Mosaic Teaching Guide
15 February 09

Mark 1.40-45:
A leper came to him begging him, and kneeling he said to him, “If you choose, you can make me clean.” Moved with pity, Jesus stretched out his hand and touchedhim, and said to him, “I do choose. Be made clean!” Immediately the leprosy left him, and he was made clean. After sternly warning him he sent him away at once, saying to him, “See that you say nothing to anyone; but go, show yourself to the priest, and offer for your cleansing what Moses commanded, as a testimony to them.” But he went out and began to proclaim it freely, and to spread the word, so that Jesus could no longer go into a town openly, but stayed out in the country; and people came to him from every quarter.

1. Unclean
1.  “The leper was a corpse haunting the edges of the community he could n0 longer enter” (Fred Craddock).
2. “He (the leper) shall live alone; his dwelling shall be outside the camp” (Lev. 13.45, 46).   
2. Jesus and the Leper
3. Everyone is Broken
4. The Poverty of Loneliness
5. Everyone is Lost and in Need of a Home
6. Fred Craddock Story

 

Mosaic Study Guide
For Personal Reflection or Smaller Group Encounters

Questions for Everyone: How did you celebrate St. Valentine’s Day?  What are feelings about the holiday?  Hallmark holiday or beautiful celebration of love?  What do you know about St. Valentine? 

On Sunday we heard about the life of a leper in Jesus’ day.  They were really dead men walking. 

Questions: Do we have modern day lepers?  Is there any group of people in our culture that might be considered “unclean?”

The categories of clean and unclean are rather foreign to us.  But in Jesus’ day everyone saw the world through the lens of clean and unclean.  Jesus touches the leper utterly ignoring this way of seeing the world. 

Questions: How does Jesus challenge the way you see the world?  Who might Jesus encourage you to touch with compassion and grace? 

Jesus displays negative emotion in this text.  The Greek would tend to indicate that Jesus is frustrated or even angry when he encounters the leper.  On Sunday it was submitted that perhaps Jesus is angry all the cultural powers including religion that led to the man’s isolation. 

Questions: Have you ever witnessed the dark side of religion?  What did that look like? 

We talked about two of our common confessions on Sunday; everyone is broken and everyone is lost. 

Question: How might these confessions shape our life together?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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