The Healing of the Leper

Mark For Everyone

MARK 1.35–45
The Healing of a Leper...

...Oscar Wilde said he could resist everything except temptation. In rather the same way, some people can keep anything except a secret. However much you say ‘You won’t tell, will you?’, and however much people say ‘Oh no! Not a soul!’ somehow the news leaks out, and we often have a good idea who it was who leaked it. It happens at the highest social levels, too. Governments, presidents and royal families are plagued by ‘leaks’ of information. Sometimes they simply learn to go with the flow and arrange some ‘leaks’ themselves, in the vain hope that this will keep people happy, not least in the media.

But why on earth did Jesus not want anything to leak out about his having healed a leper? If he was going around telling people the good news of the kingdom, surely more publicity was what he wanted? Why did he tell the poor man so fiercely (the word ‘warned him sternly’ is a very strong one in the original Greek) not to say anything? And are there any times when we, today, should be silent, however much we want to speak about Jesus and what he’s done for us...

Taken from Mark for Everyone by Tom Wright