Flailing Arks
http://www.usccb.org/bible/readings/011416.cfm
Why is the curing of the leper so important for us? Two reasons:
1. God prepares us continually to be ready for witness and testimony
2. Even though we fail to comply God will get out the message, though it will be more hidden, more difficult to decipher
When God hears us cry out, “If you wish, Jesus, you can make me clean,” does he have something else in mind when he heals us? Is there a sign that God wants from our healings, cleansing, and repairs to signify for others? Does God want us to do something specific about what he has done for us as proof to others?
Yes, yes, and yes.
I think our discovery of God’s purposes begins with the first reading about the Ark of the Lord, from Samuel. What was it for? It sounds familiar to Noah’s Ark, which was a much larger physical box that carried important stuff. The boat-like ark was a covenant container, ifyou will, holding something precious that God wants us to remember. So also was the Ark of the Lord. Noah’s Ark was a lifesaving artifact, as was the Ark of the Lord.
Noah’s Ark carried the leftovers of creation to a safe ending. After the folks and creatures were saved, God spoke to Noah, in a covenant language, saying he would not destroy creation again, because of its willful disregard for the creator. He saved a reproducible remnant of all of living creation in a wooden boat. He cleansed the earth.
We know this story. Even Jesus spoke of it in Matthew 24:23-41.
The Ark of the Lord, also called the Ark of the Hosts and the Ark of the Covenant physically held another pact from God. A covenant for a carved out group of folks, the Hebrew people.
Another similarity of these two arks is that God had already saved his people before telling them to build an Ark. Noah’s family had been hand-picked for rescue by God before the Ark was built. The Ark of the Covenant also came into existence after the Hebrew people had been saved from Egyptian slavery. While Noah’s Ark only saved a portion of humanity, it signaled an eternal commitment to all of creation. While the Ark of the Covenant was built for only a Hebrew people, it prepared the world for God’s presence in every human who would accept the presence of the Holy Spirit. Jesus, in fact, grafted us Gentiles to the root of Jesse. The hand-picked people grew exponentially, and the covenant spread across the globe.
The Jewish ark came about in a different kind of wilderness than Noah’s ark. Noah’s Ark lived in a raining wilderness for about 40 days, floating for another 340 days until the Ark was abandoned. The smaller Ark of the Covenant began as a small box and over 40 years was converted to a complex gold and jeweled artifact in the desert. Over another 1,476 years (or so) the Ark was converted into a temple, housing the Holy of Holies, and it also was abandoned.
Noah’s Ark was made of “gopher”wood, whatever that was. The Ark of the Covenant was made of acacia wood, a thorn tree. We kind of know what that is. These Arks are not just metaphors, though. They were real artifacts. God likes tactile things.
That’s enough of the comparisons. Now onto the Ark of the Covenant.
The Ark of the Covenant held a bunch of stuff. The two tablets of the commandments were in there. Also, there is the written version of the covenant God gave to Moses, noted in scripture within the “book of the law.” The document was perhaps a copy of the Pentateuch, if not the original first five books of the Bible which Moses wrote, or collected. Also, either inside or next to the Ark were two other things; a golden vessel holding a gomor of manna (Exodus 16:34), and the rod of Aaron, a staff from an almond tree, which had blossomed as a sign that the tribe of Levi would be the tribe of priests (Numbers 17:10).
The importance of these artifacts will show up in your own study. They are significant because God is always so specific about the meaning of these things. That specificity leads us in a moment to a startling connection between the leper and the book of the law.
The covenant behind the two Arks is most important to remember. To Noah, God promised:
Thus shall I establish My covenant with you; Never again shall all flesh be cut off by the waters of the flood; never again shall there be a flood to destroy the earth (Genesis9:11).
A covenant is a legally binding agreement, with consequences. God is to be trusted. The first covenant was all on God’s part. The Ark of the Covenant represented a different agreement, an intimate relationship between God and the Israelites, with expectations from both the bearer and receiver. The Ark of the Lord covenant is found noted in Exodus 19:5-8:
Now, if you obey me completely and keep my covenant,* you will be my treasured possession among all peoples,c though all the earth is mine. 6 You will be to me a kingdom of priests,* a holy nation.d That is what you must tell the Israelites. 7 So Moses went and summoned the elders ofthe people. When he set before them all that the Lord had ordered him to tellthem, 8 all the people answered together, “Everything the Lord has said, we will do.”[1]
“Though all the earth is mine,” means that all people belong to God, but he was hand-picking a small section of folks as his witness. These words changed history, identifying God's kingdom of priests. A holy nation. A witness for the world.
I’ve paraphrased what the New American Bible says about covenants into the following. This explains why the covenant from God is so revolutionary.
While covenants between individuals and between nations are found everywhere in the ancient Near East, God adapted the concept to express his relationship to Israel, an eternal innovation, which signifies a new kind of faith – a recorded, verbal, or biblical faith between God and a people. In history, other gods might “choose” nations to fulfill a special destiny or role in the world; but only Israel’s God is bound to a people by covenant. Israel’s identity as a people is put upon a foundation that does not depend upon the norms of statehood or forming of a nation. Israel will be a covenant people.[2]
That background from today’s first reading in Samuel seems like a winding road when we finally get to the gospel from Mark. But there is a connection between Eli’s adventure in using the Ark of the Covenant to defeat the Philistines, and Jesus healing the leper who fails to understand the implications of blabbing to the public.
Eli did not follow the directions of God’s procedure and purpose of the Ark of the Covenant. The leper did not follow the procedure that Jesus requested of him in his healing. God had a larger plan to fulfill in both instances, but weak old humans let him down.
“See that you tell no one anything, but go, show yourself to the priest and offer for your cleansing what Moses prescribed; that will be proof for them.”
What prescribed thing was the leper to do, and what proof would take place? Leviticus 1:1-9 tells the full tale. It’s from the book of law, which sat in the Ark of the Covenant. It’s quite specific.
Then the LORD spoke to Moses, saying, "This shall be the law of the leper for the day of his cleansing: He shall be brought to the priest. And the priest shall go out of the camp, and the priest shall examine him; and indeed, if the leprosy is healed in the leper … (it goes on)
( here’s the rest – “then the priest shall command to take for him who is to be cleansed two living and clean birds, cedar wood, scarlet, and hyssop. And the priest shall command that one of the birds be killed in an earthen vessel over running water. As for the living bird, he shall take it, the cedar wood and the scarlet and the hyssop,and dip them and the living bird in the blood of the bird that was killed over the running water. And he shall sprinkle it seven times on him who is to be cleansed from the leprosy, and shall pronounce him clean, and shall let the living bird loose in the open field. He who is to be cleansed shall wash his clothes, shave off all his hair, and wash himself in water, that he may be clean. After that he shall come into the camp, and shall stay outside his tent seven days. But on the seventh day he shall shave all the hair off his head and his beard and his eyebrows; all his hair he shall shave off. He shall wash his clothes and wash his body in water, and he shall be clean.")
You see, if a leper follows the procedure of being cleansed, a the priest first confirms that the leper has been healed before going on with the ceremony. Previous to the leper that Jesus heals only Naaman, a Syrian had ever been healed in the scripture record. The cleansing of a leper is not only a rarity, it is practically an unused procedure. Jesus, though, tells the man he heals to present himeself to the priests for examination. Remember what Jesus said to the leper.
“See that you tell no one anything, but go, show yourself to the priest and offer for your cleansing what Moses prescribed; that will be proof for them.”
It’s a rather weird process, but the specifically tactile set of things in Leviticus are important. In the cleansing ceremony, two birds are involved. One bird is killed in an earthen vessel overrunning water, and its blood is applied to a living bird, and then blood is applied to some cedar wood, and then to some scarlet fabric, and then to some hyssop. Using these things, the blood is further sprinkled on the leper, who has already been cured. The leper, remember, has been cured before this ceremony takes place. Then, the living bird is let go.
Leviticus paints a picture ofJesus’ death and resurrection. It portends leprosy as sin, and the sin is cleansed. The leper’s healing is a “proof” of the purpose of the Leviticus ritual. That purpose is to describe in metaphor what will take place when Jesus is killed. Jesus is a “heavenly” being, like a bird is “of the heavens.” The bird dies in an earthen vessel, while remaining clean. Clean due to the running water poured over it. The death of the bird is associated with blood and water; the blood is then sprinkled on living bird, which is represented as Jesus risen, and then it is applied to the already healed leper. We are the healed ones, the ones whose sin has been removed.
Or, I'm full of bananas and some other more serious analogies are afoot. (You can certainly find better explained theology than my short explanation, probably fraught with multiple errors.) In any case, this is no accidental ritual. Jesus knows it, and desires to put the Leviticus verses into cosmic purpose.
We are familiar with cedar wood here in the mountains of Colorado. It is an extremely resistant wood, hearty stuff in bad weather, and is likely the same wood as the cross. The hyssop is also important. Jesus was offered drink from a hyssop branch on the cross (Matthew 27:48). The scarlet fabric may well be the robe that Jesus wore.
Following the cleansing ceremony of the two birds, the cleansed leper has to now wash his clothes and shave off all of his hair. He is born again, resurrected. Jesus cured the leper as a sign for the priests, in order to provide testimony to himself from an ancient ceremony that spoke about him. The cleansing of the healed leper would help the Jewish priests make a connection to the Leviticus event, and perhaps recognize who Jesus was after his death upon the cross. How many cured lepers in history had ever gone to the priests? Probably none. Leprosy wasn’t curable.
But, the proof never happened. The man didn’t go to the priests. The priests never got the chance to follow through on the cured leper procedure. They wouldn’t make the connection when Jesus would be killed on the cedar cross, given the hyssop, and then rise from death. We would later, of course. But Jesus intended for the people of his day to know him.
The leper’s cure may have turned the lives around of some of the Pharisees. The proof may have changed a larger portion of the Jewish nation. Instead, because the leper did not listen to Jesus, Jesus had to be in hidden locations, in deserted places. The Ark of the Covenant was captured by the Philistines because Eli used it as a weapon. Thirty-four thousand soldiers died because he wasn’t listening to God. Not doing what God asks has implications.
When we experience the wonder of God’s graces, what should be do? Are our healings from God any less important than what he did for the leper? We are now walking Arks of the Covenant. Do we wield our continually healed and repaired bodies as we want? What does God want us to do?
There is much for us to learn from his healing acts in history, his rescues, and his miracles. Eli wasn’t aware of what God was doing with the Ark of the Covenant, and he used it improperly. The leper didn’t know what God was doing by healing him, and he responded improperly. Both acted, though, as any of us might.
How can we know what God wants from us?
We need to know him, because how he works in history is how he relates to us now. What is he whispering to us that requires our attention, and our willingness?
* Covenant: while covenants between individuals and between nations are ubiquitous in the ancient Near East, the adaptation of this concept to express the relationship that will henceforth characterize God’s relationship to Israel represents an important innovation of biblical faith. Other gods might “choose” nations to fulfill a special destiny or role in the world; but only Israel’s God is bound to a people by covenant. Thereby Israel’s identity as a people is put upon a foundation that does not depend upon the vicissitudes of Israelite statehood or the normal trappings of national existence. Israel will be a covenant people.
c Dt 7:6; 14:2; 26:18–19; 32:8–9.
* Kingdom of priests: in as much as this phrase is parallel to “holy nation,” it most likely means that the whole Israelite nation is set apart from other nations and so consecrated to God, or holy, in the way priests are among the people (cf. Is 61:6;1 Pt 2:5, 9).
d 1 Pt 2:9.
[1]New American Bible. (2011). (Revised Edition, Ex 19:5–8). Washington, DC: The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops.
[2]New American Bible. (2011). (Revised Edition). Washington, DC: The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops.