Our neighbors make us dinner every Tuesday night. They provide dinner and a movie for my family while I lead Bible Studies. I can barely write those sentences without tearing up. Last night Peter, the husband, waited on me multiple times fetching me wine and pie and coffee. This thought actually does bring tears to my eyes. See, I have this one neurosis that I have identified but I haven’t quite figured out how to negotiate. I hate being an inconvenience. There are few things that make me as uncomfortable as being served. Did you catch that? I see being served as being an inconvenience. In my head, I know those are two separate things, but subconsciously I equate the two. So when someone says, “Can I get you a glass of water?” I have to very consciously make myself reply, “Yes, please.” My recent reading in Mark caused me to consider how this translates to my relationship with my servant Savior.

This idea of being an inconvenience is the tone I hear in the leper in Mark chapter one. According to Mark, it’s early in Christ’s ministry. Jesus seems to be trying to keep a relatively low profile as He begins preaching and teaching in the synagogues. Before even the first chapter of the gospel is over, a man with leprosy has somehow seen Jesus’ capabilities, found him, recognizes His power and authority and declares the Truth that, if Jesus is willing, Jesus has the power to cleanse Him. There’s something about the way the leper asks the question that resonates with me. It’s like, “If you can spare one moment of your attention for me, that’s all it would take. I know I’m the least of your concerns and that this is a big ask. But if you are willing, you can make me clean.”

This passage is somewhat jarring. First, because it comes so early in the book. This leper has barely begun to see all of which Jesus is capable. Second, this man, aware of how despicably dirty He is, approaches a Holy man on His knees and begs Him to be made clean. The man with leprosy gets so low, knowing in his bones Jesus was the Healer he needed. He interrupts Jesus falling to His knees and asks to allow himself to be an inconvenience.

Jesus, moved with pity, touches a man known among religious men to be untouchable and responds, “I’m willing. Be made clean.” I know that if I had a thousand years to sit with these verses there would be treasures of God’s character still to be uncovered. But today’s treasure is what happens next.

Jesus sternly warned the newly cleansed man not to tell anyone what happened, but to go to the priest and offer the required sacrifices. He didn’t honor Jesus’ stern warning. In fact, he spread the news widely about what Jesus had done, and we learn from Mark that this man’s actions resulted in Jesus never again able to enter a town openly.

Talk about an inconvenience! The healing wasn’t the inconvenience. The not listening to the instructions that followed the healing led to a cost to Jesus and His disciples.

Out of all the times I’ve read the gospels, I’ve never noticed that this leper’s cleansing was the catalyst for such a ministry changing event for Jesus. You know why? Because this leper wasn’t an inconvenience to Jesus. Was there a cost? Yes. Jesus never remarks about this change in the course of his ministry. Mark does. We only know because the disciple remarks on the inconvenience of this healing to him. It was of no consequence to Jesus, because Christ knew the cost of our healing He had come to pay.

“…the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.” (Matthew 20:28)

He came to serve us. To Him, serving us in these cleansing, freeing, life giving ways is not an inconvenience. It is love. It is His very purpose, His essence.

Jesus knew before He healed the man what the outcome would likely be. He understood the price of healing Him would mean years in the wilderness surrounded by crowds. And He was moved with compassion and touched Him.

Christ knew the cost of our cleansing before He put on fleshly feet, tied His blistering sandals, began to walk these filthy roads and teach our calloused hearts. The cost of our sins is exactly what he came to pay.

Jesus, Love incarnate, experienced our flesh—every temptation, and every kind of suffering. So when we come to Him in our desperate states, we are not the least of His concerns, we are not an afterthought, we are not an inconvenience. Our suffering is the very subject of His every sympathy and He is moved with compassion, takes pity on us. He knows our pain and so, touches us in the deepest places no one else can even see. He meets us Spirit to spirit until He comes again in the flesh to heal us once and for all. So let’s run to Him with our every concern, fall to our knees and cry, “Lord, touch this broken thing in me (whatever it is) and make me whole again.” That is a plea to which He is eager to answer, “I am willing. Be made whole.”