Stir a Passion in our Hearts: Mark 1:40-45 & 1 Corinthians 9:24-27

When you get talking to someone new, once you get beyond the weather, pretty quickly you can find out what makes someone excited.

It may be people in their life – their wife or children or siblings. Maybe it is their work as a builder or a teacher or nurse. Maybe it is a hobby like woodworking or painting. Maybe it is a book they have just read and it deeply impacted them. Or it could be a café they have recently visited that makes one of those deep fried croissant doughnut hybrids – the infamous cronut. Whatever it is, people love to talk about what it is that matters to them, people will talk at length and with passion about all manner of things that have captured their hearts.

We sometimes describe people as being passionate about something. That person is so passionate about caring for the environment or that person is so passionate about fishing.

To be passionate is to be moved. It is to have strong feelings or beliefs about something.

As we come to today’s readings from Scripture, we see lots of passion. Both in the Gospel reading and in Paul’s letter to Corinthians we see it.

We are going to dip into these readings and let them speak to us today, and as we do I want to zone in on this theme of passion.

So, let’s turn first of all to the Gospel, to Mark chapter 1.

Here we meet Jesus.

Jesus Cleanses the man with Leprosy

Jesus is on a mission out and about the neighbourhoods of Galilee. He is preaching and performing miracles, and starting to draw some serious attention as he does so.

As this unfolds a man comes to Jesus. He is a leper; he has a disease which effected his nerves and skin. It causes painful inflammation, flaking skin, and loss of sensitivity of the limbs, deformity, and sometimes even paralysis.

This leprosy would obviously mean serious physical pain, but it also meant so much more than just the physical symptoms.

In Jewish custom and law this man was considered ritually and socially ‘unclean.’ He was not to be associated with and there would be ramifications if anyone go too close to him, let alone touch him. This man would be excluded from normal life on lots of levels. He would be excluded from meals, from gatherings of worship like this. This man would be dependent on the charity of others. His existence would be isolated and lonely. Here is an outcast.

We can see the issue in the language used in this passage. He says to Jesus “you can make me clean.” This is a matter of healing of his physical condition but also a matter of being made ‘clean’, of being made acceptable and socially included.

And so, it is deeply significant that Jesus stretches out his hand and touches this man. Jesus is not afraid of becoming unclean or being tainted by this man. Jesus’ love is greater than fear – he reaches out.

A beautiful detail in Mark’s account of this moment is that he includes for us a snapshot of Jesus’ heart for us to see.

He says “Moved with pity, he stretched out his hand and touched him…”

There is a choice in the English translation of Jesus’ emotion here. Moved with pity or compassion is one option. The other option here is to translate this emotion from the Greek of the New Testament as anger. Moved with anger.

Two quite different emotions.

The message translation in a way captures both in a sense saying that “Jesus was deeply moved.”

This is where we see the passion of Jesus.

He deeply cares.

He is compassionate as he sees this man’s predicament. And we could rightly say that he is angry as he sees the predicament of this man. Life shouldn’t be like this for the leper, this is not the way things should be. The anger isn’t directed at the man but against the devastating disease and brokenness that has overtaken this man’s existence. Perhaps too the anger is directed at the stigma he has faced in the community.

It’s worth us pausing here and taking a moment just to see what we learn about Jesus and who he is as we take these words in.

Jesus is not content to walk by this man and his suffering. He is drawn in. Jesus is not happy to settle for the social and religious conventions of his day by assuming that this man is untouchable, instead he reaches out.

Jesus is deeply moved. He is passionate to see this man made whole – physically, emotionally, socially, spiritually.

This is what Jesus has come for – to set the captives free.

And so, he does. He heals the man.

And then he tells him to keep it quiet.

There is no simple explanation as to why, but it seems that it has something to do with the focus and intent of Jesus’ mission.

- Just a little earlier in Mark 1, we hear this:

35 And rising very early in the morning, while it was still dark, he departed and went out to a desolate place, and there he prayed. 36 And Simon and those who were with him searched for him, 37 and they found him and said to him, “Everyone is looking for you.” 38 And he said to them, “Let us go on to the next towns, that I may preach there also, for that is why I came out.” 39 And he went throughout all Galilee, preaching in their synagogues and casting out demons. (Mark 1:35-39)

Jesus is set on a course; he is resolute about what he has come to do.

The miracles themselves aren’t the point. The disciples might wonder since Jesus is becoming so popular why he doesn’t whip up the crowds and build his popularity.

In modern terms, if Jesus had a marketing manager, he might be encouraged to Instagram some of his miracles, create some Facebook events, and gather a religious crowd.

Yet, Jesus will not be swayed by the crowds, he is deeply intentional. The healing of this leper is a foretaste of more to come. Jesus will go to the cross, and face sin and death head on, defeating it in his resurrection and offering healing to the entire world.

Jesus is full of passion and full of intention.

The funny and in many ways predictable twist in this story is that even though he was told to keep quiet, the man couldn’t keep his mouth shut.

But I don’t blame him. Could you keep quiet about such a huge turnaround, such a miracle, such a rescue if it happened to you?

The man so full of joy is bursting with delight. Jesus has instructed him to go through the official channels to have his healing confirmed and to be welcomed back into society, but this guy is just way too over the moon. He is passionate.

There is something natural about this. The greatness of Jesus and the goodness of what he is doing cannot be hidden.

Let me be clear though, disobedience to Jesus’ instructions ought not to be emulated. If we are to follow Jesus then a key part is obedience to him.  But this passage does raise a question for us – are we likely to be like the man here? Blurting out what Jesus has done for us? Are we likely to burst with such public joy at what Jesus has done in rescuing us from sin and death and healing our own brokenness?  It’s likely that we err on the side of being a little too quiet, and a little dispassionate about what Jesus has done in comparison to this man.

So, here in Mark we see the passion of Jesus to accomplish his mission of bringing God’s kingdom, of healing and making whole this broken and hurting world.

As we look at our passage from Corinthians read this morning, we see Paul imitating the passion and intention of Jesus in his life.

Paul uses a sports metaphor that would have resonated with the Corinthians who loved athletics.

He says that he like an athlete he trains and exercises. He doesn’t run aimlessly or box the air, but rather he is focused on his mission to tell the world all about Jesus.

We hear in Paul’s words the passion he has for Jesus and his intentionality and focus in sharing with others.

Paul knows something about passion that is really important.

It doesn’t just happen.

Yes, we get spontaneous feelings about things, and we can be deeply moved in ways that surprise us. But passion is often cultivated by practicing something. Pauls uses the metaphor of training because it taps into this idea.

Christian philosopher James Smith puts this well. He says: “We are creatures of habit…God knows this (since he created us), and thus our gracious, redeeming God meets us where we are by giving us Spirit-empowered, heart-calibrating, habit-forming practices to retrain our loves…If we don’t take this seriously, we will, in effect, be giving ourselves over to all of the rival habit-forming practices of our culture.”[1]

Paul’s passion for Jesus came through the training of his heart to love Jesus more, to be like Jesus in his love of others, and to announce to a world in need the good news of what Jesus has done.

As I was reflecting on the Gospel reading for this week and Paul’s letter to the Corinthians a question came to the surface for me.

What are you most passionate about in life?

If you think in pictures or metaphors, there is some biblical language which engages with the question of passion from another angle. The Bible speaks of inclining our heart towards God. So, we might rephrase the question:

What way do our hearts lean? Do they lean towards God or away from God?

Psalm 119:112 – “I incline my heart to perform your statutes

forever, to the end.”

Joshua 24:19 - “Then put away the foreign gods that are among you, and incline your heart to the Lord, the God of Israel.”

2 Thessalonians 3:5 “May the Lord direct your hearts to the love of God and to the steadfastness of Christ.”

I believe that the invitation this morning is one to incline our hearts toward God, particularly toward Jesus.

We’ve seen in today’s reading that Jesus is compassionate and good.

The Leper comes to him broken and in need of healing, and so do we. Nothing frightens Jesus away, nothing we have done is too ugly, nothing we have done makes us too unclean for him to touch us. Jesus turns his face toward the leper and extends his healing hand – he does to us too.  

We are invited to come to Jesus in faith and experience the healing and wholeness that he offers us. And as we do, we will discover that Jesus will give us a passion like him, we will discover that Jesus will invite us to share in his life, to be animated by his passion, to be filled with the Holy Spirit so that our hearts may be moved by the things which move the heart of Jesus.

My hope and prayer is that this year we may continue to come to him, regularly inclining our hearts, seeking with passion and intention that not only may we experience the salvation that Jesus offers us but so that we can be people who go out, like Paul with passion and intention to preach the good news and to love like Jesus loves.

Next week we enter the season of Lent, which is a season to incline our hearts, to encounter Jesus afresh, and to have our passions aligned with what Jesus is passionate about….

Lent is a time where we examine the habits and practices of our lives. As we do so we could ask the question – are our hearts inclined toward Jesus? Because not matter where we are at Jesus’ hand is reaching out to us.

Let’s pray.

As we come to the table we will sing together “stir a passion in our hearts Lord…” Let’s meditate on these words.

By Joshua Taylor

[1] James K. A Smith quoted in “Hide This in Your Heart: Memorizing Scripture for Kingdom Impact” by Michael Frost and Graham Joseph Hill.