It’s Only A Footnote

The Rev. Whitworth Ferguson III
First Presbyterian Church
Washingtonville, New York
February 12/19, 2006
Sixth/Seventh Sunday in Ordinary Time

It’s Only A Footnote
2 Kings 5:1-14
Mark 1:40-45

One of the most important lessons I learned in law school was,
“read the footnotes”.
You know what footnotes are –
those sentences down at the bottom of the page of a book.
We tend to find them in legal and scholarly books;
The print is typically microscopic,
so small that they almost dare us to read them,
so we tend to skip over them.
Before I went to law school,
my rationalization had always been,
that if the information was that important
the author should have included it
in the main part of the text,
so I rarely read footnotes.
What I learned in law school, though, was
that footnotes can often contain
a treasure trove of information.

So when I see a footnote in the Bible,
I look immediately to see what it is all about.
If you read along with me in the pew Bible as I read our texts,
did you notice whether there were any footnotes in either lesson?
In fact, there were seven in our Old Testament lesson,
and six in our New Testament lesson.
The footnotes in our Old Testament text
are all pretty straightforward.
The most significant tells us that we are not certain
what the Hebrew word we translate as “leprosy” really meant
three thousand years ago.
It probably meant a number of different skin diseases.

It’s a footnote in our New Testament lesson though
that I want us to look at.
It is the note that is attached to the second verse, verse 41.
You heard me read that Jesus was, “Moved with pity….”
by the sight of the leper.
The footnote reads,
“Other ancient authorities read, ‘Moved with anger’.”
What the note is telling us is that
there is an alternate reading to this verse,
that it might also read,
“Moved with anger, Jesus stretched out his hand,
and touched him,
and said to him, ‘I do choose. Be made clean!’”

One footnote, one word change,
but it changes the tone of the lesson considerably.
Was Jesus moved with pity or with anger?
Those are two very different emotions.
So let’s do a little exegesis – do you remember the term?
Let’s do a little exegesis together.

The note says “other ancient authorities” --
what does that mean? “Other ancient authorities”?
It is a reminder that when we read the Bible,
we are reading translations of copies of manuscripts.
First, we are reading a translation, words that were written --
in the case of the New Testament --
two thousand years ago in Greek.
which have been translated from Greek into English.


Now with translations come problems.
If you know another language, you know that
it can be very hard to translate some phrases
from one language into another.
Years ago, when Coca Cola’s advertising slogan was
“Coke Adds Life”,
the company wanted to begin selling it products in China.
So they tried to translate “Coke Adds Life” into Chinese.
Advertisements on billboards and magazines
and newspapers went up throughout the country
and millions of Chinese wondered about
the fizzy beverage with the slogan that said,
“Coke brings you back from the dead”.

Complicating matters further,
we are dealing not with contemporary Greek,
we are dealing with ancient Greek,
the dialect that was written and spoken two thousand years ago.
Think about how much the English language has changed
in the centuries since William Shakespeare wrote his plays
and imagine how much a language might change
over 2000 years.

But here is the biggest problem.
The text that we read from in our New Revised Standard Bible
or any other Bible is not a direct translation
from the original Gospel of Mark, the one written by Mark
or his scribe about 20 years
after the crucifixion of our Lord.
Our translation comes from a copy of the Book,
or more likely, a copy of a copy.
The Gospel of Mark was written out by hand,
and then copies were made, each one by hand.
And every time a copy was made, inevitably
changes worked their way into the text.
So even among the most ancient scrolls
we have, no two are exactly alike.
And the oldest existing texts that we currently have
are copies that date to the third century.

Scribes who copied things made errors;
It was very exacting work.
The ancient Greek language did not make it easy:
there were no punctuation marks, no commas,
no periods, no quotes, no question marks, no exclamation points.
All the words ran on together.
The copyist had to determine where one word ended
and another began,
where one sentence ended and another began,
where one paragraph ended and another began,
where one chapter ended and another began.
Biblical Scholar Bart Ehrman points out the difficulty
with the phrase that looks like “God is Now Here”.
The phrase could also be read as “God is No Where”.
Two very different meanings!
(Ehrman, Misquoting Jesus, 48)

Some copyists felt free to make editorial changes in the text.
There is a copy of an old manuscript
of the book of Hebrews in the Vatican
where one word appears,
was subsequently changed by a second copyist
and then changed back to the first meaning by a third copyist,
who added a little note in the margin
to any subsequent copyist:
“Fool and knave, leave the old reading, don’t change it!”,
(Ehrman, Misquoting Jesus, 56)

All of this underscores why we Presbyterians
do not look at the Bible
as the literal, inerrant word of God,
Instead we look at the Bible as the inspired word of God.
Words written by men – and probably women –
inspired by God through the Holy Spirit.
It is why we look to the Holy Spirit when we read
to help us understand what is it that God wants us
to learn from a particular passage.
It is why we should not say, “The Bible says…”
What we are always working on through discernment is what God says;
what God is saying to us through the written word
that is the Bible,
and even more important, what God is saying to us
through the Living Word
that is our Lord Jesus Christ.
And we know that our Lord himself
was not a literalist.

So we are back to the footnote
and a passage that if we read one manuscript
has Jesus filled with pity for the leper,
and if we read from another manuscript
has Jesus filled with anger as he heals the man.
What is it that God wants us to learn from this footnote?

It is easy for us to imagine Jesus filled with pity for the man.
Pity for the leper and his miserable condition;
Pity for his pain, pity for his hopelessness,
pity for his loneliness.
We hear the story and we too are filled with pity for the man.

But it is also easy for to imagine Jesus as angry.
Angry not at the leper for approaching him
and asking to be healed.
Rather angry that the leper should have been forced
to live so miserably
forced out of society, forced to live on the fringes,
forced to beg for a few scraps of food
forced to become invisible by the callous cruelty
of the society in which he lived,
a people who claimed to be the children of God.

If Jesus was angry, his anger would have been grounded in
righteous indignation at the way society treated
not just this man,
but all of the sick,
as well as the poor, the elderly, the homeless, the orphans,
all those on the fringes; all those who were different.
all those forced to become invisible.

How different are things today?
If Jesus were to respond to a diseased person here and now,
how do you suppose he would feel?
He would be filled with pity, most certainly;
but I suspect that he would still be angry,
angry that in our society we still render
the poor, the sick, the elderly all but invisible,
as though they are a blot, a stain on our society,
a society in which we worship success, power,
money, and celebrity.
What if Jesus knew that as a society
we have allowed one million men, women and children
to drop into poverty
each year for the past five years;
Five million added to more than 30 million just since the year 2000.
Don’t you suppose Jesus would be angry?
Angry that our response is to render them invisible,
to say, “who cares”, “they are not our responsibility”.

Now, let me ask you:
As spiritual people, people filled with the Spirit of God,
people led by the Spirit of God,
people who strive to live by the Spirit
and not by the flesh,
to do what God wills and not what we want,
how should we react?
Is pity enough? Pity for the poor? Pity for the sick?
Or should we too be angry?

That footnote says to me that God wants us to be angry, too,
in the same way his Son was.
Because it is only when we become angry at situations before us
that we will move to action;
From saying, “Oh that poor man”, or “oh, that’s a shame”,
to saying, “we cannot allow this to happen;
we must do something, this is intolerable and unacceptable.”
And isn’t that what the Spirit calls us to do
as disciples of Jesus Christ?

Professor Darrell Guder of Princeton Theological Seminary
has focused much of his work on churches
that have made the jump from compassion to action,
from words to deeds,
where genuine empathy moves to anger
that stirs action.
These are “missional churches”, according to Guder.
Not “missionary” churches: churches that support
the work of missionaries sent out throughout the world.
That is something we already do through the
Presbyterian Church (USA).
Here the word is “missional”;
A missional church is a church filled with the power of the Spirit,
where every member is Spirit filled, Spirit led, Spirit guided.
In a missional church, every member
would understand Jesus’ anger;
every member would feel anger with our Lord.
“[M]issional communities are called to represent the compassion,
justice and peace of the reign of God” through Jesus Christ.
(Guder, 142)

Missional churches, missional communities reach out
to bring the outcasts back in,
Missional churches don’t just comfort the sick,
they work to provide better health care and find cures.
Missional churches don’t just feed the hungry,
they work to eliminate hunger and poverty.
Missional churches work to change society,
to change priorities.

All this from a footnote!
One tiny letter next to a text,
And yet the footnote opens our eyes to a whole new meaning,
a whole new level of discipleship.

Next time you open your Bible to read,
don’t skip over the footnotes.
The Spirit may well be planning to open your eyes
in a whole new way.
The Spirit may be calling you to a new level of Spiritual growth
as a missional disciple in a missional church.

This is the mysterious,
but loving power of God our Father
who graces us with faith through the power of the Holy Spirit
to follow his Son, our Lord Jesus Christ.
To the Father, Son and Holy Spirit,
be honor and glory!
Amen.