was well aware of that. He didn’t retreat into depression, as far as we can tell, but he certainly understood that the dynamics of sudden notoriety were not conducive to solid teaching, nor to tutelage by humble example.

              So where does this leave us on this morning’s story?  Frankly, I’m not sure I can answer that question for all time and for all people! For me, the bottom line leads me right back to where I’ve been before, especially in our recent examination of the character and nature of the man Jesus, as seen through the eyes of the gospel of Mark. For me, that means that this Jesus is ultimately, supremely human. And therefore, supremely empathetic with his fellow human beings, and supremely worthy of our empathy for him, as one fully human.

In this unfolding story told in Mark, we see a man gifted in many ways, with singleness of purpose, purity of motive, and dedicated to a cause founded in the ethic of justice. We see him against a backdrop of an aching world, where his own followers don’t seem to understand him, where those who seek him more often than not do so strictly for their own sustenance, rather than for the good of others. And yet, he persists. Somehow he manages to live a life that is definitely in the world, yet not exactly of the world. And for that reason, Jesus continues to intrigue and astound, baffle and confound, even today. Who knows, maybe continuing to do that after so many centuries is in itself “the messianic secret!”

Whatever it is, it’s worth looking at over and over again, or we wouldn’t be here. Praise God for the opportunity to do so, together! Let us pray.

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